* Posts by Steven Roper

1832 publicly visible posts • joined 10 May 2011

Astroboffins spot smiley face on Mercury

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Re: I'd upvote all of you above....

I see where you're coming from, because this used to bug me as well, until I thought about it. I can also see a reason why El Reg does that with the voting buttons, and I would actually suggest that they NOT change the way the voting works.

I'm perfectly sure that the coders of the Reg's site are more than capable of using AJAX to make voting seamless and instantaneous, like a Facebook Like button, with no page changes, so it seems to me there's a reason that they haven't.

You said it yourself: "I'd upvote all of you above...if it wasn't for this dated voting system that takes me away from the page." What that really means is that votes, because of the effort required to enter them, have a value that making it quicker and easier to vote would diminish.

What you're missing is that the time and effort required to go through the voting process gives a value to the vote. If someone goes through all that page-refreshing palaver involved with upvoting or downvoting someone's post, it means that they consider your post worth the time and effort involved in doing so. And that gives the vote value and meaning. Which means that when I see 25 upvotes on one of my posts, it means that at least 25 people went to the trouble of reading my post, and agreed with it or liked it to the point where they spent the time and effort of clicking through a cumbersome voting system to express their approval.

It also gives weight to downvotes in the same way: if you have a lot of downvotes, it means you've annoyed that many people to the point that they felt it necessary to go through the voting rigmarole to express their disapproval. This is exactly why people on these forums complain about downvotes - because they know that as a result of the time involved in giving one it has a value that a casual AJAX-driven-one-click-instant dislike does not have. I myself only go to the trouble of downvoting posts if I feel the poster is a complete idiot who has pissed me off enough to go to the bother (and which makes the feeling of downvoting someone that much more satisfying!)

So I'd say to El Reg: Keep the voting system exactly the way it is. It gives value to the votes because of the time and effort required to submit them, in an age when quick'n'easy one-click solutions have become all too common!

Walmart workers filmed playing iPad frisbee

Steven Roper
Holmes

At least now we understand

why HP famously use half a rainforest's worth of cardboard and packing materials to ship a RAM stick. Looks like they had this sort of thing figured out years ago!

Snake-fondling blonde nude punts Polish coffins

Steven Roper
Go

Re: I don't know about the whole calander

Actually it looked to me very like a DAZ|Studio / Poser render, in fact the face reminded me a lot of FRAD's models for Victoria 4 sold on Renderosity . I've rendered better pictures than that with Cinema4D!

Definitely Uncanny Valley material there.

Kim Dotcom's new Mega site barred by Gabon

Steven Roper
Flame

Gabon cannot serve as a platform ... used by unscrupulous people

Is that so? Then perhaps, Mr. Bendover Minister, you can explain that to the hordes of 419-scamming scum operating out of your tinpot third-world country and "unscrupulously" ripping off thousands of innocent pensioners. Or is it simply that the dicks of poor pensioners can't penetrate your posterior orifice quite as deeply as Uncle Sam's can?

Who needs flying cars when we can robotically sort Skittles?

Steven Roper
Go

He's got some work to do to beat human fingers though

My 6-year-old nephew can sort Skittles and Smarties a damn sight faster than that machine does it!

El Reg acquires wildly dangerous laser cannon (with lightsabre option)

Steven Roper
Big Brother

Re: Lovely.

At least you have the option to buy them.

Here in the People's Nanny State Republic of Ausfailia, the government, in its never-ending quest to wrap us all in the cotton wool of paranoid safety, has classed all lasers over 1 mW as controlled firearms, and it's illegal to own, sell or import them into this pathetic fucked-up cuntry (spelling slip intentional).

Just another reason why I recommend against coming to this police state on holiday. Go to China instead. There's more to see, it's more free and you're actually allowed to own lasers there.

Martian atmosphere pristine, totally free of fart gas, reports Curiosity

Steven Roper
Coat

Re: My life now has a purpose!

As to who the kids of the future will remember, was Neil Armstrong the first man to fart on the moon, or was it "Buzz" Aldrin - thus earning the latter his nickname?

Bonfire Night sets internet AFLAME: Anons claim PayPal, Symantec

Steven Roper
Go

Re: IDIOTS

"...force millions of innocent people to change their passwords."

