Posts by Trevor_Pott

Re: Stop making me think about sex. It's irrelevant.

You're not allowed to use "their." That is something that the patriarchy uses to pretend women don't exist whilst simultaneously attempting to appear unbiased. A bunch of feminists decided that they didn't like it so they set upon a campaign to convince the world that using the plural form of pronouns was abuse of grammar - not to mention demonstrating "gender bias" - so they decided that everyone should default to the feminine pronouns instead.

In case you missed the memo this is huge in US journalism right now, and it has become "the thing" in SF tech circles as well.

Re: about God: She's black

She's black what? A poodle? A paramecium? Black hole? You're still being an "-ist" if you assume God is human/humanoid/human-like/human-aligned at all.

Of course, there's the part where God doesn't exist, but let's just set that to one side for now...

Re: @SoaG

a) you have no idea

b) why thank you!

c) trolling is stress relief

d) I have to be somewhat clean about the ranting. I work here and all...

d) (there are two ds?) Glad to see someone is right around here

e) the wife agrees

f) I prefer it in reverse order; social inhibition removal enhances the fun!

:)

@AC re: $100/seat

Most companies hate their customers, it seems. I'll never understand it. But I will fight it.

@Sandtitz

I personally think that $100/install/year is the "sweet spot" pricing. It generates more than enough revenue to continue support - even to generate quite a bit of profit - and doesn't feel overly onerous, even to the smallest of SMB customers.

Truth be told, you might be able to jack that up to $200 a year, if you were willing to write up goodwill for individuals and SMBs (maybe create a sliding scale?) and thus get even more profit. I don't think that's out there for either Microsoft or the customer.

The key is that you need zero minimum numbers to receive this ongoing support, and it can't have the costs ratchet skyward with each passing year. Also note that I think Red Hat should be forced to offer the same support options for RHEL. Indeed, my opinion on this is nuanced; I don't think that an OS company should be forced to support a product indefinately when there is only one user remaining.

I believe that the support horizon should be determined as a function of peak userbase. If 25% of your peak users for that product version are still using it, you must provide a support option. I'd say that should go down as low as 5% of peak users. I consider it a matter of customer protection, and I think it should apply to all developers of critical software, not simply operating system vendors.

By law they should have two options: offer support for a reasonable fee until the userbase drops below 5% of peak or lenience the source code out to a third party who will provide that support. The third party may be held to massively restrictive NDAs not allowing them to share code, etc.

Regarding the other topic: The Kingston SSDs have been in a RAID 5 of 8 SSDs since the article was published. It has been the primary iSCSI storage for my testlab. I hammer the ever living begeezus out of it all day, every day. Not one SSD is has even used 10% of it's lifespan yet, and they are working like tanks. Still delivering over 10Gbits/sec of throughput to my VMware cluster. What more can I ask?

@SoaG

I'm not sure why Microsoft would bother paying a deep web troll either. That said, the access patterns, message resonance with Microsoft's official marketing slides and entry-level textbook social media techniques in play make my spidy senses tingle.

Remember; this sort of deep web monitoring and engaging (though not remotely so ineptly) is one of the things that my company does. We tend more to focus on opinion aggregation and actual community engagement rather than marketing message core dumps, but you get to meet others in the industry when you do it. (Or rather, Josh does it. I mostly meet people and then run the hell away. Social media types give me the shivers.)

Let's look at the paid Microsoft shill's statement that is the focus for my rage:

Over a few years an upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8 will save most organisations money compared to supporting a legacy infrastructure - from the lower TCO - including fewer security vulnerabilities, better performance, greater reliability, better power saving, etc. etc.

This is pure horseshit. While the above is true in certain circumstance - and I'd be glad to write you chapter on verse on all of that if you want to kindly drop a few dozen bills in my bank account - the reality is that it simply isn't true for the majority of businesses. (Though parts of it may be true for most businesses.)

It is the absoluteness of the statement - oh so very on message - that removes the ability to have a rational discussion about this. A discussion about why one should upgrade needs to start with individual analyses of the environments and the factors holding back upgrades. Those need then be analyzed one at a time and addressed - or not - as needs and abilities dictate.

It's textbook marketing, however. Lifted damned near verbatim from some slides I have on a USB stick upstairs, emblazoned with Microsoft's logo. The thing is, the application of such in a deep web marketing scenario typically isn't so...

inept.

