m104

NoSQL has never meant "unreliable datastore for unimportant, throwaway data". If it did, there would be no need for the MongoDB rant because that poor level of at-scale reliability would have been understood from the beginning. MongoDB wasn't marketed as an unreliable data store, so expectations weren't met by the rant author.

I'm worried about the culture that's brewing as well, but I see it more as an attempt from some NoSQL supporters to keep MongoDB looking good, even in the face of serious data integrity issues. The battle lines are forming between SQL and NoSQL (relational vs. non-relational data stores, really) and there's a lot of money and reputation at stake. What we don't want is for the facts to die in a war of rhetoric about the merits of SQL vs. NoSQL. That would be dumb.

With that said, the first paragraph of the rant is worrying:

"I've kept quiet for awhile for various political reasons, but I now feel a kind of social responsibility to deter people from banking their business on MongoDB."

What the hell does "various political reasons" mean? I'm more concerned about that than any deficiencies in MongoDB's codebase. Is there a well-funded campaign to silence MongoDB/NoSQL criticism, or is this just one customer's attempt to save face for choosing the wrong data store?

Also, unlike astrophysicists, climate science has some very vocal critics trying to keep current policy decisions intact. The result of these decisions can ensure billions in corporate profits over the coming years.

And so, as you say, we don't get to have dispassionate debate in the facts, as the stakes are extremely high and incorrect conclusions can have disastrous consequences.

Let's hope that what you're describing will, in fact, unfold! A shareholder-induced leadership/direction change would be preferable to an embarrassing acquisition, especially given RIM's prestigious history.

For my money, I'll take the opposite side and say that RIM's too far gone down the entrenchment hole to recover with much dignity.

Right, the Gervais Principle is based on what employees know, think and expect, whereas the Iron Law of Bureaucracy is based on how employees act. Just two different ways of looking at the same fundamental principle: entitlement, while desirable, ultimately destroys groups.

RIM is now a textbook case of Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy (http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html) in action. Group one, the goal seekers, have been or are being forced out or converted to members of group two, the organization supporters. Those anonymous letters coming from the current and former employees? Just desperate attempts from group one employees to be heard over the crushing silence of the group two management structure.

Don't expect RIM's fortunes to turn around any time soon. Only a catastrophic business failure is going to shake up the management structure. With RIM's financials and market position, it could be years before that event comes to pass. Even then, there's no guarantee that RIM would really make a recovery. Most likely RIM will be absorbed by a larger competitor (and the current RIM top brass removed) before anything like real business failure can occur.

It's so painful to watch this. RIM has really made some great products and services.

Right, well the whole point to a "cure" is to not have to make lifestyle adjustments. Anyone who's looking to be rid of their diabetes without having to adjust their lifestyle is going to be disappointed by this research and it's conclusions. In fact, I imagine that some sufferers will be outright livid once they realize the full implications of the research results.

Basically, we're getting more conclusive research showing that type 2 diabetes (runs in my family) is a lifestyle disease. In other words: if you are diagnosed with type 2, it's your own fault.

Specifically, insulin resistance is caused by higher-than-normal levels of fat in the liver and pancreas. Belly fat doesn't matter much. Arm fat doesn't matter much. It's the fat in your organs that's gumming up the works. People are more or less prone to developing fatty organs, so diabetes rates vary between genetic/family backgrounds.

To me, this is all fantastic news. I imagine that many of us are prepared to make a few comfort sacrifices in order to avoid these types of diseases. There is still a very persistent mindset, though, that all body issues (even obesity) are caused by external factors and that the sufferers are just helpless victims. I wouldn't expect that anyone trapped in the "my type 2 is out of my control, but the cure is just around the corner" mindset is going to be welcoming of the crash diet research.

Just as there's nothing that gives conspiracy theorists more reinforcement than a government crackdown.

Read the whole article, but wanted to stop after the second paragraph. Choice quotation:

"The real innovation Groupon brought ... was their ability to profit off of closing the attribution loop in online-to-offline commerce. And this is a huge land grab that others had completely missed."

That's funny, because I thought that Groupon showed just the opposite of that. How exactly has Groupon proved that there's a profitable business in hooking up customers and businesses with slash-and-burn deals? Even taking half of the revenue, Groupon is bleeding money and admits that it is going to have to invest even more to keep up the growth curve.

