Posts by Paul Smith

Ice 'lightning' may have helped life survive Snowball Earth

What has biodiversity got to do with it?

Why does the article keep referring to sustaining biodiversity when describing a hypothetical environment that could only be exploited by a very highly adapted mono-culture?

Linus Torvalds fires off angry 'compiler-masturbation' rant

Re: He's blunt. He's aggressive. He's offensive.

For example ?

Yamaha unleashes motorcycling robot

The Point

The point is to learn.

The dynamics and engineering of such a simple machine as a motorbike is stunningly complex, and most things are done the way they are because they work, not because we understand why they work. If they can get this 'bot to lap a circuit consistently, then they can objectively measure the consequence of change, and that will allow innovation to leap forward.

Feet?

The outriggers mean the robot doesn't have to put its feet down when it stops, and they make mistakes a lot less expensive. Look up the skid-bike at the superbike school to see how they work. At a guess, in the future they will become extendible.

This is a very clever attack on Honda, who also make bikes, and robots, but don't do anything as exciting as a robot riding a bike. Disclaimer - I ride a Yamaha :)

'T-shaped' developers are the new normal

B-O-L-L-O-C-K-S-!

Why is it so impossible to be honest about agile? Is it the religious overtones of having a manifesto that make it a belief structure rather then a development paradigm ?

"Agile allows us to create efficient metrics, openness and accountability." Really?

"Having red hair allows us to create efficient metrics, openness and accountability."

Well, it doesn't completely prevent us, but it certainly does not help us.

In a small outfit, where there is only one team and the task is basically mono-skilled then your agile teams can work as described but do not, IMHO, actually promote it. The real advantage of agile over waterfall is the frequent reality check of demoing to the end-user and the resulting feedback. This comes at the cost of not designing a solution before developing it.

Once the job requires more then one team, then the SM is the only channel of communication out of the team so your openness goes out the window. Metrics that only become meaningful when the team has done half a dozen sprints with no changes in skills, tasks and personnel are not, IMHO, exactly stable, useful or predictive. And 'accountability' that is based on an SM's ability to guilt less productive team members with no external checks or balances does not sound like the traditional ideal of productive teamwork.

Additionally, the active dis-incentive to up-skilling caused by metrics that punish activity that is not instantly productive and the lack of career progression caused by hiding talented people behind scrum masters does not encourage job-satisfaction or a willingness to go the extra mile. Agile has a place in software development, but it is not the be all and end all that it is often made out to be.

So just what is the third Great Invention of all time?

Abstract thought.

I always thought that the first great human invention was abstract thought. The ability to think of things not necessary for immediate survival leads to the ability to think of time, as in the past, present and most importantly, the future, and that allows the ability to plan ahead. Sharing a plan with others makes hunting much more productive leads to language. Planned hunts mean traps become possible, if not inevitable, and that leads to tool usage. The ability to plan, communicate and make tools makes agriculture possible. With more effective hunting, and even more so with agriculture, society can maintain sections of the population who are not directly productive. Lets call them wasters. The first wasters would be good at planning and/or leading. Others could add value by entertaining, as with storey tellers, artists and musicians, which in turn gave us a sense of what came before and learning by the experience of others. And less useful members of society such as politicians, crooks, the infirm and dreamers. Most of whom contributed absolutely nothing. However, one dreamer in ten thousand turns a fire into a forge or a kiln and suddenly society becomes richer and can afford even more dreamers. All the other great inventions derive from the human ability to have abstract thoughts.

P.S. I think the Dewey decimal environment trumps RDBMS but I could be biased.

Nippy, palaver and cockwomble: Greatest words in English?

Bollard

My personal favourite is bollard. It just sounds so... right.

Twitter reduces BBC hacks to tears with redundancy notice

"The world needs a strong Twitter"

Really?

Does the world really need a strong Twitter?

US Treasury: How did ISIS get your trucks? Toyota: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hmmm

They want to know where the trucks came from, but don't ask about the guns or the ammo in the backs of those trucks.