The idea behind doing this sort of stuff is to engage with the individuals that are off message, draw out the reasons for their recalcitrance and then (referring to your trusty message-of-the-day handbook) meet the concerns one at a time by providing solid rebuttals backed by evidence. The marketing theory behind this class of engagement is that by demonstrating that even the most recalcitrant of individuals' issues can be dealt with in a reasonable fashion your efforts are amplified amongst the community you are working with.

Oh, and you also typically identify yourself as working on behalf of the company in question. Works fucking wonders for companies within the Spiceworks, Zenoss and Puppet communities, as well as the absolutely stellar Twitter social media teams that I've worked with. (Note: Microsoft's Twitter teams are awful because they aren't authorized to actually help you.)

The horrific ineptitude is why I am willing to believe that this AC is indeed a paid Microsoft Deep Web FUD coward. Because Microsoft is historically unbelievably terrible at social media and community engagement of all kinds.

If you want community engagement that Just Fucking Works look at companies like Veeam, Simplivity, Nuntanix and - increasingly - Symantec. Matt Stephenson (@packmatt73) is truly godlike with regards to community engagement and he is really helping Symantec reform how it's helping customers.

There's the key, however: helping customers. When you engage a proper deep web nerd - Josh from my company, eGeek, or Matt from Symantec, Rick Vanover from Veeam, JMT from VMware, Gabe Chapman from Simplivity or so on - they use channels like Twitter, Spiceworks or even The Register's forums to find out what needs to be done to meet that customer's needs, then get the right people joined up to make that happen.

Does it shock me at all that Microsoft would put a body into place that goes through the motions, but has no authority to help the customer and can only repeat pre-canned statements from heavily vetted slides? No. Call their support. Talk to their Twitter guys. Interact with their PR staff. Deal with Microsoft in any official or semi-official capacity when you are less than a 2500-seat enterprise customer and this is exactly what you get.

So would Microsoft waste money on a meat sack to "social media" EL Reg's forums? Fuck yes. And that meat sack would behave exactly like the one that's been plaguing us for the past few months.

Microsoft is corporately incapable of fielding a body that behaves in any other way...but they'd try really, really hard because everyone else is doing it. Then they'll abandon it after three structuring attempts because they simply can't understand why it works for others but not them.

*sigh*

Re: It's 6:15am PST

There are lots of people seeking to praise MS in different and increasingly inaccurate ways as well. Or slag odd Android, Apple, and my tea kettle, too.

This is a combination of Dunning Kruger and Brand Tribalism. (Yes, I have an article in the works on this. Can you tell?)

I think there's plenty of space for actual, coherent discussion on the topic, but only if we all put away our brand tribalism. Sadly, it seems increasingly few individuals are so inclined. Microsoft is so bloody polarizing because they both make fantastic technology and fuck up the delivery, licensing and support of said technology to a degree managed by few companies still in existence.

To hings your view of a company on any one thing - "The tech is good" or "the delivery is poor" - is to focus on one tree at the expense of the wider ecosytem. It is the man claiming loudly and resoundingly that he has/has not seen a change in his local weather patterns thus climate change must/must not be true.

To have a conversation about such things requires the ability to objectively analyze the good, the bad, and the ugly. Not only as they apply to you and yours, but to others as well. It also requires the ability to put things into perspective. How many companies, users, dollars, etc is represented by you and yours? How does that market segment change when you look at different countries or regions? How does the local culture affect buying patterns, acceptance of change or even the ability to obtain the financial resources necessary to deal with upgrades in a Microsoft-friendly manner?

What industries are the various people in? Are the magic wants of internet black-and-white thinking going to apply? Can that person/company/etc even upgrade? Why? Why not? Where are the sticking points and how can things be addressed? Should they be addressed?

None of this lends itself well to sound bites. None of it fits in a tweet. Certainly none of this is something that can be broken down into emotive - and emotional - outbursts, generalizations or packets of "me, thus you!"

I also warn of the dangers of proclaiming "they disagree with me, thus they are ignorant of IT in general!" For it is entirely possible - and any professional, rational being would take the moment to consider - that they know some things that you do not. (Or that their circumstances are different from your own.)