Which is a GOOD thing, no?

UK iPad Mini FRENZY: Queues stretch SEVERAL FEET from till

Steven Roper
FAIL

Re: I for one am waiting...

Downvoted for posting a link to a geolocked video. Fail.

Russia launches internet blacklist to protect the kiddies

Steven Roper
Devil

A pity

I liked Bad Vlad for throwing those feminist pop singers into the gulag. It sent a strong message that the kind of man-hating bullshit prevalent in the West won't be tolerated in Russia. +1000 points.

However he loses that for pushing an internet censorship regime, and more so for using the think of the children excuse, which puts him on the same level as Conroy. -1000 points.

Since I despise censorship about as much as I despise feminism, I guess that puts Bad Vlad back to zero in my book. Which means he's still better than Conroy or Gillard, but I would no longer prefer him as a leader over say Nick Xenophon (who remains my favourite politician!)

A history of personal computing in 20 objects part 1

Steven Roper

Not only that

There's talk of pioneers like Babbage and Flowers but no mention of Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing? WTF El Reg?

Felix Baumgartner sadly turns out to be blinkered FOOL

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Joining El Reg in boycotting Red Bull

I don't drink Red Bull anyway, since the stuff tastes like putrid 10 year old cough medicine, so you can consider me a supporter of the cause Lewis!

MULTICOLOURED TARANTULAS found UP TREES in Brazil

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

@ Captain DaFt

I also like spiders, but living in Australia I'm fairly choosy about what species I allow to cohabit with me. Redbacks and White-tails, for example, die upon detection.

My favourite kind is the Huntsman spider, a common household species in Adelaide. They're definitely in the huge-'n'-hairy category, averaging 3 inches across the legs with a fat bulbous body more than an inch long. They look horrific, but they're completely non-poisonous and harmless (although if you piss them off they can inflict a painful bite). These I'm quite happy to have around the house, since they get rid of the flies and mozzies that are a perennial problem here.

What I most like about Huntsmans is they don't build webs, so they don't clutter up your place with scruffy spider silk wall hangings. Instead, they lie quietly in a corner until a fly or moth or mozzie flies near them, then they teleport themselves to the location of the prey insect, knocking it to the floor, and scoff it down then and there. "Teleport" is the only way to describe the speed with which these spiders jump to snatch prey, and it can be a bit disconcerting to watch, but I have yet to have one land on me - they choose their launch vectors wisely!

Want to see what one looks like? Have a look at this! (WARNING: horrible-huge-'n'-hairy alert!)

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria review

Steven Roper
Facepalm

I'm with you on that Nick

Regardless of any previous "appearance" of the Pandaren in WC3 (as someone pointed out it was a joke), the jarring transition from a "Lord of the Rings / D&D" style epic fantasy world to a Pokemon / Kung-Fu Panda playground was too much for me. I loved the feeling of immersion, of being transported to another world, because of that "epic otherworld" D&D feeling Azeroth created. Now it feels like a Disney movie.

Which is why I cancelled my account as soon as I got confirmation that an old April Fool's joke from years ago was to become canon. Goodbye WoW. It was awesome while it lasted.

Hmm, I think I'll order an iPad Mini on Amazon ... Oh no I won't

Steven Roper
Stop

I can't believe nobody has commented on this.

Looking at the picture in the article, it seems to me that the Kindle looks a LOT more like the iPad than the Samsung Galaxy or Slate. Round corners, black, even the same aspect ratio as the iPad.

So why aren't Apple suing Amazon's arses off for billions like they did with Samsung? Surely that Kindle must violate dozens of Apple's rectangular-round-cornered-object patents?

Of course, it couldn't be anything whatsoever to do with the fact that Amazon is also an American company, could it?

Apple turns off Siri’s potty mouth

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Re: "Playboy" magazine, where many science fiction stories appeared.

See? I told you I only read Playboy for the articles!

Disney buys Lucasfilm, new Star Wars trilogy planned

Steven Roper
Facepalm

Can anyone spell

"antitrust lawsuit?"

