Posts by Paul Smith

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

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

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 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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

sticking pin

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

Passwords are for AES-holes

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

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

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?

"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

Vote now for the WORST movie EVER

confused

Having watched most of the movies that didn't make the cut, and considering that they were, by and large, worse then the ones that did, and none of them come close to being the worst I have seen, I have to conclude that "worst" means different things to different people.

Take Eyes wide shut as an example. Beautifully made and lit, includes Nicole Kidman's arse and various other bits of tasty totty, but a completly meaningless storyline. So bad, I walked out of the cinema before the end. Worst ever? Not even a contender. How about the Postman? Kevin Costner at his self important best? Drivil certainly, but worse then Waterworld or Dances with Wolves? Perhaps, but not by very much.

How many have sat through Eraserhead and only realised that nothing was actually going to happen when the credits rolled up? (Thats the David Lynch one, not the Swarchenegger one).

Bad remakes of bad movies? Rollerball, DeathRace2000, Fame, Posidon, Taxi, Get Carter all have to be considered. All are brutal, but worst ever?

Bad sequals? Jaws2, Back to the Future 2, too easy (see what I did there? 2, too? forget about it?)

Bad Franchises? Fast & Furious, Matrix, Planet of the Apes, National Lampoon, Dumb and ...

I think this competition should start again, but this time with a debate about what makes a movie bad. I am now off to root out my copy of "Wombleing Free!". The true life retelling of the famous storey of the Wombles of Wimbledon Common.

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

Eyes wide shut

First movie I ever actualy walked out on in a cinema.

IBM boasts of Power-AIX win at E-Trade Korea

sinking ships and unfaithful rodents

Yet another Sun shop looking for alternatives to Oracle, no matter the cost. Lets be honest, a 16% improvement on five year old kit is not an 'investment', it is desperation. I don't think this is one IBM should boast about, but it is one that the Oracle board should be looking at and saying wtf is going wrong.

SUNKEN LINER Titanic iceberg riddle answer FOUND ON MOON

Astronomical odds?

"In astronomical terms, the odds of all these variables lining up in just the way they did were, well, astronomical."

No... they were a certainity and a few minutes with a calculator will tell you when the next time this will be. And the time after that, and after that...

Intel: The data center will be 'Xeon E5 Inside'

good enough for the goose?

"...That, said Rodriguez, is enough encryption capability to secure all the data on a DVD in nine-tenths of a second..."

Sso we can asume it is pretty good at decrypting as well?

Oz says 41 hits a day turn bloggers into publishers

Bias?

If I want to claim that a blogger has defamed me and I want that defamation treated seriously, I have to show he got 15,000 or more hits a year. Why is this a bad thing?

Bias?

Very American reporting, don't you think?

Attack the report by attacking the sponsors of the report: "the Greens, who felt that News Ltd was out of control..."

Attack the report by taking bits of it out of context..."These numbers are arbitrary, but a line must be drawn somewhere...15,000 hits per anum translates to just over 41 a day."

So as a journalist and reporter, does the author of this article feel that the Ozzy's are right or wrong in attempting to establish some way to hold media to account?

Lithuania rules beer brewing 'vitally essential' to life

newsworthyness

Why is this news? Of course beer is essential to life.

RIP: Peak Oil - we won't be running out any time soon

Definitions

The power of positive thinking never fails to amaze. Current US production is at about the same level as it was in the 1940's. It is not trending upwards, it is just not trending downwards as quickly as it was.

The number of productive wells has increased significantly in the last three to five years, but that was after thirty years of decline.

Woman spanked for dissing ex in Facebook snapshot

Typical

Bloody foreigners! Wouldn't happen in my day!

Overclockers UK swallowed by private equity firm Afinum

Customer service

I have used them, liked them, and recommended them to others.

As far as I am aware, every one I suggested to try OCUK still gives them repeat business. Yes, of course there have been problems, faulty goods, and misunderstandings, but the reason I and others give them repeat business is because those problems are sorted politely and profesionally.

Apple tells authors: All your books iBook files are belong to us

"includes..."

I seem to read clause (ii) differently to other commentators :

if a) "...the work is provided for a fee..."

and b) "... and includes files in the .ibooks format ..."

then c) "...may only be distributed through Apple"

This would appear to mean that if an ibook format version of my work exists, then I can not sell it by any other means - even if apple refuse to sell it.