In some cases it is indeed ignorance that clouds the discussion. In far too many, however, it is ignorance of the factors that are critical to businesses that are beyond IT itself.

Just because - or someone else - believes they can craft the perfect network for someone over the internet by edict or fiat doesn't mean you have the foggiest clue in the most secret of fnords what you're on about.

And that - right there - is one of the most devilishly complex and painfully overlooked Hard Truths of our industry.

Re: It's 6:15am PST

You are wrong. I never said "how dare they not support 12 year old software." I said "how dare they not offer us the ability to pay a reasonable price for ongoing support" or, barring that "how dare they not license the source code to a third party who will provide ongoing support for a reasonable price?"

I never once asked that Microsoft continue to support XP for free ad aeternum. Nor have I said "I hate Windows 7." I believe I said "Windows 7* needs an up arrow on Windows Explorer" but that is easily fixed with Classic Shell." I definitely said "fuck Microsoft's bullshit VDI licensing that is trying to make individuals and SMBs bankrupt", but that has nothing to do with Windows 7 (or even 8) and everything to do with Microsoft's despotic licensing department.

Please get your facts straight before attacking someone. Cheers.

*But Windows 8 can indeed get bent.

Pretty sure that the e-mail is in my "sent items" folder which would be in the *.ost on at least two local systems, in the exchange server's data store and probably a dozen backups. Why?

I referred to the e-mail to give some context; that there was some back-and-forth here that had occurred but whose details are largely irrelevant. I'm unsure that anyone would care about the contents of the mail itself - beyond the snippet I paraphrased - thus see no point in reproducing it verbatim.

That said, the fact that Pernix views write cache as a new tier of storage is relevant. Not only do they view it as such, but it struck me as being so after even relatively brief testing. Conveying that is the important part; jibber jabber on the side band is...boring.

Brisk pace? Or merely a pretty face?

Most evidence says a significant chunk of our personalities are more strongly influenced by genetic factors than environmental ones. Humans experience evolution at between 112 and 160 mutations per generation. That's not particularly high, and most of the mutations we retain seem to be related to our immune systems.

People are the same, mostly, as they have been for thousands of years. Every now and again someone exceptional arises...but by definition exceptional individuals are not the norm.

I think the bigger issue you need wordy about is the finite capacity of the human mind. We are in a world where no one brain can know all there is to know about VMware, let alone "the IT industry as a whole". To say nothing of the impossibility of a modern Leonardoesque polymath. Even the greatest among us will never be expert-level in virtually all fields of human endeavour. Never again.

So it is then that variations are smoothed over time. The relevance of the one meets the requirement for the many. No islands amongst today's man, and that makes for smoother - if less interesting - evolution of technology.

A man in his basement is a myth buried in legends of history. Today you need a CERN or at least venture capital. The future is less about discovery and more about profit;. Profit is incremental for Change is Risk and Risk is ostracised. Mutations and deviants move to the edge and are defunded. Without resources - and the knowledge of the many - the genius of The One is left to wither and die.

It is the era of "social"! I don't like how they talk, let's be a thought influencer and smother them. "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table."

Never Address the technical questions! Cry bully and let slip the tweets of war! The good of the customer?

It is what I say it is. Look at the Social Influence; for Obviously this is what now determines Right. Not Correct, mind you – that concept is outmoded and from a past where merit, ethics and engineering principles mattered – but Right. What's good for Me is all that matters. ME. Mine. People I like. Customers like me, like mine, markets that I choose to deify.

This then is the hypocrisy of the one - "I disagree with their message!" – wielding their own influence and message as a weapon in and of itself. This is your future; it is IT for all your efforts should be for the future glory of me! Even those who hold such in contempt fall prey from time to time; the deck is stacked, this is pervasive and all around you.

The meritocracy is dead. It is a game of thrones now. Influence is purchased. Honesty means aught. Hewlett and Packard are dead. All glory to the hyprnozuckerberg

…bitch.

Re: So what about vFRC?

I have played with it some and will be doing a more thorough review when my ESXi 5.5 licences come in. I believe that I even discussed the "but it's free" issue in the article.

The Cole's Notes? Proximal is easier to use, easier to administer, is more feature rich and (anecdotally) has far better read caching algorithms. This last has to be more thoroughly verified, but the "word on the street" from the kinds of customers that can - and do - test these sorts of things at scale is that Proximal's focus on read cache has paid off in that regard.

