(PCI-X vs. PCIe makes little difference. The drives are nowhere near as fast as either bus.)
They are in their case. Each of their PCIe x1 SATA cards has 10 drives hanging off it, which will _easily_ saturate the 250MB/sec they're capable of. Also, as I mentioned above, a full 1/3 of their drives are on a single SATA card connected to a 32-bit, 33Mhz, ~120MB/sec PCI bus.
It must take them a solid month just to commission a node and complete the initial array scrubs (unless they're not even doing that (!) ).
One of their 15-spindle arrays is hanging off a single PCI SATA controller. The rebuild speed on that is going to be less than 10MB/sec. That's less than a terabyte a day. For ~22TB, the array would take about 25-30 days to rebuild. Even the ones on PCIe controllers would only be a bit more than twice as fast, in ideal conditions.
I'd be looking at putting in quad 10GB ethernet cards or fiber.
Pointless. A single node is unlikely to be able to get much over a couple of hundred MB/sec throughput, even in ideal conditions.
For any remotely reasonable use case, all each node needs is a pair of GbE NICs (although given their attitude towards performance and SPOFs, probably just the one is fine).
Please give me a few examples of the way words can harm, outside of the uses that are already illegal (harassment, intimidation, libel, inciting violence).
When you can find the part in the post I replied to about "uses that are already illegal", I'll get back to you.
If you can deploy cheap 67 terabyte nodes, then you can treat each node like an individual drive, and swap them out accordingly.
No you can't. Replicating the ~54TB usable space you'd get per node to another - in case of failure - is going to take at least a week (and probably closer to two). Given how poorly those nodes look to be architected for reliability, the node failure rate must be relatively high. I'd have to say the only thing that's saved them from a business-ending, catastrophic data loss incident thus far is either a) luck or b) lack of high-volume, high-profile customers.
I'd use them because they're cheap, but I certainly wouldn't want them to have my only copy of anything valuable.
That, alone, should tell you to stay far, far away from them. The rebuild times on those arrays are going to be measured in days, and the performance while they are rebuilding is going to be even more dismal than it would be normally.
Microsoft and others stifle innovation and competition through an immense patent portfolio and an angry mob of lawyers. It's no longer easy to build a good product and make money, because MS will come and sue you, while stealing your idea and driving you out of business with monopolistic power.
If something is patented, how is doing the same thing "innovative" ? Can you give some example of offensive use of patents by Microsoft ?
Have you seen what MS is doing to Google lately? It's darned hard to make freaking Bing go away and to get Google as the default search engine in IE.
Hard, indeed. About 3 mouse clicks as part of IE's setup, or about 3 more at any other time.
Now, how easy is it to make Bing the default search engine in Chrome or Firefox ?
But it's also (and at least equally) not the responsibility of the software vendor to aid the content owner in imposing their wishes on you.
Why ? The content owner is as much Microsoft's customer as you are, as is any other entity that uses windows as a product delivery platform.
Microsoft should not be colluding with the content owners to enforce DRM. If the content owners want to use DRM, they should have to do all the necessary work for that themselves.
Why ? Their business is content production, not software programming.
Neither Microsoft nor the content owners, nor for that matter the law, should be able to dictate what someone can or can not do with their own computer; only the technical limitations of the hardware and software should be able to do that.
One of the "technical limitations" of DRM-capable software is that is must enforce restrictions on DRM-encumbered media. That's how it works.
DRM attempts to constrain what people *can* do, not just what they are allowed to do, and in doing so it steps over the line.
DRM is completely opt-in. No-one forces you to purchase DRM-encumbered content.
This will become more of an issue if copyright on DRMed material is ever allowed to expire, such that the material enters the public domain, but is still inaccessible because it's covered by the DRM...
In which case it *still* has nothing whatsoever to do with Microsoft. It's something the content provider has done.
Microsoft chose to actively cooperate with the aims of the DRM crowd, instead of either rejecting them or remaining neutral.
It's the content owner's choice whether or not the media is DRM-encumbered, not Microsoft's. Their position is pretty much a textbook definition of 'neutral'.
If they refused to include DRM capabilities, *that* would be choosing a side. You're not pissed because they chose a side, you're just pissed because they didn't choose *your* side.
A computer is not just a playback device. There are very few "vendors" providing computer OSes, on the level under discussion, and Microsoft is by far the most dominant.
The DRM does nothing if you are not playing back DRM-encumbered media. If you're not using the computer as a playback device, DRM is irrelevant.