I get that Groupon is popular, sure, but they'd be even more popular if they didn't take 50% of the coupon revenue. Of course, they'd be out of business sooner, as well. The "naysayers", like myself, are pointing out that Groupon (willfully or otherwise) hasn't found a balance that allows them to grow and actually turn a profit. What they have done is grow their userbase at an astonishing rate by raising and spending huge chunks of cash. That's not a business, that's a party. And parties, while fun to attend, are a bitch to clean up.

The explosion was likely a containment failure of the previously reported (radioactive) steam that had been building up in the containment building.

More info: http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Battle_to_stabilise_ear...

My point is that your conclusion was solely based on what you "know" and not what's really going on. You've illustrated my point very clearly. You "know" three things:

a) SSDs "need" TRIM support and driver support or the storage performance will greatly suffer b) Apple doesn't support TRIM, at least not officially c) Apple hasn't stated they will have TRIM support in the future

and from those three things, you're just sure that Apple's customers will pay some terrible price.

But you need to ask a few questions to back up what you "know":

1) Where are all of the "my MBA/MBP slows to crawl when the SSD is full" complaints? 2) Why would Apple bet the future of their OS X and iOS line of products on storage performance that painfully degrades with usage? 3) When, ever, has Apple displayed a stunning lack of foresight with their technology shifts that left millions of customers to twist in the wind?

When you add these to the mix, something doesn't add up. That should cause you to pause for a moment and say, hmm, perhaps I don't "know" everything. My reply was supposed to get you to say, "ah, I hadn't considered that." I was adding to the discussion by (trying to) provoke a bit of insightful reasoning beyond the typical "I'm sure I know what I'm talking about even though I haven't tested it."

Ignore me, though. It's just a debate with our opinions and perspectives. Look at the data, instead.

ugh's comment deserves to be upvoted because it links to benchmarked testing of Apple's SSD-bearing devices. The conclusion is clear: Apple's SSD performance isn't affected by a) and thus your line of reasoning is garbage. They were stunned and you should be too. I can confirm these benchmarks, if you don't trust them, by filling up the SSD on my own MBA. No performance penalties that I can see.

So, at least one of the three things that you "know" from a), b), and c) is wrong. Since you seemed to be teetering on the side of Schadenfreude with your original comment, I'm going to guess that you generally avoid Apple products and had genuinely wished that you were right or will be proven right. Ask yourself some questions from a different perspective next time or, better yet, look up some hard data. That way you will either learn that you are wrong earlier or will have some evidence to back up your opinion.

No, this isn't Apple's business and if you think this is how they operate then you haven't been paying attention. An SSD degradation issue would destroy the trust they (Apple) have built into their brand in a way that the supposed "scandal" of Antennagate never could.

You really think that Apple would let their SSD-buying customers twist in the wind? The people paying a premium, or buying an MacBook Air? You're saying that Apple hasn't had or won't have a way to make OS X love the SSD?

Apple, the company that will probably be the first major computer manufacturer to eliminate the spinning disks, the company that is doing whatever it can to snatch up flash memory production capacity. That same company is going to let the performance suffer on, like, all of their devices? Really?

No, sorry, you missed the point of the author's post. Read the last part again:

"My stress level of fighting machines to do basic things just got lower. And for that, I’ll gladly pay Apple the premium over buying base hardware and doing it all myself."

That's right, there are at least two things even more valuable to the author than having more freedom or the saving a bit of money: His time and sanity.

If you've gotten a computer to, you know, actually get stuff done, why spend any time fiddling with the software and hardware and get stressed out about it? Why even worry about drivers? Why not be able to double click and have stuff just open properly? Why spend hours trying to configure anything? Why not spend just a bit more cash and go from frustration to satisfaction?

This point is central to the reason why Linux, as it stands today, will never become a mainstream desktop alternative.

You sight Windows as having more troubles now than Linux. Fine. But where in the article did the author ever mention Windows? That battle was 10 years ago. The author is not even considering Windows. OS X has been a great desktop environment for years and now even the hardcore Linux enthusiasts are willing to pay Apple to kick the "battle your desktop" habit.

As for meaningful desktop innovation, there's been one thing that Linux desktops (Debian-based distributions, specifically) have that OS X doesn't. One killer feature: Package management with aptitude/Synaptic. Like it or not, aptitude/Synaptic is the best feature that Linux has been able to claim for itself. A one-stop-shop for all of those thousands and thousands of packages. And the upgrades. And the system upgrades. And the dependency management. Graphical, fast, categorized. It has been a wonder to use, truly.

