* Posts by Paul Smith

533 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jul 2007

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LibDems score copyright coup

Paul Smith

Fair and proportionate use

While the intent of this amendment was to remove arbitrary decisions by ministers and allow judges to block the likes of PrirateBay, the effect is to open up internet censorship and yet another avenue for legal blackmail.

Censorship; Reuters breaks a story which is not favourable to a UK politician and uses an image of that person to illistrate the storey. Layer claims that image is copyright and gets injunction from judge forceing every ISP in Britian to block all access to every Reuters website. This delays the storey long enough for spin control though the ISPs have to pay to implement the ban. Another judge then throws out first injunction for being stupid and ISPs have to pay to remove the ban. Who pays the ISPs?

Blackmail. How about one of those ambulance chaseing b*stards you see on TV rings you up at home. He has just spotted a picture of you on the internet and says he is willing to give you 20% of whatever he can get and you don't have to do anything. He then contacts the companies hosting your image and tells then that for a small 'fee', he wont have them shut down for copyright infringment. If they don't pay up, he attempts to get an injunction. If that fails he is not out of pocket. If it succeds, the ISPs have to pay to implement that ban, the company involved looses all its web presence and the b*stard still doesn't have to pay a penny. When the company pays him to lift the injunction and go away, he gets the money but the ISPs still have to pay to lift the ban. Who pays the ISPs?

And at the end of the day, people who want to access PirateBay or similar sites, can continue to do so with only minor inconvienence.

Men at Work appeal Down Under plagiarism ruling

Paul Smith
FAIL

I hiope they win!

My great grandfather used to whistle a ditty with his butt cheeks that sounded sort of vaugely like that girl guides riff, and if they win this case, they will have enough money to make it worth my while sueing them.

Hero corduroy overpowers US school gunman

Paul Smith

What is it?

What is it about the schools in Littleton that attracts people to shoot at them?

HP Pavilion Elite HPE-180

Paul Smith

I don't know

I don't know why you guys are so negative, if swap out the MOBO and RAM, and then replace the HD, PSU and case you end up with a pretty decent machine.

Miniskirt outrage Brazilian becomes Carnival queen

Paul Smith
Paris Hilton

Consumer rights

"Arruda reportedly had around $20k-worth of nip and tuck before her Carnival debut..."

Is she too late to get a refund?

John Mayer tweets remorse over Playboy interview

Paul Smith

Chris W. Re: Jealous ...

I don't think you get it. Its not that Jenifer Aniston or Jessica Simpson have anything other women don't have, I am jealous because John Mayer has something that Jenifer Aniston AND Jessica Simpson want, and are willing to shag him to get!

Paul Smith
Coat

Who he is...

Who is he? He is the guy that shagged Jenifer Aniston AND Jessica Simpson.

Mines the one with 'jealous' on the back, front and both sides!

SourceForge bars 5 nations from open source downloads

Paul Smith

Smoke and Mirrors

I would have thought that the obvious solution would be for the stuff in question to not be available from mirrors hosted in countries where these laws apply, and to be freely available on mirrors in countries where these laws do not apply. It seems that many people (not just US law makers) tend to forget that US laws only apply in US jurisdictions.

NSA beats warrantless wiretap rap

Paul Smith

New, more efficient, approach to justice

Victim: "That bastard nicked my wallet"

Judge: "Are you the only person to have had your wallet nicked?"

Victim:"no"

Judge:"Case dismissed"

RockYou hack reveals easy-to-crack passwords

Paul Smith

Strong passwords?

My employeer (10,000+ employees) introduced "strong" password policy similar to the one AC described, and they force them to be changed every 60 days. The result was that for the next six months, every second desk had a post it note with a weird word/number combination on it. Now days, most people I asked say they use a word that is visible on their desk and sufix with the digits with the month they are forced to change it in. I wonder how many in my company are using Intel01?

FBI faked terror alerts to get phone records

Paul Smith

witty comment

"The [Justice Department] report is not expected to find — nor were there — any intentional attempts to obtain records that counterterrorism personnel knew they were not legally entitled to obtain,"

So why weren't the records obtained legally? Are they using the Nixon defence "If I do it, it is not illegal", or perhaps my personal favourite "Illegal? I do not think that word means what you think it means".