Seriously, doesn't Disney have enough fucking control over popular entertainment without giving them control over yet another iconic franchise? Try finding ANY kids' program that ISN'T owned by them, directly or indirectly. Surely there has to be some kind of anti-monopoly limit to how much of popular culture Disney is allowed to own.

Please. Just please. Does ANYONE have the bollocks and the money to take Disney on over this? I'll donate what I have to the cause.

NSW drops NBN access bombshell

Steven Roper
Mushroom

"In a somewhat novel argument"

"Stoner said because NBN Co would be paying NSW less than the state wanted for access, consumers’ power bills would rise."

Oh look - humans breathe out CO2. Power bills have to rise!

Oh look - a politician farted. Power bills have to rise!

Oh look - Australia has three 'A's in it - Power bills have to rise!

Oh look - that cloud looks like a teddy bear. Power bills have to rise!

This shit is why South Australia has the most expensive electricity in the world. Electricity prices have MORE THAN FUCKING TRIPLED here in the last 5 years. This is corruption, graft and outright fucking theft at the highest levels, and the greedy foreign companies responsible need to be brought to account NOW.

That's why I'm voting for Nick Xenophon - he's pushing for a royal commission into the corruption that has led to this farce.

Paintballs proposed as defense against ASTEROID ATTACK

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

More likely

by then the USA will have become the next 50 provinces of China.

Better luck next time Blofeld! Five Bond plot myths busted

Steven Roper
Paris Hilton

Excuse me, is this yours?

You dropped your icon. I found it on the floor next to where you posted your comment.

Chrome extension blocks political speech on Facebook

Steven Roper
Facepalm

LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU

People who deliberately block out political discussion should forfeit the right to vote if they're that disinterested. The last thing I want is uninformed and possibly self-righteous idiots who refuse to acknowledge or discuss important political issues, deciding who gets to make laws governing my life.

US Copyright Office approves phone jailbreaking and video remixes

Steven Roper
FAIL

You stop reading, you don't comment. Deal?

Microsoft has no plans for a second Windows 7 Service Pack

Steven Roper
Facepalm

"Micro$oft"

The gag so old it's new again!

US patent office prepares to kill off Apple's bounce-back patent

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

That wasn't a typo James

It was what is known in the trade as a "Freudian slip". A very good example of one too, I might add! ;-)

Amazon accused of remotely wiping punter's Kindle

Steven Roper
Megaphone

Re: Seconded

I maintained, loudly and often on this very forum, several years ago when the Orwell scandal broke, that I would never buy a Kindle and I have never wavered on that since. This story simply vindicates and strengthens my stance.

When my dad, who is an avid bookworm, talked about buying a Kindle, I warned him off and convinced him to buy a Nook instead. I've also convinced more than a dozen other people not to buy Kindles in that time, and will continue to do so.

It might not seem like much, but if each of us do our part in warning others off the Kindle we can really hurt Amazon's sales and send the bastards a strong message that this behaviour will NOT be tolerated. I take pride in the fact that I've already cost them potentially thousands of dollars in lost sales and will continue to cost them thousands more until they get the fucking message.

US climate-change skeptics losing support

Steven Roper
Facepalm

Wait until

their electricity bills triple because of it. We'll see how many of them still believe in AGW when they can no longer afford to run their shinies any more.

French cops cuff man over €500K Android Trojan scam

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Re: Malware authors ....

7) All of the above, and take your time about it too.

The hoarder's dilemma, or 'Why can't I throw anything away?'

Steven Roper
Go

Right!

This thread enticed me to go out to my garage and take stock. Let's see...

2 x Amiga 500s, one with a half-meg expansion board still in it.

1 x 52 MB GVP side-mount hard drive for said Amiga 500.

1 x Amiga 1200, with 68060 racer board and 32 MB of RAM on it.

1 x tower case with 3 320 MB SCSI HDDs in it, to hook up as external storage device to said A1200. Yes, I was the first in my group of friends to have ONE WHOLE GIG of storage space!

4 x plastic disk boxes with dozens of 3 1/2" Amiga floppies in them... Oooh, The Settlers! I loved that game! And Elite Frontier... Damocles... Shadow of the Beast (1 and 2)... Menace... Sidewinder... Blood Money...

