Posts by Trevor_Pott

Re: Smells like Nutanix

If that were the case, VMware and EMC would have done something underhanded, like telling Nutanix they weren't welcome at PEX in order to kneecap competition and attempt to prevent them from responding questions about direct comparisons. Oh, they did? Hmm.

Well, then I think it's safe to conclude that VMware has decided to once again rip off ideas and intellectual property from their own partners then proceed to act in an anti-compeitive manner and otherwise be complete fuckbags. Shocked? Less and less every day...

@AC

When you're starting from "zero" it's not hard to make a graph look like you're "accelerating." It's also not hard - if you're Cisco - to make stupid amounts of money for something that isn't as good as the competition. Vendor inertia + pressure sales = victory. That has piss all to do with what's the most appropriate technology and everything to do with lies, damned lies and luncheons.

Side note: please explain to me why I, as a business owner, am interested in having all of my data go through a single wire? If I am speed constrained there may be a case to be made for getting a faster network port, but there are a lot more factors to consider than just speed.

Redundancy, for one. I am not fond of the idea that some putz could come along, unplug a single cable and annihilate my entire datacenter. For that matter, how does a pipe the size of the universe itself help me if the widgets on either end don't go that fast?

Speed = eleventy billion only matters if you subscribe to the notion that life is better with great big hierarchical north-south networks with storage at the bottom, all centralized and bottlenecked. Newsflash: it's 2014. We go east-west now. Fabrics are the new black and Cisco is playing catchup.

Decentralized and dynamic is good, for a number of reasons. Expandability, capital cost, and redundancy are the big ones. FCoE could be a part of this great new world, but at the moment Cisco's implementation isn't. I think we'll see a lot of traction yet from more numerous smaller, slower storage deployments that are connected more widely east-west than a great big fat pipe heading southward to a single point of storage failure.

@Nate Amsden

Bang on analysis. Insightful, accurate...truly top quality. You should package that up and send it in to Drew, get it posted as an article and get paid for it, sir.

just Bing "SMB v3"

...so you don't get access to any technical information, get frustrated, and have to Google it to learn anything useful?

Re: HP's answer

First off, 50TB is nothing. It might be lots for really small clients, but it doesn't even begin to address most of my 50-seat clients, let alone those at 250 or 500 seats. Lefthand is for sub-100 seat setups, as far as I am concerned.

50TB maybe seems like a lot when you're using it only for VMDK storage. But then what are you using for CIFS? You could virtualize the file server and use Lefthand storage for that, but then you're back up against that 50TB wall. Or...get an appliance, right?

But why get Lefthand for VMDK and then a separate appliance for CIFS? Why not just get one widget that does both jobs, does it well and does it cheap?

Also: regarding performance...3par RAID 5 performance is inadequate as well. The compairaison isn't a bunch of rust spinning in a circle anymore. It's hybrid arrays. LSI's CacheCade or Microsoft's Tiered Storage Space on the DIY shelf, or Synology's SSD caching on the appliance shelf. Lefthand needs to be as fast as VSAN and Maxta (meaning taking rust and SSD to make superpowers) or it's just a toy.

A 32-node Maxta array can deliver amazing IOPS as well as insane capacity. You can also get a similar (though less dramatic on the IOPS side) effect from Synology storage. Those Synology arrays can top 600,000 IOPS now, and they cost a bent pittance.

Lefthand was cool in it's day. I really liked it. And in situations where all I need is an HA pair of servers to run a handful of smallish VMs without any real storage capacity requirements, Lefthand is fine.

For my customers who are needing 10-30K IOPS for their VMDKs and 150TB of 10K IOPS CIFS storage (about average for 50-seat setups I do,) it has so far proven to be far to expensive to attempt to make it work. There are just better alternatives at this time.

Re: You nailed it Trevor

I know you didn't suggest there were cost savings. That's sort of where I was going with that. For SMEs, cost is king.

Re: HP's answer

@Nate Amsden Lefthand is for really small clients. Look at something like the Synology 1813+. I see these things everywhere. Little HA pairs of them littering the SME space. 2 units in RAIN 1 each with 2 SSDs (acceleration tier) and 6 Spinning disks in RAID 5 means 5x4TB usable at some pretty impressive IOPS for dirt cheap.

The RS3614xs+ is an example of the kind of gear I'm seeing put out by MSPs for far heavier workloads. I've never had a chance to play with one myself for an extended period, but I'm seeing them pop up.

The volume of data these things can shift and the IOPS they'll provide (hybrid storage arrays are a good thing) just make the Lefthand offer inadequate. That isn't to say Lefthand is bad for what it does, but it can't compare to VSAN or Maxta for the same job, it can't compare to Synology or Qnap for raw storage and it can't compare to any of them for price.

