So I came across a slashdot article about new solar cells that set some efficiency records. Almost all of the initial comments say the same thing: Yeah, but when can I buy it? That's the trouble with a lot of the new technology announcements in todays world. People want it now. They don't want to know that a breakthrough has been made, they want to know how it's going to make their life better, products cheaper, or things faster.
This 'improvement' isn't going to help 'general' solar usage much at all from what I can tell. Yeah, it may be very efficient, making it great for space/satalite usage, but becuase it uses gallium and indium. Scarce and expensive (not to mention a little toxic) elements. The goal would be to get efficient solar cells that don't rely on scarce materials to work. Oh well, it's a step in the right direction.
So there's been a bit of a dust-up going on over mid-tier storage going on. Chuck Hollis from EMC posted an interesting idea about evaluating "Usable Capacity" for arrays. He focused on an exchange use case. He compared the recently released CX4, NetApp's FAS series, and HP's EVA. Three very competitive models. He then proceeds to say why he thinks the CX4 is a better value because it achieves a 70% Storage Capacity Efficiency. That is, 70% of the raw is usable. He then does the same thing for the other two giving an HP EVA 47.2% and NetApp 33.61%. There's a pretty good set of links associated with it to show he's not making these numbers up. Problem is, like with anything, there's more than one way to do something. And boy did NetApp fans (and some employees) and EVA fans (and some employees) let him have it. There was also a follow-up post by Chuck Hollis And in the comments for both posts, NetApp and EVA champions throw some counter-evidence and poke holes in the configurations (which were worse case in my opinion) Chuck used that made the other offerings suffer in comparison. So when you change configurations to ones that favor NetApp or HP, they each best EMC (of course they do...). The truth is always somewhere in the middle.
The tit-for-tat bickering that went on in the comments ran the gamut. Some were very insightful and pointed out areas that Chuck should consider. Chuck also responded to some of the comments in a respectable (although somewhat antagonistic) manor. Some of the comments were down right rude. I guess an average day on the internet, come to think of it. My beef is Chuck's taking the worst case or outdated case scenarios for the competitors while using the new-car-smell versions of EMC's products. He hides behind the idea of "show me the document on their website that says that" mantra. Some commenters rightfully called him out to produce the same for his gear. This all took place before the long labor-day weekend so it'll be interesting to see if it keeps it's momentum this week or if the down time has tempered people's zeal.
It also reminded me of a bit from Comedy Central's The Daily Show from back in May. In it Terry McAuliffe (Hillary campaign staff) and Chris Matthews (MSNBC commentator) engage in what Jon Stewart calls a "West Virginia Douche-Off". I got that kind of vibe from from the back and forth between the NetApp and EMC crowd. You can see the clip here (it's the last 1:42 of the clip, starts around the 6-minute mark):
