* Posts by Paul Smith

533 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jul 2007

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I thought I was being DDOSed. Turns out I'm not that important...

Paul Smith

Re: Happens all the time

You mean in addition to GCHQ and the NSA?

Microsoft, HURTING after NSA backdooring, vows to now harden its pipe

Paul Smith

Who are they voting for?

Has anyone asked who google, microsoft, etc. will be supporting in the next presedential race, and what they will demand in return?

Thanksgiving ROAST in SPAAACE: Comet ISON faces FIERY SUN DEATH

Paul Smith

Intelligent design at Nasa?

"... it will have started falling towards the Sun more than a million years ago, well before mankind even came down from the trees... "

I think our ancestors left the trees a lot more then one million years ago...

Dark HEAVY METAL star fires up jets, vomits hot ROCK into space

Paul Smith

Lots of it about

I have always wondered how there got to be so much Iron around if it could only be distributed by Super-novas. Now I kow :)

PlayStation daddy on new PS4: She's ALL 'PLAY', NO 'Station' this time

Paul Smith

...historical record of plundering AMD's patents constantly,..

As proved in court so many times that AMD makes more money from the fines and penalities imposed on Intel then they do by selling chips. Oh wait, they don't.

"I am an IT technician and engineer by trade", don't feel too bad about it, I used to work in Currys too.

Want to BUILD YOUR OWN Tardis? First, get a star and set it spinning...

Paul Smith

c as a constant

Relativity is based on c (the speed of light) being constant and does a good job of showing that to be true. However, if that is changed to say "constant at a given moment in time" then most f it still hangs together just fine, but a whole bunch of really difficult problems just go away.

How do we actualy know that the speed of light is the same now as it was when the universe was only a few minutes old?

Want a support contract for GlassFish 4.0? Tough luck, says Oracle

Paul Smith

The circle turns...

Everybody back on the JBoss bus.

NSA justifies hacking world's digital communications

Paul Smith

"They are there to enforce justice, not to prevent things before they become crimes."

Either you believe in the concept of "innocent until proven otherwise" or you accept that it is sometimes ok to remove undesirable people from the general population.

One extreme means you might have to put up with weirdos living next door, the other leads to concentration camps. Since plenty of people already think I am a little weird, I know which option I prefer.

There will always be people that abuse the system, that rape, steal or murder. This can and will never be totally elminated, even in a totalitarian society, and yet, if you look around the world, you will see that the more free the society, the lower the levels of abuse.

Thorium and inefficient solar power? That's good enough for me

Paul Smith

Off topic

Consider a heat recovery ventilation system instead of putting holes in your walls.

Oracle sued over $33,000 bill for SaaS: STRIPPERS as a SERVICE

Paul Smith

Re: @Grogan: You clearly have no idea how charge cards of any sort work.

And the hotel that no longer accepted AMEX gave a damn because...?

Ellison ditches own cloud keynote for billionaires' America's Cup boat race

Paul Smith

Re: If I had just paid a bezilllllion dollars....

Why, what happened in Headingly in 1981?

Ex-CEO Elop's plunder to total $25m in voyage from Nokia to Microsoft

Paul Smith

"front-runner for the chief executive seat"

Shares drop 30% plus under his tenure.

Awesomly distructive internal policies.

Once mighty organisation utterly humbled.

On the other hand, as CEO of Microsoft, he would make Ballamer's run look good...

Huawei CTO insists: 'We are not a threat to UK and US national security'

Paul Smith

Oh yes they are...

I would say that Huawei were a massive threat to US and UK national security, but not for the obvious reasons. In order to comply with FISC, PRISM and various other quasi-legal programs, Huawei would have to be told what to collect and how, and where to deliver it. Potentially, this information could render the western networks as open to the Chinese as they currently are to the NSA. And since the are not heavily dependent on the US government, they can not be blackmailed into the same degree of secrecy.

Torvalds suggests poison and sabotage for ARM SoC designers

Paul Smith

Re: Another "spoilt child stampie footie session"

Would that be the Gordon Ramsay who is a multi-millionaire, whose own resaurants are consistently voted among the ten best in the world, who consistently turns around failing enterprises and makes them critical and commercial successes, and who keeps being awarded Michelin stars that recognise his outstanding skills and talents?