HP has good tech with Lefthand. They just have to figure out how to market it effectively to meet the growing challenges from proper storage SAN providers on the high end and upstart NAS/SAN providers on the low end.

Re: Shouldn't there really be a disclaimer...

@Lusty actually you read it wrong. I don't think SME-focused MSPs will "pick from an assortment of new toys [they've] found and put together a unique design" at all. Instead, what I see is that they are standardizing on a new generation of providers that do everything SMEs require while offering direct margin support to the MSP crowd.

This is important, because there is a driver amongst MSPs not to give up margin to enterprise vendors as margins are getting thinner every day. (It's the reason, for example, I'm getting out of the game.) Because they are choosing a standardized set of equipment, they can keep spares to hand should something go wrong, but also refine in-house procedures to make things simple, easy and efficient.

I don't see anything complicated about deploying a Synology or Qnap-based solution into an SME. They're really easy to use. What they don't have, however, are "Synology certified supertechnician" programs, so finding a new consultant to replace the existing one would be hard.

SME-focused MSPs are not big on adding complexity. Perhaps even less so than enterprise-focused types. They handle dozens of customers where they can't offer too much attention to any single one. The last thing they need is complexity.

What's happening, however, is that there is an emerging dichotomy of providers. These SME-focused MSPs are choosing to provide hardware and software to their clients from different providers than the traditional enterprise vendors. I'm seeing it more and more with MSPs from around the world.

This makes it harder for an SME-focused MSP tech to break into the enterprise...but also for enterprise-focused techs to come down and support an SME. The gap here is bigger now than it ever has been, and it looks to be getting wider.

It's not a complexity issue, per se, though there is something to be said for the fact that SMEs tend to have a far larger total number of vendors supplying gear. (Because they can't afford to buy single-vendors stacks, and they tend to buy small/cheap cloud services from multiple providers.)

The issue is more one of a new generation of vendors being more than "good enough", vendors that enterprise techs would never give the time of day to. That makes for inter-professional jihads on the part of the differently focused sysadmins, but it also is creating a gap in product-focused skills and knowledge that we should all be aware of over the next few years.

This trend is something that has always been active at the lowest end, but I'm seeing it formalize and really pick up in the 50-500 seat range of SMEs. It is even expanding upwards in that I have seen things like Synology installed for high-IOPS production deployments in sites as large as 1000 seats. Eventually the squishy middle between enterprise and SME will start to get a lot more blurry and friction between the two camps will accelerate.

Re: You nailed it Trevor

Maybe, maybe not. The cloud doesn't actually offer a cost savings. That's the real problem. The price is going to have to come down quite a bit for there to be an advantage to SMEs. Remember that SMEs don't replace systems on a 2-year or 3-year cycle. It's closer to 6 years or 10 years between refreshes.

That's the whole reason Microsoft is pushing Office 365 and Azure so hard: they are addicted to subscription fees and they want to put a gun to the head of anyone and everyone to make sure that they pay up regularly. SMEs also aren't keen on change; Office 365 and Azure represent change you can't control and have zero say in. Windows 8 still weighs heavily on SME perception of Microsoft and that will haunt them for some time.

I have seem clients go into the cloud and then seen them come right back out in short order. I have seen clients go into the cloud and be happy with it. I have also seen clients avoid it like the plague. No one size fits all and no one solution is going to address all comers.

Can Microsoft convince SMEs to pay triple or more the cost of IT than they do now? That's the real question. When you start looking at the costs of IaaS and running a fleet of VMs on Azure the costs can be closer to 40x that of running your own infrastructure!

The cloud is not cheaper than buying and maintaining your own gear. That, right there, is the biggest issue with SME uptake. Microsoft is not likely to address that issue. They are far more likely to declare victory at some point where they feel they have enough customers and start turning the knobs on pricing in an Oracle-esque fashion. That won't end well.

@AC re: adverts

I do believe you enjoy being incorrect. Why - exactly - would I write an advert for a service I have no interest in offering? My existing sysadmin clients are in maintenance mode. I have a negative interest in acquiring more and I am trying quite hard to extricate myself from most of the ones I do service.

Put bluntly: systems administration doesn't pay well enough. I'll probably be doing it for the rest of my life, but mostly as a favour to those specifically requesting my services and certainly not as a means of making a living. Systems administration hasn't paid the bills for nearly two years. Every dollar I make doing systems administration is 3 dollars I could have made doing any number of other activities.

Your personal prejudice only reveals your own limited worldview, AC. You know far less than you think, and I am increasingly unsure you think much at all. Cheers.

Re: "allow the PRC to move in."

"Read up on history and you will understand why China has not attacked Taiwan."

I know my history. That's also why I said "the costs outweigh the benefits." Do actually read the entire comment.