2 x boxes of assorted cables and power bricks, none more recent than 1993ish. Centronics leads, RS-232 cables and connectors, SCSI adapters and those super-wide ribbon cables they used; the 5-pin DIN-type leads the C-64 used, Amiga and C64 power bricks...

1 x Commodore 64 C w/ Datel Action Replay 6 and DolphinDOS.

1 x 1541 5 1/4" floppy drive (the ORIGINAL kind with the push-in door) and DolphinDOS.

1 x MPS-803 dot-matrix printer for same, with cartridges

1 x 14400 baud unbranded modem w/ cable

1 x 56k baud Motorola modem w/ cable

Assorted cartridges for said C64 including Hesmon, Epyx Fastload, Cockroach Graphics Pirate and Freeze Machine.

8 x plastic floppy disk boxes with all my old C64 games and crackscene demos on them. Oooh, some old favourites: Bugaboo The Flea, Henry's House, Zaxxon, Wizardry, Elite, Mercenary, subLogic Flight Simulator II...

4 x boxes of old Commodore User, Your Commodore, Ahoy! and Australian Commodore and Amiga Review magazines. And there's that old cover tape with the R1D1 game on it!

Awwwww look... My dear old Sinclair ZX81, my first computer, complete with 16KB Expansion Cartridge of Don't Fucking Sneeze Near It Or It Will Crash. And my beloved old VIC-20, complete with Maths Invaders, Typing Tutor and that tape of crappy BASIC games that came with it... And is that my old Casio PB-100? My god, an old desktop office cassette recorder... wow, this is becoming an archaeological dig here...

Ethernet cables and old wireless mice indeed! Bah! MY garage is a veritable computing museum!

Now pay attention, 007: James Bond's Q re-booted

Steven Roper
Joke

Re: 1980?

At 32, you are a slip of a lad, but at least you've not far to go now.

When you pass 40 sunshine, then you can finally put your youth behind you and become a miserable old bastard like the rest of us.

Now GET OFFA MY LAWN!

Ocker CANNIBAL DEATH SPIDERS invade Japan!

Steven Roper
Alert

That's because

redbacks, funnelwebs, brown snakes, taipans, box jellies and all the rest of our indigenous deadlies don't fucking FLY... (Except possibly for the drop-bears, and even those only travel more-or-less straight downwards out of the trees!)

Craig, Connery or ... Dalton? Vote now for the ultimate James Bond

Steven Roper

I voted for Moore

I grant that Connery was certainly the better actor, but to my mind James Bond is, first and formemost, an utter sleaze, a slimeball who worms his way into bed with every woman in the story - and IMO it was Moore who carried the "sleazebag" style off better. He really did come across as utter slime. Connery's suave, sophisticated Bond came off as seeming too "clean-cut" and genteel for what the character was supposed to be, which to my perception jarred with the "slipperiness" I expected from Bond.

As to Craig and Brosnan, they simply came off as common garden "action hero" types and while their performances were enjoyable, there was nothing to distinguish them from other action movies of the time, like Die Hard or the Bourne movies.

Australia ponders patent refresh to restrain trolls

Steven Roper

It's very simple

Any company caught "evergreening" is put into mandatory receivership, its entire assets are confiscated by the government, and the top line management including the CEO go to prison for 30 years.

That'll make the fucking greedy bastards think twice.

Vote NOW for the vilest Bond villain

Steven Roper

In my book

Hugo Drax was no villain. To me he was a hero and a martyr, who sadly failed in a noble endeavour. If I had his money and resources, I'd certainly do exactly what he tried to do - wipe the human plague off the face of the planet and replace them with a selected few - namely, non-religious people with at least a semi-decent education who aren't concerned with telling everyone else how to live their lives.

Only I wouldn't do it with mere poison gas from orbiting probes - there's NO substance toxic enough that a handful of bar-fridge-sized probes' worth would wipe out every last human on the planet (yes, I know about botulinum toxin, and no, those probes would not be an effective method of spreading it sufficiently.) My preferred technique would perhaps be a weaponised disease with the fatality rate of ebola and the contagiousness of the common cold, since most other forms of destruction (like my erstwhile favourite, grey goo) would wipe out all other life as well.