The future for Proximal Data in the face of vFRC is pretty simple: be the better mousetrap. Innovate faster, provide the better offering, work more closely with customers and work cross-platform. VMware might get to "good enough" one day, but in my opinion - and really, that's all you can go on until you've worked with vFRC's interface and design philosophy yourself - it's a long way from that just yet.

By the time VMware gets to "good enough" Proximal Data will have moved on to new features. Minimal risk write caching as one example. There's more that I can't exactly go into. I think Proximal is worth the money today, and I'm a stingy bastard who works with broke SMBs who never have budget.

Given what I know of the company - and the bright people working for it - I think that it will most likely still be worth the money several years from now. But you don't have to take my word for it. Go to the website and <a href='http://www.proximaldata.com/product/try_us_program.php">download the trial</a>. Put it side by side with VMware's offering.

That's part of the beauty of virtualisation, no? The ability to try this sort of stuff before you buy. Of course, I'm of the belief that if you try it you'll likely choose "buy"...but I'm an infrastructure nerd and I find this all quite fascinating and cool.

Re: my company

***warning, largely anecdotal evidence***

In my testing, the answer is yes. Now, I don't have a Nimbus or Violin costs-more-than-Monaco all-flash SAN. In fact, I have a RAID 5 of 8 Kingston Hyper-X 240GB SSDs. You'll note in the review that this array is perfectly capable of flattening a 10GbE link. Which is what I'm using, because of "too poor for infiniband or 40GbE".

I am also capable of absolutely flattening that 10GbE link while doing things like "testing 10GbE swtiches" or "trying to make Hyper-V do something strange." I test things. It's kind of my job.

Still, Not being made of money, I have to run my actual production VMs on the same hardware. So I use Proximal Data's Autocache with the 480GB Intel 520 SSDs inside my Fat Twin and Eris 3 nodes. The result looks a lot like the theoretical model I laid out in an earlier article, with the exception that one of the Eris 3 nodes has a Micron 1.4TB PCI-E SSD for Autocache, another has a 120GB Intel 520 SSD and there are some Synologies in play.

Long story short, when I am busy making the "SAN" cry, the Autocache-enabled nodes still bloody work. Sure, they do yeoman's work when accelerating a really slow setup (like a RAID 1 of 2x 7200 RPM SATA drives) or a mid-range setup (bigger Synology diskstations), but the truly surprising bit is that they actually provide worthwhile and noticeable improvement to the VMs that are stored on the SSD array.

Now, I'll admit, outside of latency-sensitive setups you don't notice host-cache at all when the SAN isn't congested. Why would you? But flatten the link and the difference is night and day.

It's a danger too. It gets to the point that you just sort of forget you're using it. Then one day, the SSD fails in the server and everything reverts to pre-cached speeds...it's painful. I promise you, you'll get the SSD swapped and cache turned back on in a right hurry.

...but at least the thing keeps on working through that. That's the part that ultimately won me over.

I never would have thought that it would be a more efficient use of the SSDs available to me use them as host cache instead of just lashing them together into another RAID and doing more high-sped central storage. Up until about two months ago, that had been my plan.

Now? Now that looks like a great deal of hassle for no huge advantage over what I'm getting from the host cache. So yeah, it works. Even if your central storage is made of fast.

Re: Why would you cache writes locally?

It's all about proximity. With hybrid SANs - and I make extensive use of them myself in my own datacenters, not to mention I am a fan of Tintri - you are still hauling all that data across the network. That's latency. It's also another bottleneck. It's more to wire up (if you want more bandwidth), more cost, more to manage...

Local read cache is local. Practically zero latency, minimal network impact. Put it in and it goes faster. It's also something where you can spot accelerate or deploy en masse, according to your needs. Great big fast SANs are bloody expensive. They are even more expensive if you need things like high availability, replication, etc. They like to charge you all the more for the goodies and two hybrids is a pretty penny past two traditionals.

Read caching is cheap, it's easy, it's non disruptive. It's an easy option when your alternative is massively expensive SANs. This is why I think read caches are a great mass market play; they fit really well into those businesses that are of a size where "a new SAN" is a massive investment that takes a lot of consideration and months upon months of fighting for budget. Perfect for the SMBs and midmarket.