The rest of your comment proceeds from the assumption that I don't already know that world war three is not something China can win alone. It is a false assumption.

Mind you, I don't remotely believe in your rah-rah western imperialist patriotism, either. China is more than capable of holding its own against it's neighbors and the USA can't beat a bunch of poor people with sand and more sand. It isn't an all-powerful demigod here to protect the world. The USA's doesn't have the ability to project enough force to defend Taiwan all on it's lonesome, let alone defeat China on it's own soil. If you think for a fraction of a second they can, you're delusional.

China is tooled up for mass production. The USA is not. The USA has a bunch of high-end hardware in the field, China's military is somewhat dated. China has it's allies, so does the USA. A war would be devastating and the outcome of that war is in no way a certainty. This isn't a comic book. The allies do not always win.

If China invades Taiwan, much of the world will turn against them. Taiwan - unlike Tibet - has a globally important economy. It would mean war. Thus the price China pays for invading Taiwan would be higher than the benefit they receive from annexing it.

But nothing on this earth could stop China annexing it if they should wish to, and I have my very severe doubts that anyone currently has the ability to blockade China from keeping supply lines open after they've taken it.

The day China makes that move, the next world war begins. China knows this. Today, that isn't something China wants. Tomorrow...who knows? Fifteen years from now the political and economic landscape could have changed so dramatically that China has more and better equipped allies than the USA. They may well at that point decide to make a go of it.

...but nobody - not even 'MURICAH, FUCK YEA! - could stop them taking that scrap of land if they wanted. The best anyone could hope for is to make them pay dearly for doing so.

Re: "no-one is brave enough to move into Africa as it's too politically unstable"

Bingo. Adam smith was a smart cookie. The problem with most modern "capitalists" is that they only really ever read select parts of his first book. He wrote more than just one, and he covered territory about the necessity of regulation, managing the morale of populations, etc. Marx and Smith both had a lot to say on the subject and both, as it turns out, were largely right.

They were never so dicotomic as we are generally led to believe and they would both be utterly appalled at the world we've built today.

"allow the PRC to move in."

You're precious.

If China decide to invade Taiwan they will do so. Full stop. Not a power in the 'verse would be able to stop them. Once they've consolidated their position - something that ought to take a matter of hours, when you have a state with China's GDP backing the play - dislodging them would be a long, miserable, bloody process that would probably chew up the navies of every major power on the planet before the deed was done.

China can mobilize a truly unholy amount of men and equipment in a shockingly short amount of time. They have a very small pond to jump across and even with operationally acceptable 20% losses during the engagement they could occupy that island utterly and completely in mere hours. It wouldn't take much planning on China's behalf to be able to arrange a blitzkrieg strike before anyone even knew what was going on, let alone had a chance to respond.

Once entrenched, how, pray tell, do you extricate them without turning the entire island into a sheet of glass? China's military commanders are no fools. They have learned the lessons of the French resistance, of the VietCong and the Taliban. They know what guerrilla tactics work and what don't. They know how a resistance movement will organize, how to root it out and how to minimize the damage they can do.

Unlike western democracies, the Chinese have no need to seek a swift conclusion to anything. They don't need to "win the hearts and minds of the populace." They will march in, subjugate the populace and breed them out of existence. Two generations later, only a handful of extremists will even remember what their ancestors fought for and the rest will be Chinese citizens.

China doesn't invade Taiwan because the costs outweigh the gains. Nothing more. Do not delude yourself for a moment into thinking there is anything else restraining them.

"no-one is brave enough to move into Africa as it's too politically unstable"

Balderdash. Somalia is capitalism unchained. No nasty government regulation to get in the way of anything. Governments only know how to screw things up. The free market will decide optimal stability of a region, just like it find the optimal point of all things.

"Network ain't gonna resize itself just when you pay."

The Network doesn't resize itself at all when the money that should have gone towards infrastructure improvements is pocketed instead.

Re: "what leads you to believe they, as a bank, have done anything wrong"

Guilt isn't determined by the act (or not) of breaking the law, either. In these days of cutting deals "no admission of wrongdoing" and blatant corruption the law is infinitely malleable to those with the right resources.

Fortunately, the people have more than a flawed legal system at their disposal to hold individuals and corporations to account. One of the more important tools is peer pressure. Ostracisation is a powerful incentive at the individual level and can become "voting with our collective wallets" at the corporate level.

Failure to be found guilty in a court of law does not mean the actions of an individual or corporation are just, morally correct, ethical or even legal. Human beings who aren't sociopaths hold themselves and others to more standards than the lack of being found guilty of a criminal offense.

It's easy to game a system with well defined rules. It is far harder to game a system where the only rule that truly matters is Wheaton's law.