Linux kernel dev who asked Linus Torvalds to stop verbal abuse quits over verbal abuse

Re: Don't let the door hit you on the way out Sarah.

And there in lies the problem.

Instead of just saying that you think the USB3 sub-system should be better, you are making personal attacks on a person it is safe to assume you have never met.

If you really think the USB3 sub-system should be better then it currently is, then why don't you fuck off and make it better then it currently is?

Pretty simple really

Abusive is about the person and not what they did. It is never useful or productive.

She's a pussy - abusive because it is about her. He's a 'tard - abusive because it is about him. She's lovely - potentially abusive because it is about her even though it could be considered complimentary. It really is getting very close to 'she is a great fuck' which is clearly abusive.

That code is f*cking shit - robust but not abusive because it is not about the person. The kernel group considers abusive behaviour acceptable and that is why I and a great many people I know have no interest in participating. If you want to call my code shit. That is fine, but you had better be able to defend your position. If you want to call me shit, you can fuck off.

Safe Harbour ruled INVALID: Facebook 'n' pals' data slurp at risk

NSA hurting US business interests

This is really good news for privacy lovers everywhere, but not for the obvious reasons. Now that US business has concrete evidence that not respecting privacy affects their profit margin, they will force US politicians to clean up the NSA mess.

FBI: We unmasked and collared child porn creep on Tor with spy tool

Re: Weird init?

It is hard to know if you are being serious or facetious. Assuming for a moment that you are being serious, then you are completely entitled to your opinion and I agree that collaboration and information exchange are the future, but that is not mutually exclusive with respecting privacy. A simple example will explain my case: I want to buy a present for my wife, advertisers know my tastes and budgets as well as hers and so can suggest the perfect present. Cool, collaboration and exchange working well as I get what I want and they get a sale. But if the privacy of my transaction is not respected and she finds out about it before the day so ruining the surprise, then whoever betrayed that privacy will earn some serious negative reputation.

Bias?

Dark-web deadbeats

perverts

unmasking the scumbag

unspeakable images.

nefarious purposes

Rather emotive language, don't you think?

Given that we are talking about a country that had a shit fit over Janet Jacksons left nipple, and given that the article implies that the FBI probably has details on over 200,000 TOR users from this site alone, I have to ask if the author is actually a shill for a US three letter outfit that would like to discourage the use of TOR and other secure communications services by any body except themselves.

No more Arab Spring. No more Snowden. Of course it also means there could never be another Watergate.

Yes kiddy fiddling is a very bad thing, but no, it is not worth giving up your right to a private life, or giving free reign to governments to dictate what they think is good for you.

BOFH: I'm not doing this for the benefit of your health, you know

Meh...

H&S provides so many opportunities for creative mayhem that just chucking him out the windows seems a bit, I don't know, lame?

US to stage F-35-versus-Warthog bake-off in 2018

Re: One day..

And one day pigs will fly, but stern words have never yet managed to change a bullies behaviour.

Biz that OK'd Edward Snowden for security clearance is fined $30m for obvious reasons

Ironic?

"Shortcuts taken by any company that we have entrusted to conduct background investigations of future and current federal employees are unacceptable,"

Isn't outsourcing back-ground checks just another shortcut?

Patching a fragmented, Stagefrightened Android isn't easy

Bright side

If Google loses to Oracles copyright claim's, does that mean they could sue Oracle for publishing insecure API's?

Cloud computing’s refuseniks: How long can they hold out?

We can hold out until the fad has passed.

Cloud computing is a very effective solution to a very specific set of problems.

It is not a solution to a whole bunch of other problems where it is currently being sold. Take Office 365 as a good example of all the things wrong with current cloud marketing efforts. Office is used to write and maintain company internal and external documents. They do not require significant computing or storage resources, but would cause significant difficulties if inappropriatly accessed. What is the benefit of putting them in some one else's hands that is so great that I am willing to accept that they could deny me access to my own documents? Or expose them to all and sundry and I could do nothing about it, not even sue them? Where is the 'win' in this situation?