Now, if you want to argue "why put a write cache into the local hosts (thus creating another tier of storage that has to be maintained, etc", well, there's no way I can answer that for you. I work with Proximal. They do read cache. Anything I could say (positive or negative) about the write cache stuff would be open to accusations of bias. I can only recommend that you talk up Pernix and/or Flashsoft and ask your questions directly. They are going to be the ones who can give you the most well thought out response.

Re: Something to Separate the Men from the Boys in the Spaces where Words Control Worlds

People haven't changed overmuch throughout our recorded history. Cultures change. The tools we have change...but we are mostly the same. (Evolution of minor things like lactose tolerance and resistance to various diseases put to one side.)

I see no sign of the singularity. The closest I have seen so far as some of the Deep Data Analytics and simulation startups like Cloudphysics who want to move from reactive analytics into Muchos Big Time predictive analytics. Still, they are a ways away and their scope of addressable technologies is narrow. (There are only so many PhDs in the world who know enough about this stuff to code the Really Good Stuff.)

It is as it was. The tools change. The people stay the same. Mostly. Adjust your models for the power of individual personalities where required but realise that weather != climate and that short term local variations are smoothed out with time.

Microsoft has built flash caching into Storage Spaces for Server 2012 R2. Until I get a good JBOD cluster setup going, I'll not know how it fares in the real world.

Re: Are you feeling lucky, punk?

A) I entirely agree it should be in place for all vendors.

B)The threshold for legal support should be "a given % of remaining active users as compared to peak usage."

C)I see it as a natural extension of laws in many countries requiring guarantees or guarantees of support combined with laws that ensure third parties are allowed to manufacture parts for cars and other such equipment.

To put it more bluntly: if a company (Microsoft) isn't willing to provide support for a product when a significant % of peak users are still using that product then a third party should be allowed to obtain the source code and maintain it under license. It is no different in my mind than saying a third party can manufacture brake pads and shoes for your car (thus extending support beyond that which the manufacturer would provide on their own with no laws or competitive forcings.)

Microsoft is the subject of immediate discussion. Do not make the mistake of assuming I feel they should be uniquely beholden to these principles.

Of course, of you're one of those rabid Tea Party types that is viciously opposed to consumer protection laws, you'll be violently against such things and the conversation can go nowhere but horrible from here.

@AC Re: @MS deep web social media shill

Great riposte. Respond to the hard questions with ad hominem. I should thusly consider your opinions valid why?

Re: @MS deep web social media shill -@Trevor_Pott

No. I am not upset with Microsoft. There are plenty of amazingly talented people at Microsoft producing excellent technology to the best of their abilities. I am furiously livid with Microsoft's licensing department.

Microsoft is not a homogenous entity. I can loathe and despise one collection of soulless cretins while being quite enamored of the others.

Re: Stop bashing Vista

As someone who uses both Windows XP and Windows 7 heavily, going back to Vista (or in my case Server 2008) is still a fucking nightmare. While the OS may be "usable" now (for "fuck Windows Serach" values of "usable") the UI is pants. It's all the worst parts of Windows 7 and all the worst parts of Windows XP mashed together into a clusterfuck of horror.

Windows 7's UI is superior in (most) ways to Windows XP. You need Classic Shell to get a good menu (and to get back your up arrow) as well as networktray to get a per-NIC indicator and quick link to network adapters. Beyond that, you're good...and those two changes are free (beer and speech) and can be scripted into your installs.

Vista just has so many little niggly things that even two patches in the UI feels unfinished. Using it for any legnth of time makes me wonder how people dogfooded this thing without going stark raving mad.

A lot like my feelings about Windows 8, funnily enough...

@AC

Why are you a douche canoe? Is it a disease? Some terrible genetic disorder beyond your control?

Enquiring minds want to know...

Re: A major flaw

Nobody in this thread has said "we won't pay Microsoft to support Windows XP." We have said "fuck Windows 8" and "fuck the Windows 7-era VDI licensing" and even "there's lots of XP out there that can't be updated."

Ding me $100/installation/year and I'll gladly pay for the support costs. Just give me the fucking choice. Don't try forcing me onto the "new" version with the lie that "newer is better." If you want to sell me on "better' then prove it with facts and figures applicable to my situation. And that of my clients.

