No, in the big banks, it's the disk servers that do the mirroring themselves, not the application servers. Except for software updates and configuration changes, the application servers just sit idle at the backup site.

Life is change. Stop whining and get over it, or write your own stagnant website that never adapts itself to any new technology. Maybe you could even write it in COBOL, just for giggles. :P

I notice all the whiners and trolls bitching about the layout changes are Anonymous Cowards.

Somehow it figures that people so lazy that they can't be bothered registering an account would also be the first to complain.

You're always welcome to just fuck off and go elsewhere to whimper on the internet, you know? Try Facebook -- they seem to love pathetic whiners and drama queens like you.

Just wait until someone from Quebec wants to use whatever you're producing and you'll be hearing from the lawyers.

We have that strong economy as a result...

Apparently you haven't been reading the same news feeds I have over the past few years. The whole world's economy has been in the shitter for a long time now.

Fair is fair -- why are celebrities allowed to go by their stage names?

Note that although there are 7-bit character sets that will support each of the European languages, you have to use a multi-byte set in order to support all of those languages in one database. Splitting your data on language barriers isn't very effective, and would complicate systems even more than MBCS do.

This.

And further to what the parent poster said, there is the issue of whether Silicon Valley is really any "better" when you consider the number of FAILED companies it has produced. I think the Europeans are a lot smarter about their investments than North Americans; both Canadians and Americans are far more prone to gamble on someone with a good story than they are in Europe.

Even Canada suffers on the "Silicon Valley" front because we're required by law to deploy systems in both French and English on launch, which makes software a lot harder to develop. Especially when you consider the fact that you don't even need to fuss around with multi-byte character sets to support English.

Unfortunately the drug delivery system explodes half way to the patient... :P :P :P

With one key difference. The crowding out is being caused by humans and humans alone; die-offs as a result of "extinction events" are unavoidable natural catastrophes. There is absolutely nothing "unavoidable" or "natural" about the way mankind is butchering this planet.

You do realize that "race" is merely an accident of melanin levels and sun exposure?

Nah, of course not. When it was time to learn grade school biology, you took that as your cue to fuck your cousin.

We're not in the middle of an "extinction event" -- we're simply crowding out other species and consuming their habitats.

There is a world of difference between an asteroid strike and bulldozing the rain forest.

Why shouldn't death come for a robot? Where is it written that robots should be granted immortality, even if they are sentient?

All things come to an end. Even metal and plastic.

Every single time a leap second comes up in the future, we have these panic-stricken articles predicting doom and gloom for some services.

If you haven't figured out how to deal with leap seconds that have been an issue since the '70s, I say your service DESERVES to crash and burn, and you DESERVE to spend long and stressful hours dealing with the mess.

Leap seconds aren't a surprise to ANYONE with a functioning brain cell.

Read between the lines of what the summary is complaining about. Apparently the slashdroids have that fantasy.