Or were you thinking of some other foul-mouth Gordan Ramsey who should not be used as a role model?

MIT clears itself of responsibility for Aaron Swartz's prosecution

Paul Smith

Re: Not neutral.

To fix the US judicial system, just replace politicians with professionals. You don't elect judges, juries or defence attorneys, why elect prosecuters?

Oracle deploys lawyers against Solaris fix-it duo

Paul Smith
Happy

Madness

"Those wom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

Looks like Larry might have pissed someone off :)

Admen's suggested tweaks to Do Not Track filed straight into the bin

Paul Smith

Re: DNT will be about as effective as the evil bit

Again with this "Worldwide Government Regulation" crap?

If you want an internet that no one else owns or controls, then you have to put up with other people using it in a way you don't like, including annoying ads, spam, kiddy porn, blasphemy, hate speak and incitement to violence.

If you want an internet that doesn't have things you don't like, then you have to put up with someone else choosing what is allowed and what is not.

Paul Smith
WTF?

Re: DNT needs to be declared a binding legal contract

And would sir prefer the contract law to be judged by West Texas or the State of Maryland?

Paul Smith
FAIL

Re: I love W3C

I think you are the idiot that needs to learn more. Yes a browser displays HTML, but it displays what ever HTML it is given in response to its request. The whole point of a DNT header is that you are asking someone else (nicely) to be given only what you have been asked for, and if they wouldn't mind, would they please not tell anyone else who you are and what you asked for. Oh, and even though you are accessing their information from their servers which they pay for with advertising instead of charging you directly, would they mind terribly not sending you any of that advertising that pays for their site.

Elon Musk's Grasshopper tops 300m, lands safely

Paul Smith

Pretty... but pointless

A very cool piece of engineering combined with some excellent sensor usage but so what? They could have produced exactly the same results with a parachute and not have had to carry (and burn) all the extra fuel involved.

Americans attempt to throw off oppressive, unresponsive rulers on 4th of July

Paul Smith

WTF...

"Among other things this meant that legal slavery continued in large parts of the Land of the Free for some decades after it would have been outlawed had the USA remained British. - Ed"

-- What a stupid thing to say on so many different levels. Regardless of your opinions on the matter of slavery or history, all this bootnote does is distract attention from the important themes of the storey.

Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?

Paul Smith
WTF?

So...

"...so my American jolly was dropped in order to help fund Thatcher’s cock-sucking City trader friends’ plan to steal from the public sector for 30 years and then, when it eventually went wrong, get the public sector to pay for it..."

If I read that right, what you are saying is that thirty years ago you expected to doss through univeristy at public expense and wind up very comfortable as something in the City, and that you are still bitter that the Thatcher era meant that east end wide boys who went to the wrong schools and had the wrong accents but could buy and sell you, were able to take the job, the money, the prestige and probably the sex that you believed you were rightfully entitled to?

Of course, the economy would have been so much safer in your hands, wouldn't it? The fact that you give your kid too much money because rumour has it another kid has more, and then express disappointment because he didn't blow on something stupid sounds like the ideal skill set for a city trader.

Review: NetAtmo Urban Weather Station

Paul Smith
WTF?

"...it can’t be fully exposed to the elements..."

"...it can’t be fully exposed to the elements. It needs sheltering as you’re not supposed to get it wet,..."

This was a joke, right? A weather station that you are not supposed to get wet?

GE shows off tank-tough tech

Paul Smith

Bored

So is device was so riviting that you both ended up googleing a temperature conversion... You will forgive me if I don't actually watch the video.

NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days

Paul Smith

1) Propulsion not generation - Pretend the engine is a magic black box run by the solar panels. It does not have to be efficient, it has to get you to Mars (and back). If the solar panels dont produce enough power for a pulse a minute, run the engine for twice as long at a pulse every two minutes.

2) Waste products - A pellet the size of a grain of sand ejected at 30Km/s, every 60 seconds will leave a trail of one grain of 'hot' sand, every 1,800 Kilometers.

