* Posts by Paul D Smyth

26 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Mar 2013

BOFH takes a visit to retro computing land

Paul D Smyth

Apple Lisa

If BOFH has an Apple Lisa he's lucked out for sure. Easily £3000+ lol

'Hey Google, remind Greg the locks have been changed, and he should find a new place to live. Maybe ask his mistress?'

Paul D Smyth

This is terrible

Said no parent of a teenager ever :-D

He's coming home, he's coming... Hutchins' coming home: British Wannacry killer held in US on malware dev rap set free by judge

Paul D Smyth

We already have them, ask any of the Windrush families. They're every bit as zealous as American ICE

Judge slaps down Meg Whitman for accusing Autonomy boss of being a 'fraudster who committed fraud'

Paul D Smyth

Re: Easy Straight Forward Case so Far

All along I've been suspicious of this case. Is it fraud because it was found to be fraud or because HP convinced a US court that it was. It sound to me that HP is coming under far more scrutiny in the High Court than in the US. Just smells of HP overpaid through their own incompetence then their unwieldy corporate structure wrecked the culture of the company causing key employees to leave. Rather than admit their own failings they threw Lynch & co under the bus. I've seen the same happen when an entire team from a small company IBM goggled up resigned en masse. It could be that Autonomy were fraudulent, it could be that they were naive and negligent but to me this is most about HP stitching someone up to protect themselves from shareholders suing them

Paul D Smyth

1 Whitman appears to be throwing Lesjak under the bus, just as she threw Autonomy under the bus. There's a pattern of behaviour here that would make the Politburo proud

Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy: Run Huawei, Google Play, turns away, from Huawei... turns away

Paul D Smyth

Depends on whether the orange man baby has Google eject them from the Play store for doing it. If you have to pay 30% to Google but someone else charges you 15% it's a no brainer

Former HP CEO Léo Apotheker tells court he didn't read Autonomy's latest accounts before fated $11bn buyout

Paul D Smyth

More often than not a "lowly sysadmin" would've been fobbed off with "legal and finance have signed this off and they know what they're doing better than you" so props to your manager for passing it on and to the board for paying attention.

Paul D Smyth

Re: crap CEO

Many years ago I worked within the Corporate IT of a large PLC. Speaking to board level directors on a daily basis you get to know how brilliant these people are but also an instinct when someone has been promoted beyond their capabilities. It's called the Peter Principle. Since this case came to light I have believed that this has been the case and rather than admit their negligence, HP have pursued this path that Autonomy were criminally liable in order to prevent them being sued to bankruptcy by their shareholders. I'm certainly not exonerating Autonomy but It'll be interesting to see how this case plays out in the High Court where the US govt holds no sway.

Court orders moribund ZX Spectrum reboot firm's directors to stump up £38k legal costs bill

Paul D Smyth

Re: Game Over

It's long past time the SFO were called in to investigate this. Levy, Martin & Mrsic-Flogel should certainly see the inside of a criminal court at least, if not a jail cell

Paul D Smyth

Re: Zombie companies

Apparently Levy attempted to appoint Darl McBride as a director.....

DNAaaahahaha: Twins' 23andMe, Ancestry, etc genetic tests vary wildly, surprising no one

Paul D Smyth

"Despite having virtually identical DNA"

*Virtually* identical DNA. This is the great myth, even identical twins will not necessarily inherit the exact some amount of DNA from each parent so there is no guarantee that they would get exactly the same results. You would not expect them to be wildly different though.

As for the differences in results, anyone who has submitted their data to multiple companies will tell you that they get very different results, and that's with the same DNA test let alone different ones. This is because each company is using it's own dataset, i.e it's own set of DNA results therefore if they haven't got as many people for a particular region you will not get as many matches from that region hence the discrepancy. Now when you add the possibility that different tests will potentially have different markers recorded the differences will become even larger.

To sum up, anyone who expects a DNA test costing £79 to be as detailed as a DNA test costing £1000s is expecting a bit much. Some companies offer much more detailed tests but again, it's only as good as the dataset behind it.

Microsoft sysadmin hired for fake NetWare skills keeps job despite twitchy trigger finger

Paul D Smyth

I've had things like this happen to me more than once. I had a recruiter add HPUX experience I didn't have and many other skills. When the interviewer starts asking questions about a particular subject that you can't answer it can be quite embarrassing. On most occasions they've queried the CV and luckily I always take a copy of my CV with me to follow along with so I'm able to give them that to demonstrate that the recruiter had altered it without my permission but on one occasion they didn't say anything and when I didn't get the role I found out later it was because they believed I'd embellished my CV.

Which scientist should be on the new £50 note? El Reg weighs in – and you should vote, too

Paul D Smyth

Re: One problem with this

"Short of massive inflation reducing the British pound to a fraction of its current worth"

Have you met Brexit?

ZX Spectrum Vega+ blows a FUSE: It runs open-source emulator

Paul D Smyth

Re: Sir Clive's health

I'm sure they'd like to put this on the former directors too if they could get away with it

Paul D Smyth

Re: FUSE?