If Microsoft started giving-away MS Office for free with Win7 [...]
Office suites are a well-established, long running and clearly discrete market.
Web browsers, were not.
Used to be you had to buy things like GUIs, network stacks, memory managers and CPU schedulers separately as well. Are you going to try and argue Microsoft are anti-competitive by including them in Windows ?
There is simply no other explanation for why Navigator went from 90% to just 10% of the browser market in only two years time, except illegal dumping.
So what's your explanation for Netscape going from 10% to 90% in the same timeframe a few years earlier ?
Netscape crashed and burned because they released a product that was bad (Navigator 4.x) the same time their competitor released a product that was good (IE 4.0), then proceeded to not fix it for several years.
It is not the software vendor's job to police my actions with my hardware. I think that last sentence is really the crux of the argument. Incorporating DRM into the operating system is just that: the vendor trying to dictate what I do with my hardware.
No. The software vendor is merely providing a service for the content provider. It is completely the decision of the content provider whether or not to DRM-encumber their product, and by doing so prevent you from exercising your "rights". Further, it is most certainly NOT the responsibility of the software vendor to aid you in circumventing the wishes of the content owner (ie: by providing a system that can decode DRM-encumbered content without enforcing restrictions).
DRM is a attribute of the *content*, not the player. If you don't want to be restricted by DRM, don't buy DRM-encumbered content.
What Microsoft did to Netscape (drive their $30 Navigator browser out-of-market) is approximately equivalent to Comcast announcing "we'll give everyone free MP3s" and thereby driving Itunes.com out of business.
Actually, it's more like them introducing DVR functionality into their cable boxes for free, while other providers either don't have it (and require a third-party device) or charge extra for it.
And that does't qualify as "Microsoft works in collusion with the big media companies to build restrictions on copying and playing media into their operating system" ?
Not when they are a one of hundreds of vendors providing DRM-capable playback devices.
I want my computer to do what I want it to do, not what Microsoft or anyone else want it to do.
And content owners who encumber their work with DRM don't want it being copied without their permission.
And that is precisely what Free Software is about.
"Free software" won't remove the DRM that the content owner has put there.
Not the best parallel I did in the recent history, but I couldn't come up with a better one.
Wow. A simple scenario of vendor A selling products that enable the use of vendor B's products, and the "best" comparison you can come up with is the Holocaust ?
The usual excuse "but if we don't, someone else will" does not work when you have a de facto monopoly position.
Microsoft do not have a monopoly position - de facto or otherwise - in the market for playback devices.
If MS did not implement DRM, the content industry would have to drop it because it simply would not work on most computers, thus they would lose a sizable portion of their income, thus have to choose between dropping DRM and losing sales. MS allows them to keep both, only their support makes this possible altogether.
They would not, because the entity with power in this situation is the one selling the content that customers want, not the commoditised playback device they don't care about.
DRM will never be defeated by shooting the messenger.
The idea of paying A to get featureset X, or A+B to get featureset X+Y, has been around as long as the concept of trade has existed. How it is implemented is nothing more than a semantic detail. The burden of proof lies upon you to argue why this common practice - a fundamental tenet of free market capitalism - is unacceptable, not to beg the question.
The GPL doesn't make it impossible to charge for software, but it does make it difficult to charge for copying software. Charging for writing software is a different matter, and is a much stronger business model because you're charging for something that has real value.
And is completely different market to selling software, hence irrelevant to my point.
I'm sure if someone got filthy rich off donations for a really good bit of kit then RMS wouldn't object... as long as the opportunity to grab the source and compile it yourself is not blocked then why not send a couple of bucks to someone who's done it for you? Or, even if you do build it yourself, still send the author some remuneration if you've found it useful? We don't need the kosh of lock-in to hand over our cash, we need software that is useful.
While this is true, it's hardly a principle around which a sustainable business model can be built.
I find this point rather interesting, as Richard Stallman gave a speech at Otago University here in small old New Zealand last year, and he was quite adamant that there was nothing wrong with charging for software, and took great pains to make the distinction between "free as in freedom" and "free as in beer".
He might say that, but his actions demonstrate otherwise. The GPL is a license that makes it practically impossible to charge for software.
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(PCI-X vs. PCIe makes little difference. The drives are nowhere near as fast as either bus.)
They are in their case. Each of their PCIe x1 SATA cards has 10 drives hanging off it, which will _easily_ saturate the 250MB/sec they're capable of. Also, as I mentioned above, a full 1/3 of their drives are on a single SATA card connected to a 32-bit, 33Mhz, ~120MB/sec PCI bus.