3) Shock - Fit shock absorbers.

4) Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty - This only applies to explosions. We are merely generating intermittent reactions.

US bill prohibits state use of tech linked to Chinese government

Paul Smith

WTF...

"The House of Representatives Committee reported several times in its findings that it was unable to get the level of information required from Huawei and ZTE to allay..."

The information the Committe was looking for was proof that that Huawei and ZTE were instruments of Chinese government policy. The reason they failed to get it was that no such proof exists.

And when you get anonymous cowards repeating seemingly believable but ridiculus nonsense like Chinese kit that redirects copies of IP traffic to China, well duh? 1) It is simply not practical as anyone who ever has to cable a network will tell you. Traffic goes through pipes and someone has to pay from them, you do not double your traffic without someone noticing. 2) A scandal like that would not be a secret, it would be used by every competitor trying to get into the same markets, but only if it could be prooved.

Big Blighty telcos ordered to block three BitTorrent search sites

Paul Smith
FAIL

Minority report?

Who is this judge to tell others to stop me from doing something I want to do? What idiot was defending this case?

If I break the law, and the state can prove it, then the state can prosocute me.

If I cause you loss, and you can prove it, then you can sue me.

By what authority does this judge claim the right to demand someone else restrict my behaviour?

Larry Ellison buys airline

Paul Smith

Noooo....

The airline seats are not for him... They are for the hired hands.

Bug kills Intel gig-E controllers

Paul Smith
FAIL

Smart or Dumb?

The guy has shown how 'clever' he is by tracking down a really tough bug. Kudos to him, but now, a rare bug wich affected one handset and one switch has been published in a way that every 10 year old l33t is going to try to exploit, just to see if they are 'clever' too. Relly dumb.

Ten 3D printers for this year's modellers

Paul Smith

Lack of faith

Not one of the devices listed appeared to use parts made by itself. Doesn't say much for their abilities.

Google's Glasses: The tech with specs appeal?

Paul Smith
FAIL

Has your mother never told you...

...that the single most boring thing it is possible to listen to is someone talking about their personal dislikes. The only reason anybody tolerates it at all is if it gives them the chance to respond in kind.

Lets by honest, can you name one single person who gives a flying f*ck about whether or not you find wearing a watch irritates your wrist?

I watched Excel meet 1-2-3, and beat it fair and square

Paul Smith

paradigm shift

There was nothing unusual about the way Lotus disappeared. Yes it was an excellent product and no, it did not have much competition, so it is not a surprise that it thrived. However, as soon as something better came along, it had the choice, adapt, or die. From the same era, consider DBase III. Clever name aside, it was the dominant product in the market until something better came along in the form of FoxBase. Neither product survived the transition to modern GUIs.

Red supergiant Betelgeuse heads for SMACKDOWN with 'dust bar'

Paul Smith

I wonder ...

... is Betelgeuse close enough that a supernova there would be an extinction event here?

If it is, then now would be a good time to a) confirm the theory that iron at a suns core triggers supernova, b) identify whether or not there is iron in that dust cloud, and if there is c) work out how to travel interstellar distances in a hurry.

We might just have a supernova to outrun...

Hydrogen on demand from silicon nanospheres - just add water

Paul Smith

Off track

This topic has gone way, way off track. From bitching about the 'failures' of fuel cells to fake green credentials, the El Reg usual suspects have been remarkable slow in picking up the key parts of this storey.

1) You can carry the energy equivilent of 45l of Hydrogen in a one once package

2) Nobody is going to care if you spill some.

The 'failure' with fuel cells has always been the difficulty in supplying them with hydrogen in a safe and convienient manner. There use in cars (or laptops) currently requires distribution and storage of very highly compressed, and massivly explosive, pure hydrogen. This technology potentally removes that problem by allow the hydrogen to be created on demand requiring only locally sourced water.

The 'green' argument around energy use is a complete distraction here. Even if the production of the raw materials was very expensive, the 'green' question we should ask is if it is less expensive then the current ways of solving these problems with fossil fuels, when the production, distribution, storage and safety are also factored in.