Frustrated bug hunters to expose a flaw a day for a month

Paul Smith

Tosh and Twaddle!

Security Researchers upset because they are not appreciated. What a surprise.

Who exactly asked them to research the security of other peoples products? No one.

Why do they do it? For their own benefit, of course. They get financial recompense or ego massage and any financial benefit is not earned through doing something useful, it is gained by exploiting the flaw themselves, selling details of the flaw to someone willing to exploit it, or by being paid to not do one of the above. Since all three options are borderline criminal, why is it that they expect to be appreciated.

AWOL SDK kicks off Nexus One backlash

Paul Smith

Yes men

I think this is a wonderful example of what happens when you surround your self with yes men and start believing your own hype.

Enormous raygun-on-a-lorry project acquires lorry

Paul Smith
Thumb Up

excellent

Can I nominate this as the headline/tagline of the year?

Ferry giant refuses ID card

Paul Smith

Carriers responsibility

Carriers are responsibile for ensuring their travellers have adequate identification to get INTO their destination country because they are liable for the costs of repatriation. If P&O weren't sure that French or Dutch officials would accept the UK ID card, then they were absolutly right to refuse travel.

TfL deploys privacy-busting voyeurcam

Paul Smith
Coat

Wow - I feel so much safer.

It took me less then five minutes to find the address of house in question http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&ll=51.458285,-0.31693&spn=0,359.991674&z=17&layer=c&cbll=51.458341,-0.316819&panoid=8-hhpTkDk_gu55d9fATBgw&cbp=12,218.05,,0,-5.09 and the name of the registered householder (I leave that to the reader). I would hope that some considerate lawyer writes to the occupants to offer their services in obtaining just reward for the entertainment they have provided. At the very least, they should be given a free Oyster card. Then we could track them online all day.

Mines the one with nothing (left) to hide.

Tory peers to protect kids from anuses

Paul Smith
Coat

do they specify...

Do the good Lords specify the gender of the breasts to be considered? We wouldn't want our old Tarzan movies, or anything Schwarzenegger has ever appeared in to be considered extreme porn. Perhaps the honourable gentlemen could give us some indication of how much needs to be covered to remain safe? Just the niple? Neck to Knee? Naturally, breast feeding is a no-no.

Mines the one that left the country.

Germans devise attacks on Windows BitLocker

Paul Smith
FAIL

@pitagora

"you can't install a keylogger if you can't boot the machine" - Really? Do you want to bet your companies secrets on that?

Arkansas cop tasers 10-year-old girl

Paul Smith

WTF

Cop: Hi Honey, I'm home

Wife: Did you gave a good day at the office dear?

Cop: It was fun! I had a violent criminal who resisted arrest, attempted to flee the scene and then assulted an officer of the law.

Wife: My God! I hope you shot the bastard!

Cop: Nah, she was only ten, so I tasered her instead.

Is this the world's dirtiest PC?

Paul Smith
FAIL

Not even close

The PC pictured is quite dirty but you can see plenty of shiny metal and you can tell what colour the the motherboard is. I once insisted that the boss of a client company use the vacumn cleaner until the screws on the case were visible before I would think about trying to repair it. I think that helped get the message across.

BetOnSports founder Kaplan jailed for four years

Paul Smith
FAIL

Interesting reporting

"Punters lost more than $16m when BetOnSports closed is books in 2006." Poor punters - bad BetOnSports. Remind us, why did they close their books? Oh yes, now I remember. They were found guilty of breaking laws before they had been passed. They were held under "house arrest", and now, because they have been good boys and admitted their guilt (and paid $43 million fine) they only get to spend another year in jail before they can go home to their familes. And what was their crime? Surely it can't have been that they were better at business then some Americans?

Remind me, why are we against the Taliban?

Blogging vicar casts Tina Turner into hell

Paul Smith
Flame

Come on baby,

Light my fire

IT contractors aghast as FSA evicts self-cert mortgages

Paul Smith

Get a grip

Were is this coming from? The regulator is suggesting that some pimply faced yuff working on commision only should not give you a thirty year loan just because you say you can afford it, and you are upset. Why?

If you are good enough then after five years, you wont need the loan, and if you aren't good enough, then you wont be able to repay it anyway. Either way, no harn done.

