Posts by Trevor_Pott

The amount of fibre we need is actually fairly small and can be obtained by eating cuts of meat that westerners typically avoid. It is entirely possible for a human to survive off of nothing but meat and be healthy, though it is at least as hard as being a vegetarian, if not harder.

You are correct in that we should eat a mixture of meat, fruits and vegetables. Where we diverge significantly is that I do not believe that we "should" eat more of either category than is minimally required to make begin healthy easy. I.E. we "should" eat the minimum amount of fruit required to get the fibre we need if we prefer to skip the types of meat that would otherwise contain it.

We should make sure we get the minimum number of nutrients required to stay healthy from whatever combination of sources we enjoy; in fact, best to do the maths and find out what the optimal amounts are so that you can create a set of "staple foods" that you make sure to eat a minimum amount of every week.

Beyond that minimum what you eat "should" be what you enjoy up to your daily calorie limit.

I don't believe for a second that making meat cheaper and more available is a bad thing. I think there are all sorts of reasons to pursue vatmeat as a concept and I"m perfectly okay with making veggie huggers all angsty.

All that matters is that you get the nutrients you require (which includes fibre) and you stay within your calorie limits. You should eat any combination of things that you enjoy to get there. Any other advice is simply some jasckass imposing their morality on you, no different than a putz with a holy book on my doorstep before coffee o'clock.

And I'll treat them the same.

You will have to provide proof that we are evolved to eat grains. Fruits, vegetables, nuts and meat, yes. Not grains; grains require processing and that is something we have only learned to do recently (6000 years or so.) Our digestive tracts are optimized for processing meat in that we produce enzymes to break it down efficiently and we lack the ability to extract various types of nutrition from grains that we can only get from meat (and certain until recently rare legumes).

Cows, for example, are optimised for eating grains. They can extract all sorts of stuff from it that we can't and have no need of meat whatsoever. We, on the other hand, require fruits, veggies, nuts, and meat to be healthy. (Though with enough science you can compensate for the loss of any of those.) We don't need grains at all.

Actually, meat is pretty much the best thing you can eat, so long as you strip the fat our. Pure protein is what we're build to consume, not carbohydrates. "Eating too much meat" isn't an ill. It is "eating too much of anything." That includes fruits and vegetables.

Meat is quite good for humans; we should be eating significantly more of it as a regular part of our diet and way less cereals/grains. But we would need quality meat for that, and we would still need to exercise portion control. Your personal objection to meat is lacking in essential science.

The issue isn't the food consumed but the quantity. Vatmeat looks to be a top quality source of protien. I welcome it.

Re: What happened to Eadon??

"By the way, there are more options at your disposal than a ban-hammer. You could, for example, rate limit posts, remove people's no-moderate tag, temporarily suspend accounts, use a badge of shame, default comments to invisible. . ."

Excellent ideas, some of which I had not considered before. Thank you!

As for my idea of what it would take to get to the "banhammer" state, yeah, I really do think that you'd need to go all out on the douchewagon to get there. I'm a pretty hard-core believer in freedom of speech. (As well ast he freedom to add people to your ignore list. The freedom to say something doesn't mean you have the freedom to force them to read your tripe.) I'd love to see the "ignore" button that gold badge holders get extended to all commenttards. I think it's a viable solution to a certain class of troll.

That said, your insights are exactly what i am trying to get feedback from "people who are not Trevor" before submitting my proposal. I realize that my views on freedom of speech are certainly far more extreme than would be generally acceptable in most places.

A part of me does believe you should be able to forum jack, be generally dickish, off topic and so forth. I think that it is up to individual users to push back against that, to ostracise or ignore. If I didn't then frankly I'd have agitated ages ago to have jake, Matt Bryant, RICHTO and others booted. I never have.

What I did instead was ask for an "ignore" button and put their asses on my ignore list. I do plan to agitate to have that extended to everyone. If the really offensive individuals and/or serial thread-jackers are simply "ignored" by 85%+ of the community they will either go away entirely or look like complete tools talking only to themselves while the discussion continues around them as though they weren't there.