So we arrive at the crux of it. As with so many arguments in the comments, when you strip the events away, it is a fundamental philosophical difference. On one side we have myself, and those who believe as I do, stating that individuals and corporations must be held to a higher standard than the ability to prevent themselves from being held criminally liable for their actions.

On the other side we have you and those who believe as you do, claiming that ethics and morality are arbitrary, and thus should not be used as standards of governance or the foundation of rules of interaction.

One side takes into account the variability of humans, their ability to lie, cheat, corrupt, adapt and conceal. The other side is procedural, believing that everything can be codified and quantified. The debate is as old as time. We'll not solve it here, today...or likely ever.

Re: "what leads you to believe they, as a bank, have done anything wrong"

The court of public opinion does not require the assumption of good faith.

The assumption of good faith is founded in the principles of the presumption of innocence and is a rational extension of the foundational principles of our society when dealing with unknown individuals or entities. You assume good faith when there is no history to inform you otherwise.

Where history exists it is rational to examine past behavior to deduce patterns. Thus presumptions can be made from past behavior, which may or may not continue to warrant the assumption of good faith.

There is a difference between caution and naivete. When and where a pattern of populace-hostile behavior exists I do not assume good faith because I have never been presented with a rational reason to do so.

At some point the assumption of good faith gives way to naivete. In this instance, I believe that your assertion we should assume good faith falls on the "naivete" side of that line.

What I find most interesting is that you are quick to assert the right of a bank to the assumption of innocence and yet are clearly willing to assume that I haven't read your comment in full. You would seem to believe that corporations are more deserving of the presumption of innocence than individuals. Or perhaps that we should not presume things of corporations based on past behavior whereas we should with people.

Either way, your standards appear to be dichotomic.

For the record, my standards are dichotomic, as I believe there is a difference between people and corporations. I don't for a second believe that corporations should have all of the same rights as natural persons and that includes the "right" to the assumption of good faith. (Not that this is an actual right.) Legally, a corporation is entitled to the presumption of innocence, however, that is a different and separate standard from the assumption of good faith.

The damage a corporation can do is orders of magnitude higher than that which most individuals are capable of inflicting. As such, I believe it is critical that we do not assume good faith of corporations and instead view them with a critical eye.

Re: "what leads you to believe they, as a bank, have done anything wrong"

Meanwhile, the rest of us live int he real world where it is far more likely that IT operations at any company is underfunded, internal bureaucracy makes implementing policy difficult-to-impossible and negligence is a more realistic assumption than not.

You give no reason to assume good faith beyond your assertions and personal beliefs. Conversely, there is a lot of history that demonstrates that banks have a lackadaisical attitude to regulations in general and large organizations of all types have hostile attitudes towards proper IT policy.

I see no reason to presume the bank did everything to spec when history says it is far more likely that they haven't. People are innocent unless proven guilty. I do not extend the same concept to banks.

Call it personal prejudice - and frankly it is personal prejudice - however, I will always view bank IT as paralyzed and constantly fighting uphill battles they can never win until proven otherwise. I've heard far too many horror stories from very reliable sources in the UK banking industry to be capable of holding a different view.

It's the reason I don't do any reporting on bank IT. No matter how hard I try I cannot believe a bank to be innocent unless proven guilty. Fortunately, comments don't require the presumption of innocence.

That said, you've nothing to prove your side either. Only a philosophical requirement on your part that they be presumed to have done everything right. Your beliefs and assertions conflict directly with every iota of experience - personal and secondhand - I've ever had with bank IT. As such, I feel entirely justified in calling you on it and saying that for your thesis to be accepted evidence is required.

@AC re: "Dont Worry, Trevor *loves* sensationalism.."

With your utter lack of passion you must be an amazing romantic partner.

Re: "what leads you to believe they, as a bank, have done anything wrong"

Oh, I read what you wrote. But what you wrote basically says "oh, sure, It's not impossible to lock down your machines, but that's just such a hassle that no bank can really be held to those standards." Which is utter bullshit.

Also, under EU law data controllers have certain responsibilities. One of the most critical is ensuring that any third parties with whom they share data meet the same data protection requirements as the original entity itself. In plainer language: by law, the bank has a duty of care to that data even if that data is being used by a third party.

It doesn't matter if the breech happened at a contractor or at the bank itself. The bank is responsible for that data. It must ensure that all of the contractors it uses secure the data as well or better than the bank must itself.

That makes a data breach at a contractor the bank's responsibility and an abdication of responsibility by the bank. No matter how hard it is on the wee diddums to have to comply.

"what leads you to believe they, as a bank, have done anything wrong"

They're a bank.

While it is ordinarily a safer bet to presume ineptitude than malice (see: occam's razor), when discussing banks malice is a constant and ineptitude an inevitability.

