Posts by Trevor_Pott

Re: Synology - are you receiving me... ?

Cheers! I'd been making sure the Synology marketing geeks watched the thread so they woudl be able to take notes on any/all complaints and work to address them.

For all the grief that the neggers want to throw Synology's way, my experience with them is that they are genuinely interested in providing the best product possible at the lowest price point possible. There are not a lot of companies I could say that about.

They're dwarfed in size by a lot of the competition, so sparse resources are not always distributed in a way that makes everyone happy...or is even optimal. But they do seem to try to make things right. It wasn't always the case...but in the past year and a half I've really noticed an uptick in their corporate culture. Here's hoping you do too!

Re: "Far cry from the prosumer NASes upon which Synology built its name"

K, I'm not misunderstanding at all. Synology are not currently making claims of enterprise-class support. Rumblings are that this is the direction they are moving towards. How will that new support effort look? Nobody knows.

The whole argument about 4-hour enterprise support is somewhat pointless. That's not currently something you're promised when you buy Synology. Instead, what you get it low cost systems where one entire unit can fail and the other just keeps going. That gives you leeway in getting the downed one repaired.

Personally, I prefer that model over so-called enterprise support, because none of my customers can withstand a 4-hour-long outage. Not even the smallest of SMBs. Thus the Synology model works incredibly well for my customers and thus why I have units are in production. 4-hour support just isn't good enough for me; nothing other than truly redundant hardware is.

That said, I understand that it's a staple of enterprise sysadmin thinking. So it will be critical for them to meet those requirements when they roll out their enterprise support offering.

Apples, oranges...ewoks?

Re: Latency

That's interesting. I'm currently using an HA pair of 5 bay units for a review I'm working on. Even the nodes without Proximal Data caching enabled don't throw a wobble, and I'm using 7200rpm disks!

Re: Synology - are you receiving me... ?

Jeremy, e-mail me and I'll get you formally introduced. :)

Re: Where's...

Replication is not backup. Snapshots and backups still need to take place. Replication is just for hardware failure, and I trust it far more than I do "redundant controllers".

Re: Where's...

I far prefer two physical units in block-level sync over just a pair of failover controllers. Failover controllers still leave the motherboard, CPU, RAM, backplane etc as single points of failure.

Unless I can physically shoot the primary node and have the set still work it isn't redundant.

@Danny14

Good points all.

Noxious Ancient Souls

...because if you say "Thetan" you +++++------CARRIER LOST

Re: "Far cry from the prosumer NASes upon which Synology built its name"

Their support - for me - has been excellent. Similarly, I have heard no complaints for those I personally know who've worked with their support.

I do know that new versions of the DSM often have issues right at release and that you still have to do your due diligence as a sysadmin before updating, but I have been running these things in production for literally years now. Not a single issue.

Now, I have no particular loyalty to Synology, so if you have horror stories, please to e-mail them in. I'd love to investigate, poke around and see what I can so. So far, however, I see a massive community of die-hard evangelists and a few people on the edges who complain. (As there would be with any company.)

If this perception is inaccurate, I'd love evidence. It would give me something to chase down Synology's PR people with and ask pointed questions. If they are going to aim for a more enterprise-class support, how are they going to deal with the kinds of support issues that people raise to me?

So please, send in your squaks!

Re: Synology Issues

Not exactly encouraging. That said, I'll flag this thread up to their marketing geeks. Maybe some push from that direction will help with whatever changes are necessary for them to be better at the support bit. All we can do, eh?

Re: Synology Issues

Sounds like legitimate issues! How far did you pursue support? Makes me wonder what the enterprise-class support will be like and how the levels will differentiate.

I've heard from people who've encountered bugs in DSM releases. Usually this was coupled to the Synology support guys spending hours or even days working with them to troubleshoot the issue, extract root cause and then build the patch into the next update.

Making the leap into the commercial midmarket (and eventually enterprise) space is going to require a new regime of testing, a different beta and alpha program and certainly different support. It will be exceptionally interesting to see if (and how) they meet those requirements.

Re: Add Infiniband and/or Fibre Channel

They were somewhat cagey about any discussions regarding those interfaces. I was left with the impression that it is likely those will be added in due course, but they have bigger fish to fry right at the moment. Suspect it's a couple years out yet for formal support.