I 'm surprised Elliot Carver didn't get more votes - after all, he's the only one obviously based on a real-life villain, namely Rupert Murdoch. Now there's an evil megalomaniac despot if ever there was one.

Facebook, Twitter, ordered not to spoil murder trial

Steven Roper
WTF?

Lack of media coverage of Gillard's feminist character assassination of Abbott?

What. The. Fuck.

Every fucking major news outlet carried the story front page for three days straight. You'd think Abbott was an evil woman-hating psychopath from the way she carried on. And these feminazis still aren't satisfied? What do they want, to burn him at the stake?

I'll be voting for Abbot now on fucking principle.

Kernel crimps make Windows 8 a hacker hassle

Steven Roper
Devil

The reason malware won't work

on Windows 8 has nothing to do with "improved security" More likely it's everything to do with Microsoft taking us back to the 80s by removing multitasking - so the malware can't run in the background while you use another app. You know, the same reason why nobody was able to create a working virus on the Commodore 64 - because it could only do one thing at a time.

Well, Microsoft did write CBM BASIC V2. Maybe they're trying to get back to their roots. However I, and most of the rest of the computing world, have since moved on.

Face-recognising spy drone tech tapped up by... Quantum

Steven Roper
Stop

Re: Automatic recognition and targetting?

Don't shave off your beard! Try trimming it into different styles over time instead.

One thing I've found is that my beard (which I've had for more than 15 years) seems to fuck up Facebook's face-recognition software. This is because my beard keeps changing shape, altering the shape of my face as perceived by such software. As it grows, it "puffs out" around my lower cheeks and jowls, making my jawline look more square than when I trim it back. I also vary the style - sometimes I go for a professorial look, sometimes squaring the cheek line, sometimes letting it blow out to a "full bikie beard" look.

And when my mother posts photos of me on Facebook (she's a prolific Facebooker and has posted dozens of photos of me on there) it almost never auto-tags me (but it does my sister, mother and father, who doesn't have a beard) because in every new photo, my beard is a different shape to the last time.

I've noticed it mis-tags my brother as well, most likely because he also has a beard and varies his between muttonchops and goatee, among other styles. The one occasion I recall Facebook successfully auto-tagging me after Mum uploaded a new photo was when I had kept the exact same beard style for several months, with Mum uploading multiple photos of me in that time. After that I changed my style again, and for the next photo Mum uploaded it did not "recognise" me.

But if you shave off your beard, you'll give the software a chance to recognise the actual shape of your face, after which you won't be able to change it again (resculpting your jaw is a LOT harder than resculpting a beard!) and it could give the system a baseline. I don't know if that would affect the software's ability to recognise you if you grew the beard back at a later date, since I've had my beard continuously since the mid 90s and thus haven't tested it for this effect.

So keep your beard, but change the style every few weeks. Let it grow, trim it back, crop it to a goatee, grow it to a "professor" look, and so on. I've found this works a treat for fucking up Facebook's auto-recognition software and I can assume this'll hold true for police/surveillance software as well.

I wonder how long it'll be before the Western police states realise that face-recognition software can be thwarted this way, and start banning beards as being "unlawful disguises"?

40,000 sign petition to oust Rep. Paul 'pit of hell' Broun

Steven Roper
Facepalm

Think about it a second

Mr. Ian M. Hurt.

I. M. Hurt. You, know, like I. M. Stupid or I. P. Freely?

Yeah, right.

O2 flogs logs of mobe locations to anyone with a wallet

Steven Roper

You're forgetting

that copyright is only for Big Business, not the plebs like you or me. Contrast the efforts by Big Media to remove right of first sale doctrine (currently under way in the USA) and establish century-long copyright term extensions, with the efforts by the same Big Media companies to strip copyright protections for photographers, so Big News networks can legally rip off their pictures as "orphan works" simply because somebody posted them on a website somewhere without credit.

Copyright isn't for us slaves, only for the masters. So "copyrighting" our movements wouldn't work. The only law is, you will give, give, give and they will take, take, take.

Bing is the most heavily poisoned search engine, study says

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Re: Remember when Google first appeared...

I certainly remember what Google once was, and I agree with you that what it has become does not compare favourably.