We're not talking about an excel spreadsheet with a phone number and address on it We're talking here about detailed information that could well be used for spearphishing attacks against the kind of people that make spearphishing attacks worthwhile.

There exist multiple ways to protect against insider data theft. If the person is in a highly privileged position there exist multiple technologies and procedures which will allow an organization to pinpoint whodunit in a matter of seconds. Whether this is an external breach or an internal one makes no difference to the duty of care the bank had to their customers in retaining this information.

"But the NSA are a bunch of derpy fucks too" is not an acceptable excuse. "Tommy put worms in Sally's sandwich so I put worms in Jessica's" doesn't fly in elementary school and it sure as shit shouldn't fly when dealing with the largest financial institutions in the world.

If the bank was unable to protect the data against insider threats it should not have been retaining the data. End of.

Re: @Trevor_Pott

"If anyone is vaguely serious about preserving the best of past journalism and reinventing it for the modern era, the linked issues of money, ownership, litigation and susceptibility are the ones that need addressing FIRST, or we're doomed to an eternity of the partisan puff-piece frippery and recycled press releases that so blight our current press."

I agree, but this must start with the understanding that journalists need to get paid, and not at poverty levels, either. They have a right to earn a living, and those at the top of their craft have a right to a damned good living. Just like any other professionals in any other craft.

Once we as a society accept that, the question becomes how to fund it. Display advertising is dead. Finished. Kaputski. People are completely immune to it and there is no fucking way that pays that bills for any serious news organization. Millennial are [happy unicorn bunnies] that wouldn't pay a subscription for the water to extinguish themselves if they were on fire. That leaves four possible ways to pay for journalism.

1) Government sponsored. PBS to a damned fin job in the US. The CBC in Canada are top notch. Tea Party types would have an absolute aneurism at the very concept, however, because they are fundamentally capable of understanding that governments don't fail at everything and that journalistic organizations like the CBC do not allow the government to micromanage. So despite the proven viability of the model, we have to scratch that off the list.

2) Patronage. Al Jazeera does a bang up job of this and cranks out some of the best news on the planet. The flip side of this coin is that if the Patron decides to meddle, it can all go to shit. The only way it works is what I call the "Mozilla model": build a loyal enough following that there is a reason for larger, more profitable "news" empires to ensure you are kept alive and left unmolested. Apple to a Microsoft under the Microscope. Hardly ideal, but it is proven to work.

3) Crowdsourcing a.k.a begging. The wikipedia model. Shaming your readers into coughing up a bent pittance for a resource they use every single day. Personally, I'd rather be peeled than spat on by a bunch of layabout assholes who will begrudge the outfit every bent copper and moan ceaselessly that "true" journalists should do everything "for the love of the craft" and that content should be free.

This model is simply untenable. Somewhere between the 10,000th post about how "the only way for journalistic integrity to actually exist is for journalists to work four shifts a day in a Chinese iPhone factory and pursue their journalistic endeavors on the side without having the gall to beg hardworking readers for their money" and the 50,000th accusation that "the journalist is biased towards/against Apple because of his job in the iPhone factory" the journalist will snap. He'll go nuts and paint times square with the warm, viscous entrails of the entitled fuckbags that believe themselves so pure and unimpeachable that they are justified in demeaning and degrading people who are literally killing themselves in an effort to bring them news.

From a pragmatic standpoint, I don't believe any news organization can withstand the continued decline of not only it's reader base but the source of it's income. Add to that the fact that once a journalist has snapped they are unlikely to return to the craft and ultimately this model fails due to sheer attrition.

4) This brings us back to content marketing, which brings us back to money from advertisers, vendors and so forth. This requires a decently sized journalistic organization in which editors serve as a firewall between writers and journalists. Money is handled on side of the house and writing on another.

The firewall has to be pristine. Vendors cannot be allowed editorial input on articles that run. Journalists must be allowed the freedom to write whatever they want about any vendor they want. The sales and marketing teams find companies to funnel money into the machine and the editors ensure that no pressure from vendors ever crosses the barrier to their writers.

The downside to this model is the same as any other: there is the distinct risk that the journalist snaps and makes satisfying, mewling, bleeding display art out of a readership that hurls accusations of bias at the drop of a hat. This is greatly reduced, however, by the journalist making enough money to live reasonably comfortably and perhaps even support a family.

Ultimately, this is the only model that works. The journalist is isolated from the admen who fund the enterprise and gets paid enough to tell the fickle fucks who read his articles precisely what to go do with themselves.

The journalist has a duty to the truth. Not to a given person's interpretation of the truth, but to report the facts. Any and all facts they deem relevant. Advertisers will prefer some facts be added and some facts be omitted in order to help control the message. The milled masses will prefer the same, so as to cater to their personal prejudices and preconceptions.

