Fuck all.

What could cause the corruption:
Cosmic rays, Bad sectors, Weird bugs

Why is this a problem:
"Unless it is very carefully done, this kind of format could lose a lot of logging data as the result of a relatively small corruption"
  (http://lwn.net/Articles/467892/)

You can script mysql databases, assuming the data files are intact, mysql is intact and runs on the server, and you have functioning tools and the skill to use them. ASCII logfiles will be readable in spite of spot corruption and can be processed with grep / head / tail -- if these primitives don't work it probably doesn't matter what's in the log.

The wise professional is intensely mistrustful of innovation. Innovation introduces new failure modes and deprecates tested methods and experience. Innovation is always born half baked, unreliable and unsupported. By the time all the problems are solved with a given innovation, it's design will typically prove to be just as compromised and unsexy as its predecessor - and then the cycle of "innovation" repeats. Some innovations have sufficient value to overcome their costs - many don't.

And who said that OSS was about innovation?

More power than an old line Cray, more like. Coolest gd'd thing.

What would you suggest instead? I used to run Linux on the desktop, but the $50 I paid for RAM is nothing next to the time and frustration of dealing with the user-hostility of the developer community. I've done Windows, but that's no fun. Mac OS X sucks worse than every operating system but the ones that exist.

I figured that Apple is using +/- standard chipsets now. So I looked up the memory spec for my laptop (DDR2-1NNN where N is a number I don't remember), and picked an inexpensive kit off newegg where there were some reviews reporting that it worked in macbooks. For the price I figured it was worth buying something that hadn't had the relevant dead chicken waved over it.

Good for you.

My late 2009 macbook would randomly beachball when I had it on Snow Leopard at 2GB. Maybe because of the combo of a largish itunes library and using Firefox (maybe not my best decision). By this release though 8gb slots in fine and didn't cost me much more than $50. Combined with a fast hard disk (and dumping firefox), it's back to being my favorite computer.

I barely got my new mini booted before running back to Microcenter to get an 8gb kit.

My experience is that a Mac with a recent OS rev is almost unusable with 2GB of memory. 8GB and it sings.

On the requires Windows side:
  - garbage CRM uses ActiveX
  - Exchange

Doesn't work with Linux:
  - the iPhone

On the tired of Linux side (used linux from ancient days):
  - developers keep fiddling with my interface
  - hardware support still uneven and unreliable, especially graphics and (surprisingly) network
  - inconsistent copy/paste behavior
  - Netflix, espn3

I used to have time to fiddle with this sort of thing. I don't want to do that anymore.

C (and for that matter unix) reflect a very specific aesthetic. C was by no means inevitable - there were plenty of other languages forty years ago, some of which are more "modern" than C. It is the aesthetic of the language that makes it so beloved (and despised), and that we owe to a very few people.

The direction of the T4 has been set for some time. It's overdue - the single thread performance on the T series is basically miserable and has barely improved since the original T chips. My job involves doing a lot of single thread activities on T series hardware, and that makes me a sad panda.

It is simply easier and less fiddly to manage applications when they are all totally isolated from each other. I've found that it's pretty damn complicated (especially if your dumb ass sales guys haven't negotiated a proper maintenance window) to negotiate downtime across multiple customers or constituencies. Applications step on each other, have subtly different requirements and expectations, and generally expect to be the only thing running on a system. For instance you stick multiple applications in that one database - and then one application requires you to upgrade and one requires you to not upgrade. And the same goes for web servers - suddenly you find yourself stuck on Apache 2.0 because you require some crufty plug in.

All of this can be worked around with a bit of cleverness and perseverance but hardware is cheap and good IT guys aren't.

Enjoy providing free computer support to your family and friends. I have other priorities.