Google's new parent Alphabet owns abc.xyz – and, yup, there's already an abc.wtf

Re: In related news

Apple© have successfully patented the ™ symbol are claiming that Google are in breach and are demanding that the World Trade Federation (WTF) hand over all Google's letters to them. Meanwhile Oracle have made a counter counter claim that the © symbol belongs to them and that Apple must cease and desist.

Sengled lightbulb speakers: The best worst stereo on Earth

Re: Almost a dictionary definition of the word

My new favourite word of the week!

Windows 10: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE to Microsoft's long apology for Windows 8

Wow!

Probably the most exciting thing about this launch of a major OS from one of the worlds largest OS producers is just how unexciting it is. MS might still be huge, but they are looking increasingly like a spent force. The question now is if they will go quietly, a la DEC, or kicking and screaming and dragging the rest of the industry down with them, a la SCO?

How much info did hackers steal on US spies? Try all of it

"...how the Obama administration responds to the crisis."

How did this become Obama's fault? Did that fool n* leave his laptop on the bus again? No, he doesn't take the bus any more, and he doesn't have a laptop.

EU: Explain your tax affairs. Google, Amazon, Facebook: Mmm... nah

Get a life

Some minor 'elected' representative from a constituency you have never heard of wants you to drop what you are doing, fly to a country you have no interest in and answer in detail an bunch of unfocused questions that could cover any, and every aspect of your business, and in return you will get... nothing.

If said official has reason to believe a law is being broken - and remember that they are the ones who made the laws in the first place - then they have plenty of ways of having it investigated and corrected. If no law is being broken, and the officials have no power to reward attendance or punish absence, then why on earth would major CEO's want to help them aggrandise themselves.

Quantum computers have failed. So now for the science

Re: analog analogies

QM theory was developed to describe phenomena that could not be explained by classical means, so the thing I take from this is that having a physical model displaying features previously only visible in the QM world removes (some of) the need for a quantum specific theories and moves us closer to a theory that joins both worlds. If, in the process, we happen to get rid of some of the 'dafter' aspects of modern physics (cough, strings, cough), then all the better.

FBI alert: Get these motherf'king hackers off this motherf'king plane

Re: working on planes

Preparing a powerpoint sales pitch with big bold key points designed for simple minded managers to read and comprehend might not be the brightest thing to do in a public place, but cutting code? Seriously? When I used to code in C it was considered cool to able able to cram as much code into as little space as possible, but even I was never able to get enough for an even a slightly non-trivial program onto the confines of a laptop screen. I think you are perhaps taking commonsense past the point of paranoia and into the realm of stupidity.

BOFH: Explain? All we need is this kay-sh with DDR3 Cortexiphan ...

Re: Tier 3 Waffle

Careful what you wish for... I had a boss who, if presented with "It's tier-3 Cortexiphan we're looking at so obviously it's topology redundant with multiple backchannels and has the full dual Dunham processor architecture behind it. With a 2 Teraflop Bishop Gating protocol, obviously." would have asked why do we need dual Dunham, single Dunham will do.

Alfa Romeo MiTo Quadrifoglio Verde: Less fun than it should be

fashionable?

"It’s fashionable to deride paddle gearboxes, but being able to change up as you exit a roundabout means even Milton Keynes can be fun."

It was, when Jeremy Clarkson was a young man.

1) Why would you want to change UP as you exit a roundabout?

2) WTF where you doing testing a car in Milton Keynes?

and

3) Of course its all about the noise, its a bloody Alpha, what else would it be about?

Motorola's 5-incher finds the G-spot: Moto G 4G budget Android smartie

Re: Compared to Nexus 5

Really? I used to have one and it was OK. I now have the 3G Moto G II and it is better then the Nexus in every way that matters.

Fancy six months of security nirvana for free? Read on...

Re: What, like Mac users?

Of course, you would know, wouldn't you. There is no way your system could possibly be one of the 500 million computers which the FBI claim are compromised each year (source http://thehackernews.com/2014/07/fbi-botnets-infecting-18-computers-per.html).