If the mob is screaming "the black man done it" while they prepare a noose and tree, it's not the journalist's job to agree. If the companies who fund the place he writes for demand that a black man be proven to have done it, it still isn't the journalist's job to agree. It's the journalist's job to report what he knows and - if possible - find out who did do it. Black man, white man, or space alien.

Money needs to flow to pay the journalist's wages. It is the job of the news organization that the journalist writes for to firewall him from the source of that money.

Critically, however, the journalist has no more a duty to represent the presidencies and preconceptions of his readers than he does to write what those who pay him demand. The journalist's first duty is to the truth.

Nobody likes the truth. We all prefer a comforting lie. It is far easier for the soon-to-be-lawn-art milled masses to pillory the poor journalist than admit that their preconceptions were inaccurate. This makes determining bias hard. It requires critical thinking. It also requires the ability to analyze evidence dispassionately.

Sadly, as much as journalism has seen a decline over the past few decades (thanks, Murdoch,) critical thinking and analytical capability amongst the general populace have declined at a much faster pace. What good is a journalist if the populace to whom he delivers information demands not the truth, but emotionally satisfying confirmation of their already extant beliefs?

This is the true dilemma facing today's journalists. "Truth" and "truthiness" have become tangled up in personal politics, apathy, self interest, frugality, entitlement and cynicism. The journalist can deliver the purest, most untainted truth there is to deliver...but all to often we're left wondering if there's anyone out there but us who gives a bent damn about it anymore.

Re: Register needs an alternative funding model and #MDFC

Wow. And here I felt bad because I only paid the Timmies hobo a buck fiddy this morning.

I need to get a lot more evil.

Re: Register needs an alternative funding model and #MDFC

"With a few entirely honourable exceptions, journalistic principles bit the dust some time around Thatcherism."

And yet, I see my generation - which largely rejects both Thatherism and Reaganism - believes strongly in those journalistic principles. A resurgence, you could say. Though now that there isn't much of a newspaper industry it's taking shape in the form of citizen journalism and "new media" enterprises.

How corrupt they turn out to be if and when they find success is an open question. That said, El Reg is quite successful, and we continue to bite the hand that feeds IT...

Re: Where's the incentive

@ Humpty McNumpty oh, no, I was totally trolling the dude. 100%. He'd been douching it up so hard by the time I got to the thread that I decided to poop on him. I never claimed to be holier than the others who dwell here. I'm just a little more self aware. Thus when I'm being a jackass it's usually on purpose.

He didn't just offer his opinion, he went after anyone who disagreed with him, and completely ignored the fact that there already exist alternatives that do what he wants. I see him as demanding Kickstarter change because he isn't satisfied with the existence of alternatives: he wants his view imposed on the market leader, because it's the market leader.

And because, apparently, he's channeling Carl Icahn.

Under that circumstance I feel zero remorse about trolling his ASCII. In fact, I rather enjoyed it. A++++++++ would troll again.

As for your concerns: Kickstarter has all sorts of rules and regulations to prevent "exploitative capitalism at it's worst." It is vicious about scams and cracks down on them hard. Frankly, that's why a lot of the other services sprung up: to get around Kickstarter's more restrictive rules and enforcement.

Is Kickstarter perfect? No. But I honestly don't think that government regulation will help here. I'm usually down with my socialist brethren, but in this case A) there's no evidence that the model is broken B) there's no evidence that Kickstarter isn't capable of self regulation and C) there's a hell of a lot of evidence that if any government tries to "regulate" this industry it will get a lot worse in a hell of a hurry.

You ask the following question: "why are we prepared to give other people money for them to turn into profit for themselves?"

The answer - quite simply - is "because if we don't then the thing we want to happen or be built won't happen or be built."

Kickstarter exists to fund projects and products that in all likelihood would never happen otherwise. It's naive to say that this is some sort of magic hand of the free market making a moral decision about who should or should not survive. Anti-competitive measures exist in the form of artificial barriers to entry raised though everything from regulation to vertical integration that prevents startups from being bootstrapped in any number of industries.

Let's try a small hypothetical scenario:

I really would like a glowing plant. In fact, I want a glowing plant quite a lot.

Now along comes a scientist that says he has the skill to make me a glowing plant, but not the startup capital to make it work. He needs a Big Pile Of Money if he is going to make glowing plants. Making just one is only slightly less expensive than making several thousand, so he decides that if he is going to do this, he's going to make a business out of it. Fair enough. I can respect that.

So he turns to Kickstarter. He says that if he meets his goal then he will be able to sell anyone a bag of glowing plant seeds for $50. He figures he needs $65,000 or this isn't getting off the ground. He offers various things to funders from a free plant to a vase made out of old lightbulbs to the grand prize of having their name spelled out in the DNA of the glowing plant for the person who ponies up $10,000.