For some Synology units the expansion shelves are linked to the master units via Infiniband. Technically, as the DSM is Linux, nothing stops you from just bunging the card in and supporting Infiniband, Fibre Channel or FCoE yourself, albeit through the command line.

If Synology really is making a play for proper support and the enterprise space - as i very much suspect they are - then Fibre Channel, FCoE and Infiniband will be inevitable.

A) QNAP's rack widgetry doesn't go as fast.

B) This is something like the third generation of Synology's RackStations. IIRC, they beat QNAP to market for virtually every feature.

C) Price, price, price.

D) The last time I tried QTS it was a steaming pile of dung, especially compared to the DSM.

QNAP are welcome to feel free to submit hardware and/or software for testing (assuming they have a virtual appliance version of QTS) at any time they wish.

As for "what gets you published", well it certainly does help to have the various technology journalists on your press release list. It also helps to submit hardware for testing if you want it reviewed. Do you have any idea how many product launched per day occur?

The last time I cranked my own bent coppers into the QNAP slot machine what came out the other end was complete shite. What incentive would I have to ever go repeat the experience? Synology, on the other hand, has served me - and my company, and my clients - well for years. Their equipment has done yeoman's work and never given me the slightest hint of grief.

I have a wall of NASes from a variety of vendors. More of the things than I could use in a lifetime. If you think for a second that bunging a bit of kit my way is enough to make me a lifelong bosom buddy, you're entirely wrong.

Every man has his price, but mine is mid 7 figures. So far, I've not had adequate offers.

Hardware vendor? Software vendor? Service vendor? Crackpot with an RPi? Send 'em all my way. I'll take a boo and report back as honestly and objectively as I know how. That's what I get paid for.

Re: Err, No

They'll do all the technological bits required to be kick ass at $5K a piece. Turning the knobs to $10K is for extras that most don't need or buy.

Re: "Far cry from the prosumer NASes upon which Synology built its name"

This is the third-ish generation of their rackmount stuff. Nothing has really changed except the marketing and an incremental ratcheting of the IOPS. The previous generation claimed 400,000+ IOPS and has a rather good reputation.

For the record, I run a great many "production workloads" on Synology devices, and have for years. Never had a single problem.

Re: Let's see...

A) The NSA do listen on the pipe.

B) The NSA can - and do - demand the data via secret letters from a secret court using tangled (and secret) interpretations of purposefully obfuscated laws paired with secret letters to keep everything secret on penalty of all involved going to secret prisons for a secret amount of time after a secret (or no) trial.

If your data is at any point exposed in a an unencrypted format* to a company or individual that has a US legal attack surface - no matter how small - then your data belongs to the NSA. That simply cannot be contested at this point.

Nothing Microsoft, Google, Amazon or anyone else can do will ever make their clouds secure unless they find a way to offer 100% end-to-end (at flight and at rest) encryption that nobody but the keyholder can decrypt. No man-in-the-middle attacks. No secret give-us-the-key-now attacks. No hidden backdoors in the crypto algorithm. (It must be developed openly and audited by multiple independent reviewers with divergent - or opposing - allegiances.)

Neither Microsoft, Google, Amazon or any other American provider have the slightest interest in providing that level of security as it would eat a few points of margin to develop and maintain it. So, unless you can secure it yourself you can't trust cloud computing for anything but the most trivial of workloads.

I'll certainly not be putting any personally identifiable information for any of my customers in the cloud...

*Or encrypted with an algorithm the NSA has broken/compromised.

Re: "Oracle databases are still apparently a thing."

"Is a thing" is an expression that significantly predates the hipsterati discovering it and converting it into an image macro.

Re: Missing the woods for the trees

Empathy and emotion are emergent properties of the chemical reactions that make us. They aren't magic.

What they are however, is individual. That you experience one set of chemical reactions in response to a particular stimulus doesn't mean that someone else does. Thus saying "my emotions are the reason that my argument is valid" is both absurd and pointless. That response cuts both ways; the emotions of the opposing part logically would hold the same validity and thus when and where opposite they cancel eachother out.