Cybercrim told to cough up £1m or spend years in chokey

double jepardy ?

Is this an attempt to punish him twice for the same crime? He obviously has spent it all if he cant afford a brief good enough to get him off, so that means there is no realistic likeyhood of him being able to pay the "fine" for a crime he is already being punished for.

The obvious thing to do then is declare himself bankrupt meaning his debtors can no longer place a lien on him, so he doesn't get the extra four years.

'Utterly unusable' MS Word dumped by SciFi author Charles Stross

Re: "Stross is a long-time Linux user...."

What is the problem finding a Linux laptop? Buy a laptop, install Linux, no problem.

Not-spot-busting for the home: Eero thinks tiny mesh router's a winner

Cool!

A project for my new Raspberry Pi!

Deprivation Britain: 1930s all over again? Codswallop!

When I were a lad...

"3YM: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

4YM: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

1YM: And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you."

(Monty Python, Four Yokshiremen, circa 1974)

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

I Really like it!

Nah, just kidding

Which country has 2nd largest social welfare system in the world?

Ah but, who do they spend it on?

"As that chart shows, the net effect of all of this is that the US really does spend more on social welfare than anyone other than France." Correct, but not complete.

I did a report using US Census office figures that showed that while what you say is true, a significant portion of this is given to the already wealthy and rich. How much? Enough that if some of this state support was given to the poorest instead, 9.4% of ALL US householders would be pulled above the poverty line.

Beyond the genome: YOU'VE BEEN DECODED, again

"we are currently the only species known to have deciphered its own code"

That is just what the mice want you to think.

Why did it take antivirus giants YEARS to drill into super-scary Regin? Symantec responds...

Nation states?

"Looking at the balance of probabilities, the possibility of Regin being the result of a non-nation-state coder is between slim and none," Thakur said.

Are you seriously trying to tell us that the coders behind the NHS patient records debacle or the MOD procurment process are somehow better then a couple of gifted and motivated amateurs? In fact, can you name a single piece of not-shit software that can be credited to a nation-state? Even BT's fucked up Phorm was written by a private entity.

GT sapphire glaziers: You signed WHAT deal with Apple?

Silly little three year old...

So what? That GTAT screwed up their contracts and went bust as a result is not the interesting storey here. Why not use your industry skills to tell what is happening to the businesses that used to buy GTAT machines to make saphire screens? Where will they get their machines now?

Tell us about the businesses who woke up to find their suppliers in direct competition with them, did they survive or go bust? Do they still make saphire screens or have they moved into different markets?

Also, why not tell us who you think Apple (and other) phone makers are going to buy their screens from now? Instead of going from $30 to $10, are they going to go to $60?

Murder suspect charged after pics of strangle victim posted on 4chan

Why is this here?

A sick fuck kills a woman, and posts/boasts about it on 4chan.

The same sick fuck announces that he has deliberatly arranged for a child to find his dead mother and that he intends to commit suicide by cop.

What do the sick fucks on 4chan do about it?

What is the IT angle?

Is it a sick fuck usng the internet to boast about his 'acheivements'?

Or is it the sick fucks on 4chan doing nothing to stop a drama from turning into a tragedy?

Does El Reg really believe this sick fuck deserves the 15 minutes of fame you are helping him to get?

Facebook says vendor secrets forced it to homebrew switches

Epic

"...Finally, and this is advice of the most sound sort, if it looks like, in spite of all efforts, your kludge will begin to resemble an ordinary computing machine, it is time to put more men on the job...."

Chipmaker FTDI bricking counterfeit kit

Odd reactions

I don't get all the comments about unacceptable behaviour and malicious damage and so on. Why is it that you expect FTDI to play nice with components it can positively identify as fakes? That the end user might not have known it was a fake isn't really relevant as if they were dupped, they can demand recourse from the seller, and if they knowingly bought a cheap knock-off, then they shouldn't be too surprised if it stops working.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like what FTDI did, but I am surprised that no one has done it before.

