'Why do Register readers get so frothy-mouthed?' Thus started WW3

CoTW Short, sweet and funny. What, we like these things. Just smile and be happy already.

Opening this week's commentary, AidanH came up with a short funny one which made the Great Tardmangling Machine chuckle to itself, alarming its overseers considerably:

HMRC called their system MOSS... well played. I assume their next project will be ROY.

Very good, very good.

Silver-badged 'tard DodgyGeezer pitched in on the news that social media boffins are (shockingly) peddling utter crap to us all.

It's not only social media. There has been an explosion in fake science everywhere. It turns out to be easy to feed data from any source into a spreadsheet, and then fiddle with the statistical tools until you get a nice full-colour chart showing you what you want to see.

Activists everywhere are doing this, and then claiming that: "Science says that..." you should do what I say.

If only the educational system had taught people:

1 - to understand maths

2 - to be properly skeptical

But, alas, it's too late now. We have bred a generation of gullible morons and put them in charge of us. Our foreign policy and energy infrastructure are two illustrations of the result. Look for many more appalling similar messes in the future...

Well said, that man. Two plus two definitely makes five!

The Wooden Twig of Fail

Where would we be without conspiracy theorists? Answer: on the Moon, of course. Or so said Dalek Dave, who picks up this week's Wooden Twig of Fail for seemingly claiming the moon landings never took place:

And there, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the proof that they never went to the moon.

If they are trying to figure out how to get astronauts through the VARB then it is because they have never done it before.

Had they done so, they would have the answers already....

I thank you!

53 downvotes later, it's clear someone has the answer - and that someone evidently isn't Dalek Dave.

This week's Comment of the Week

Winning the Golden Vulture Dropping of Excellence this week is commenter thames, who weighed in on the news that Debian is being forked as a result of a massive Linux bunfight over incorporating systemd into the popular open source OS.

Depending on who you talk to, Systemd is either the spawn of Satan, or it's the salvation of software packagers. More specifically, it's a type of "init system"...

Opposition to Systemd tends to revolve around two things, and it should be noted that not everyone who dislikes it, dislikes it for the same reasons.

Some people dislike it simply because it's not System V. These are the "grey beards" that Systemd proponents like to talk about. Other people dislike it because they think it's a good concept which has been badly implemented by idiots who ignore valid criticism...

There are already loads of independent Debian derivatives (which I think Devuan is more like, rather than a true "fork"), which focus on things which aren't addressed by the main release, so one more isn't a problem.

You can read the full thing, with all its 100+ glorious upvotes, here.

Special mention

In a special mention for this edition of Comment of the Week is newbie poster Camberwick Green, who makes a pertinent observation about the level of debate to be found hereabouts.

I'm relatively new to the forum side of The Reg and so I was somewhat bemused as to why someone would get so froth-mouthed so quickly about an off-the-cuff musing and so I took a look at your post history. It was immediately apparent you're in fact a serial mouth-frother with a post count/days membership ratio that implies you spend an awful lot of time here. I wouldn't dream of delving into your psychology ..but have you thought about getting out more?

To paraphrase a response to you in another thread: I won't try to reason with you because you have the reputation of being unreasonable. That, along with your grasp of due process that seems to come from a box set of Ali McBeal, means further discussion is pointless.

Can't we all just hold hands, sing kum-bye-yah and be friends, folks? Please? Oh okay, okay.

Goodbye, print safely. ®