If I fund the project to the tune of $40, I get a bag of glowing plant seeds when they're ready. That's $10 off from the sticker price I would pay if I never took part in the project at all. That sounds like a fair deal, so i could do that.

Instead, I choose to give him $500. Why? I really want that glowing plant. He needs to make it to $65,000 this is how much I can spare. Did I mention I want a glowing plant?

I am helping him fund his business and in return I will be getting something I desire: a glowing plant. There is no rational reason for me to expect to own a portion of his company. There was never an expectation that I would own a part of that company and I paid my money in full knowledge that all I was getting was a bag of glowing plant seeds.

That's all i wanted. I'd have paid more than $500 if I'd had it to pay.

I don't know if you've ever started a business. I have. It's expensive. Far more so than just the raw costs of materials. If you have a moral objection to people making a profit then I don't understand how you function in our society. Businesses make profit. It's how our whole society works.

I - one of the most socialist commenters on El Reg - don't have a problem with these folks making a profit. They make me a glowing plant, they get profit. Win, win.

The market will determine if the cost is fair. If the cost is not fair people won't pay it. Nothing on Kickstarter is a natural monopoly or a good you just can't live without. Thus nobody is forced to buy anything: they are paying only if they feel the price is fair.

Because of that I don't think regulation is rational or warranted. I also don't think it's warranted to think Kickstarter should change it's model or try to become "all funding things to all people" just because it has name recognition. That's like suggesting that Coca Cola should sell coffee because they have name recognition and you like coffee.

Of course, you know, there is a way to decide this. Go start an Indigogo to raise enough money to lobby Kickstarter to change it's business practices. Let the market decide if your idea is fair and worth the money.

Re: Where's the incentive

You spent the top of this thread banging on about wanting an "incentive" to buy things and woe to all that paying money and receiving a physical object in exchange for that money was "inadequate" incentive. No, you want a percentage of the man's profits as well as the physical trinket!

Who the fuck do you think you are, Carl Icahn?

Then you jump straight to bullshit like "Comprehension not your strong point is it?" and get your panties in a bunch when someone calls you out for being a douchecanoe.

What you haven't grokked at all from this thread is that the people here see no reason to change Kickstarter to meet your whims. This is because you have provided to reason they consider valid. Your argument-fu was just not remotely strong enough.

This isn't because we don't think that the model you propose is a bad model, it is because it exists elsewhere and thus there is no reason to change Kickstarter. Kickstarter is what it is is and it has no logical reason to alter itself to be like another option just because you prefer the model of another option.

Let me try to put this into perspective. If a bunch of people are standing around a Smartcar saying "gee willickers, this really meets my exact needs, I think this is great" and you trip onto the scene and exclaim that it would be better with a big-block V8, a full bed for cargo and the ability to haul 3 tonnes then they are going to tell you "go buy a truck, ass clown" and go back to talking about their Smartcar.

Now most trolls, missio accomplished, would go off and terrorize kindergartners or some such. Nope, you hang around and say the Smartcar lovers "don't understand" and "they haven't given you a good reason that the Smartcar shouldn't have a big-block V8, a full cargo bed and the ability to haul 3 tonnes. You deride them as sheeple and say that they are preventing innovation by refusing to recognize how much better the Smartcar would be if it would only evolve to be exactly like you describe.

Thus begins the circular logic.

"Dude. Go to ford and buy a fucking truck. There's no rational reason for Smart to build a pickup. Lots of people build pickups. Smart makes Smartcars. A niche they creates and do well in."

"You don't understand! They could do so much better if they sold a Smartcar, but with a big-block V8, a full cargo bed and the ability to haul 3 tonnes!"

"Dude. Go to ford and buy a fucking truck. There's no rational reason for Smart to build a pickup. Lots of people build pickups. Smart makes Smartcars. A niche they creates and do well in."

"You don't understand! They could do so much better if they sold a Smartcar, but with a big-block V8, a full cargo bed and the ability to haul 3 tonnes!"...

Ad infinitum. So while I do so enjoy being stuck in the Typhon Expanse getting blown up every time the Bozeman saunters through the portal, I'm glad you've chose to decompress the shuttle bay as there are many other places to be.

Re: Where's the incentive

You haven't asked questions. You shat an "opinion" - that appears to me to be far more of a demand than anything else - followed by a stream of vitriol at anyone who told you your opinion was unwarranted, undesired and unhelpful.

So yeah, you know what, the best I got for is "dude, your opinion has been roundly rejected and based on how you've handled that you're coming across as the sort of fellow I wouldn't want to have beers with."

