Have you forgotten about virtualization and SaaS? Why would your computer have to be on a corporate domain to connect to a VMware View session or load an app through Citrix? This comes down to corporations controlling data, not devices, which was their primary concern all along.

I live in rural Indiana, so I couldn't give two shits about LA and NYC broadband. I'm sure what they have still beats what we do. Eight minutes up the road is my in-law's farm. They don't have access to cable or DSL and only recently got access to a wireless option due to Omnicity cutting a deal with them to place equipment on the top of their grain elevator. It was barely usable above their previous Earthlink dialup. I live in a small town with about 2,000 people and have access to DSL and cable, but the offering is comparable to what Comcast et al were offering about 6-10 years ago in the nearby suburbs. I'm thankful to have 3Mb DSL and landline for ~$70/mo. I wish I could have >10Mb and VoIP instead but it isn't available to me. It sort of sucks. Everyone has complaints about the current state of broadband in the US, but what is the solution?

...and by *very* nice restaurant you mean Applebees with two adult beverages? What *very* nice restaurant for two costs $40? As to your main point I completely agree. Theaters should be able to make far more money by lowering food costs and increasing quantity, but maybe the business model is based on controlling demand.

The density in Sweden is a little tighter than it is in the US. I wish that internet speeds in rural areas of the midwestern US were 100 Mb, but the fact is it costs a lot of money to build and maintain that network which will return very little.

I hope you are joking. The teachers I know are compensated for the lower wages with the best health and retirement benefits around. I'd prefer to see the 80 student classroom as it might get teachers and politicians working together a little more to improve things, lest the politician lose his job.

LOL. Flame on.

Thanks for the personal attack, but I'm actually a VMware admin. Stop crying, grow a pair, and make a decision that best fits your business needs. You aren't using Windows, so go with something else like that Oracle offering, or pay VMware to keep up. Better yet, buy physical machines!

It sounds like you licensed the wrong edition for your cluster. Although it pains me to say it, for that kind of density and the decreased feature set that you are used to, you might consider switching to Hyper-V. The density you claim probably means Windows Server Datacenter or Hyper-V Server is more cost effective per CPU anyways. Call your VMware rep and tell them how pissed you are.

Then I'm pleased to inform you that with VMware vSphere Enterprise, you'd have a total vRAM entitlement of 128 GB per physical host at those specs. Enterprise Plus is a 96 GB per CPU entitlement. If you've allocated more than 96 GB per CPU to virtual machines I'm going to venture a guess that you've overallocated the memory or your density is way too high, but maybe you just have unique requirements. I have been fine scaling out with dual Intel quad-cores and 48-64 GB each host with the virtual machines allocated below that amount. Also, the entitlement is pooled across the cluster.

They adjusted the vRAM entitlements after the initial reaction to the change in licensing. Fact is, most customers will not be affected, a some that are can just dial back the allocations which not only gets them within the entitlement, but also reduces overhead. How many users of vSphere really set the vRAM on a virtual machine to the minimum required amount to get the job done?

You, sir, need a new foil hat.

It is subsidized because it has been determined to be beneficial to society as a whole, just like phone service and education. Also, this is probably the largest factor holding us back from a paperless society.

This is a wrong, but very common perspective. If you want someone to blame, look at congress. Look at the US Supreme Court. Look at the patent process. The leaders of corporations are just trying to make money for themselves and shareholders and provide long term viability in the market. Politicians, on the other hand, are to blame for the law of the land which prevents innovation and economic growth. Granted, corporate lobbyists have some blame, but it was the government officials that actually passed the laws. Exercise your right to vote, people.

When I learned SharePoint, I used a dedicated low-end PC with Linux and VMware Server. I installed a second hard drive to dedicate to the virtual machines. It took some time to boot the environments, but it worked. If I were to do it today, I'd go with a better desktop, load up on memory and use multiple hard drives in whatever RAID configuration made sense. This can scale out to multiple desktops, NAS, managed switches, etc. I'd probably use VMware Hypervisor instead of Server as well. Boot it off a USB flash drive or SD card if you want. Consider power, cooling, noise, and space in your hardware selection.

I am of the opinion that many federal departments are formed to manipulate state functions through legal wrangling and finance, like threatening to pull funding of highways if the state doesn't prohibit alcohol to people under the age of 21. While I agree with that example in principal, it was a shady way to implement it. I'm now a big fan of small federal government, and large state.