Give DuckDuckGo a try. I've found it's quite similar to what Google used to be like back in the Altavista/Yahoo days, with loads of useful geek gadgets added on if you click over to their "goodies" page.

Crazed Microsoft robot accuses BBC kids' channel of Win8 piracy

Steven Roper

Re: Ten downvoters with no sense of irony, it would seem.

If you were being ironic, perhaps you did too good a job. Look up "Poe's Law" sometime, it'll explain your downvotes quite effectively.

WoW cities wiped out by 'exploit'

Steven Roper

Been a while since I last played WoW

My brother and I used to be avid players for quite a few years there. We canceled our accounts earlier this year when Blizzard decided to take the game from Lord of the Rings-esque epic fantasy to fucking Kung-Fu Panda.

On Star Trek Online and LOTR Online (our current MMOs of choice), we've seen quite a few players, many of whom, like us, defected from WoW, are now calling it "the MMO that lost its way." I wonder how many people bought the MoP expansion compared to say Wrath or Cataclysm. I'd be willing to bet the numbers are down on the previous two expansions.

Shame really. I have many fond memories of WoW, before the hipster idiots destroyed it by demanding all that pathetic panda shit.

eBay frets as right to resell comes under scrutiny

Steven Roper
Mushroom

Don't worry

America is now officially at the "Nero fiddling as Rome burns" stage, and their empire is falling to the "Goths" (aka China and India). Won't be long now, once America's Rome has been sacked the rest of the world will be free of their greedy shit once again.

I'm looking forward to seeing the USA become the next Somalia. Their comeuppance has been far too long in the offing.

Network boffins say Terabit Ethernet is TOO FAST

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

@CheesyTheClown

You know you can change your downvote to an upvote simply by hitting the thumbs-up, right?

325 Dicks sell for AUD$20m

Steven Roper

I remember Dick Smith back in the 70s when it was actually owned by Dick Smith - general-purpose transistors 14c, resistors 5c, capacitors 10c - 90c depending on type and size, 555 timers 50c, 7400-series TTL ICs around 70c or so - all well within range of a kid's pocket money back then. I was a regular customer until I got into computers instead of electronics, around 1982/3, and my weekly trip into town to restock my components drawers was the high point of my week. Tandy Electronics was closer, but a damn sight more expensive (I remember Tandy selling resistors in 2-packs for $1.95 and 2 transistors for $2.95 - in the 70s!)

Last time I was in a DSE was a couple of years ago, and as I recall it had degenerated to little more than a mobile phone shop that also happened to sell cameras and RC toys. A long and sad fall from the treasured electronics enthusiast store I remembered from my youth.

Smartphones may soon listen in on you while they sleep

Steven Roper

Re: Not if you power it off completely

I wouldn't be surprised if they end up putting a capacitor in there to keep the damn thing running on minimum for a couple of hours even if you remove the battery. Law enforcement and spook agencies at the very least would love to have such a feature in smartphones. Couple that with Australia's and UK's data retention laws and you have a cornucopia of Big Brotherish delights for them to drool over.

Mind you, given the propensity of the Facebook-and-Twitter mob to pour out their private lives to all and sundry this'll probably be welcomed by them, making it a standard for everyone whether we like it or not.

Microsoft Research man: It all starts with touch

Steven Roper

Re: What I found interesting

Even if it does, simply have it that the patent period begins from the time of grant rather than the time of application. So that wouldn't be a problem then, would it?

Hitachi claims glass data storage will last millions of years

Steven Roper

Re: I remember when...

There's just one problem with DNA: Evolution - which means the "error correction" you refer to has a way of completely altering the data over multiple generations.

See, if I consider my DNA as information handed down to me by my father, who got it from his father, who got it from his father, and so on back to the Cretaceous, for example, then we find that the DNA is describing something along the lines of a cynodont, which is a rather different creature to a human being. It certainly isn't the same information by any stretch, despite said cynodont being my own direct-line male ancestor. (Although I find the idea of calling a tiny ratlike creature "great-great-something granddad" rather amusing myself!)

Life isn't a good preserver of information. It seems to me the ancients got it right the first time around - carving things in stone seems to be the way to go!