It must take them a solid month just to commission a node and complete the initial array scrubs (unless they're not even doing that (!) ).
Actually, it's not that bad. Half a day, maybe.
One of their 15-spindle arrays is hanging off a single PCI SATA controller. The rebuild speed on that is going to be less than 10MB/sec. That's less than a terabyte a day. For ~22TB, the array would take about 25-30 days to rebuild. Even the ones on PCIe controllers would only be a bit more than twice as fast, in ideal conditions.
I'd be looking at putting in quad 10GB ethernet cards or fiber.
Pointless. A single node is unlikely to be able to get much over a couple of hundred MB/sec throughput, even in ideal conditions.
For any remotely reasonable use case, all each node needs is a pair of GbE NICs (although given their attitude towards performance and SPOFs, probably just the one is fine).
Please give me a few examples of the way words can harm, outside of the uses that are already illegal (harassment, intimidation, libel, inciting violence).
When you can find the part in the post I replied to about "uses that are already illegal", I'll get back to you.
I hope you don't mind twiddling your thumbs for days, while transferring your data to your backup drive...
Days ? I'd be amazed if they could pull all the data off an active node in much under a couple of *weeks*.
If you can deploy cheap 67 terabyte nodes, then you can treat each node like an individual drive, and swap them out accordingly.
No you can't. Replicating the ~54TB usable space you'd get per node to another - in case of failure - is going to take at least a week (and probably closer to two). Given how poorly those nodes look to be architected for reliability, the node failure rate must be relatively high. I'd have to say the only thing that's saved them from a business-ending, catastrophic data loss incident thus far is either a) luck or b) lack of high-volume, high-profile customers.
I'd use them because they're cheap, but I certainly wouldn't want them to have my only copy of anything valuable.
They run RAID6 across blocks of 15 drives.
That, alone, should tell you to stay far, far away from them. The rebuild times on those arrays are going to be measured in days, and the performance while they are rebuilding is going to be even more dismal than it would be normally.
What ever happened to "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me?"
Because once you get past being called names at school, "words" can most certainly hurt you.
The point is that Fair Use is not something a copyright holder is legally obliged to facilitate.
Fair Use is my right, as in, legal entitlement.
Fair use is not your "right", it is something you can do without fear of prosecution.
Microsoft and others stifle innovation and competition through an immense patent portfolio and an angry mob of lawyers. It's no longer easy to build a good product and make money, because MS will come and sue you, while stealing your idea and driving you out of business with monopolistic power.
If something is patented, how is doing the same thing "innovative" ? Can you give some example of offensive use of patents by Microsoft ?
Have you seen what MS is doing to Google lately? It's darned hard to make freaking Bing go away and to get Google as the default search engine in IE.
Hard, indeed. About 3 mouse clicks as part of IE's setup, or about 3 more at any other time.
Now, how easy is it to make Bing the default search engine in Chrome or Firefox ?
But it's also (and at least equally) not the responsibility of the software vendor to aid the content owner in imposing their wishes on you.
Why ? The content owner is as much Microsoft's customer as you are, as is any other entity that uses windows as a product delivery platform.
Microsoft should not be colluding with the content owners to enforce DRM. If the content owners want to use DRM, they should have to do all the necessary work for that themselves.
Why ? Their business is content production, not software programming.
Neither Microsoft nor the content owners, nor for that matter the law, should be able to dictate what someone can or can not do with their own computer; only the technical limitations of the hardware and software should be able to do that.
One of the "technical limitations" of DRM-capable software is that is must enforce restrictions on DRM-encumbered media. That's how it works.
DRM attempts to constrain what people *can* do, not just what they are allowed to do, and in doing so it steps over the line.
DRM is completely opt-in. No-one forces you to purchase DRM-encumbered content.
This will become more of an issue if copyright on DRMed material is ever allowed to expire, such that the material enters the public domain, but is still inaccessible because it's covered by the DRM...
In which case it *still* has nothing whatsoever to do with Microsoft. It's something the content provider has done.
Microsoft chose to actively cooperate with the aims of the DRM crowd, instead of either rejecting them or remaining neutral.
It's the content owner's choice whether or not the media is DRM-encumbered, not Microsoft's. Their position is pretty much a textbook definition of 'neutral'.
If they refused to include DRM capabilities, *that* would be choosing a side. You're not pissed because they chose a side, you're just pissed because they didn't choose *your* side.