Otherwise, I'll spend the money I would have spent paying Microsoft support buying third party applications and hardware to defend my now out-of-support Windows XP installations.

Paying a reasonable amount simply isn't the issue. Paying an unreasonable amount it. Being forced to upgrade is. Are you capable of understanding the difference?

@DougS

They should be forced to support it forever, so long as people are willing to pay a support subscription...and that subscription should be available even to consumers.

$100/year/installation would be acceptable.

Or they could just fix VDI licensing.

Re: Oh come on...

"XP Embedded is supported by Microsoft unitl January 2016. If you're running XP Embedded SP3 you have a further two years after that.

If industry can't get its shit together by 2018, something is drastically wrong."

I still have stuff running on Windows 2000. The manufacturer of the original industrial equipment is long since out of business. Replacing all units with the nearest replacement equipment (which frankly isn't as good) would cost 5 year's worth of annual gross revenue.

Should we just close our doors because legacy support offends you? How about you explain that to the new mother who just gave birth? "Sorry, lady, you won't have a job to come back to because it offends some anonymous asshat on the internet?"

Get real. Life's bigger than your prejudices and certainly bigger than your massive "worldly" experience.

@ragrath

If I invest heavily in moving my applications, changing interfaces and retraining users should I

A) Invest in another iteration of the same locked-down, lock-in ecosystem from a vendor that demonstrably gives no fucks whatsoever

B) Invest in a corporate stable Linux distro that allows me choice?

The costs are roughly the same - I ran them - and the Linux option doesn't require me to scrap and rewrite my entire business plan and end-user workflow in order to support it.

To wit: fuck Microsoft with a bag of badgers until they both listen to end users regarding interfaces and fix the fucking VDI licensing so that we can use computers how we want to.

Re: @MS deep web social media shill

It emphatically isn't $100/seat/year. I would galdly pay Microsoft 100$/seat/year to be able to use RDP or proper VDI to access software on systems that I own.

No, this is far - far - worse. This is $100 for every single device used to access a given system pet year. Do you own a home PC, 3 tablets, 2 smartphones, RDP in to your home VM from inside other VMs, servers, client sites, hotels, etc? $100 per device per year. Last year I clocked myself in at over 300 devices.

Microsoft says that if I upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 I have to pay them over $30,000 a year just for the right to access my personal virtual machine at home.

That's way different from $100/seat/year.

So where is Microsoft's "I take weekends and evenings off" paid shill on this topic? Where are his facts and figures? Where are the numbers showing me ROI and TCO that apply to my situation and that of my clients? Indeed, that of any real-world clients that aren't a cherry-picked group of American Enterprise customers who use access methods and patterns from 10 years ago?

I want to be wrong on this, Mr Microsoft marketing guy, please, do prove me wrong on this.

Oh, and no, that bullshit Redmondian line that RDS is as good or better than VDI? Fuck that noise with an angry goat. I have applications that will only work on client operating systems and refuse to work on Server ones. Besides, even if I could get it to work...why should I have to pay thousands - and put in a significant amount of administrative effort trying to get shims to work - just to to what I can do on XP Pro by enabling RDP?

Remote desktop services is not VDI. It's a fucking kludge - a terrible kludge - that we have to put up with only because Microsoft's dark-side clown brigade (composed of the most elemental evil this universe has to offer, congealed in the darkest gutters humanity has ever known) decided that we just aren't allowed to run the client OS in a VM and use it in a manner that works perfectly fine except for their ridiculous licensing.

I want persistent desktops for my users, Microsoft. Centrally located and administered. Simply put, I want the ability to field persistent Windows 7 desktops. No layers of complex management. Just working systems that are simple to set up, simple to control, simple to use.

I'm waiting, Microsoft. Tell me how your upgrades are adding value and going to save me money. Tell me how upgrading isn't going to choose between bankruptcy or retooling my entire personal - and corporate - data access workflow to something far less efficient. Tell me how you're out there for the customer, Microsoft.

Engage with me, damn it. I'm a tech blogger, a Microsoft partner and - far more importantly - a customer. Surely one of those categories of individuals still matters to the corporate overmind.

Answer my goddamned questions. Provide me with facts and figures. Show me how I can do what I want to do, how I want to do it and do so in a manner that will in fact save me money by upgrading.