A car using this technology would produce no pollution in use. To recharge it would simply empty its (non-toxic) waste tank, refill its fresh water tank, and top up on catalyst. Oh, and it doesn't use any non-renewables. What is not to like about this idea?

Why no one wants to Joyn GSMA's Skype-killing expedition

Paul Smith

Operator alternatives

There has been a standard in place for over ten years, which is supported by the infrastructure that all the operators already use that could put the over-the-top players out of business tomorrow. Called IMS, it uses an extremly simple concept. I dont want to communicate with your land-line, your mobile or your PC, I want to communicate with you. So if you have indicated which device you can be reached on, then when I try to contact you (using your personal identifier), the infrastructure will negotiate the path that best supports the form of comms I have requested (voice, VOIP, video etc.) to the most available and capable device connected to you.

The classic sales example is the guy who starts out working in his garden. He doesn't have his mobile with him but his wrist watch can recieve SMS texts. As he walks back into his house, his watch informs the houses cordless phone system that he is in range and can now recieve voice calls. As he goes into the TV room, his watch contacts the telly, and now he can recieve a fully interactive video call.

There are various theories about why this hasn't been widely adopted yet, my personal favourite is that the business people at the operators have only barely managed to get their heads around 2G and clearly have not grasped the impacts of data on their business yet. One of them will, hopefully soon, and once one takes the risk and tries it, the rest will jump on the bandwagon.

Clap Google, Amazon in irons to end tax shenanigans - MPs

Paul Smith
Facepalm

What a load of b.

Amazon, Google, Starbucks and all other corporate entities have legal and moral responsibilities to their stackholders, and to the law of the land in which they operate. If that law says if is legal from them to pay 0.01% turnover in tax, then they have satisfied both requirements. However, if the press, who would like to distract you from their own woes, and politicians who made the laws in the first place, want to make a song and dance about the inequities of a system that treats the rich better then the poor, we just let them.

Why do we seem unable to comprehend that the press just want to sell ads, and politicians just want to sell votes, and consider everything they say and do, through that filter?

HP: AUTONOMY 'misrepresented' its value by $5 BILLION, calls in SEC

Paul Smith
FAIL

@Paul Lee 1

If you sat in front of me and went on about how the world owes you a living, I wouldn't hire you either. That chip on your shoulder must be getting boring by now. You had a shit time at autonomy, big deal, get over it and move on. That or become a plumber.

The Sinofsky Letters: Defenestrated Windows overlord corresponds

Paul Smith
FAIL

Re: GUIs are supposed to be for newbies.

Wow! A true Wordstar user if ever their was one. Worse then that, "If you're still faffing about with a mouse in a traditional WIMP GUI, you're still at the "Beginner" level ... You sure as hell don't get to vote on how such a GUI is designed." You obviously believe that you should have been one of the key designers of Metro, no one else could come out with such a dumb statement and keep a straight face! Let me guess, you also believe colour monitors are for gamers only? Sound is an irritating distraction, and anybody who cant remember the differences in syntax between the find commands as implemented on Solaris, AIX and Linux is beneath contempt.

Sorry, mate, the world has changed for the better. As an IT Pro (defined as someone paid by others to actually solve their IT issues) when ever I see someone trying to be too clever, I just groan and try to point out the simple way to do things. You rely on memory, I rely on understanding. Which one of us do you think has a better chance when the unexpected happens?

LOHAN plugs into some hot LiPo treatment

Paul Smith

This baby is growing up

Have you recalculated the expected altitude you hope to reach before launch, given all the extras that have been added to the payload over recent weeks? Might be simpler to just launch the damn rocket off a tall building.

Brains behind Kazaa and Morpheus unleash patent storm

Paul Smith

"they must feel they have something solid"

Callam McMillan @ 09:21 said "...As for the logic of pursuing all these big name players, they must feel they have something solid... ".

They don't need anything solid, they just need something that is expensive to defend against. Prior art has no meaning after the patent has been granted. When challenged with a patent suit like this, a company really only has three options:

1) pay someone else to continue to doing what you do

2) pay to change what you do and pay the penalty of having done it 'wrong'

3) pay to try and prove that the USPO was wrong to grant the patent in the first place, and all subsequent judgements that the patent is valid were also wrong.