But if you are new to contracting, then WTF are you doing taking out a twenty or thirty year loan? If you can't manage your own credit, why should the tax payer manage it for you?

[And before people get too snotty, I contracted for six years, and in that time, only 10% of my gross income went on taxes]

Microsoft names Visual Studio 2010 dates

Paul Smith
WTF?

I wonder...

$11,000! How many copies of eclipse will that get me?

MySpace confession sinks car-death conviction appeal

Paul Smith
WTF?

Thats odd...

When I grew up, I was taught to believe that one of the things that made America great was that everyone there was innocent until proven guilty. No I know I was right to be sceptical. In this case, how would it matter if she jumped up and down shouting "race me, race me" in front of a live TV crew with an audience of millions 5 minutes before getting in her car? The 'victim' drove badly, fucked up, and died. How is she culpable?

Police drop case against admin over animal rights comments

Paul Smith

wft

I asked a serving officer in the MET about this. His response was, and I quote, "Fuck me, thats a handy one!"

NASA: Extraterrestrial sample holds ingredient for alien life

Paul Smith

Control...? @ Graham Marsden

No [speaking slowly in a condecending manner], they measured the carbon 13 content just as they said in the article.

100 freetards an hour join Pirate Party UK

Paul Smith
Coat

raison d'etre

"apart from wanting to legalise non-commercial file sharing"

Huh? It is already legal. The music industry is attemping to criminalise it, but they have not completly succeded yet.

Mines the one with WTF on the back.

Texan judge outlaws Word

Paul Smith

Patent trolls or legitimate case

I dont think I understand. XML = eXtensible Markup Language. How do you add something patentable to something designed to be extended?

Perhaps el Reg hacks could spend a few minutes researching this Canadian company to see if they have a legitimate cause for grevience, because I can not help but wonder if the primary purpose of this case is to generate the fear that "if I use XML in my apps, will I and my customers risk legal issues?" which begs the question; would this case have happened if Microsofts version of OOXML had been adopted?

Flying 'Motorbike'/Reliant Robin 'to take off next year'

Paul Smith

Investment opertunity?

Anybody else think those wings look a little bit too small to be realistic?

Cops and ISP in paedophile data mix up

Paul Smith

Justifications

We all know that even discussing paedophiles raises strong emotions, but look at the justification given in the article;

"Police approached the ISP after getting information from a "reliable source", suggesting that children were at risk of falling into the hands of a paedophile ring. "

...children were at risk of falling into the hands... That suggests to me that the police expected to find children on the premises, or at least they gave that impression to the ISP. That is very different from using your computer to look at some dirty pictures.

I would love to think, but I do not expect, that somebody will look at the "intelligence" this unnamed force recieved and how they used it. Did they go back to the ISP and find the correct address? Did they arrest the real offender? Has the real offender been convicted? Or, and I suspect this is more likely, have they left the ISP thinking that one of its subscribers is a kiddy fiddler? Let us hope that no one working there reads the News of the World.

DRAM patent holder sues Big Blue

Paul Smith

Swine

Wouldn't it be sad if there was a severe outbreak of swine flu in that court room and all those poor patent lawyers died horribly.

Airbed-fixing German blows up mattress flat

Paul Smith
Grenade

Darwin award candidate?

Title says it all.

Amazon cuts cost of Kindle

Paul Smith
Coat

competition

I wouldn't expect an early UK release, as there is already stiff competition. It is called the Public Library.

Mines the one thats overdue.

Prof: People reject news which conflicts with beliefs

Paul Smith

So that explains it

"...The prof added that, counterintuitively, it is those with little confidence in their own beliefs who are least willing to consider opposing views. ..."

I always wondered why it was so difficult for so many people to see the problems with Bush, now I understand.

Pirate Bay sells out to Swedish software firm for $7.7m

Paul Smith
Coat

Is this..

the end of an era?

Mines the one walking sadly into the sunset...

Nine-ball attack splits security researchers

Paul Smith

so-called security consultants

Please correct me if you think I have any of this wrong.

A good security consultant will secure your network against current risks and propose procedures to ensure regular patching/updates. For a SMB, call it two days consultancy, once a year. Fifty SMB's on your books and you can make a comfortable living.