Don't run and hide when I ask you the hard questions, you fucking cowards.

Your paid shills are all over this forum. What good are they to me, to you or to any of your customers if they can't answer the simple questions put to them? If they can't prove their claims in front of all?

Prove me wrong, Microsoft, and I'll gladly write you a massive article series about how wrong I was, and how awesome Microsoft is. I'll write several. Prove that my understanding of your licensing and it's impacts on myself any my clients are incorrect and I will champion Microsoft and it's policies...because if you can do so then Microsoft will deserve to be championed.

Until then, stop lying to people in the forums of The Register. Put up or shut up. Can you do so before XP turns into a pumpkin? The clock is ticking.

Tick tock

Tick tock

Tick Tock

@MS deep web social media shill

"Over a few years an upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8 will save most organisations money compared to supporting a legacy infrastructure "

Bullshit. Prove it.

I could invest in some firewalls, imaging software, IDS and a few other things to defend perfectly working estate. As an alternative, I can buy all new Microsoft software and the same stuff, because I'll still have to defend my estate against emerging threats.

Oh, and with XP retail boxed, I can RDP into my system from as many devices in the world as I wish. With Windows Vista or newer I have to pay $100 per device per year. That's after I have to buy in to a much more expensive Enterprise licence with software assurance that in no way benefits me.

Don't shit in my hand and tell me it's gold. Back your malarky up with evidence and hard numbers or go crawl back into the Redmondian gutter you congealed in.

Re: Just move it.

Canada's a nice country for such things...

Re: @James Micallef

Also: for the record, moving past research into what the majority of planetary citizens feel and directly to me, personally...

...this is every single thing that is wrong with America in one neat little bow.

@James Micallef

Oh look, it's someone attempting to use pedantry to distract from a peerfectly clear meaning that everyone else in the thread is capable of understanding and working with.

So sorry you don't like what I have to so, but too bad. I'm learning from the Americans and thus give zero fucks about such niggly little verbal rules. Word Police.

As for speaking for the vast majority o the world, I've done my research on this. Just because you lurve 'Murikkka (fuck yeah!) doesn't place your views in alignment with those who feel the jackboots of the xenophobes at their collar...which is most of the world, just so's you know.

Hating America is pretty simple: those who hate it want it to fall. The government to collapse, the institutions that make up it's military, it's political infrastructure, it's very "way of life" to be erased and reformed. Critically, we want it reformed in such a way as it keeps it's goddamned nose out of our business.

In a perfect world, America would experience a bloodless revolution wherein it's governmental system was replaced with an actual democracy (not a republic) that saw proportional representation with electoral districts drawn by independent committee (and thus immune to gerrymandering), outlaws money in politics (by providing a fixed amount of funding for any candidate who made the minimum number of signatures) was strongly multi-party, had a minimalist military, universal (health care/primary education/post-secondary education/emergency services/environmental protection/pension/employment insurance) at a minimum!

Now, certainly, there are many out there - particularly amongst the extremist Muslims - who would not be fond of seeing their old nemesis reforms into something that provides education to women and doesn't push Sharia law, but you can't please everyone.

The key here, however, is the desire to reform America such that it would catch them up with the better parts of the western world and allow them to serve as a beacon for others once more. Combined with a new found culture of "staying the fuck out of the business of other nations" I think it could go from "'Merikkkuh" (fuck yeah!) to a grown up member of the international community that the rest of us can respect and work with.

What it is today is a bully. A bully with a number of highly evident mental problems that is trying to beat the entire world to be just like it using any and every club it can find. America is dangerous, and that responsibility isn't borne merely by the government, or by one political party or even by some shadowy organization.

That responsibility rests on the shoulders of the people who elected their governments and who refuse to organise - and to speak out en masse - to change it for the better.

Maybe you love the Ayn Randian direction of 'Merikkkuh and it's increasingly disconnected sheeple. Maybe you like their interventionist policies and their exceptionalism. That puts you in the minority. The rest of the world - and all evidence points to "the overwhelming majority of the world -doesn't. Nor do they have any intention of allowing themselves to be converted in their crusades.

If they want to ruin their own country, fine. But they absolutely need to give up the weapons and the economic clubs to beat other nations with before they do. That, or we need to take it from them. A massive international economic and military wall around that black hole of a country so that it can implode on it's own, without harming others.