This is why the emotion of the debating parties is irrelevant. The only way that emotions can be used to validate an argument is by saying that the emotions of one party are somehow more valuable than those of another. Which is perilously close to the same "dehumanising" concept you so casually threw around. Where's the line between "my argument is valid because my emotions have greater value than yours" and "you shouldn't vote because you're black and I'm white?"

All sorts of animals have emotions. Virtually all mammals, most fish...hell my lizards have very clearly observable moods. There's nothing special about emotions.

What does, however, set truly sentient, sapient beings apart from lesser creatures is logic. The capability for rational and predictive thought is rare. We only know of a handful of non-human animals that posses it, and that's not for lack of searching.

Thus in an argument attempting to establish fundamental ethics upon which to build a moral code - and ultimately laws - emotion of the arguing parties simply has no place. By the same rational belief/faith/religion have no place in these arguments either. Why is your belief/faith/religion to be taken as more important than mine? What the hell makes you so special?

Far more critically, why should your personal belief/faith/religion be imposed on those who don't share it? Like the emotions of the arguing parties, belief, faith and religion can't be entered into argument unless you posit superiority of one side. If you do that, you are throwing the entire concept of a society in which all individuals are equal under the law right out the window.

And like my ancestors, I will fight a fucking war to defend that concept. I will die, if I must.

That leaves logic, scientific evidence and reasoned discussion. So far, I haven't seen those used to validate the right-to-life belief.

Re: RTFM

Uh...you're pointing at the article that says Windows 8's growth was outpaced by it's three year old predecessor and failed to make a significant dent in it's 13 year old ancestor as evidence that Windows 8 is a success?

The fuck, what?

I think you need to read this, and then start learning a lot about how Microsoft reports figures. Such as the fact that units sold and then downgraded are counted as sales of the new OS, rather than the old one.

Windows 7 is an example of a beloved operating system. One with broad customer support and appreciation. It started off strong and grew pretty much linearly. Windows 8 - like Vista before it - started off weak and grew in an irregular pattern dominated by major contract renewals.

More critically, Windows 7 is still surpassing Windows 8's growth, despite that fact that all new contract renewals are counted as Windows 8 sales. This means that popular support for Windows 7 is so overwhelming amongst consumers and small businesses that their market signal is completely drowning out Windows 8's corporate and government contract renewal.

Are you even capable of understanding how unbelievably, overwhelmingly large of a failure that is? Consumers and SMEs don't have a lot of purchasing power when compared to the commercial midmarket, Enterprises, CSPs, MSPs and governments...all of whom are contract purchasers.

Windows 7 licence growth is almost exclusively coming from new system purchases or retail purchases of the OS. (Open licence could count here too, but almost everyone will buy the newer OS and use the downgrade options.)

The PC market has been declining year over year. So that means that in a declining market, so many systems are being purchased with Windows 7 that it's growth is outpacing not only retail purchases of Windows 8, but contract renewal rates as well.

That's mind boggling. That's a failure of epic proportions.

That's Windows 8.

Edit; I do realise we're looking at NetApp data here and not counted sales, but MS's official figures follow the NetApp data quite well so far.

Re: Had enough of Microsoft.. start menu whingers

I can't say what I really think. If I did I'd never be allowed to write on these forums again. Believe me, this is quite toned down.

Re: Missing the woods for the trees

Lexxy, I think with that statement any credibility you may have had evaporated. Are you seriously trying to say that an adult human being who is sentient, sapient and capable of processing information about their environment, making decisions, etc is rationally equivalent to a non-sentient, non-sapient clump of cells? That they are the same thing to you? Under what logic does that form?

Let's take one of the most extreme scenarios; someone with a genetic defect leading to mental retardation so sever they would score below 70 on an IQ test. As an adult, that human is still more aware than a cat or a dog. They are well into the realm of being aware of their environment, being able to have theory of mind and a fear of death. Are you honestly saying that even the most mentally bereft of adult humans is the same as a collection of cells without a functional neural network?

A blob of cells isn't human. It has the potential to be human, but the characteristics that make us sentient and sapient simply don't exist at that stage.

Let me put this into context: are you familiar with the concept of stem cells? They are cells in your body flooded with telomerase and which have not had "fates" assigned to them. (Fate assignation methodology is beyond the scope of this comment, however, there's plenty of research if you want to hit up Google Scholar.) The short version of a stem cell is that it can become any kind of cell. Most stem cells could even be used to clone an entirely new copy of the host animal.