Per-user ignore lists at least remove the ambiguity of "so who decides if someone deserves to be [insert disciplinary measure here]ed". Only the most egregious cases would thus need intervention. That said, this is a personal preference, and I'm interested to hear other viewpoints.

Re: What happened to Eadon??

It's a fine line, and I have to be honest when I say that I'm not entirely comfortable myself with the idea of outright bans for anyone. (Well, maybe jake or Bryant...)

The reality of it is that Eadon was an outlier that caused some problems, stepped over the line and has caused a rethink of commenter and forum policy within El Reg. Drew and I had a frank and open discussion about all of this and I am under the impression that dialogue internally at El Reg has been proceeding apace on the topic as well.

My position on this is thus: I agree with the decision to banhammer Eadon, despite the misgivings that it causes with my inner internet troll. The situation was unique. I similarly believe that we should unban Eadon and invite him back with the understanding that he refrain from ad homs against the authors or other El Reg staffs. Call it "time served."

He may or may not accept - $deity knows I'd be pissed if I got banhammered from somewhere - but I think that "undeading" him is ultimately the right path forward. There is, however, a catch.

I believe - and others have agreed - that the forum policies need an update for clarity and that the issue should probably be discussed in the open. We're a technology website, after all, and this is an issue that affects online communities the world over.

A large part of the reason why this hasn't happened is because I agreed to create the draft and I simply haven't held up my end. I'm a little on the OCD side about trying to find the right balance and so I'm neck-deep in research about how other online communities have solved the same problems, as well as researching how the active members of our community are responding to the fallout of the incident. I've started soliciting input from members of the community as well about how The Register should deal with moderation.

Part of the issue is that full bore moderation - as it occurred under the moderatrix - is time intensive and expensive. The bigger issue, however, is that it is soul crushingly disheartening. What a lot of readers don't appreciate is exactly how utterly vile some of the comments that get posted here are. This is part of the reason why there are post counts before a commenter is allowed the right to post without moderation.

I don't exactly moderate this stuff myself, but I do talk to the folks that do...and frankly they find some of what people post quite upsetting, sometimes even legally questionable. So any policy needs to not only take into account issues like "continued and ever-ratcheting ad homs against writers and staff" but outright "not okay" posts from new users and even a sustainable methodology for tagging, reporting and acting upon offensive posts from established community members.

As a nerd I'd love to find a nice clean set of rules that are absolute. Ultimately, I don't believe that's going to be possible. Make absolute rules and a true troll will simply find a loophole. Clearly, however, we should try to do better then we have.

Some people are going to be very upset that we don't allow everyone to say anything they want. They demand nothing less than a moot-free 4Chan and they'll get all huffy and "leave" unless they get it. Others will leave if we let the community degenerate into trollmageddon.

I am a troll at heart; hell, I write for the register and am essentially a professional shit disturber. I prefer a community that falls between the two extremes of "4Chan" and "fully moderated by 'think of the children' NIMBYs." I suspect that the majority of El Reg staffers and community members feel the same.

If you agree, or if you disagree, I think the next month or so is your chance to speak up. I don't have the final say on community anything, but I have been given the opportunity to put forth a few proposals. The people trying refine the community rules are decent people. I can say with absolute confidence that all ideas will be considered.

So speak up! The Register isn't a faceless megacorp bent on pushing its view of the universe upon you. (In fact, given the eclectic nature of the people who work and write for El Reg I'd go so far as to say "The Register" doesn't have a collective 'view' on most topics.) You have a voice in the discussion regarding the evolution of the forums and it will be heard. Even if we all ultimately disagree vehemently, your views will be weighed and considered.

Re: Dale Vile speaketh the truth.

Agree entirely. Most SMEs that i know of that are using "cloud" are using the "cloud" of their local MSP. They aren't using Google, Microsoft, etc. That, and despite Dale's protestations about "hysteria," privacy concerns are beginning to filter down to SMEs...though I admit they are far more common amongst enterprises.

