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Kevin Rose Load Tests Gmail

Posted by timothy on from the really-pushing-the-envelope dept.

SishGupta writes "Load Testing Gmail - fillmybox@gmail.com A few weeks ago, Kevin Rose of the The Screen Savers decided to load test Google's new email service, Gmail. He asked everyone to email him their favourite 5MB attachments to 'fillmybox@gmail.com.' The test Gmail account is now 102% maxed out. You can read about the test and the results at Kevin Rose.com (his weblog)."

7 of 366 comments (clear)

  1. 1GB = 1024MB so... by Compholio · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... since Google advertises the service as 1GB of email storage 1023MB is technically under the limit and not 102% of the limit.

    1. Re:1GB = 1024MB so... by Cody+Hatch · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Um, no.

      The standard prefixes kilo, mega, giga, tera, etc. mean the exact same thing when applied to ANY measure. That's the entire point of a standard, and the standard says 10^3, 10^6, 10^9, and 10^12, respectively.

      The standard prefixes kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, etc. mean the exact same thing when applied to ANY measure. That's the entire point of a standard, and the standard says 2^10, 2^20, 2^30, and 2^40, respectively.

      To be clear - the value of the SI prefixes do NOT change, no matter what you happen to be measuring. Thats the entire point of the SI system, for crying out loud! People may misuse the units (for example, I've heard people expressing their weight in kilograms, which is obviously absurd), and if you want to communicate with them, you may want to misuse the units in the same fashion, but it doesn't make them RIGHT.

      <gratuitous flamage>
      Let's see - you're arguing that a unit system which is bizarre, contradictory, outdated, and confusing even to its adherents is good, because it sort of mostly works, despite the fact that there is a better and clearer alternative.

      Tell me, what's the weather like in your part of the US? Managed to blow up any launch vehicles recently? :-)
      </gratuitous flamage>

    2. Re:1GB = 1024MB so... by sik0fewl · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The standard prefixes kilo, mega, giga, tera, etc. mean the exact same thing when applied to ANY measure. That's the entire point of a standard, and the standard says 10^3, 10^6, 10^9, and 10^12, respectively.

      Well, they're actually SI prefixes and can't really be applied to any unit of measurement.

      The standard prefixes kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, etc. mean the exact same thing when applied to ANY measure. That's the entire point of a standard, and the standard says 2^10, 2^20, 2^30, and 2^40, respectively.

      It's a IEC standard, but not a universal standard. If you're an electrical engineer then you might have reason to use them, it's likely to confuse most other people (not that the situation isn't already confusing).

      To be clear - the value of the SI prefixes do NOT change, no matter what you happen to be measuring. Thats the entire point of the SI system, for crying out loud!

      That's right, whenever you apply them to *SI units*. Bytes are *NOT* SI units and kilo, mega, giga, etc are *NOT* SI prefixes when used to measure kilobytes, etc. Sure, they share the same names (the source of all the confusion), but they are not SI units and do not follow SI prefix rules.

      By the way, I actually wouldn't mind kibi/mibi/etc prefixes myself but it would've been a lot nicer if they thought of that *before* using the same prefixes as SI. I think eventually the new naming will takeover, but saying that the current system is bizarre, contradictory and outdated is simply incorrect. However, to say it is confusing hits the nail on the head.

      --
      I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
  2. Re:And your point is ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Kevin Rose is a wannabe hacker (or cracker, whatever term you want to use) who tries to portray himself as a technology guru. This is simply another stunt to make him look cool in the eyes of script kiddies. Sad really...

  3. Re:false advertising, and email wars by Quill_28 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >24 megabytes is a substantial difference for most email users.

    It is if you have 10MB or 100MB,
    but not when you have 1000 megabytes.

    100K of memory was alot when all you had was 640K, but 100k is nothing to most users nowadays.

  4. Re:false advertising, and email wars by Yolegoman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I doubt that the space is all that the users care about. I was quite content with 5 megs of space until the spam-bots got a hold of my Yahoo account.

    No, the real deal is archiving all of your old email and the ability to search through it all, as well as targeted advertising... I detest picture-advertising... most kinds, that is. pr0n's another story.

    One of the other factors that makes the service so appealing to me is I trust Google, unlike Microsoft or Yahoo, to not sell my email address. When the company who gave you the email address is handing it out to the spammers (or spamming the box themselves), something is wrong.

    - Yolegoman

  5. What a pointless load of tosh! by MarkTina · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is the point in his test ? Did he think that Google hadn't done any testing at all ? Did he think that if a mailbox hit 100% something dreadful would happen ? Of course it's going to work just fine, 1Mb, 10Mb, 100Mb, 1000Mb or even 10,000Mb is just a tiny dribble in the ocean that is Googles' infrastructure. He's just looking for some kind of kudos ... "Hey dude I filled up my Gmail account!" "Wow! That's so ... so ... actually that's pretty lame .."