Hating America is a rational response to a nationalistic, overreaching superpower that isn't anywhere near the beacon of civilization it believes itself to be yet is attempting to force the rest of the world to emulate. It is the international version of a "schoolyard bully"'s club and it needs to be treated the same. Isolate, contain, retrain.

@Velker Hettt

It does indeed make a difference which side of the US government's weapons you're on. I'm still pretty pissed that the USA murdered some friends of mine. In fact, most of my country is still pretty bitter about the casual brutality and absolute lack of remorse the USA has shown about this (and similar) incidents.

Canada isn't an American ally. We're a hostage. It is incidents like the above that serve to remind us of such. And they wonder why we hate them so...

@DrTechnical

Very few try coming to the USA for a better life. A few million, all told. Most are trying to get into Canada (while we have our problems, we aren't anywhere near as fucked up as the USA). Many of those who do move to the US hate it anyways. Many of those who live in the US hate it too.

I realize there are some who are misguided enough to try to move to the USA "for a better life," but the shine typically fades quite quickly upon arrival. Besides, not everyone is intelligent enough - or worldly enough - to realize how bad the place really is. America dumps billions into propaganda. Some people give up their entire lives to move there only to realize that they were sold a completely bullshit bill of goods. The really rare ones go there and like it.

If your alternative is being ethnically cleansed, American probably looks pretty good. If, however, you have the means and the capability to choose where to live, there is no rational reason on this earth to choose the United States over many of the alternatives.

There is a difference between people fleeing for their lives willing to accept any port in a storm and people who have options making a choice.

In my experience those who move to the US by choice when there are other options available are either massively ideologically deluded (Ayn Rand ermagerd!) or they are sociopaths who believe that they have the ability to simply squish enough little people to make up for the massive deficits of US society. (If they are sociopaths, they're probably right; the modern USA is designed entirely to reward them.)

Also: the USA has "given" me nothing. The USA has economically plundered my nation and used the barely concealed hint of violence to keep us in line. When the time comes for it to do good on an international stage it waits until everyone else has committed - and millions have died - before i decides to step in and take all the credit.

The rest of the time it's trying to either intervene in internal affairs of sovereign nations of club brown people over the head to steal their oil. What about a well-armed group of bandits is admirable? Why should I thank them? Why should I praise them?

They are bandits. Thugs to stand up against. Not leaders to admire.

@MondoMan

It is indeed my choice and for many damned good reasons I choose Canada. Way - way - better than the US of A.

'Hating America is a crime'

Then there are ~6.7 Billion criminals out of a population of ~7 Billion. At that point it's not so much a "crime" as it is "something a small - and very deluded - chunk of society deeply wishes were a crime, but will never be."

America is an unfortunate artefact in human history. One I sincerely hope will be quickly forgotten.

Re: Noise and power consumption levels would definately be nice...

The thing ships with a 200W PSU, but seems to consistently idle around 50. Doesn't seem to get much above 100W when going flat out like a lizard drinking.

I think that actually beats my purpose built home server/HTPC, damn it!

Re: Noise and power consumption levels would definately be nice...

Noise is basically none. Power was low enough that I even forgot it was relevant. When I get home, I'll kill-a-watt it.

Do you want a photo of it other than in bits? I thought "in bits" was more interesting.

Re: So...

Only gets noisy if you flatten it. By "noisy" I mean "less noisy than my Alienware MX18 playing games."

Oh, look, it's Microsoft's paid Anonymous FUD coward. Hey, didn't expect you to be in here trying desperately to get us "on message." Not at all.

So, how's tricks? The new marketing shakeup treating you right? I hear the budgets got reorganised something fierce and the community engagement efforts were cut by more than half. How'd you keep the gig, anyways? I wouldn't have thought The Regster's comments section was important enough to dedicate meat to in these "tough economic times" (OH GODS MAKE THE QUARTERLY REVENUES BETTER OR WE LOSE OUR JOBS).

I'm curious about the details of your work with Microsoft. (Or is it Waggner Edstrom?) Do you run multiple sites? Are you a deep web specialist or do you do social media as well? How many forums are in your personal stable, or do you handle it as a team?

I notice that you take weekends off; is that because of the recent cuts, or was your division always had that limitation? So many questions!

Hope you're having a great day!

--Trevor