Where Dale and I disagree is in the roll of MSPs. I see a lot of SMEs that simply don't have sysadmins anymore. They are managed by an MSP that's running 15 or 20 companies at the same time. When and where "cloud" gets implemented is typically when the MSP decides it is advantageous. Most "cloud" stuff is actually the MSP's private virtual cloud (a rack in a local colo) or their private cloud in their own DC. They sync their client's stuff there, run e-mail, etc.

But the overwhelming majority of SMEs are - in my experience - simply moving to appliances, both physical and virtual. Synology is a great example. While some - if not most - SMEs use a cloud service for something - usually e-mail - they just don't see the advantage to anything else.

Office 365 breaks even compared to a local copy only if you refresh every three years. Most SME's don't. Azure for your servers just doesn't make financial sense, especially if you shift a lot of bits. Bit shifting is expensive.

The problem is exactly what Dale points out: Microsoft, VMware, et al are basing their info off of metrics derived from within their own echo chamber. When you actually start getting out onto the real coalface, all their promises and their "this is demanded by our customers!" fall to pieces.

I wonder how many of us have to say it in how many different ways before vendors start to care?

Re: Don't forget the rest.

Putting this as bluntly as possible: I give zero fucks about what China and Russia knows about me because I don't have to interact with either nation. I can - and likely will - live the rest of my life without ever setting foot there or having to interact with their government in any way.

I do have to put up with the USA, loud, proud and in my face every bloody day. Even if I never planned to set foot there again, they are a demented giant with dreams of extraterritorial grandeur that lives directly south of me.

Dictators like those in China and Russia are evil men obsessed with holding on to the power that they have and ensuring their hold on that nations they rule is absolute. The USA is run by evil men obsessed with taking over the world through economic and cultural imperialism and have no compunction whatsoever about killing you and the entire wedding you're attending with a drone to see their aims fulfilled.

It's different when you live next to the bastards. It's impossible not to feel like a target, especially when so many of them in positions of power publicly demand that we be invaded. Even jokingly, I'm not okay with a country of nuclear-weapon-toting religious nutjobs making jokes like that.

Other nations get uppity and sometimes get rules by the truly deplorable, but they are not married to a combination of nationwide moral exceptionalism and pride in their international ignorance. I get sniffy about how the Brits treat us - as just one example - but at least the Brits understand us. We can built a bridge with that understanding.

The Americans don't understand us, don't want to understand us and in fact view us as nothing but resources that are "rightfully theirs."

So yeah, not nearly so angsty about China or Russia knowing my life's history. Pretty angsty about Uncle Sam's religious zealots knowing it though. That's just not okay.

Re: @JDX

JDX can't consider either wrong because U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!

All that's required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing. JDX demands you not only do nothing, but you don't even think about doing anything. Just let the evil men[1] win.

Now wave your flag and kiss an eagle, boys!

U.S.A!

U.S.A!

U.S.A!

[1]And just so we're clear...the evil men are the ones running the USA. If you think otherwise then you're dafter than any "conspiracy nutjob".

@JDX

Why would anyone post on an open forum why I don't want the NSA tracking us? Dafuq?

Re: Deja vu, all over again!

Bullshit Mark. Windows 8 was ONLY Made for touch.

There is some legacy keyboard/mouse code left in, but Windows 8 was designed ENTIRELY for touch. It's more than just Metro. It's "search as the default interface" and the minimization of a hierarchical structure for application discovery, settings interaction and more. Everything about it assumes you are probing your slab with fat fingers instead of a precision pointing device and and honest-to-god keyboard.

Windows 8 is a swinging sack of rotting dicks presented to productivity (keyboard+mouse) users as though it were the greatest dessert dish of all time. It's terrible. It's insulting. It gets in the way of doing real work. Worst of all, Windows 8 is about telling the computer user how they are going to use the computer instead of recognizing that it's my fucking computer and it is going to do what I fucking tell it to.

Windows 8 - and the milled minions of Redmond - emphatically do not know better than I do about how I should use my computer to get work done. Removing choice and herding us towards a means that works for their thinking patterns and particular combinations of neuroses are a dangerous precedent to set.

