Posts by Paul Smith

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

Very well said

I could not have put it better.

The truth on the Navy carrier debacle? Industry got away with murder

Re: Chocolate Teapot

Someone clever once said "I don't know what technology the next war will use, but the one after that will be fought with sticks and stones".

Code Spaces goes titsup FOREVER after attacker NUKES its Amazon-hosted data

Re: bummer...

Bullshit! Big or small doesn't matter. They had no disaster recovery plan, so they had no chance of recovering from a diaster.

Remember that the next time you think of trusting someone else with anything you own or are responsible for, if it is important enought to worry about losing, then you must have it is more then one place, and that those places must not be reacheble from each other.

Asus Z97-A puts Intel's 9 Series chipset through its paces

UEFI - uck

UEFI makes for pretty bios's but makes dual booting to anything other than Windows a right royal pain, and it seems to be getting harder and harder to disable, or am I just getting paranoid?

Dogevault praying backups work after confirming attack

Duh...

So its a hard 'g' as in doggy and not a soft 'g' as in dodgy.

Silly me...

US judge: Our digital search warrants apply ANYWHERE

Re: Conflicting Laws

"Can American courts compel a citizen to commit a crime in another country? I can't wait to find out the answer!"

Yes.

American law does not recognise non-american law or juristiction. Their law is written as if it is the only law.

Whaddaya mean, No refund? But I paid in Bitcoins! Oh I see...

Re: Pissed again?

"The speakers answer"? Surely you mean the drunkards recollection of what he thinks someone else might have answered to a witty and clever question which the author cant quite recall in full detail at this time?

Whoosh right back at you.

There is absolutly nothing different about a refund in bitcoins from a refund in Pounds, Euro, Dollars, gold, pork bellies or any other unit of exchange. The one and only thing you can not do with bitcoins, which you can sometimes do with other currencies, is pretend that it never happened.

Buy a gold ring or any other volitile commodity from your local pawn shop tomorrow, and take it back the next day for a 'refund'. Maybe you will get one, and maybe they will offer to but it back from you at its new price.

Pissed again?

So you were not only technically, intellectually and sartorially outclassed at this networking event, you got pissed as well. I have to assume that you hadn't sobered up when you wrote this excuse for an article.

Let me try to explain it as I would to a five year old.

The old fashioned pound sterling used to be a pound of sterling but people who were rich enough to own one were too posh to carry them, 'cause they were bloody heavy at almost half a kilo each. After a while, they came up with the idea of a paper version which was simply an IOU to say that you would be given the actual pound if you asked for it, but in the meantime, they would keep it in a safe place for you. It was just as good for paying for things and was easier to carry around so it became popular. Of course there were a few problems when people asked for their actual pound back, but nothing a standing army couldn't handle.

Crypto is just a little word for big mathamatics so a crypto currency is one based on a pound of crypto. Instead of carrying around big computers to do the maths on the spot, you just carry the token that shows you (or someone else) did the math.

Your confusion regarding refunds seems to be, how can I put this politely, fucked up?

If you order a £5 cup of fresh sewage and get raw sewage instead, you ask for a refund and get your £5 back. You don't get exactly the same £5 back, the one your granny wrote 'happy 1st communion' on. You get 'a' £5 note, or perhaps 5 pound coins, or any other combination of monetary tokens that add up to a fiver. What doesn't happen is that people to not pretend the transaction never happend. The transation of them giving you a cup of sewage in return for your fiver was recorded on a journal and written to a ledger and sealed when the cash drawer closed. If another transaction is needed, to cancel the sewage and refund the fiver, it also has to be recorded in the journal and written to the ledger. It doesn't matter if the fiver was a promise for a pound of silver or a token for 600 Flops.

Spooks vs boffins: MIT bods say they've created PRISM-proof encryption

@ itzman

"I have been constructing a private 'cloud' to enable a distributed organisation to access sensitive data across the internet: Why?..."

Since some of your fundemental assumptions on security and encryption are wrong, you are probaly not the best qualified person to create such a cloud. I suggest you google Diffie-Hellman key exchange to get some of the basics. Then you can revisit everything you have done so far...