Want a more fuel efficient car? Then redesign it – here's how

Re: Depends on assumptions

bet you wish you still had the Alpha...

Scrapping the Human Rights Act: What about privacy and freedom of expression?

Re: You don't need rights when you've money

You have that completly backwards.

1) If you have enough money, you don't need someone else to defend your rights, you can do a damn good job defending them yourself.

2) You are also badly mistaken if you think the Tories care about profit, perhaps you are confusing them with the republicians in the US. The proper name for the tories is the Conservative party. They wish to conserve things just they way they are, so that the tories with the power, keep the power.

Microsoft vs the long arm of US law: Straight outta Dublin

Do a little research

This is not about one individual keeping details of their drug deals on a server in Dublin, this is about MS trying to sell Office365 to every company in Europe. It looks like having every European quote, tender, offer, invoice and patent application sitting almost in within its reach has prooved too much temptation for the greed of US lawmakers and corporations.

The States has never had a tradition of respecting anyone or anything else, but when the judges are now saying that international treaties are not worth the paper they are written on, you have to ask cui bono? Who is this benefiting?

Microsoft tells judge: Hold us in contempt of court, we're NOT giving user emails to US govt

Not difficult.

Whether or not the feds have access to the data already is irrelevent if they can't use it in court.

The reason that MS needs to win this case is because losing it will cause the collapse of the cloaud market, not just for them, but for Amazon, IBM, Google and everyone else trying to sell online services that involve offsite storage.

Corporate governence demands that the board takes all 'reasonable' measures to keep their data secure. If the feds bang on the door with a warrant or sopena, then they must mount the appropriate legal defence. If MS loses this case, then the feds would be able to issue a warrent or supeona for data from someone who might not defend it as rigourously as the board would, opening the board to the risk of being sued by their own shareholders. The means the board would refuse to use the cloud for corporate data. End of market.

Apple's ONE LESS THING: the iPod Classic disappears

Re: Other options

Cool! Do the Sony players plug into the BOSE docking station I have in my living room? Or the logitech speakers I bring when I go travelling, the are sound like shite but I can run them on a couple of 'AA' batteries if there is no mains available.

How about the docking stations all my friends seem to have? Can I use the Sony players to play my latest music when am visiting them?

Google on Gmail child abuse trawl: We're NOT looking for other crimes

re: Lawsiut magnet

Does this mean that I could sue Google for not alerting the police that scumbags were planning to break into my flat? Or for allowing some tosser to park in my parking space? Maybe any lawers here could say if they would be complicit by having the information and not acting on it, or merely accessories after the fact by providing indirect assistence? After all, they have now proved that they are happy to read peoples mail in search of potential crime.

Google might think they were doing the right thing in this case, but I suspect that the harm they have done by proactivly playing at Big Brother will end up causing a lot more damage to society then one sicko ever could. If nothing else, sicko's lawyer can probably get the sicko off scot free by claiming that Google is the actual criminal here by knowingly transporting and delivering contraband material to his equipment without his knowledge or consent.

Microsoft's Euro cloud darkens: US FEDS can dig into foreign servers

Re: And Google's and Apple's

"Why don't the feds simply ask the Irish authorities for their help instead of bludgeoning the US tech industry to smithereens? That would be a lot simpler, quicker and would leave everyone including most users (apart from the individual(s) being investigated) entirely happy that things have been done properly."

Because they would be told to fuck off in no uncertain terms. The "Civilised World (tm)" has a concept you might have heard of known as "presumed innocent until proven guilty", the US has a shortened that to "presumed guilty".

Thirteen Astonishing True Facts You Never Knew About SCREWS

Screw vs bolt bs

The way I was taught, the thread has nothing to do bolt verses nut. Something is a bolt if it is fitted by applying torque to the nut and a screw if torque is applied to the head. So the bolt in picture no.2 is a bolt in most applications, but it would be a screw if it was being screwed into a threaded hole.