Windows 8 has very obviously deprecated every single non-touch input method...and the market reacted clearly. Suck it up. Learn from it. And do better next time.

Re: Deja vu, all over again!

Actually, I use Office 365 on my Android tablet just fine already. It's all down to the browser you use...

if( (Secret Prisons == CIA) && (Secret Courts == FISA) ) then Secret Police = ?

In a nation where money is the goal of all (wo)men the secret police is the IRS.

Re: time for some serious declassifying, Keith.....

Forget Americans. Time to come clean on NSA activities that target citizens and legal residents of the USA's so-called "allies." A Canadian or Australian should no more be subject to warrantless (or rubber-stamped) scrutiny than an American.

Re: The Xbox One ..

Not a whit. I think you underestimate how many people aren't fond of the NSA pedocam - software-only off switch or not - or the insulting "compromises" Microsoft threw out as it tried to halfheartedly backpedal in the face of Sony kicking their ass.

Additionally: People give way fewer fucks about cable/satellite/etc integration than you seem to think. Oh, and they keep grudges. Why invest in the XBone when Microsoft was hell bent on screwing the public the first time around and shows no sign of changing their tune in the future?

With the XBone Microsoft can make you an unperson at the flick of a switch, separate you from your entire content library, invalidate years of investment, spy on you and change the terms such that you have to fork over more to get less than the month before.

Sony can do this too...but there is significantly less reason to believe they would. Selling consumer products - and asking consumers to put their content library investment in your hands - is difficult when your name is "mud." What possible reason would anyone have to have faith in "subscribe now" Microsoft?

I could go on about why they shouldn't, but I've been there, done that and I really don't feel like bumping your salary any more tonight. (I'm assuming you get paid on a per-shoddy-and-baseless-refutation.) MY piece is spoke, I think the proles are by now immune to "the message."

Re: Local apps as niche and quaint?

Bitbashing is already niche. Sorry you missed "USB" and everything that came after that. Have you been introduced to x86 virtualisation? Network virtualisation? Anything in the past 10 years?

I never said bitbashers were going to evaporate entirely, just that they were going to be rare, (niche!) and probably very expensive. Everything else will be "virtual" and "cloudy" and "as a service." We're already mostly there.

Re: @NielB

Fox News also says they feel the need for "balance". That's why they will give 85% of air time to the 2% of people disputing largely settled science, all while exclaiming that they are real news because they "ensure balance."

You'll forgive me if I don't give a bent fuck about balance; I care about the truth, and reality isn't balanced. Reality simply is, and it gives no fucks whatsoever about individual or group politics, hurt feelings or "balance".

So I calls 'em like I see's em, sirrah. If you come across as trowling lipstick onto something do not be shocked if I patronize, probably with a heap of sarcasm and possibly even using a thesaurus. Sorry mate, but I'm the dude way on the edge of the spinny bits, unbalancing the disk drive so I can get the storage rack to run in horizontal mode.

Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(display_server_protocol)

"Have you used them? They are significantly better in terms of usability and UI than Android or IOS. I think the appeal is there."

A) That's subjective

B) You're full of shit. Android is by far the best mobile UI.

C) 30% of nothing is still nothing.

Re: The Xbox One ..

And the Xbox 360 will be the last time Microsoft sees anything like a decent market share for xbox. After having pissed in the planet's cheerios with the XBone, they won't be repeating that exercise and Sony will be the dominant console for the next era.

Re: Game Over.

Microsoft is strongest in the UK for phones - by far - when compared to any other region. Interestingly enough, so is Blackberry. What's more interesting is that you are comparing Microsoft's UK market share to Blackberry's GLOBAL market share to get your numbers.

You are also spreading utter FUD with your bullshit with your "more powerful and secure OS to tackle it with". This is an outright lie.

If you compare Windows Phone to ANdroid Froyo or Gingerbread you might have a point. Maybe. On the other hand, Microsoft's market share is so insignificant they aren't a target for malware or hacks. Yet they still fall regularly during any concerted attempt to hack the OS.

