You might want to read the actual blog where they explain what they use in a bit of detail. This isn't my area of expertise either, but I do know that running 10 servers is very different from running 100 servers, which is also different from running 1000 servers. There are many questions that crop up that you really don't have to consider when you're down in the smaller arenas. (E.g. patch management - manually patching 10 servers is feasible and more cost effective than having an OTS solution; manually patching 1000 servers, not so much.)
They do also state at the outset:
In this post, we'll share how to make a 2.0 storage pod, and you're welcome to use the design. We'll also share some of our secrets from the last three years of deploying more than 16 petabytes worth of Backblaze storage pods. As before, our hope is that others can benefit from this information and help us refine the pods.
My reading - they definitely know more about this than I do, and they're not too proud to admit there could be lessons they can learn from the community.
1. It's Linux, you fool! 2. This is Slashdot. 3. For bonus points - Linus commented on it. (Angels sing in glorious dulcet tones.) 4....and used a Google tool to do so. (Angels commence gentle strumming of harps.) 5....one that competes with the evil Facebook. (Lo, Satan is vanquished.)
It's intuitive to those who possess no self control. There's no reason to model and expound it (and everything else you pontificated on in your pretentious nonsense); it's perfectly well understood under the simple term "vigilantism".
Sigh. You're right, I won't get very far challenging you on plain logic because you're not addressing most of my actual points, and many - not all - of your debating points are merely cliches which are being thrown around regardless of context.
I'm not sure if you're willfully misreading because of your biases, but here's my note on the assumption/imputation - re-read the quote and parse it all again. It's your comment about the media companies and what they all want to do. How do you logically demonstrate or prove that? Get it?
I don't know why you should be defensive or hyper, but you are. Have fun. I don't want to waste any more of my time.
Mate, chill out. For most people it's not about a status display. You can find plenty of hobbiests who love mechanical watches and enjoy sharing their latest finds which only cost them $50, and are sufficiently obscure that only a fellow enthusiast will have any idea what it is. Most people can't even recognize a mechanical watch just by looking at it. How is that any different from someone whose hobby is retro gaming?
I know what you're getting at (the analog/digital bit), but as it happens Timex does make some mechanical watches. I happen to be wearing one almost identical to this one right now. I have a few different watches - I wanted one with a power reserve complication and this happened to be very affordable.
Mechanical watch complications, by the way, are what I would imagine would appeal the most to a geek.
My point about copyright infringement being illegal is that it's rather disingenuous to get on one's high horse about the ISPs doing something "probably illegal" when that action is only being done in response to an action that is not just probably illegal but known to be illegal. Talking about the legality of copyright infringement being irrelevant to this issue is simply more of the same tired self justification - "I know what I'm doing is illegal, but they deserve it and HEY LOOK AT THIS!". Hand-waving, if you like.
From the earlier post I was referencing:
Please stop helping the media companies to spread misinformation. Downloaders are not pirates. "Pirates" are defined as people who make and sell copies of copyrighted works commercially, for a profit. Equating your typical downloader with "pirates" is a gross injustice. And which is something the media companies want everybody to do, in their minds.
Okay, I admit I threw in the bit about "we're too cheap to buy something". But if you want to talk about people making assumptions and imputations, how about that last sentence in that quote?
I can't argue with your logic in your gas company analogy because you don't employ any. You just say "no, you're wrong" and continue in your hyper-defensive mode. It's not adding anything.
Also, I wonder if there are any laws against this already? It seems to me that banding together to deny service to a certain list of people has got to have some anti-trust laws or something.
Except that copyright infringement is illegal, y'know?
And, could this be a major nail in the IP coffin? Judges aren't going to have much respect for them if they do really crazy things in the name of protecting their IP. The tide is already turning on that front and this is pretty desperate.
No. See above. And as has been pointed out you're on thin ice trying to posit this as "really crazy". The response as described is quite reasonable.
Which is probably illegal. If they try it, I expect a horde of lawsuits over it.
And copyright infringement is definitely illegal. I haven't seen a single argument on Slashdot arguing otherwise. As strong as the feelings are here, people either complain the inappropriately draconian responses to the illegal activity, or ignore that it's illegal and engage in long-winded pedantic debates about whether it's theft (while still admitting it's illegal).