York CompSci student pleads guilty to Facebook hack

A little honesty at last

"At Facebook nothing is more important to us than the security and integrity of our site,..."

Users, privacy etc. all came a poor second.

Does your smartphone run Carrier IQ? Find out here

Money!

Would it be fair to assume that since the end user did not request this service, the carriers were honest enough to exclude these 'diagnostic' reports when calculating the end users data bill?

Is the electromagnetic constant a constant?

Universal constants

I always considered universal constants to be over rated. The only reason we need 83% of the known universe to be made up of matter that we can not prove the existence of, is because without it, some of our 'constants' wouldn't be constant. Well guess what fellow physicists, beware of interesting times ahead!

Newtonian physics gave us a concept of gravitation that related attraction to mass over the square of distance, and we knew of no reason to doubt why that should not be univeral, so it was called the - all together now - Universal Constant of Gravitation. Einstein however, missed a golden opertunity. He came up with something that showed that the measurement of mass and of distance was not absolute but relative to velocity, so instantly, Big G should have become suspect.

When I fell in love with physics, it was its simplicity and honesty that attracted me. If the evidence proved a theory wrong, you dropped the theory and tried to come up with a better one. Dark matter and super string theories are not, in my humble and outdated opinion, better theories, they are attempts to bodge disproven theories and should have been strangled at birth.

Vegas man begs web for $1m to fix gigantic scrotum

Wow

I am so happy that I live in a country where doctors ask "What seems to be the matter?" and not "How will you be paying?"

An ode to rent-a-nerds and cable monkeys

If writing for El Reg has taught you anything...

...it should have been that your perception of the number of syllables we commentards are prepared to tolerate is orthogonal to the clarity of the conceptualisation you are attempting to portray. It should also have tought you to use your dictionary as frequently and as carefully as your thesaurus. You might then have known that an ode is supposed to rhyme.

VeriSign demands website takedown powers

It gets better,

The Mothers Union of outer Mongolia/Bromley decides that they want all .com sites with the letters 't - i - t' anywhere in the name, ***le or on the home page to be taken down. There would be nothing left in the cons***ution to stop them.

CyanogenMod 7.1 brings 24 Android phones into fold

Xperia is coming - but not yet

From the CM web site...

"Users of Sony Ericsson devices have been left out of the CyanogenMod experience for a while now. We are happy to announce that users will be able to enjoy a full-fledged CyanogenMod with nearly full hardware support (we are still working on FM radio) starting in our next release. You can also expect nightly builds and more instructions soon."

The key words are "starting in our next release"...

Paris, for getting me all excited, then leaving me flat...

Ease data traffic jams with some network improvements

Make you mind up...

The whole point of the motorway analogy was to show the massive gains to be had from a seperate and seperated path introduced for dedicated traffic purposes. But then went on to suggest that we should just make the existing cart track wider!

Should your system offer Mr, Ms ... and Mx?

Pipe dreams

Can anybody tell me an acceptable word to use for the third person singular that is gender neutral (rules out 'he' and 'she') and not offensive (rules out 'it')?

Gravity wave detector gets more sensitive

Lies for children

"lies for Children" - Great expression which nicely sums this article up.

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle simply says we can't know the exact position and the exact momentun of a particle - and this is the important bit - at the same time. The reason is simply because measuring one affects the other. This does not, as suggested, lead to vacumn fluctuation since it is possible to know exactly the position of a particle, there fore it is possible to know, with absolute certainty, that it is not there.

If you want to play with energy-time uncertainties, then you need to be able to play with Schrödinger's cat without getting scratched.

'Major' C++ revision receives standards blessing

Re: Excuse me, but...

"... any language can be used to write ugly."

Sadly, very true, but some languages make it much harder to be elegant then others.

LightSquared blasts GPS naysayers in FCC letter

Galileo

Looks like another good reason to invest in the Galileo system. Mines the one with the map in the pocket.

German Green extracts tracking info from mobile operator

Statistics

"we're all being tracked all the time just in case the police want to know where we were at some point in the future."

Ah, no, not quite. We are all being tracked all the time in case we want to actually use our mobile phones. The data is kept so the operators can see who wants to use there phones, when they want to use them and where they want to use them so that the operators can make sure they have enough capacity so you can use your phones. The fact that the police can request access to that data is secondary.

Praying for meltdown: The media and the nukes

Lewis taking a day off?