Unfortunately, Apple now has the App Store for OS X and you can actually buy real, usable, curated, and user-rated apps for the desktop and get your updates from the same place. Whoops. Linux doesn't have a killer feature for the desktop anymore, if it ever did.

This is going to sound trollish, but I'll take a shot anyway: in three to five years, you'll be able to replace "MySpace" in this article with "Facebook" and it'll make perfect sense.

Making money is the key. MySpace wasn't able to do it with 100 million users and Facebook won't be able to do it with a billion users. Someday, perhaps, investors will learn that it's hard to make a killing by throwing free parties. If you're Twitter or Tumblr any similar social site, learn from these mistakes! By having Pro accounts, Flickr could last for decades with a decent return rate. Twitter and Facebook, on the other hand, will burn out in a few years if they don't find a sustainable source of revenue.

I highly recommend (as I do to all interested family, friends, and coworkers) that you wait, just a few months, until Apple has launched the new iPhone.

The worst case is that the iPhone 4 will be half the price of what it is today and you waited a bit (assuming no beneficial upgrades; unlikely) and the best case is that you'll get the new phone, with all of its features benefits, for the same price of today's iPhone 4 (much more likely).

D.) All of the above.

It seems somewhat fitting when we imagine that Goldman Sachs' customers are the wealthy with "more money than sense," but it's not so funny when the investors turn out to be Universities, charities, pension funds, and the mutual funds trusted with your parents' retirement money...

Going back and re-reading the "Goldman's Facebook Offer" email, I can't figure out how it would get past a spam filter.

It's a scam of the pump-and-dump variety, plain and simple. Look forward a few investors and investment banks making out like bandits and the rest getting screwed.

I just spent an hour yesterday explaining to a coworker that correlation != causation, data and statistics can easily deceive, and that most published study findings are likely incorrect. It was a little soul-crushing, therefore, to run across this headline and simultaneously hear an uncritical summary of this study on NPR this morning...

Said coworker told me, after seeing that correlation != causation, that she was never taught that in school. I replied that likely she had but that the concept is easy to forget and almost never reinforced in daily life. Thinking about it today, it seems like nearly all marketing efforts try to convince the intended audience that correlation == causation.

I'm glad you elaborated on your original comment, but you're showing the fallacy of a zero-sum game perspective between Microsoft and Sony. I'd consider both companies to have lost, and lost greatly, to Apple. The battle over media formats and the console market share opened the door to disruptive products and services from Apple. Both Microsoft and Sony gave up an early lead in the mobile device market to Apple, as well. If they aren't sweating yet about those little $99 iOS boxes from Apple, then they still aren't paying attention.

Well you'll get no disagreement with me that "try it and see" is a good thing and needs to be funded. What the author is saying, and I take as a very insightful point, is that you're unlikely to efficiently find a project's make-or-break point if you're always awash in cash. Time and resources tend to get used if they are available. Research tends to recommend more research. Delivering a self-sustaining product is hard compared to discovering and exploring within a sandbox.

What the "startup" mentality has that the cash cow companies lack is the sink-or-swim pressures that create success or failure from new projects. Market pressures, in other words. Cash cow companies can afford to have many projects in limbo, sucking time and energies away from progressing towards projects that will ultimately succeed.

Because cash cow companies (by their very nature) haven't had to develop many successful projects, they tend not to be very good at it. Not only that, but cash cow company executives often become fearful of any line of development that may undermine the cash cow's market performance. When those two factors coexist, you're left with a company that's not only painted itself into a corner, but has also forgotten how to paint.

BTW, I think Twitter sounded like a simple idea on paper, but certainly not a stupid one. If a small group of people finds a passionate use case, there are likely others out there who will feel the same.

One of the author's points is that things like Twitter are not being developed and released by Google and Microsoft, despite the massive R&D spending. Furthermore, the only reason why we have Twitter at all is because those founding developers didn't happen to be working for one of the cash cow diseased companies.

I believe you just inadvertently proved the author's point. The cash cow products allow the insanity to continue, which wastes the potential of the employees and resources. The "cognitive decline" that the author mentions is the rationalization that allows this wasteful process to continue.

