Some of my servers have been flagged at about 100 emails a day to multiple users at yahoo. Hotmail seems to be around the same too.

Yahoo even sends you a message saying they've blocked you and to check out their website for options.

Colonel Sandurz: Prepare the lawnmower for light speed.
Dark Helmet: No, no, no, light speed is too slow.
Colonel Sandurz: Light speed, too slow?
Dark Helmet: Yes, we're gonna have to go right to ludicrous speed.

OK. While I don't agree with what Childs did - or is suspected of doing, I don't believe that "getting things in writing" is going to do any good either.

I don't know what kind of idealistic companies you work for, but the majority of companies, and small-to-medium ones at that, have no real recourse for bad decision making. Getting something in writing is only useful if you have the money to sue them after they fire you - because they will. And even if you sue, you need a judge and lawyers that understand technology for it to be successful.

What's that you say? If this is the outcome, perhaps he should have found another job earlier? Yes, sure, of course, whatever makes you feel better. The truth is, when push comes to shove, the Boss will get rid of anyone who can point the finger at him, and this is almost universal across companies.

You mean all the news that's 3 days old? Why, we have /. already.

Who do you think sponsored Hitler's public book burnings?

I was referring to the practice of Google datamining your search and Internet history through the various methods they have in place.

Last time I checked, MS didn't upload the contents of your hard drive and CDROMs to their servers in order to sell you similar things. Throw up a packet analyzer on your network - do you see GBs of data going to MS? I don't think so...

"Hello?"

"Hi, It's MS calling, we noticed you put in a CDROM of Adobe Flash yesterday evening...we figured you might be interested in Silverlight instead?"

Because this is the equivalent of Google's practice with Adwords, Adsense, Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Search History, Google Toolbar, Gmail, etc...AND THEY TELL YOU THEY ARE DOING IT...

MS has some tricky things about them, yes, but the whole premise of the parent article is that Bing doesn't collect as much data, and use it against you (or for your own good!) like Google does.

When I saw that "funny" mockup of Google and the phrase "where are my fucking keys" - and google returns "on the fridge, where you left them dipshit" - I honestly thought this is where it is headed.

Google has made no secret of wanting to control the entire Internet experience for a user from content down to how you access that content. They have both sides of the market cornered, from a user and a webmaster's perspective.

They control most of the advertising, and they control (directly through analytics, or indirectly through adsense tracking) your website statistics. They know where a user goes to, and from, they know which sites. They know what you search for. If you've actually read the adsense terms, you'll know they tell you they use all the information they have on you to target advertisements...ON ANY SITE.

If you search for "buy a cadillac" and you then go to another website, if the cadillac ads are permitted to run on that site, it is likely you'll see them, or other ads Google has specifically targeted to you. It is no longer the job of the webmaster to do this.

I like Google, but the amount of information they have, if they DID decide to be evil, they would be the WORST company, because Microsoft holds absolutely nothing compared to what Google has on you.

I've always wondered what would happen today if I searched for the cookbook...would I get flagged...who knows. I remember 15 years ago the thing was practically a staple for all kids on the Internet.

If anything there has been a huge increase. They just call it different things - autism, down syndrome, middle management, liberal arts...

This is why man invented global warming.

I was responding to the poster above me who suggested RAID.

I know that. I was suggesting Tape was a more ideal solution due to the longevity of support from major server vendors, etc.

I also made a point to note that I had seen Tapes covered in mould that did not work.

If you had read my response to the parent poster in this conversation you would have seen I was responding to questions and suggestions posed not by the article, but by another poster.

RAID is not backup or archive. If you have a RAID1 system with bit errors on one disk - you now have them on the other disk.

Using more complex RAID configs does not necessarily solve the problem.

With archiving, the problem becomes apparent after you pull out your media after 7 years of not using it. Is that parallel ATA hard drive you stored it on still good? Do you have a connection for it? What about those zip and jazz drives you used? Do you have a method of reading them? Are those DVDs and CDs still good? Did you accidentally burn them using DirectCD years ago?

For any archiving solution tapes are still king. The LTO and Dat72 varieties have been around for a long time, and each manufacturer pledges a certain timeframe for device support and even more have services to retrieve files long after the storage media is unsupported.

Not many companies have temperature and moisture controlled vaults for archive storage - but still, people, use some common sense. I've seen tapes in such bad condition, growing mould because they've been stored under bathroom counters.

This will be interesting when soldiers begin to bluescreen on the battlefield.

Commanding Officer: So what happened out there?
Soldier: Well, Bill got freaked out, said he didn't know what to do...said the simulation stopped whenever a baddy got too close.
Commanding Officer: So what happened?
Soldier: Well, he just froze up, completely. I hit him a couple times, even re(peatedly) booted him, nothing.
Commanding Officer: Where's Bill now?
Soldier: He finally reanimated and ran off screaming something about a pagefault.

I'm guessing the reason why is that the Somali pirates don't look like Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom...

Wow, it takes talent to be modded offtopic on an offtopic conversation.