Adult humans produce thousands of these things per day. Our brains alone crank out several hundred new brain cells a day, to say nothing of the stem cells lining our guts, our marrow and various other aspects of our physiology: we are constantly being refreshed and renewed wiht new cells thanks to our stem cells. We couldn't be alive without them.

What's really interesting is that these stem cells don't always actually stay put. Every now and again we'll shed a few. One of the places this happens more than any other is our intestines. Or, to put this in a more compact version:

On a fairly regular basis you actually excrete as part of your feces collections of cells that could very easily (under the right circumstances) grow to become an adult human being. Not just any adult human being, one with your exact genetic code.

That's right, you poop people.

Well, that is, if you define any random collection of cells that could grow to become a fully independent adult human being a "person".

So, are you "advocating the destruction of a person" by taking a crap? What about by cutting yourself, bleeding and thus causing an uptick in blood cell production which ultimately jars loose a few stem cells that will probably be passed through the kidneys and excreted with your urine? How many "potential people" are killed by a night of intoxication?

Oh, so you don't consider the clumps of cells you excrete, bleed or murder with toxins to be "potential people?" Why, exactly? What differentiates that agglomeration of cells in your intestines from one that happens to exist in a uterus?

Did your mind generate something with the word "natural"? Interesting! But you see, "nature" is jut the result of fundamental forces interacting. The sort of thing that makes a hydrogen bond to a carbon, and those interact with another carbon...amino acids form proteins which cooperate and compete until you have RNA, DNA, cells, biofilms, multicellular organisms...and you.

You're a sack of chemicals and nothing more. That's nature.

What sets advanced multicellular life apart from less advances forms of life is the emergent properties of neural networks. The more complex the network the more complex the consciousness of the organism. Cats, dogs, people, elephants...where do you draw the line? Why?

Ultimately what this really boils down to is that you are arguing that potential people should have rights. But you are only arguing for a specific kind of potential people. Ones that arise under very specific circumstances. In order to grant rights to this special class of potential people you seem entirely ready to deprive actual people of their rights. Why?

What about non-human animals? Which among them deserve right? Why? Why not?

What about "potential people" that don't arise from your sanctioned methodology? Do they deserve rights? Why? Why not?

Your argument is based in emotion and rhetoric. I am open minded. I can be persuaded, my mind changed. I suspect you'll find that most of The Register's readership is the same. The key here is that you have to actually put the effort in. Answer the hard questions. Provide evidence, sound reasoning, logic and rationale.

Emotions of the arguing parties are irrelevant. Rhetoric is irrelevant. Faith is irrelevant. Either you can prove your argument or you can't, if you can't then don't expect to persuade anyone.

In the meantime, I will continue to advocate that women have the right to prevent a clump of non-sentient, non-spaient cells from developing a neural network advanced enough to be capable of choice. (Though I believe that once a neural network has evolved past that point the ethics of termination changes.)

I won't, however, denigrate adult humans - regardless of their mental faculties - by saying that they are remotely "the same" as something that can't think, or feel...or choose.

Re: 2015!?

Office exists for Mac OSX

Re: Startisback and Modernmix is a necessity

I personally bay for RetroUI because Classic Shell doesn't make Metro Apps windowable.

Re: MOD NOTE

Your opinion was that I shouldn't be given a choice. As far as I am concerned that does make you no different than the oppressive, religious far-right.

Additionally, by what law must abortion be non-trivial? It seems to me the relative importance of it is an individual thing. That it is important to you does not make it important to me. It's quite obvious something I find very important - the right to choose - is not all that important to you.

You trivialized the immorality of removing choice from another. I engaged that and voiced my opinion that this was immoral. You then trivialized me and my personal beliefs by attempting claim that they paled in relevance to your own personal moral code and set of psychic traumas.

You are defending your choice to reach for the censorship button by saying my beliefs are more trivial than yours whilst crying that I am trivializing your beliefs. Nice.

And for the record, while I thought you were probably a douche before, I'm absolutely convinced of it now.

Isn't it interesting how diverging moralities generate dichotomies of perception and relative importance?

