Posts by Tom Maddox

Thanks to your OVERUSE of ALL CAPS, I can't actually TELL if you're being SERIOUS. If you ARE, then I AGREE with your basic POINT, which is that MORALITY and RELIGION are not interdependent, but you come off sounding like a JACKASS. If you TROLLING by pretending to be an ATHEIST, then you actually ARE a jackass.

Where?

While I partially agree . . .

. . . I'm not sure I see your point. Are you talking about the new pricing model or about the subject of this article? If the latter, what VMware is doing is actually a good thing because it allows the VMware administrator to virtualize storage more effectively. When combined with SDRM and SIOC, it gives the VMware administrator much more control over what disk performance is available to VMs, and it gives the hypervisor more ability to auto-tune storage distribution.

If your issue is with the storage "cartel" calling the shots, I have some news for you: this sort of thing is already happening. If you think VMware has not already been working with the major storage vendors to bake in advanced functionality, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. Not, again, that doing so is a bad thing. From a VMware administration perspective, it would actually be great to hand vSphere a bunch of disks and allocate them directly without having to dick about with LUNs, NFS mounts, etc.

How dare you . . .

. . . introduce reason into a perfectly good Microsoft Hate Thread(TM)?!

Not even trying

Come on, "WinCrap 7?" "MicroSuck?" You're not even trying! Here are some better alternatives for you to consider for next time around:

WinFaux

WinBlo

SinPho

WinGroan

WinMoan

And "Microsoft" of course has many of the permutations perfected by Slashdotters and other assorted basement-dwellers over the years:

Micro$oft

Microshaft

Microsloth

Micros~1 (for the old school)

Tsk. Kids today, no commitment to excellence or creativity when it comes to fanboy trolling.

The counterargument . . .

. . . is that it doesn't *have* to be that way. Back in the Internet's salad days, there were sufficiently few people using it that, if you talked to enough people, you could probably track down the real identity of an individual, but no one (except possibly the FBI) was explicitly gathering personal information. If you were an asshole in a moderated forum, you got banned, but you could easily come back with an alt. Facebook and Google are now working hard to tie your Internet identity to your real identity AND scarf up a mess of data about you. Exactly how bad that is depends on your perspective and what you personally get up to, but I don't think anyone would disagree that giant databases of information which can be used to tie up vast amounts of personal data which can then be used to identify the proclivities of specific individuals and/or commit crimes of data, identity, and financial theft and fraud constitute a tremendous risk to the people whose information in those databases.

The typical El Reg reader seems to be of the perspective that people who use Facebook or other social media (or indeed the Interwebs at all without 7 proxies and a pseudonym) get whatever they deserve. This perspective fails to acknowledge that most people are not aware of these issues to the same extend that most Reg commentards are and further does not address the fact that at least a subset of this information can be scarfed in by illicit/clueless Web programmers.

I personally try not to put anything on the Internet that I wouldn't want my mother to see, but not everyone is so careful. In any case, when one shares information with one's friends, one probably doesn't expect to see that information spewed out for the world to see, regardless of the content.

OBLIGATORY

SHUT YOUR FESTERING GOB, YOU TIT! YOUR TYPE REALLY MAKES ME SICK, YOU TOFFEE-NOSED, MALODOROUS PERVERT!

Obviously

When you're sexting the Queen!

Ahem

I think you want, "Gérard n'aime pas de douches d'or?"

Distortion of truth

These "protestors" are little more than a flash mob. If they want to protest, why not do so at BART HQ or at the BART police barracks? Why are they inconveniencing (or worse) people trying to get home, pick their kids up from school, get to work, go to the doctor, etc.? In case you're not aware, public transit is the transit system used by the working classes and other regular folks. If your goal is to change policy, protesting by shutting is going to turn public opinion AGAINST you.

Furthermore, it's actually a public safety issue. Much has been made of the hypothetical concerns about someone having medical emergency while cell phone services are shut down, despite there being clearly-marked emergency phones on the trains and platforms. Suppose someone has an emergency while the train is stopped in the tunnel because the protestors have managed to keep another train from leaving the platform? Where is your moral righteousness when you've killed someone who really IS innocent?

I won't deny that police brutality should be taken seriously or that people have the right to protest. On the flip side, the police have historically been very tolerant of protests in San Francisco. I marched in the anti-war protests before Gulf War II: Electric Boogaloo, and the only time the police interfered with us was when we tried to march onto the Bay Bridge, which would have created similar safety issues. I actually talked to a riot officer during one of the more recent protests, and he was remarkably calm about the whole issue. In my experience, the SFPD, at least, are not a bunch of truncheon-wielding thugs. BART police may be a separate matter, since they have less experience and training. As I mentioned originally, though, let us not forget that the person who got shot did so because he attacked another human being with a knife. Setting aside the knee-jerk issue of it being a cop, I think every human being has the right to self-defense and the use of lethal force where warranted. If someone is trying to end my life, I would feel completely justified in ending theirs.

Finally, I live in a neighborhood with a large number of homeless people and a large number of police officers. I've had to call the police on three separate occasions in response to assault, mugging, and a drunken hit-and-run driver who ran down a small child, so I very much appreciate the contribution the police make to my neighborhood. While I oppose excessive use of force, I do respect that they have to deal with the least-pleasant members of society, and I don't think they should have to lay down their lives so that some yahoo can go flailing around with a deadly weapon.

True

But only the first four are canonical.

Sure

But you have to do it with every single goddamn game out there. And then there's the Twitter crap, "Joe Blow likes scatology," etc. The real answer, from my experience is to install the FB Purity plugin.

Well, obviously . . .

. . . it's an ultravisor. They should get UltraMan to do their commercials; I hear he needs the work.

More seriously, I got a promotional email from these guys, and I thought it was spam. Apparently, the formal product name is "HotLink SuperVISOR." I assume you yell the last part of the name and maybe pump your fist for good measure.

ORLY?

My browser title bar says "News for the WORLD." Don't worry, you'll get over it.

Certainly

I think it would be a fabulous use of Mozilla's resources maintaining compatibility with a dead platform. Maybe they can also crank out an Amiga version or a BeOS (PPC, of course) version.

Phantom pager

I do have "phantom pager" syndrome, but I attribute that to the fact that my cell is usually carried at the same position on my waist and set primarily to vibrate.

As to the Web sites, without opening them I predict that they are mostly anecdata and scaremongering tabloid journalism.

That . . .

. . . and the deafening clicks of their down-votes.

I know, right?

They didn't make a complete neural network from scratch, they just built a system to simulate a small part of one, so this effort is obviously a complete failure. After all, if you can't succeed completely in a gargantuan task in one go, you might as well not even start it.

</sarcasm> for the <sarcasm>-impaired.

. . . and other misconceptions

Are you sure there's not an "i" instead of an "o" in your last name?

Heck with that

Laser-bearing piranha!

Gorillas

"Get your filthy packets off me, you damn dirty apes!"

It. Was. Irony.

No actual body required.

@Robert

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=angry+birds

*Sob*

You couldn't just look it up, could you? Noooooo, you had to go and correct some poor sot . . . incorrectly. Chris Miller is correct in his spelling; you are not. The irony police will be around with bats and a chainsaw; if you must leave, please do so by way of the lumbermill.