Facebook pays $19bn for WhatsApp. Yep. $45 for YOUR phone book

The new and improved ?

New and improved drugs? I am not sure if you have been paying attention. When is the last time you heard about a drug company coming up with a cure? They have no interest in cures, and they don't want you to be healthy.

The drug companies operate exactly the same way any other drug dealer does.

They want you to be just healthy enough that you can continue to pay for their drugs, and sick enough that you need to take (and pay for) their drugs every day for the rest of your life!

Home lab operators: Ditch your servers ... now!

I don't get laptops

I do not understand why laptops are considered attractive in this context. Yes they are designed for the most power per watt, but, so what, the power bill is simply not the expensive bit of a home VM.

Laptops are designed to be portable, and charge a hefty premium for the privilege. A diy desktop running an oc'ed i7 with 32G ram with space for all the storage you can imagine, will still set you back £500 or less, and that sort of money does not get you much of a laptop.

EVE Online erects mashed-up memorial to biggest space fight in history

re: Micky mouse the fifth

I can just imagine you trying to make a cup of tea...

Mickey: "Whats this shiney thing?"

Mickey's Mom: "A kettle, it boils water"

Mickey: "Boil! Thats a pain in the arse. Why isn't it working?"

Mickey's Mom: "You have to put water in it,....

Mickey: " fuck that I'm bored "

Mickey's Mom: " ... plug it in,... "

Mickey: " Boring! "

Mickey's Mom: " ... and turn it on"

Mickey: " I'm always turned on!"

Mickey's Mom: " then wait until it boils"

Mickey: "Fuck that, I wait for nothing! Tea bag, cup, sorted!"

Mickey: "What's this shit! Tastes like piss water. All tea drinkers are puffs!"

Well. it's lasted for over ten years now and it's still going,...

So did the TV show "Friends".

MPAA spots a Google Glass guy in cinema, calls HOMELAND SECURITY

Re: Going to be a painful future

Their ignorance of geography does not mean the have no right to other opinions, but when ignorance is publicly demonstrated in one area, it can safely be assumed in others, so it shouldn't be a surprise if their opinions are not given the respect they believe they deserve.

How much should an ethical phone cost? An extra penny? Or $4bn

Missing the point.

I think too many people have missed the basic point of this article, and the author isn't doing them selves any favours.

The core if the article is not that an extra 1cent, or $32 or whatever the current figure is, will save a life or prevent a rape, it is that the original cost of 1 cent has now grown to $32 and still will NOT save a single life or prevent a single rape.

The people who will benefit from your extra $32 per electronic device are the bureaucrat's who will have a safe job for the rest of their lives followed by a comfortable pension. It makes no difference to the people forced to work in these countries.

And to those of you who cliam that you can not put a cost value on a life but still support this idea, do you not reaslise that what you are saying is that you are prepared to pay $32 so you dont have to feel bad about the rape and murder required to make your phone?

Two million TERRIBLE PASSWORDS stolen by malware attackers

password policy

I got so peed off with different sites requireing different policies, that I came up with my own.

I have three passwords, (four if you include the ones I don't bother remembering) that I use for everything.

I have my use everywhere password for low value sites that wont hurt me if they are cracked (such as this one). It looks like Passw0rd (but isn't) giving me 8 character mixed case with digit to satisfy most sites.

I have the passwords that must be changed on a regular basis such as work, it looks like Password1311 (but isn't), the digits are the year and month I last had to change it.

I have a complex non-guessable password for bank accounts etc.

And finally, for infrequently visited sites, I just use the "forgot my password" link and have them send me a new one when I want access.

I am not a fan of keypass or the likes as they are just a single point of failure. If someone hacks my hotmail account, if they take the time, they can find references to some of the other sites I access, and maybe even some of the user ids I use. They can they try to access each one individually to see if I have used the same password. If the break my keypass account, they have full access to every site I have registered with keypass, no need to guess. And that motivates hackers to target keypass.

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

The circle turns...

Everybody back on the JBoss bus.

NSA justifies hacking world's digital communications

"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

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

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

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

"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'

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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?

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

"...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

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

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

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

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

Noooo....

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

Bug kills Intel gig-E controllers

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

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?

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

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'

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

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?