Edited to add: I'm not saying I'm not a douche. I probably am, certainly I appear to have broken a few people's doucheometers by disagreeing vehemently with them. What I am saying, however, is that given your actions I'm pretty confident I'm no douchier than you.

Re: Missing the woods for the trees

Hi Lexxy, well this is the classic debate, isn't it? I don't believe life is mysterious. I can tell you exactly why those cells are alive. I can explain it all right back to first principles. With enough science the need for religion evaporates.

I also don't hold that a clump of cells has the capability to make a choice. If they do, what then a mouse, a moose or even a biofilm? What makes one non-sentient, non-sapient clump of cells more important than another? My fish is more aware than a fetus. My cat more aware than a 3-year-old child. What makes humans sacred?

I was not "granted' life. That implies a sky fairy doling out lots which is - ultimately - absurd. I am the result of trillions upon trillions of chemical interactions and nothing more. My conciousness is an emergent property of those chemical interactions and humans are not the only animals that are both sentient and sapient.

By all tests, Elephants are likely just as sentient and as sapient as we are. Corvids most likely are close enough for jazz as are cetaceans and our cousins the other Great Apes. I do not hold humans to be exceptional. I do not hold myself to be exceptional. Holy hell, man, I'm mostly bacteria. Organisms we gleefully kill by the quadrillions without a second thought are absolutely critical to making sure the very chemical processes that keep my body alive continue to function.

Your argument seems to rest on the innate majesty of man, an argument which is typically rooted in religion. I reject both religion and the innate majesty of man. Sentience and sapience are the relevant qualities I respect. In this regard I respect an infant human no more (and no less) than I do a dog or a cat. I hold a completely non-sentient cellular mass with less regard than I do my fish.

As much as I respect your right to believe what you will, only science and hard evidence will change my views, and in that view you cannot remove a choice from something that isn't capable of making one. Nobody is a "person" to me until they are sentient and sapient...and frankly, I include a lot more of the animal kingdom in my definition of "person" than those who typically wield religious right-to-life arguments would ever accept.

Complicated world, many views.

Re: MOD NOTE

I'd also like to add that had you simply said to me "Trevor, I think that you're a gigantic fuckfaced douchball (to whom I hope something really terrible happens) and that post you wrote really offended me. For personal reasons I don't want to get into, it's all a little too close to home, can you please withdraw it?" I totally would have deleted the post.

Instead, you decided that the best possible route was to attempt to have me censored. To remove my choice to exercise my right to self expression. You didn't even try asking nicely. Or even asking douchily.

Butting heads on the internet needn't strip all of that humanity away. Most times, you'll find I'm actually quite nice and make earnest attempts to be helpful...even do many who have been utter douchewads in the past. But going straight for the censorship button off the bat is really rather a no-go for me.

That is where I start forming some pretty negative opinions of you, sir. It's where your actions very directly start to walk into territory I feel is immoral and unethical. You went straight to censorship. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, just push the big red button marked "nuke."

Well, maybe this will be a bit of a lesson. Try the carrot, then the stick. If both fail then and only then seek out someone with a far bigger stick. While I can't speak to the rest of the world, this is the best way to get good results from me.

OSX and IOS are incompatible. Why aren't people whining about this?

Because one's a consumptive OS and the other's a productive OS and there isn't a rational reason the twain should meet?

Re: Missing the woods for the trees

Followup to this here.

Re: MOD NOTE

And oddly enough, you'll find me receptive to viewpoint. I apologize if I have offended you.

That said, your journey was your own. your pains and trials - however real and emotionally scarring - won't mean the same to others, just as things that upset me won't even phase you.

I have an anxiety disorder; one whose details I won't go into, as there are certainly unscrupulous commenters who would love nothing more than to use my triggers against me. I see comments all the time that I find particularly upsetting which others probably wouldn't. Should I demand they be censored?

You may not like that I, personally, view any purposeful restriction of choice as both immoral and unethical. It is, however, a very strongly held belief, and one I feel falls right smack in the middle of the kinds of things that the concept "freedom of speech" was designed to protect: your right to air your personal view on morality, ethics and their interplay in society.

Is the choice itself remotely equal? Hell no. Choosing to buy an operating system you hate versus sticking with one you love is nowhere near as emotionally scarring as having to go through the choice of an abortion. I don't hold the two equivalent in any way.

