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Google

Google Envisions 10 Million Servers 169

Posted by kdawson from the up-scale dept.
miller60 writes "Google never says how many servers are running in its data centers. But a recent presentation by a Google engineer shows that the company is preparing to manage as many as 10 million servers in the future. At this month's ACM conference on large-scale computing, Google's Jeff Dean said he's working on a storage and computation system called Spanner, which will automatically allocate resources across data centers, and be designed for a scale of 1 million to 10 million machines. One goal: to dynamically shift workloads to capture cheaper bandwidth and power. Dean's presentation (PDF) is online."
Programming

Submission + - Blizzard asserts rights over independent addons

Submitted by bugnuts
bugnuts writes: Blizzard announced a policy change to Addons for the popular game World of Warcraft which asserts requirements on UI programmers, such as charging for the program, obfuscation, soliciting donations, etc. Addons are voluntarily-installed UI programs that add functionality to the game, programmed in Lua, which can do various tasks that hook into the WoW engine. The new policy has some obvious requirements such as not loading the servers or spamming users, and it looks like an attempt to make things more accessible and free for the end user. But unlike FOSS, it adds other requirements that assert control over these independently coded programs, such as distribution and fees.

Blizzard can already control the ultimate functionality of Addons by changing the hooks into the WoW engine. They have exercised this ability in the past, e.g. to disable addons that automate movement and "one-button" combat. Should they be able to make demands on independent programmers' copyrighted works, such as download fees or advertising, who are not under contract to code for Blizzard? Is this like Microsoft asserting control over what programmers may code for Windows?

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