You did it yourself earlier on in this thread, rebutting someone who talked about piracy and self-righteously proclaiming "no, we're not at all like pirates, we don't sell the stuff, we just download it for our own personal enjoyment because we're too cheap to buy something we want".
Ethically, it's rather like your local utility company shutting off your gas until you come into the office and have a chat about conservation.
No, it's not at all like that. It's more like your local utility company shutting off your gas after you've missed several payments of your gas bill and received half a dozen letters asking you to pay up.
Yep, just like we know Linux doesn't deserve any credit for having finally made it to the point where installation isn't a monumental headache of editing config files by hand.
I have been operating MS servers since NT 3.1 and I always found the biggest problem was not bad code - it was that the pretty graphics made everyone think configuring a server was easy and they didn't need to read a manual or know what they were doing. Hence the customers who ran SQL Server 6.5 and called me in when their database ground to a halt because they didn't know they had to run update statistics. That's not Microsoft's fault - that's someone who needs a consultant to configure their systems properly because they don't know enough to do it themselves, but they're too cheap to call someone in until their server degrades.
I've told the story before, but it bears repeating. I know a senior admin who doesn't know how to configure permissions - he thinks that if someone can't write a file it's because they're in a READ ONLY group as well as the READ WRITE group and the fix is to remove them from the R-O group.
That's a joke - that's someone who shouldn't be allowed near a server, Windows or UNIX. But because everything is pretty with buttons and stuff, he can barely find his way around and if he bashes at it long enough it'll eventually sort of look like it's working. Of course, underneath it's a steaming pile of dung, but the pretty graphics make non-admins think they can be a server guru, and they can't!
I hate to quibble, but you then followed that up with "they will save money by paying you a slightly lower hourly rate". Take an employee's pay and multiply it by anywhere from 1.5x to 2x to understand how much it actually costs a company to have that employee. Or to reverse it, poster can figure on between a 33% and 50% cut in hourly rate just for the company to break even on the switch, not even save money.
As someone else points out below, these data are defined as public. Some data are public by default, and are supposed to be. Do you also think it represents a breach of privacy if you get caught inside your house on Google Streetview cameras? "But you should pull the curtains", I hear people calling out in a shrill voice. Dumb...pure sophistry.
That's nice. Presumably you have the technical skills necessary to assure a high value of "protect it properly". Most people don't, and have to depend on someone else to do it for them.
...people were just taking it because of what I call the Kazaa mentality of just copying things because you want them and are too damn cheap to buy it
I'm really surprised you got modded up on a site like/. which is overwhelmingly pro-copying (quite happily admitting - in fact almost boasting - it's copyright infringement, because apparently that makes it a lot better).
If you see social networking as being a genuine paradigm shift rather than just a segment of the market, then it's pretty solid logic, actually. It's the same kind of logic that said Microsoft had no choice but to bolster their game when it became apparent they were lacking on the internet side of the game, back when Netscape Navigator was king.
* And yes, I used the word paradigm because it's appropriate in this context. Don't attack the supposed buzzword; respond to the argument I make, please.
I don't like Computer Associates. Bad, bloated solutions and dreadful technical support. The appalling level of support is the same world wide (and I've had to suffer it in multiple different regions, so this is not some random bloviating on my part).
I once had a site where the anti-virus solution from CA was slowing the entire network to a crawl because it was checking files it shouldn't have been checking, and the exclusion lists simply didn't work. I logged a call to the Asia-Pacific help desk. They had to escalate to North America. Forget a quick response, they apparently didn't have 24x7 support. Everything was a three way conversation - me to Australia, Australia to US, with no way to cut out the middle man. I followed up a week later, and they hadn't done anything. They e-mailed me several days after that with some vague promise of "look for a couple of dll files in your e-mail, that'll fix it". No e-mail. Repeated this a couple of times, still no results.
Finally, after a month of this nonsense, I told my client I was installing something else and binning the CA product. Bang, everything just worked.
CA called back two months after the original call. "Hi, this is so-and-so from Computer Associates, checking on the status of ticket number...". I told him we'd uninstalled the product and replaced it with their competitor's solution. "Oh...so I can close the ticket, then?"