It's just that in the real world nobody gives a bent fuck about Windows Phone so nobody bothers putting effort into compromising it. Should it ever become relevant, it will end up as riddled with compromises as the desktop version. Likely through that festering wound called "Internet Explorer." Just as on the desktop.

Microsoft took 7.5% of tablet market share then stalled and even declined. Their tablets languish on shelves and they have give away a significant number of those tablets to even get there. Very few of the tablets were sold for what Microsoft feels they are worth and the OEMs that are manufacturing them are bleeding their cash reserves as well as market share.

Oh, yeah, Microsoft's tablets are doing great.

Re: Android is no threat

"need to build on something more secure than Linux imo. It's too much of a Swiss Cheese liability."

You're so full of shit your eyes are brown.

Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.

Interesting, most of my customers use Android, Mint or Apple with LibreOffice and have seen a massive increase in free time thanks to the move. Less updates requiring reboots. Less logging on. Less fighting with things. It Just Works.

Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.

It's the best solution on the market only if all you care about is the technology. The instant that other things - trustworthiness of the vendor, the government the vendor must submit to, complying with your own laws, TCO, lock-in, business continuity and so forth - matter to you then Microsoft becomes a terrible plan.

Microsoft may well have the best technology on the market. What Microsoft and the Redmondian buttsnorkle brigade simple cannot grok is that "the best technology on the market" simply isn't good enough. There are larger concerns and the competition is "good enough."

Which was rather the point of the article.

Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.

Funny, I've been doing "real work" on LibreOffice for about 2 years now, as have my clients. No problem. I guess your giant brush of generalizations doesn't apply to all cases. Maybe it even only applies to those who were stupid enough to use VB macros.

And they deserve what they get.

Re: Some peoples heads are so far up their A.......ndroids!

Who prints things? Between Docusign and eFax I haven't killed a tree in 8 months.

Maybe next time you're shambling down the aisle at the grocer's in your walker you can think really hard about how some day we might be able to send pictures down those crazy newfangled telegraph lines. What a rush!

Re: Some people in the forums are biased?

Dear gods, yes. How DARE Microsoft call *anything* OCS/LCS does "SIP"? It's cross-compatible with zip!

Re: Sorry folks but we *have* been here before. Repeatedly.

And? Novell is still technically a going concern. For that matter Sco is still filing lawsuits.

Microsoft being "alive" and Microsoft being an unchangeable technology superpower are two totally different things. Microsoft has the option right now, today, to choose between the two paths.

On the one hand, they onboard someone at an executive level with real authority to make changes and they start down the long road to redemption and customer engagement. It will be bitter, hard and filled with a lot of bile internally...but it would ultimately lead to a massive and incredibly loyal fanbase in all the different communities that are relevant to ongoing operations. In this scenario Microsoft evolves into an unchangeable superpower and retains the status for decades.

On the other hand they can continue to believe that they can simply dictate how we will use technology, when, where and why. They will alienate quite literally everyone at some point using this strategy and will do nothing to redeem themselves to those they've alienated. This will lead to mass customer exodus as "best of breed technology" is simple "not enough" for more and more people. The empire will slowly crumble into obscurity, though it takes decades to do so.

Were Microsoft existing in a vacuum then they could cling to their userbase simply out of inertia for another 10 years all the while abusing them rapidly. They wouldn't have to worry about reputation, enmity or the magnification effects of social media because their users simply would have no alternative except to go build their own software.

Of course, Microsoft doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's competitors are aware of this and they will put significant resources into accelerating the latter scenario. I can think of about a dozen fairly cheap ways to really stick it to Microsoft and do disproportionate amounts of damage. If I can, others can as well.

Credible alternatives to most Microsoft products exist with more being created each year. The competition doesn't need to become a monopoly and block replace Microsoft to win; they simply need to whittle away market share to the point that Microsoft is no longer dominant. At that point, Microsoft has to compete...

...and competing against companies with rapid, loyal communities built around them is really hard when your customers hat the ever-loving shit out of you.

Re: The "John Doe" vote.

You still have to sign in to vote, so the system knows who you are and what you voted.