I do - and did - acknowledge that there is a grand difference in degree of douchiness between restricting a woman's right choose and telling people what they can and can't buy. Misogyny - along with gods only know what other sterotypes that you had to deal with locally - make dealing with the consequences of the right to choose difficult, if not hellish. That's a whole other layer of douchiness heaped on top of the basic douchiness of purposefully setting out to remove someone's right to choose.

I'm sorry that I offended you; such was not my intent. I do, however, believe the debate and discussion is itself important. There is a purposefully massive discrepancy between the personal and emotional magnitude of two examples of someone denying another choice. Yet the act of purposefully denying another choice is no less wrong at the less emotional end of the scale than at it's peak.

Re: RTFM

Oh, really, it's "just a bunch of whiny nerds" that don't like Windows 8, eh?

I guess that's why Windows 8 is flying off the shelves, scoping up untold amounts of money from punters' wallets and decimating the market share of both XP and Windows 7. The consumer and small business markets - typically far more end-user driven - are clearly overwhelmingly in love with Windows 8 and driving a new era of awesome as they embrace the post-productivity world.

...or not.

You know, looking at those market figures (especially sales of Windows 7 on consumer/prosumer devices and the rise of the staunchest Windows 7 ally - Lenovo - against all competitors)....if you're right...there's a fuck of a lot of nerds out there. Like, a lot. A lot a lot.

Enough to make them a market worth building your goddamed operating system for.

Care to revise your view that "it's just some angsty nerds?" Or perhaps you'd care to concede that there are enough nerds to care about. Maybe you're wanting to admit that nerds have so much influence (despite small numbers) that courting them is a rational business move? I'm fine with any of those, really...

Re: MOD NOTE

CEILING CAT IS WATCHING YOU ANGST

Re: Missing the woods for the trees

@Lexxy pretty much all scientific research shows that in the first trimester the unborn fetus is less aware than the snails that clean my fishtank. So no, it doesn't.

That said, I'm not entirely deaf to the right-to-lifer point of view. If they are prepared to create a social compact wherein a woman who is forced to bring an unwanted child to term is compensated for several times her salary during the period of the pregnancy (to make up for opportunity cost of career advancement as well as her regular salary), post-partum counselling, and we are prepared to provide a rich, supportive, caring environment for the child - including paying for all it's needs until it is done post-secondary - I would consider that they may have achieved a compromise worth putting the issue to a referendum.

That said, under no circumstances would I support forcing a pregnancy to term if it had a risk of harming the mother. The right to choice of a living, sentient and sapient woman trumps the "right" (and I use the term very loosely) of a non-sentient, non-sapient clump of cells.

"What could be" is not an excuse to restrict, restrain or harm people who are here, now. That child "could be" the next Hitler. It could be possessed of any of a hundred thousand genetic abnormalities that means it won't make it to term, or suffer SIDS shortly after birth.

When large amounts of peer reviewed science - not the odd paid-for-by-the-right-to-lifers crank - shows that fetuses within the first trimester have the ability to choose, this might be a different conversation. Until then, we're arguing about the right of something roughly equal to bread mould that "might, one day" be more versus the right of a living, breathing person.

Now, if that isn't enough politics for one day, I could get started on the insanity of the US's refusal to install mandatory background checks on firearms or ban automatic weapons, despite support from 95% of the population...

Re: "...but not just any keyboard or mouse ..."

...the keyboard and mouse that iGod(TM) gave you!

Re: how about ...

Indeed. I get to deal with a lot more creepy crawlies in my life through SQL injection attacks than infected desktops. The last three infected desktops I had were Macs! I've also had infected iPhones and an Android device through the lab in the past month...

Re: kde has a start button....

I use Linux extensively. CentOS mostly, but Mint and Android where possible. The problem with upping sticks is that it absolutely is an "all or nothing" approach. WINE only covers so much...and that isn't much! ReactOS covers a bit more, but again...not much.

I am a hostage, pure and simple. I can't leave because to do so would destroy my livelihood and those of many of the most important people in my life. Yet staying shackled to an abusive partner like MS is intolerable as well.

Lacking resources to escape and unable to cope with servitude I turn to the only recourse left me: lobbying for change. The chances of success may be low, but it is the only viable alternative left me...and hundreds of millions of others.