A not so good security consultant will not secure your network. In fact they will tell you again, and again how dangerous the internet is and how hard it is to stay safe from zero day exposure and why you need their services at least once every couple of months to install the latest patchs, plus emergancy call outs, plus clean up expenses. Say ten to fifteen SMB's required for a comfortable living?

The good consultant will also configure the mail servers to not accept mail unless correctly and exactly addressed, (no more best guess spam) and will also configure transmission limits, (no more zombies pumping out shite). Has either step been taken on your network?

Paul Smith

Cat out of the bag

Is this not just more proof that the so-called security consultants and experts only exist because of fear, and need to encourage that fear in order to surive?

NASA takes stick over feet and inches

Paul Smith

@Wade Burchette

[We landed on the moon using feet and inches! How many times have we landed on the moon using meters?] You found Mars a bit trickeyer though.

[Which sounds better? "I walked for miles and miles" or "I walked for kilometers and kilometers"? ] How many steps was that? One kilometer is one thousand paces.

[The pound is a more accurate measurement of weight than grams because pounds is a measurement of force whereas grams is a measurement of mass.]

To use a very British term with American spelling, "Bollox". A Kilo of water is the same amount of water at the equator, the North Pole or on the surface of Mars. Slightly more accurate, and useful, then your pound? That Kilo is (by definition) the mass of one litre of water, which is also (by definition), exactly one decimeter. (i.e. 1000L = 1 cubic meter). So if I have some water and can measure weight, volume or length, I can work out everything else without having to remember any 'magic numbers'.

US feds subpoena names of anonymous web commenters

Paul Smith

Am I the only one who noticed...

"I'd hate to be the guy who refused to tell the feds Timothy McVeigh was buying fertilizer," Why? When did buying fertilizer become illegal?

I am not condoning what McVeigh did, but no system can completely deal with nutters unless the rest of us are willing to accept that we have no rights or privacy at all. And every now and then, the nutters are right - think of Thomas Jefferson or William Wilberforce, both dangerous anti-establishment figures in their day, heros in our day.

The Times kills off blogger anonymity

Paul Smith

Duh

Why slag of the Times "Well done lads" for naming "The blogger is Richard Horton a 45-year old detective constable with Lancashire Constabulary."

Little bit of pot, kettle, and black perhaps?

Dutch cat skinner publishes critics' personal details

Paul Smith
Thumb Up

The Real storey

I don't care what she did with here pussy, the real storey here is the way she dealt with the supposedly anonymous hate mail, for which I must applaud her.

Exploding core counts: Heading for the buffers

Paul Smith

History repeating on me

"Moore's Law is gonna run out of gas, and sooner rather than later, because software can't take advantage..."

Maybe I am an old man, but I would swear that I read the same thing written about the 80386 chip when it was launched. "What was the point of a 32 bit chip, when there were no 32 bit applications?"

At that time, a 16MHz 80386 computer actually took longer to do the same job as a 16MHz 80286. This was because it was doing 32 bit fetchs to get the same 16 bit data. but the software caught up... as usual.

NSA whistleblower: Warrantless wiretaps targeted journos

Paul Smith
Unhappy

Nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!

"Nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!" The mantra of state control for over 50 years.

I used to live in a society where there was "presumption of innocence", where I had the right to face my accuser, and where judgement was made based on evidence presented to a jury of my peers.

In that society, I could think, say and do what I liked, with very, very few exceptions, so long as I did not interfere with anybody elses rights to do the same.

In such a society, the state had no need to spy on me. Why waste the resources? If I stepped out of line, by interfering with somebody elses rights, the judical mechanisms were in place to deal with it, and if I didn't interfere with anybody elses rights, then nobody gave a damn what I got up to.

My society wasn't perfect. Bad things still happened, and sometimes bad people were not punished, but I still believed that these were the things that made my society "better" then the others.

But no longer. Now the state must spend time and effort trying to finding out if I "might" do something wrong. They must pay people who could have been making our society better to monitor my phone calls and emails. To track my movements and to monitor and record who I met and what I said. If the technology existed, then they would have a "duty" to monitor my thoughts, just to be safe.

So hands up everybody that voted for the Taliban, for they are the ones in power.

Aussie air zealot savages prêt-à-porter stealth fighter

Paul Smith
Thumb Down

Balanced ?