Poor, short-sighted leadership is the root cause of cash cow disease, not the profit itself.

Exactly. I read an article like this as implying that, "serious money is only for executives and rich people, not for workers. Workers are commodities, tools."

From the article: "How many lives could be saved through research, aid, or vaccines? How much good could be done with $3.5 million?" The author is literally implying that giving $3.5 million to a world-class engineer is a waste. Not a word about the millions or billions of dollars of compensation for management, as you said. None. It's as if the author can't possibly imagine that a single engineer could do work valued at $3.5 million, ever.

What causes this type of mentality? What is this even called? Crab-bucket mentality? Self loathing? It's one thing to see workers struggling for fair compensation for their contribution to an organization's financial success and quite another to see a resistance "from within" to that struggle. Don't programmers, engineers, designers, etc. want their peers to be more successful?

One way to look at this failure to innovate is to see plain old leadership ignorance: Microsoft, despite all of their efforts and hired brainpower, just hasn't been able to connect these dots. The GP sees this failure as something else: continued unwillingness, by the corporate leadership, to seriously support these innovation efforts. I agree.

If you disagree and think that Microsoft's leadership is willing to change and has just not been able to, then their leadership must be phenomenally incompetent. Just ask yourself, what's their cohesive product strategy? Where's their commitment to excellence? How many of these research projects are designed to build on the strengths of Microsoft's offerings or fix their weaknesses? Why aren't these research projects winnowed down into economically viable and marketable products and services? What's the corporate vision?

A simpler explanation is that the leadership of Microsoft is afraid of anything that competes with their two cash cows: Windows and Office. If this explanation is correct, then any product or service that Microsoft makes (or participates in) will be sufficiently hobbled in order to keep Windows and Office at the forefront of their offerings. It's their "strategy tax." Mobile devices and web services both compete with Windows and Office, in some way, so the company has done relatively little to advance in these two areas.

It doesn't matter which way you look at it, though: spending billions and having little success to show for it isn't a merit badge, it's a mark of failure.

What's particularly vexing to me is that Microsoft seems to have given up on giving developers the best experience, as well. Why would anyone want to develop a web app targeted for IE 7.5, especially given that the market share of this new IE version will be squat for awhile, perhaps always. Will WP8 bring about a new custom flavor of IE? Will there be an upgrade, mid-cycle?

In the same vein: A lot of criticism has been leveled at the new WP7 ads, but I haven't seen much coverage from the developers' perspective. Is Microsoft implying that WP7 customers aren't going to spend much time on their phones? Again, why develop for or port to the WP7 platform if Microsoft's ad strategy is based on the idea that the customer won't actually use the device that often or for very long.

Perhaps it's hubris or just ignorance on their part, but making things harder or more confusing for developers isn't going to bring in the profit for third-party developers or Microsoft.

No plan B? Hah! Let's face it already: there will be no IPv6 transition.

Eight years ago, I was in the "more effort needed" school of thought about IPv6. I figured we'd slowly update our programs and toolkits and libraries and reference material and college textbooks and switches, etc., and by 2005 it'd be about the right time to switch over. It will be painful, I thought, but necessary and ultimately a very good thing. So I waited and watched, much as I'm sure many of the HN readers have been doing. I figured that those people who are smarter and more connected than me would form the leadership of the IPv6 migration and show the rest of us the way to 128-bit Internet addressing bliss.

Realistically, though, we're no closer to a workable migration to IPv6 today then we were in 2002. Since then, we've managed to switch from analog to digital TV (at least in the US), migrate most software from ISO-8859-1 to some flavor of Unicode, settle the Blueray/HD-DVD format war, increment the USB protocol twice, formalize HTML into HTML 4.0 and XHTML and HTML 5, and virtualize or emulate every major operating system onto every major hardware platform. But nothing of any substance has happened on the IPv6 front.

The reasons for the lack of progress have been clearly laid out by others, but the unspoken sad reality is that we're wasting our time with IPv6. Even to say "IPv6 migration" implies that it will happen and thus IPv6 is the only solution to IPv4's woes. We're torturing ourselves with IPv6 by going on like this and it's not bringing us any closer to a solution! At this point, there's no reason not to start looking for workable extensions to IPv4 (and TCP/IP in general) to address the issues we're having.

