From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Sep 16 23:51:21 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4405216A4D3; Thu, 16 Sep 2004 23:51:21 +0000 (GMT) Received: from tinker.exit.com (tinker.exit.com [206.223.0.1]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C5E5E43D31; Thu, 16 Sep 2004 23:51:19 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from frank@exit.com) Received: from realtime.exit.com (realtime [206.223.0.5]) by tinker.exit.com (8.12.11/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i8GNoF6i006599; Thu, 16 Sep 2004 16:51:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from frank@exit.com) Received: from realtime.exit.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by realtime.exit.com (8.12.11/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i8GNoF1J068130; Thu, 16 Sep 2004 16:50:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from frank@realtime.exit.com) Received: (from frank@localhost) by realtime.exit.com (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id i8GNoFVU068129; Thu, 16 Sep 2004 16:50:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from frank) From: Frank Mayhar Message-Id: <200409162350.i8GNoFVU068129@realtime.exit.com> In-Reply-To: <20040916194526.GA3364@VARK.homeunix.com> To: David Schultz Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 16:50:15 -0700 (PDT) X-Copyright0: Copyright 2004 Frank Mayhar. All Rights Reserved. X-Copyright1: Permission granted for electronic reproduction as Usenet News or email only. X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL119 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org cc: Frank Knobbe Subject: Re: ZFS X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: frank@exit.com List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 23:51:21 -0000 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@exit.com http://www.exit.com/ Exit Consulting http://www.gpsclock.com/ http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/