CA is number one on my list of companies to avoid.
Privacy is a two way street and when it comes to minors, of course it should be compulsory.
And in any other conversation you'd have the majority of/. bleating on about how "I'd let my kids do/see/read/post anything they wanted, they deserve freedom, I trust them, etc., etc.".
Look, I understand the passion that people feel for Linux, FOSS, etc., but why is it sad news? If you step back and look at it from a 65,000 foot level, there are a few notes to take away.
First, try and understand why they made the switch back. It's probably not licensing fees, right? So it's more likely to be difficulty in switching, missing functionality, etc. What are the lessons to be learned?
Second, don't be sad. Seriously. I've said this before - it's supposed to be about choice. If someone chooses to use Windows/other Microsoft products/other closed source products, well then isn't that their choice? I know some people will say "but it's wrong, abc product always crashes, MS can't build secure software" and so on. But - a technologist's job is to find the best solution, for whatever value of best applies to the particular customer in their particular context. And sometimes that may be a Microsoft product, or some other closed source product.* No product is a one-size-fits-all item. If you try and force something to fit the problem, or argue from politics or ideals rather than logic, you're less likely to make a positive impression.
Sometimes it seems as though people on this site want Linux to be everything to everyone, everywhere. I suppose it's not technically a monopoly, and maybe it's harder to argue that there's a lack of freedom of choice if there are different distributions - but I think it goes against the spirit of freedom and competition.
* Except for CA. They're dreadful, and there is never a context where CA is the best solution.
Slashdot Mirror
You might want to read the actual blog where they explain what they use in a bit of detail. This isn't my area of expertise either, but I do know that running 10 servers is very different from running 100 servers, which is also different from running 1000 servers. There are many questions that crop up that you really don't have to consider when you're down in the smaller arenas. (E.g. patch management - manually patching 10 servers is feasible and more cost effective than having an OTS solution; manually patching 1000 servers, not so much.)
They do also state at the outset:
In this post, we'll share how to make a 2.0 storage pod, and you're welcome to use the design. We'll also share some of our secrets from the last three years of deploying more than 16 petabytes worth of Backblaze storage pods. As before, our hope is that others can benefit from this information and help us refine the pods.
My reading - they definitely know more about this than I do, and they're not too proud to admit there could be lessons they can learn from the community.
Err...I'm confused. Help me out here.
Lulzsec at least isn't tampering with these things
So it's okay, or at least tolerable, if they go in somewhere they're not allowed, so long as they just look and don't destroy or modify? Okay...
leaving my front door unlocked doesn't give anyone the right to enter my house
Ah, it's not okay then. Even if they just look around and don't touch anything?
1. It's Linux, you fool! ...and used a Google tool to do so. (Angels commence gentle strumming of harps.) ...one that competes with the evil Facebook. (Lo, Satan is vanquished.)
2. This is Slashdot.
3. For bonus points - Linus commented on it. (Angels sing in glorious dulcet tones.)
4.
5.
Q.E.D. I mean, really...
It's intuitive to those who possess no self control. There's no reason to model and expound it (and everything else you pontificated on in your pretentious nonsense); it's perfectly well understood under the simple term "vigilantism".
It's a computer, not a holy war.
You must be new here...
Sigh. You're right, I won't get very far challenging you on plain logic because you're not addressing most of my actual points, and many - not all - of your debating points are merely cliches which are being thrown around regardless of context.
I'm not sure if you're willfully misreading because of your biases, but here's my note on the assumption/imputation - re-read the quote and parse it all again. It's your comment about the media companies and what they all want to do. How do you logically demonstrate or prove that? Get it?
I don't know why you should be defensive or hyper, but you are. Have fun. I don't want to waste any more of my time.
Mate, chill out. For most people it's not about a status display. You can find plenty of hobbiests who love mechanical watches and enjoy sharing their latest finds which only cost them $50, and are sufficiently obscure that only a fellow enthusiast will have any idea what it is. Most people can't even recognize a mechanical watch just by looking at it. How is that any different from someone whose hobby is retro gaming?
I know what you're getting at (the analog/digital bit), but as it happens Timex does make some mechanical watches. I happen to be wearing one almost identical to this one right now. I have a few different watches - I wanted one with a power reserve complication and this happened to be very affordable.