You have a lot of "I want" with bloody little "and here's why you should too." You're all stick and no carrot. I don't see a reason why I shouldn't call you on that. Writer, not writer...if you're wrong on the internet then expect the rest of the internet to appear out of a portal and beat you to death with a rubber chicken. It's kind of the way the internet is.

Kickstarter is one thing.

You are "of the opinion" that it should be another.

People say "no, it shouldn't"

You say "should too!"

I say "hey, there's this other thing over here that's exactly what you are talking about, but it's not Kickstarter."

You respond with "my opinion is valid, damn you!"

Yep. This conversation sure was just dripping with class until I arrived. Kickstarter is what is is and people like it that way. There are alternatives, ranging from Indiegogo to the TSX Venture. There's no rational reason that in the face of that diversity it would change or even should change. You seem averse to looking for alternatives. You're just being a hater.

So, if you're being a hater, why should I spare you the rod? You lot wouldn't give me a half a breath before you started in with the knives, it seems to me that turnabout is fair play.

Just...let it go. Even if you believe ardently and eternally that you're in the right on this, nobody else does. You're preaching to an audience you can't convert and you're just making yourself look the fool in doing so.

So yeah. Opinions are like assholes. Everyone's got one. And in this context, yours just happens to be the one that's smelling up the joint. Sorry man, but that's the way it is.

Re: Where's the incentive

Opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one. But christ man, what the hell have you been eating? *hurrrk*

Re: @ Trevor_Pott

@AC Oh, I do very much care to enlarge upon that. When I do, it will be in the form of a nice multi-page feature. Gathering banners takes time, but the long story short is that they violate your privacy in pretty much the exact same ways as Google, with only a very few exceptions...and they have completely new ways of invading your privacy that Google doesn't even use yet.

They aren't like for like on every single privacy invasion, but wingus is just as guilty as dingus on this.

Re: Windows has nothing at all to do with it, regardless of what you've read.

My dealer says to do a paint job required removing components and thus they won't support warranty. Their word is the one that matters, not yours. I also checked the warranty on several of the notebooks I've recently purchased: same deal. Remove the OS and warranty is null and void. Again, their word is what matters, not yours.

Your repeated assertion that people want Windows 8 is equally irrelevant. It isn't reflected in the market. Windows 7 is selling far better than Windows 8. In fact, it's where virtually all growth is coming from. Evidence from retails has been mounting as well. Evidence from online statistics has been perfect clear too.

But you know what? I don't fucking care. I am not the one who suffers because you - and those at Microsoft - are in denial about this. Microsoft shareholders, employees and fanboys are. I'm done with Microsoft. So you believe whatever you want to believe. It doesn't change reality.

In reality, when I offer someone with the opportunity to upgrade to a Windows 7 computer with a shiny new SSD, faster CPU and so forth, they buy it. When I offer them the opportunity to downgrade to a shiny new Windows 8 computer, they pass. That tells me what I need to know to sell computers to my customers. That makes me money.

You can go on your merry way being poor and selling fuck all. It's no skin off my nose one way or another.

Re: Windows has nothing at all to do with it, regardless of what you've read.

Wipers and tires are considered "user replaceable parts". A proper paint job on the car requires disassembly of components that are only supposed to be disassembled by the dealer during warranty period. Thus it would invalidate the warranty on everything but the powertrain, as the disassembly was not done by the dealer. (Warranty is only honoured if all such maintenance is performed only be the dealer during the warranty period.)

That's not exactly earth-shattering in conceptualization. It occurs on cars, printers, computers, even home appliances. Your manual will explicitly state what is a user-serviceable component. Any disassembly of the unit for any reason invalidates warranty. User-serviceable components never require disassembly.

Which brings me back to Windows 8: people don't know how to get rid of it. It's bloody hard to find a PC that doesn't run it for sale in the shops. Even if people did get the upgrade to Windows 7 done, they'd probably not get their warranty honoured.

If what is for sale is not what people want to buy they don't buy it unless they are under significant duress or pressure to do so. What the hell is so hard to understand about this?

People will buy a newer computer even if they don't need one if that computer is significantly faster than their old one and does exactly what they want (i.e. is exactly like their old one, but faster and without the viruses.)

Microsoft released a smelly turd onto the market and tried to force everyone to buy it.

People said "I'd rather use my beater than buy your goddamned Edsel."

This is not rocket science. It may hurt the feelers of the nerderati that the hoi polloi have the choice of doing this - that they the pendulum of power is no longer on the side of being able to force upgrades by fiat - but too fucking bad.

Put PCs on the market with Windows 7 and SSDs and they will sell. How do I know this? Because this is exactly how Lenovo ended up kicking HPs ass and stealing top spot. The market. Analyse it.