A computer is not just a playback device. There are very few "vendors" providing computer OSes, on the level under discussion, and Microsoft is by far the most dominant.
The DRM does nothing if you are not playing back DRM-encumbered media. If you're not using the computer as a playback device, DRM is irrelevant.
If Microsoft started giving-away MS Office for free with Win7 [...]
Office suites are a well-established, long running and clearly discrete market.
Web browsers, were not.
Used to be you had to buy things like GUIs, network stacks, memory managers and CPU schedulers separately as well. Are you going to try and argue Microsoft are anti-competitive by including them in Windows ?
There is simply no other explanation for why Navigator went from 90% to just 10% of the browser market in only two years time, except illegal dumping.
So what's your explanation for Netscape going from 10% to 90% in the same timeframe a few years earlier ?
Netscape crashed and burned because they released a product that was bad (Navigator 4.x) the same time their competitor released a product that was good (IE 4.0), then proceeded to not fix it for several years.
It is not the software vendor's job to police my actions with my hardware. I think that last sentence is really the crux of the argument. Incorporating DRM into the operating system is just that: the vendor trying to dictate what I do with my hardware.
No. The software vendor is merely providing a service for the content provider. It is completely the decision of the content provider whether or not to DRM-encumber their product, and by doing so prevent you from exercising your "rights". Further, it is most certainly NOT the responsibility of the software vendor to aid you in circumventing the wishes of the content owner (ie: by providing a system that can decode DRM-encumbered content without enforcing restrictions).
DRM is a attribute of the *content*, not the player. If you don't want to be restricted by DRM, don't buy DRM-encumbered content.
What Microsoft did to Netscape (drive their $30 Navigator browser out-of-market) is approximately equivalent to Comcast announcing "we'll give everyone free MP3s" and thereby driving Itunes.com out of business.
Actually, it's more like them introducing DVR functionality into their cable boxes for free, while other providers either don't have it (and require a third-party device) or charge extra for it.
And that does't qualify as "Microsoft works in collusion with the big media companies to build restrictions on copying and playing media into their operating system" ?
Not when they are a one of hundreds of vendors providing DRM-capable playback devices.
I want my computer to do what I want it to do, not what Microsoft or anyone else want it to do.
And content owners who encumber their work with DRM don't want it being copied without their permission.
And that is precisely what Free Software is about.
"Free software" won't remove the DRM that the content owner has put there.
Not the best parallel I did in the recent history, but I couldn't come up with a better one.
Wow. A simple scenario of vendor A selling products that enable the use of vendor B's products, and the "best" comparison you can come up with is the Holocaust ?
The usual excuse "but if we don't, someone else will" does not work when you have a de facto monopoly position.
Microsoft do not have a monopoly position - de facto or otherwise - in the market for playback devices.
If MS did not implement DRM, the content industry would have to drop it because it simply would not work on most computers, thus they would lose a sizable portion of their income, thus have to choose between dropping DRM and losing sales. MS allows them to keep both, only their support makes this possible altogether.
They would not, because the entity with power in this situation is the one selling the content that customers want, not the commoditised playback device they don't care about.
DRM will never be defeated by shooting the messenger.
The idea of paying A to get featureset X, or A+B to get featureset X+Y, has been around as long as the concept of trade has existed. How it is implemented is nothing more than a semantic detail. The burden of proof lies upon you to argue why this common practice - a fundamental tenet of free market capitalism - is unacceptable, not to beg the question.
The GPL doesn't make it impossible to charge for software, but it does make it difficult to charge for copying software. Charging for writing software is a different matter, and is a much stronger business model because you're charging for something that has real value.
And is completely different market to selling software, hence irrelevant to my point.
Yeah, Redhat and Novell sure don't make a dime with their Enterprise releases.
They sell support contracts, not software.
I'm sure if someone got filthy rich off donations for a really good bit of kit then RMS wouldn't object... as long as the opportunity to grab the source and compile it yourself is not blocked then why not send a couple of bucks to someone who's done it for you? Or, even if you do build it yourself, still send the author some remuneration if you've found it useful? We don't need the kosh of lock-in to hand over our cash, we need software that is useful.
While this is true, it's hardly a principle around which a sustainable business model can be built.
I find this point rather interesting, as Richard Stallman gave a speech at Otago University here in small old New Zealand last year, and he was quite adamant that there was nothing wrong with charging for software, and took great pains to make the distinction between "free as in freedom" and "free as in beer".
He might say that, but his actions demonstrate otherwise. The GPL is a license that makes it practically impossible to charge for software.