Mechanical watch complications, by the way, are what I would imagine would appeal the most to a geek.
My point about copyright infringement being illegal is that it's rather disingenuous to get on one's high horse about the ISPs doing something "probably illegal" when that action is only being done in response to an action that is not just probably illegal but known to be illegal. Talking about the legality of copyright infringement being irrelevant to this issue is simply more of the same tired self justification - "I know what I'm doing is illegal, but they deserve it and HEY LOOK AT THIS!". Hand-waving, if you like.
From the earlier post I was referencing:
Please stop helping the media companies to spread misinformation. Downloaders are not pirates. "Pirates" are defined as people who make and sell copies of copyrighted works commercially, for a profit. Equating your typical downloader with "pirates" is a gross injustice. And which is something the media companies want everybody to do, in their minds.
Okay, I admit I threw in the bit about "we're too cheap to buy something". But if you want to talk about people making assumptions and imputations, how about that last sentence in that quote?
I can't argue with your logic in your gas company analogy because you don't employ any. You just say "no, you're wrong" and continue in your hyper-defensive mode. It's not adding anything.
Also, I wonder if there are any laws against this already? It seems to me that banding together to deny service to a certain list of people has got to have some anti-trust laws or something.
Except that copyright infringement is illegal, y'know?
And, could this be a major nail in the IP coffin? Judges aren't going to have much respect for them if they do really crazy things in the name of protecting their IP. The tide is already turning on that front and this is pretty desperate.
No. See above. And as has been pointed out you're on thin ice trying to posit this as "really crazy". The response as described is quite reasonable.
Which is probably illegal. If they try it, I expect a horde of lawsuits over it.
And copyright infringement is definitely illegal. I haven't seen a single argument on Slashdot arguing otherwise. As strong as the feelings are here, people either complain the inappropriately draconian responses to the illegal activity, or ignore that it's illegal and engage in long-winded pedantic debates about whether it's theft (while still admitting it's illegal).
You did it yourself earlier on in this thread, rebutting someone who talked about piracy and self-righteously proclaiming "no, we're not at all like pirates, we don't sell the stuff, we just download it for our own personal enjoyment because we're too cheap to buy something we want".
Ethically, it's rather like your local utility company shutting off your gas until you come into the office and have a chat about conservation.
No, it's not at all like that. It's more like your local utility company shutting off your gas after you've missed several payments of your gas bill and received half a dozen letters asking you to pay up.
I have to use IE7 and half the internet doesn't work.
Really? Like what? I have to use IE7 as well, and there are only two major sites I visit which are functionally broken in IE7...
If Slashdot drops support for IE7 my productivity will be even higher.
...and one of the sites which is functionally broken for me in IE7 is Slashdot. (E.g. can't comment - I am writing this in Opera.)
Yep, just like we know Linux doesn't deserve any credit for having finally made it to the point where installation isn't a monumental headache of editing config files by hand.
I have been operating MS servers since NT 3.1 and I always found the biggest problem was not bad code - it was that the pretty graphics made everyone think configuring a server was easy and they didn't need to read a manual or know what they were doing. Hence the customers who ran SQL Server 6.5 and called me in when their database ground to a halt because they didn't know they had to run update statistics. That's not Microsoft's fault - that's someone who needs a consultant to configure their systems properly because they don't know enough to do it themselves, but they're too cheap to call someone in until their server degrades.
I've told the story before, but it bears repeating. I know a senior admin who doesn't know how to configure permissions - he thinks that if someone can't write a file it's because they're in a READ ONLY group as well as the READ WRITE group and the fix is to remove them from the R-O group.
That's a joke - that's someone who shouldn't be allowed near a server, Windows or UNIX. But because everything is pretty with buttons and stuff, he can barely find his way around and if he bashes at it long enough it'll eventually sort of look like it's working. Of course, underneath it's a steaming pile of dung, but the pretty graphics make non-admins think they can be a server guru, and they can't!
I hate to quibble, but you then followed that up with "they will save money by paying you a slightly lower hourly rate". Take an employee's pay and multiply it by anywhere from 1.5x to 2x to understand how much it actually costs a company to have that employee. Or to reverse it, poster can figure on between a 33% and 50% cut in hourly rate just for the company to break even on the switch, not even save money.
