Posts by Josh Holman

Writing about an Australian Snowden would land Vulture South in the clink

Outside the limit of our sight, feeding off us, perched on top of us, from birth to death, are our owners! Our owners! They have us. They control us! They are our MASTERS! Wake up! They're all about you! All around you!

'Arrogant' Snowden putting lives at risk, says NSA's deputy spyboss

"The net effect is our people who are overseas…are at greater risk because we don't see the threats that are coming their way."

That's because YOU are the threat.

GitHub probes worker's claims of hostile, sexist office culture

Sexism: prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially : discrimination against women

Not hiring women because they belong in the kitchen == sexist.

Gawking at women hula-hooping,jump-roping,jogging,etc == genetics.

Defies belief how many people can't use a dictionary.

Idiot.

Cameron: UK public is fine with domestic spying

As an American...

I also have a problem. I'm not sure which side runs this Village.

Be seeing you!

SECRET draft copyright treaty LEAKED: Meet the Trans-Pacific Partnership

I don't see what the big deal is...

Of course we're at war with EastIndia, we've always been at war with EastIndia.

PUNISHMENT gluttons: The Dr Who monsters that come back for more

One missing...

The Black Guardian.

Would like to see the guardians make an appearance in the new series.

Why Java would still stink even if it weren't security swiss cheese

This article was complete drivel.

I'm not sure why as a sysadmin you seem to feel you posses the competency to criticize programmers or programming languages. If your coders say "but it runs on my machine" and your company is developing a cross-platform application in Java, perhaps they should have hired developers with the requisite experience. Management are a bunch of twats, your company is doomed. If you haven't run into a Java application that runs everywhere (Eclipse comes to mind) maybe its because you admin 4 computers with 2 applications. Its also good to know you feel Java is finally dying, we can all finally get rid of that crusty old Android thing.

P.S. If you personally use dozens of languages, why are you still a sysadmin and not a devloper? (by choice I'm sure), and why would you say Python compiles and doesn't require an interpreter? Of course you need a Python interpreter you silly twit. (barring 3rd party compiler). .PYC is byte code like Java . Your career prospects are limited, and I can't understand why El Reg actually publishes your nonsense,

P.P.S I have worked professionally as a sysadmin, and as a developer. (Including Java and Python)

Legendary sci-fi fantasy author Ray Bradbury exits planet Earth

RIP

Thanks for the great stories.

Twelve... classic 1980s 8-bit micros

No ATARI 400/800? YOU ARE DEAD TO ME, EL REG.

Oracle v Google could clear way for copyright on languages, APIs

C doesn't have any set API's? Great, then Ken Thompson and Ritchie's estate can sue anyone who has ever implemented <stdio.h> regardless whether it was re-implemented (and copyrighted) That should cover just about everyone using a computer.

What's in the box, Windows sysadmin?

MinGW and MinSYS, make your Windows life worth living, Long live grep,sed,and awk.

Merry Christmas, Stratfor

@AnonCoward

Odd, when I was young and 'hacking' for GODs and PBXs through Genie,Tymnet and UUNET. Linux hadn't even been created yet. Wonder what we were doing? Oh well. That being said, it was never for malicious purposes. Being detected was the last thing one wanted. It was all about the fascination with computers and technology, never harm to others. But the world doesn't stop for anyone does it?

Dragonriders of Pern author Anne McCaffrey dies

Indeed, I'm oft perplexed by the sentiment that the genre is male dominated. So much for Mary Shelley, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. LeGuin, Andre Norton (Andrew North), Ocatvia Butler, Margarget Weis, etc,etc,etc.

P.S.

So long, and thanks for all the dragons.

Fallout: New Vegas

I really enjoy this game

Fallout 2 is my favorite game. That being said I am not an isometric Nazi or anything, and I enjoyed Fallout 3 as well. I found this game a rather enjoyable blend of the two. It has more of the character and soul of the first Fallout games, but is very much the same engine as Fallout 3 and I am fine with that. I enjoy tooling around the wasteland, laughing at the jokes and characters, and enjoying the writing as well. This game will entertain far beyond the average of most games released today. Enjoy your Stay!

Reg reader completely loses the plot

4 step plan

1. Remove all lower case 'l's from the word 'talking'

2. Remove some other random letters

2. ??????

3. PROFIT

4 step plan

1. Remove all lower case 'l's from the word 'talking'

2. Remove some other random letters

3. ??????

4. PROFIT

Reg competition: Cisco goes isup

3 Step plan

1. Remove all lower case 't's from website

2. ??????

3. PROFIT

I have some hostages, and they are tied up in a sack at the top of a flag pole!

I'm going to blow them up at midnight, unless I get these three demands:

1. I want a million dollars!

2. I want a getaway car waiting for me!

3. I want the lowercase letter 't' stricken from the English language!

See, you have to make one crazy demand, so if they catch you, you can plead insanity.

LOL, getaway car.

'I can see dinosaurs from my back porch'

The Courtier's Reply

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk.

Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.

Personally, I suspect that perhaps the Emperor might not be fully clothed — how else to explain the apparent sloth of the staff at the palace laundry — but, well, everyone else does seem to go on about his clothes, and this Dawkins fellow is such a rude upstart who lacks the wit of my elegant circumlocutions, that, while unable to deal with the substance of his accusations, I should at least chide him for his very bad form.

Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.

- PZ Myers

Mono man accuses Mac Gtk+ fans of jeopardizing Linux desktop

@E

Ummmm....

"I have some issues with a guy devoted to porting Microsoft's attempt to embrace extend and extinguish C++ (via managed C++) to non-Microsoft platforms criticizing a project which has built an excellent standard C & C++ cross platform GUI API (GTK/GTK+)."

You did know that Miguel De Icaza is the original author of GNOME right?

LOLZ.

Lab tech supplier redefines corporate song paradigm

Can we see that just once more?

I get the sense of it. I just don't understand it.

Cobbler pieces together mass Red Hat Linux installations

So has Linux

PXE server + AutoYaST.

Microsoft can pound sand with its IP - my grandma runs Ubuntu

The Answer to Zimbra problems is....

Scalix

El Reg decimates English language

Romanes Eunt Domus

What is this then? Romanes eunt domus, "People called Romanes they go the house"?

Mystery web infection grows, but cause remains elusive

Re-infection

According to http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=4902045&highlight=%2Fmem#post4902045

The exploit injects code into the kernel by accessing /dev/mem through tainted binaries executed at boot time. Although I cannot confirm this works in practice, in theory admins looking to prevent being reinfected could compile a new kernel with the grsecurity patch (http://www.grsecurity.net) and use the following kernel options:

Security-->Grsecurity-->Address Space Protection --> Deny writing to /dev/kmem, /dev/mem, and /dev/port

one more thing...

Preventing the tainted binaries from accessing /dev/mem doesn't mean the attacker is not still able to replace the system binaries via the unkown attack vector. Using Grsec's RBAC to pevent the root use from altering system binaries would serve to further protect the system, and if the apache user role were also well defined it *may* help prevent the initial attack vector.

Steve Jobs: struggling to redefine the TV paradigm

I have a better idea

What if instead of $299 TV unit, there were a $399 TV unit AND a game console? We could call it the "XBox 360" then we could start a service to download TV and Movies (both HD and regular), as well as allow subscribers to play multiplayer games, VOIP chat, purhcase games, demos and other content to our "console". We could call this service "XBox Live" - wait....who am I kidding, thats probably the better part of a decade away.

Josh