ZFS

[Frank Mayhar]

David Schultz wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2004, Frank Knobbe wrote:
> > On Thu, 2004-09-16 at 11:20, Bruce M Simpson wrote:
> > > On Thu, Sep 16, 2004 at 11:12:16AM -0400, Kevin A. Pieckiel wrote:
> > > > Where on earth would you find a disk system that can store 2^64 bytes of
> > > > data or larger, anyway? 
> > > You can bet that somebody, somewhere, needs this right now. And someone
> > > will definitely need it in the next 5-10 years.
> > Naahh... there is No Such Application for it.  ;)
> Actually, there are a number of parties---banks, governments,
> geneticists, and Internet search engines, for instance---who
> never seem to have enough storage.

Not to mention the folks to whom Frank was (very obliquely) referring.

This whole argument just seems silly to me.  So what if 128 bits seems
large?  Thirty years ago it would have seemed utterly ludicrous that an
individual could possibly ever use even a few gigabytes of storage, but
in this room I have .75 terabyte online.  A zetabyte may seem like a lot
now, but in thirty years?  Who knows?

I think that the one thing we can say is that there's pretty much zero
chance that we can predict what the future will bring, "number of particles
in the observable universe" notwithstanding.  Personally, I think that an
apparently infinite address space is a _good_ thing.  At least we won't run
out soon, right? :-)
-- 
Frank Mayhar frank at exit.com	http://www.exit.com/
Exit Consulting                 http://www.gpsclock.com/
                                http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/