Half of Milky Way's mass found in million-Kelvin gas cloud

Steven Roper

So

what effect does this discovery have upon omega? Are we still heading for the Big Rip in 50-odd billion years' time or are we now facing down the Big Crunch?

fanbois and fandroids - counterproductive

Steven Roper
Devil

Well, speaking as a hater

I'll give my side of the story.

As anyone who has seen my comments in the article threads can attest, I express an almost pathological hatred for all things Apple. I've been more than slightly acerbic in my opinions of "fanbois" and positively rabid about the doings of the company itself. I've copped my share of downvotes for some of my more irrational rants, but I have my reasons for doing so.

Firstly, I am very passionate about computers. They've been my life since I was 16 years old and got my first Sinclair ZX81 back in 1982. I was part of the Commodore 64 and Amiga demo scene and I've built my career as well as my hobbies on computers. I have no S.O., no kids, because the lifestyle choices I have made centred around computer technology more than people. That's my nature, that the passion most men give to their wives and children, I give to what I do and what I create with computers.

In all this time, I've grown up and lived with a culture of relative openness in computers. I've become used to the concept that a computer I've bought and paid for is mine, to do with as I please. And part of that is writing programs and sharing them with people. The feeling I get when I see someone using my software and knowing how it impacts their lives is awesome. Even more awesome is when I see someone expand on my idea or program, and they show me their improvements. That's been the way I've worked since the old demo swap-meets and copy-parties of the Commodore 64 days.

As you can see, these things matter to me. A lot. I've lived my life around them, and I have strong feelings about them.

So when a company like Apple starts locking down everything in sight, and by showing other companies that users are willing and even eager to have control of their own computers snatched away from them , those companies follow suit. You mention people going on about walled gardens and I can understand your frustration with the repetition, but for those like myself whose mentality was founded on building a greater whole on shared ideas this mentality is utterly repellent.

It's not only the app-store lock-in, it's things like the ability to reach in and delete software from your computer - a trend started by Apple, and quickly followed by the likes of Amazon, Google, and now Microsoft as well. It's all this corporate control-freak mentality that I didn't really see before Apple brought out the iPad. Yes, Microsoft was the tyrant du jour of the pre-Apple era, but even they didn't impose restrictions on the distribution of software - until Apple did it. And add to that the endless ridiculous lawsuits, where it's getting to the point where I'm almost afraid to continue programming in case I tread on someone's IP toes. I feel that I'm being told I'm not allowed to use my brain for what I do best because some corporation owns some vague general concept behind what I've come up with myself. And Apple, with their sue-everyone-for-making rectangles mentality, have come to exemplify this kind of control.

And I'm sorry, but that really, really, pisses me off. When I feel afraid to develop new ideas because "sorry, Apple/Google/whoever have the patent on that already", that makes me want to throw things and scream. But polite society understandably does not allow me to do these things, because the expectation is that we stop throwing tantrums somewhere around the second or third year of life.

So I vent. I let off steam. I rant and rave on a forum, to a bunch of people I don't really know and have never met. I do so knowing that some of them share in my anger, and knowing that others are angry about the same things I am is strangely comforting and soothing. I do so knowing that still others will be angered, offended or even amused by my rantings, and we'll let off at each other until you'd be terrified to leave us all alone in a room together. Yet if we all met down the pub, I really believe nary a harsh word would pass.

You see, at the end of the day, it's Internet rantings. And I believe that's why a lot of us do it. It's what psychologists call a coping mechanism - a means of anger management, a way of letting out pent-up frustration with the way the world is, in a manner that is essentially harmless, because only a fool takes everything you read in these forums (or indeed on the entire internet) seriously.

To my way of thinking, it's far better to explode all over a Reg comments thread with pathetic curses against "retarded fanboi sheeple", than to act like a complete ass in real life. That is why I sometimes carry on the way that I do, and I think it is a sentiment shared, if not always fully understood, amongst other commenters.

Events in stratosphere can affect Earth's entire climate

Steven Roper
Trollface

Re: I hate to piss on anyones parade but...

You can't argue with them bill.

It's like a religion. You can posit all the science under the sun, but the followers of Mother Earth have their faith and don't set much store in mere evidence.