I assume that everything is continueing to go well in Fuxs Ville, allowing Lewis to take a well earned rest. There was no plutonium in the soil samples, when the looked more closely, it was the day-glo from the firemans boots, and the dirty water just has a bit of scum on the top. Nothing to worry your pretty little heads about.

Never the less and just to give this a bit of context, ten thousand dead and rising, fifteen thousand missing and rising. There are decent sized towns where no one can remember the dead, let alone bury them.

Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IAEA

"I have never been so ashamed to call myself a journalist."

"slightly heightened radiation - occasionally reported in scaremongering fashion as "10x normal"'

I am not surpised you are ashamed, you should be!

To a physicist, 10x Normal radiation level is slightly heightened (for a given Normal on a given scale) but instead of dealing with the physics or the facts, you prefer to use "scaremongering". In what way do you think you are any better then the Red Top brigade who also bend the truth to sell copy.

Croatian brainboxes deploy calculus-based CAPTCHA

Touchy today?

"So someone who doesn't understand calculus or advanced math is an idiot then? "

Artists, peace campaigners and any body else attempting to join a Croatian advanced math club without a good knowledge of advanced math is probably an idiot, yes.

FAA to pilots: Expect 'unreliable or unavailable' GPS signals

Re: Nameless Faceless@12:08 - Non Issue

"Commercial pilots do not use GPS for navigation." - Fail.

Commercial pilots use GPS, INS, VOR/DME and the have been known to look at compasses, maps, and even out the window. Have you heard of RNAV, or GNSS approaches? These rely strongly or exclusivly on GPS. The 45meter deviation reported by one poster earlier is enough to completly miss a runway. That might proove to be an issue, don't you think?

VFR stands for Visual Flight Rules - that means lots of looking out the window. GPS is handy because it can tell you where to look and what you can expect to see, but under VFR, it is no different from having a map. Quite a clever map, admitedly. I think what you meant, and completly failed, to say, was that private pilots flying light aircraft under IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) rely heavily on GPS navigation, but do not have the luxury that commercial pilots have of knowing how accurate their navigation data currently is. For them, 45meters out is not a huge issue, but suddenly fluctuating data can serious upset an autopilot.

AC @23:46 - How will we tell?

Aircraft have multiple navigation systems including GPS, INS and VOR/DME and each system is constantly being compared to the others to spot exactly these sort of mistakes. It is why so few pilots end up driving into rivers etc.

Judges reject Operation Ore appeal

DPP laziness

So what, in effect, the DPP is saying, and the judge is agreeing to, is that if you want to do something illegal with the internet, first steal someone elses ID and use it to get a credit card. You will be then be left completely alone since the DPP is far to busy to bother checking that the credit card used was actually issued to the person accused. And as we have seen so often where 'kiddie porn' panic is concerned, suspicion is conviction.

This approach does have lots of advantages as it seems that it makes everyone happy. The police and the DPP get easy prosocutions, politicians can claim they are doing something and have the convictions to back them up, newspapers have headlines that sell papers, pressure groups have hate figures to scare us with. Even the peados get to carry on as usual. In fact, the only people to suffer by doing things this way are the idiots who allow their ID's to be stolen and the kiddies that are being abused, and lets face it, nobody really gives a fuck about them.

DARPA, NASA team on '100-Year Starship' project

"No human organisation...

"No human organisation has yet appeared with both the financial clout and the long-term commitment that would appear necessary to get humanity out among the stars."

Does the Catholic church not count?

Airport screeners go for the groin

winners and losers

Just like the war on drugs, the war on terrorism was based on grossly incorrect assumptions but has since become so profitable for the incumbents, that it will not be allowed to end.

UK border police seize £500k from Nigerians' hand luggage

Currency rules

From the IATA website: http://www.iatatravelcentre.com/GB-United-Kingdom-customs-currency-airport-tax-regulations-details.htm

"Currency rules

Import and Export: local currency (Pound Sterling-GBP) and foreign currencies: no restrictions if arriving from or traveling to another E.U. country.

If arriving directly from or traveling to a country outside the E.U.: amounts exceeding EUR 10,000.- or more or the equivalent in another currency (incl. banker’s draft and cheques of any kind) must be declared."

Notes from HM Revenue & Customs "Cash Declaration" f orm C9011: "Notes on completing this form

You do not need to complete this form if you are travelling to or arriving from another EU country or are carrying less than 10,000 Euros."