I was exactly the same, I decided to hold back as it had been funded expecting there to be more available once launched. I've seen instructables using a raspberry Pi and 3D printed parts available to download and the official Pi screen that would do the job. Probably a little more expensive than the indiegogo price but easy to put together.

Ecuador tried to make Julian Assange a diplomat

Paul D Smyth

If Ecuador say he's a diplomat then he's a diplomat. The UK Govt have no say in the matter. They can declare him persona non grata but they can't take away his diplomatic status or immunity.

As Craig Murray posted on his blog:

"The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations – to which the UK and Ecuador are both party – is the governing international law and determines the obligations to respect diplomatic immunity. It is crystal clear (Article 4,1) that the need to obtain agreement in advance of the receiving state only applies to the Head of Mission – ie the Ecuadorian Ambassador. For other staff of the mission the sending state (in this case, Ecuador) “may freely appoint” the other members of the mission, (Article 7), subject to provisos in Articles 5,8,9 and 11. Plainly the only one of these which applies in the Assange case is Article 9. Julian Assange is persona non grata – unwelcome -to the UK government. That is a legitimate reply to notification, but comes following the appointment; it does not pre-empt the appointment."

ZX Spectrum Vega firm's lawyers targeted by empty-handed backers

Paul D Smyth

Vega+ happy backer found riding Shergar while sipping Pims with Lord Lucan

I didn't back this at the time but intended on buying one when it came out. When the original developers were forced out I began to smell something was rotten and challenged RCL on their facebook page. Over the past year excuse after excuse has been trotted out along with lots of dirty linen and comments about being picked on by the nasty bullies who originally came up with this. I repeatedly demanded to see evidence that Vega+ units were actually being produced. We got definitely by October 2016, then definitely by the end of the year. Then all backers units would ship in February 2017, then March and so on and so forth. I challenged RCL to show pictures of the components to prove that they had enough to manufacture these units. Nada. I am now of course banned from posting on their facebook group. Surprised I was able to for so long to be honest.

Let's face facts:

1. The money has mostly gone.

2. There will never be a Vega+

3. They do not have enough hardware to produce more than a couple of dozen.

4. They have no software deals in place.

5. All backers have lost their money.

Game authors demand missing ZX Spectrum reboot royalties

Paul D Smyth

Re: So...

We never refuse a request, my might ignore them for a year or two but we never refuse...

BBC hooks up with ITV, launches long awaited US subscription VoD

Paul D Smyth

Proof read your articles

If you're going to get on your high horse, proof read your article. It's noteworthy not note- worthy and what the hell is ad- vice? I suggest before you write "scathing" reports you first learn spelling and grammar. This reads like an essay an 11 year old wrote; Badly.

The Mail vs Wikipedia: They're more alike than they'd ever admit

Paul D Smyth

I'm trying to remember when Wikipedia itself last supported a brutal dictator, endorsed fascism, viscously went after anyone with a conscience, stoked hysteria, hatred, racism, sexism, bigotry and Islamophobia. Nope, not the same

VMware unleashes Linux on the (virtual) desktop

Paul D Smyth

Has nobody told them X11 is a Network Protocol?

#justsayin

Admins! Never mind POODLE, there're NEW OpenSSL bugs to splat

Paul D Smyth

Debian Security Announcement

Is it absolutely impossible for these guys to just send out an announcement in plain English?

A memory leak flaw was found in the way an OpenSSL handled failed

session ticket integrity checks. A remote attacker could exhaust all

available memory of an SSL/TLS or DTLS server by sending a large number

of invalid session tickets to that server.

What? Where, what typical applications/scenarios might be affected? Real world examples? No wonder the Open Source world has such a bad rep amongst non geeks. Pure gobbledygook brought on by severe laziness and extreme arrogance.

NSA plans to FREE YOUR DATA with range of cloud services, analytics

Paul D Smyth

Poisson Avril

I particularly come to El Reg every 1st April for great stories like this. Keep up the good work guys!

Mr Loof Lirpa

Interwebs taunt Sir Jony over Apple eye candy makeover

Paul D Smyth

Re: Seriously...

Which is even worse because he clearly signed off on it

Paul D Smyth

Re: Really?

Fisher Price is exactly what I thought when I saw the icon set. Let's call it Jelly Baby

Gnome cofounder: Desktop Linux is a CHERNOBYL of FAIL

Paul D Smyth
FAIL

Old News

Oh please, give it a rest, Miquel is the flop, who wants Mono? Nobody, his major product is a huge flop. How do we define "Desktop Linux" do we include ChromeOS? Android? because you know Adroid's doing ok and Gnome doesn't look like a Fisher Price interface now any more. Ubuntu is taking off in a big way, Steam on Linux has almost equalled 3 years of Steam on Mac usage in 3 months.

Stop trauling old news to stir trouble, it's dull, it's boring, it's obvious and most importantly it's very poor journalism.