Re: Missing the woods for the trees

Just so we're perfectly clear, I believe that anyone who advocates removal of choice from someone else is in the same bin. Remember that in many corners "right to life" belief is non-controversial and viewed as socially positive. They would be insulted to be associated with the kind of people who would tell you what you can and cannot buy.

Regardless of which choice you are denying someone, if you advocate denying some choice, you're a douche.

Personally, I believe that right-to-lifers are both the "anti-choice" sort of douche as well as the "misogynistic fuckbag" class of douche, a twofer that makes the more douchy than your regular "my preferences should determine what you are allowed to purchase" douche.

I do understand that in some (rare) instances choice needs be curtailed for the common good. You shouldn't be allowed to choose , for example, to own a nuclear weapon. But restricting someone else's choice when the impact of the other person's decision doesn't affect you in the slightest really does smack of douchbaggery, regardless of how extreme the context.

If you strip away the misogyny portion of the debate and put it to one side, what's so different about telling someone they must have a baby? Or that they must get married? Or they they must not go to school? In each case it is one person forcing their will on others where, ultimately, the result of that other person's choice doesn't impact the douche in question at all.

Why is it somehow more acceptable when corporations become involved? I don't view capitalism as a get-out-of-jail-free card for unethical behaviour. Authoritarian douchbaggery is authoritarian douchebaggery no matter how you dress it up.

Microsoft is free to make a start menu, or not, as they choose. I wouldn't force Microsoft to fix Windows 8, even if I could. They have to want to. I can, however, show them that there are consequences (such as alienating their user base) for each action...but it must be Microsoft's choice.

Similarly it is my choice as a customer to protest and lobby until I convince Microsoft to change their mind. When someone says to me "I believe you should not be given the choice" the rest of the sentence doesn't matter. You're a douche.

You might be a douche with added douchiness because of what choice you want to deny, but there is a base level of douchiness simply to the act of wanting to deny someone choice.

Re: I had to Google how to find the Control Panel...

The context menu on the start button is cute, but no replacement for a start menu. It's a nice-to-have in Server 2012 R2 (for those few instances that you run with a GUI and need to administer from time to time), but it doesn't even begin to address the issues that exist with the UI...

Re: Well For A Tech Site !!!!

I have to use the goddamned thing every fucking day and I still hate the useless post-productivity mess that is Microsoft Tiles 8.11 for Fondlegroups. I hate setting a new system up. I hate the bizzare limitations on consumer versions. I hate the way it spits out printer drivers that work fine (until a reboot) and never give me any sort of shit whatsoever on Windows 7.

I hate Metro and the fact the stupid hotcorners that make using a vertical taskbar a nightmare. I hate that goddamend charms fuckery and the ribbonised everything. I loathe search - especially unified serach - and want my "slow", iterative, one-file-after-another unindexed Windows XP search that acutally fucking finds shit back.

I hate full screen applications, how much of a miserable pig it is to close Metro apps with a mouse, that so many things default to Metro and IE11's utter inability to talk to itself. I hate the busted proxy settings and the VPN UI from hell.

I hate clicking on a printer in order to make "print server" appear so I can tear out drivers and I loathe UEFI boot that's locked down so I can't fix broken partition tables or make dual-booting systems. I hate the stupid steamrollered-flat look of everything that makes buttons so hard to see, especially in non-optimal viewing conditions.

I am enraged beyond my capability to rationally express how shitty Windows 8 is from almost any remote-control application, especially when Windows 8 is windowed. (Hot corners can eat a sock full of soup.)

I could go on - for some time - but I'll just take the time to add this: I hate commenters like you.

Don't assume that we haven't tried this festering shit pile simply because we disagree with it. Some of us loath the thing because we have to use it day in and day out.

Getting my up button back wasn't worth the trauma inflicted on the rest of the OS. Not by half.

Re: kde has a start button....

Was that you volunteering to foot the bill for having all the apps recoded, Tom 7? So long as you're paying, I'll gladly switch. Though if truth be told, I prefer Cinnamon. Having to make plasma widgets just to drag a file to the desktop in KDE is irritating as hell.

Contact information is on the website, any time you're ready to cut that cheque. Last I ran the numbers the conversion would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3.4 million dollars. Thanks!