I'd bet that a small group of dedicated engineers could come up with an compatible extension to IPv4 (that expands the address space) and could develop a workable migration strategy, example code, socket library modifications, and a compatible version of Ubuntu all within a year. Imagine the excitement if IPv6 could be sent to the circular file and a clear alternative was not only proposed, but downloadable.

So, in short, that's my solution: cast off IPv6 as the death march project that it is and get excited about a minimum viable product (see what I did there?) alternative to IPv4.

Oh, and since this is HN: I'm sure that there's just no way to make money from an extension to IPv4. No consumer going to need a converter box, to sit between their modem and LAN, right? I mean, the government would have to offer rebates. Madness! No businesses are going to need consulting services or contracted coding work. Nope. It certainly won't be like Y2K, but even it it was I'm sure no one made any money from that transition...

Seriously, Joel, Facebook just needs to "optimize" a bit and they'll be more profitable? Really? With a valuation of $33 billion, Facebook needs to make a bit more than a dime or two extra from their users. They need a ton of real dollars from each and every user or (more likely) dozens or hundreds of dollars from some users and nothing from the rest. How are they going to do that, exactly?

How will Facebook change its platform to convert its hundreds of millions of users, who signed up for a free party, into billions of dollars per year without spoiling the party? No one likes getting invited to a party with their friends only to find that the beer isn't free after 11:30, or worse, they've been tricked into attending an MLM meeting. If Facebook could convert eyeballs to dollars the way Google can, there was no reason not to do so when they had 50 million users, or 100 million, or 200 million... It hasn't been done, though, because it would spoil the party and stop that lovely flow of VC money.

I am just gobsmacked that, within just a few years of the US housing market bubble popping and the financial empires getting caught with their pants down, you would continue to support the speculators' fantasy of pre-IPO tech valuations. These types of valuations aren't just irresponsible or insane, they're scams! The consumers have no money or credit left, so the easy money is going to come from gullible investors.

You're right: completely invisible. Wave would have been so cool if Google had plopped it right on top of Gmail, like Gchat and Buzz. Our Wave-enabled contacts would have gotten their messages as waves, seamlessly, and non-Wave contacts would have continued to receive regular emails. Wave collaboration could have been supported with notification emails to non-Wave contacts, like "we're editing this on Wave, so click here {...} to join in." Best of all, every Gmail user would have been upgraded to Wave... I thought that was supposed to be the plan! What a waste.

I'd like to ask one of the top Googlers just what they were thinking by positioning Wave as a replacement to email, chat, and online collaboration and NOT integrating those services into Wave itself. IPv4 to IPv6, hello! No migration plan means no migration. Email support means being able to use Wave and email at the same time; not having to choose.

Still trying to wrap my head around this, but at this point I'm not sure what's worse: a) Planning, developing, implementing, marketing, and supporting Wave as communications platform without regards to Gmail, Gchat, and Buzz or b) Axing Wave before trying to add Gmail, Gchat, and Buzz support

I don't think the article was disputing the original work contracts or implying that any part of the contracts were illegal or deceptive. Instead, the programmers mentioned in the article were upset because they became aware of just how valuable their work and knowledge can be. Those past high frequency trading work contracts are over and done with, but that doesn't mean the programmers need to take the same terms for future work. In fact, with some investment of their own, they may be able to supplant some of the established trading house market with their own startups and actually receive the fruits of their labor. What a concept!

Wealth is all about percentages and the standard profit percentage share for professionals and engineers, "big-corp" or otherwise, is 0%. These programmers left to start their own trading companies, likely because the salary bumps being offered (a measly $45,000 extra on $150,000 base salary, in the example) were insulting compared to the revenue being generated directly from their work. That's demonstrable value. Consider: a 1% profit share from the example in the article would be over $300,000 per year. Not a large bonus at all for a financial managers or executive, but not an outlandish bonus for a highly valuable member of a lucrative enterprise, either.

Your last paragraph sounds a lot like, "keep your head down and be thankful you have a job." I assume you're just defending the status-quo and pointing out the tradeoff between sharing the risk/reward and being comfortably salaried. You can't possibly be implying that programmers or other skilled professionals shouldn't even try to negotiate better contracts, right?

This step-by-step script building demonstration (with highlighted "new" lines!) is just awesome. I've seen this approach in a couple of programming books, but hardly ever on programming blogs.