As someone else points out below, these data are defined as public. Some data are public by default, and are supposed to be. Do you also think it represents a breach of privacy if you get caught inside your house on Google Streetview cameras? "But you should pull the curtains", I hear people calling out in a shrill voice. Dumb...pure sophistry.
I think Opera calls it the URL bar/Address bar, too. But who cares?
I assume by your comment of "excessive sitting" you are referring to the recent study that says sitting behind a desk all day raises your chances of a fatal heart attack by 54%, independent of how much you exercise and whether you smoke.
Your sig:
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it
You are not God; you are not my superior; and you are not correct. To hell with your self-serving pretentious nonsense, thief.
That's nice. Presumably you have the technical skills necessary to assure a high value of "protect it properly". Most people don't, and have to depend on someone else to do it for them.
Vista does - right-click on your file and select "restore previous versions".
...people were just taking it because of what I call the Kazaa mentality of just copying things because you want them and are too damn cheap to buy it
I'm really surprised you got modded up on a site like /. which is overwhelmingly pro-copying (quite happily admitting - in fact almost boasting - it's copyright infringement, because apparently that makes it a lot better).
If you see social networking as being a genuine paradigm shift rather than just a segment of the market, then it's pretty solid logic, actually. It's the same kind of logic that said Microsoft had no choice but to bolster their game when it became apparent they were lacking on the internet side of the game, back when Netscape Navigator was king.
* And yes, I used the word paradigm because it's appropriate in this context. Don't attack the supposed buzzword; respond to the argument I make, please.
I don't like Computer Associates. Bad, bloated solutions and dreadful technical support. The appalling level of support is the same world wide (and I've had to suffer it in multiple different regions, so this is not some random bloviating on my part).
I once had a site where the anti-virus solution from CA was slowing the entire network to a crawl because it was checking files it shouldn't have been checking, and the exclusion lists simply didn't work. I logged a call to the Asia-Pacific help desk. They had to escalate to North America. Forget a quick response, they apparently didn't have 24x7 support. Everything was a three way conversation - me to Australia, Australia to US, with no way to cut out the middle man. I followed up a week later, and they hadn't done anything. They e-mailed me several days after that with some vague promise of "look for a couple of dll files in your e-mail, that'll fix it". No e-mail. Repeated this a couple of times, still no results.
Finally, after a month of this nonsense, I told my client I was installing something else and binning the CA product. Bang, everything just worked.
CA called back two months after the original call. "Hi, this is so-and-so from Computer Associates, checking on the status of ticket number ...". I told him we'd uninstalled the product and replaced it with their competitor's solution. "Oh...so I can close the ticket, then?"
CA is number one on my list of companies to avoid.
Privacy is a two way street and when it comes to minors, of course it should be compulsory.
And in any other conversation you'd have the majority of /. bleating on about how "I'd let my kids do/see/read/post anything they wanted, they deserve freedom, I trust them, etc., etc.".
Look, I understand the passion that people feel for Linux, FOSS, etc., but why is it sad news? If you step back and look at it from a 65,000 foot level, there are a few notes to take away.
First, try and understand why they made the switch back. It's probably not licensing fees, right? So it's more likely to be difficulty in switching, missing functionality, etc. What are the lessons to be learned?
Second, don't be sad. Seriously. I've said this before - it's supposed to be about choice. If someone chooses to use Windows/other Microsoft products/other closed source products, well then isn't that their choice? I know some people will say "but it's wrong, abc product always crashes, MS can't build secure software" and so on. But - a technologist's job is to find the best solution, for whatever value of best applies to the particular customer in their particular context. And sometimes that may be a Microsoft product, or some other closed source product.* No product is a one-size-fits-all item. If you try and force something to fit the problem, or argue from politics or ideals rather than logic, you're less likely to make a positive impression.
Sometimes it seems as though people on this site want Linux to be everything to everyone, everywhere. I suppose it's not technically a monopoly, and maybe it's harder to argue that there's a lack of freedom of choice if there are different distributions - but I think it goes against the spirit of freedom and competition.
* Except for CA. They're dreadful, and there is never a context where CA is the best solution.