The extortionists rely on the fact that option one is almost always the cheapest, and remember, if any one of your victims decides that it is cheaper to go with option one, then that is considered evidence that the case is valid and makeing option 3 even more expensive.

If you were curoius why so little that is new or innovative has come out of the US in the last 20 years, now you know.

LOHAN turns up the heat on Vulture 2 motor

Paul Smith
Facepalm

mission creep?

If you guys keep adding more and more 'stuff' you risk ending up with something that will be too heavy to fly! Go back to basics and remind yourselves what it is you are trying to accomplish here.

So, that vast IT disaster you may have caused? Come in, sit down

Paul Smith
Happy

re: nice free advertising buddy

"I usually get involved just a minute before the shit hits the fan..."

Oddly enough, I try not to get involved until after a problem has been found.

Microsoft: Don't overclock Windows 8 unless you like our new BSOD

Paul Smith
FAIL

damn lies

Wow, I had forgotten just how gullable El Reg reporting could be on occasion. Somebody did a data trawl and wanted to get paid for for it, so they came up with messages that support their sponsors beliefs (or wishes): "beware the overclocker!" (for he shall not upgrade to your latest overpriced kit) and "beware the non-mainstream PC" (for it shall not make us profit).

Yet , if you look at the same figures from a slightly more critical perspective, you get:

1) "If your PC has a problem that will show up with time, then give it time and it will show up!"

2) "If you do something that makes your PC crash, then if you keep doing it, it will keep crashing!"

But I don't suppose anyone will pay them for stateing the blindingly obvious...

Apple hardware fixer Bob Mansfield retires from Cupertino

Paul Smith

Bloody hell...

Is there nobody left on this forum who can still count?

25c is not a nickel. And it is not two dimes. It is a quarter.

And Jim, not to be too pedantic but while a "nickle" might be worn around the neck in the form of a pendant , a nickel is the term used for a north American 5c coin.

US Navy uncloaks stealthy underwater solar cells

Paul Smith
FAIL

Is it me?

Am I being really dumb in thinking that there is a source of energy that is much more plentiful, and much easier to extract than solar, and it is not dependent on whether you are .9, 9, or 90 meters below the surface. The kenetic energy of the water itself?

LOHAN seeks failsafe for explosive climax

Paul Smith

sticking pin

I would be nervous of the pin sticking and preventing the parachute from opening.

Passwords are for AES-holes

Paul Smith
FAIL

security joke

The worst security joke I have encountered so far was when I contracted for a international business machine manufacturer. The had just installed a very new and very expensive mainframe in the basement of one of their national HQ's. To get to it you had to swipe a card to get through the first door, be physically signed in by a rented uniform, and swipe a different card and enter a challenge response password to get through a second door. And repeat the process to get out again.

There were no toilets in the basement.

By the third day of operation, we had a rota where whose ever turn it was had to go through the security procedure to get out again and go up to the second floor toilets. They then had to work their way down through the fire escapes, wedging the doors open with ash trays, until they were back in the computer room. Then go all the way back up to the toilets and came back through the official security channels. That department was later critised for not showing initiative.

Senator probes NASA airfield deal for Google's jets

Paul Smith
WTF?

Can he do that?

Can a US senator simply demand personal information like that on a whim? What if I happened to be on one of those Oompa loompa flights? How is that the senators business, and why on earth would a senator from Iowa want to know?

How much taxpayer money will NASA need to spend to satisfy this whim and is its NASA's job in the first place?

How much taxpayer money has been spent on satisfying this and other senators whims in the past?

Singapore most 'liveable' Asian city for ex-pat IT pros

Paul Smith

HK for me

I absolutly loved working in HK. It is one of my favourite places in the world. I far preferred it to London.

So what's the worst movie NEVER made?

Paul Smith

"Keys to the City: The Terry Childs storey"

The true storey of the brave operator who fought a city and won!

A Cathryn Bigelow docudrama

Written by Salmon Rushdie, based on the Rush Limbuagh article

Starring Mel Gibson, Eddy Murphy and Mia Farrow

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