Re: kde has a start button....

Question: can the computer run my Win32 and AMD64 apps? You know, the ones my business relies upon and which would cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of my company's gross income for the next three decades to recode even one? Does it have like-for-like alternatives? For example, ones that can run th multi-million-dollar industrial equipment? No?

Well then, looks like KDE isn't much of a solution after all.

Re: Missing the woods for the trees

Your list of band-aids on top of band-aids still don't sort out the issues others of us have with a giant, useless app chooser taking up the entire screen...or indeed apps that take up the entire screen.

Here's a thought: you bring back the start menu and you fix metro. It's called choice.

Choice is only a bad thing if you're a religious zealot. You know, the kind so obsessed with women's vagina that they will torment entire nations in order to ensure an unwanted baby gets born but them work with furious vengeance and anger to ensure that no social safety net exists to care for that same child once it's emerged into the world? Yeah, I lump all you "anti-choice" types in the same group of obsessive-compulsive sociopaths.

Re: Had enough of Microsoft.. start menu whingers

" we consumers are obliged to accomodate those changes (by accepting or moving on)"

Bullshit. We are obliged to do no such thing. We have free will and the right to lobby corporations, designers and even governments to reverse decisions we don't like. We have the right to lobby for choice. We have no obligation whatsoever to simply suck it up and take it.

Doubly so when there is "nowhere else to go." And let me pre-empt the bullshit "well it's simple to just up and change" by saying that if you were even thinking that was a legitimate bit of internet commentard assholishness I hope a bus hits you in the crotch. Repeatedly. You fucking know better.

You stand up to bullies, you don't mew meekly in a corner. Bullies com in all forms, even monopolistic corporations with a death grip on a market segment. Especially monopolistic corporations with a death grip on a market segment. You are under no obligation to hand your abuser back the baseball bat after they're done beating you just because there's no other shelter you can find.

Your worldview makes me despair.

Re: Had enough of Microsoft.. start menu whingers @Trevor_Pott 10:17

I'm also a loudmouthed, opinionated dick who can't spell. Really should put Swype on this thing and get used to using it. Or get a keyboard cover. Hmm....now I want a keyboard cover for a Galaxy Note 2...

Edit: well there's lots for that 10.1" monstrosity that uses the note name, but I'm having the devil's own time finding one for the phone. Curses!

Re: Had enough of Microsoft.. start menu whingers @Trevor_Pott 10:17

No, he's pretty clear that he believes OSes are better without a start menu and that he would much rather future versions of Windows - or anything else, for that matter - don't come with them. In other words, he wants everyone else to not have choice regarding their OS UI simply because he prefers something different.

Demanding that those who protest a lack of choice be silent is a dick move. Almost as big of a dick move as denying individuals choice in the first place. Shockingly, however, I think you'll find that I don't hold the opinions of assholes like him - or supports of assholes such as yourself - in high regard at all.

I'd go so far as to say I hold them in sever contempt. Contempt enough that their anger, irritation and moral outrage are like the duclet tones on pure ecstasy to me. I revel in their outrage. I dine upon their annoyance. I revel in their pettiness.

So yeah, I stand up for the little guy, I demand choice and I believe that your money is yours to spend as you choose; you shouldn't be tricked, coerced, locked-in, or otherwise made to buy what you don't want. I believe that if you want to sell something you should have to sell what people want. 'm a loud-mouthed opinionated dick that's for the people.

The dude above is an asshole, and you're a jackass. Isn't the internet awesome? Have a great time, buddy, and I hope one day you find something that brings you joy other than stepping on others. Seems like you could use something worthwhile in your life. Peace.

Edited to add: and where is it written that I don't like MS? The endpoint division can go fuck itself with a rusty rake - though maybe I'll decide otherwise if they fix Windows 8 - and I hate the licensing department more than all but a handful of humans on earth. That's well known. But there's lots of Microsoft, and I am pretty much in love with the STB guys. How binary does one's mind have to be that criticism of one area must be hatred for the whole?

It means that I don't give the person abusing me a shiny new tungsten baseball bat on their birthday. I walk the fuck out of the house and don't come back until they had a quite serious amount of counselling. Things for you to consider (if that is indeed something you are willing and capable of doing.)