One page one the good doctors objections to the F35 claims of low observibility, zero pages countering those objections, 6 pages slagging the man and his history. Very balanced.

When the village idiot tells you that your house is on fire, it is considered wise to check that there is no smoke before you remind him that he is, in fact, an idiot.

UK comms intercepts up by half - and it isn't the council

Paul Smith
Black Helicopters

Resource used or wasted

500,000 requests for information. Each one processed and answered. Each answer accepted and analysed.

That is an awful lot of people doing an awful lot of work. For what?

Solar-curtain "soft house" plan proposed by MIT prof

Paul Smith

facts or bile?

I agree that the architects facts were thin on the ground but I regret that your own were not exactly spot on either. Take the 'average' house energy usage figures you use, you didn't mention, and I quote "85 per cent of energy used in households was for space or water heating".

Now since it is no big thing to build a fully passive house, i.e. one with zero external heating requirements (www.scanhome.ie is one example I know well, plenty of others exist) that reduces you 'electrical' requirements for an average house from 60kWh, to 9kWh. This can be reduced further with the use of low energy bulbs, switching off instead of standby etc. All stuff you would do anyway if you were building a passive house. So we are now talking about running a very comfortable house on as little as 3 or 4 kWh.

I completely accept that curtains are not a very viable solution, even if it did get the professor's name in print, but does that really justify getting your hackles that far up?

Veteran climate scientist says 'lock up the oil men'

Paul Smith

nay-sayers

1) I think you will find that he was bemoaning the way that the natural scepktism and debate was exploited by the nay-sayers.

2) This is not a religious debate - what you believe does not matter. The scientific evidence suggests strong probability of global warming caused, or at least significantly influenced, by human action. That is not belief, opinion or interpretation. It is simple statistics.

3) To say that there is no change in the environment is ignoring the facts.

To say that man has had no effect on the environment is being hopelessly optimistic. To refuse to take steps to protect the environment, when its failure will directly put our childrens lives at risk, just so we can make a profit today is plain stupid.

Sweden ushers in bugging for all

Paul Smith

Re Not such a bad thing...

"Remember, if you aren't a crook (and don't use online banking or credit cards), you've got nothing to hide!"

So I take it you are happy to post your personal finances on the net? After all, if your company uses any sort of computer system to handle payroll, then that data will probably end up passing through a swedish router sooner or later, and once it does, the world can find out what you earn.

Your credit card details? Sooner or later, some shop you use will route their transaction request via a swedish server. (Not deliberatly, they have no control over the routing of internet traffic) and viola, your private data becomes public data.

Perhaps a journalist you respect is trying to uncover corruption in government in your country, a country with strict rules about bugging etc. (so obviously not Britain then), all the government has to do is 'ask' the telecomms operator to route some of the switching traffic related to calls through Sweden and hey presto, instant, legal, bugging.

Of course, you are not worried by any of this because you are an innocent man, with nothing to hide. What do you need privacy for?

God makes you stupid, researchers claim

Paul Smith
Alien

truth

And they got paid for that research? Mind you, you got paid for that headline so we can't complain too much.

There are two forms or types of knowledge, recieved and percieved. Recieved knowledge is stuff you believe to be true because you trust the person who told you. Percieved knowledge is stuff you believe to be true because you have worked it out for yourself.

As a child, almost all your knowledge is recieved. When your parent told you not to put your finger in the flame because it would burn, you accepted that as the truth. You also accepted as the truth what you were told about God, the tooth fairy and santa clause. When you put your finger in the flame, as all children do, you burnt your finger. That knowledge had gone from recieved to percieved. But when you began to doubt santa and the tooth fairy, wether due to a questioning mind, peer pressure or your parents telling you etc., then you naturally started to doubt all the similar stuff you had been told. In times past, your belief in God would have been supported and reinforced by your society, (if everyone around you believes something, it is hard to say they are all wrong!) but in the modern (western) world, with so much contact with other religions and none, this lack of support makes anybody with a questioning mind reconsider their beliefs. This is not a factor of intelligence except in so far as a more intelligent person is more likely to have a questioning mind. The more intelligent person is also more likely to answer a question in a way that reduces potential embaressment. In other words, many acedemics will say they are not believers to avoid ridicule from their peers, regardless of what they actually believe.

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