Hypertable vs. HBase Performance Evaluation

What a strange thing to say, given that it's probably very likely that the implementations probably work pretty differently internally. You'd probably see similar differences with such a different implementation no matter the language, assuming it isn't something ridiculous like Ruby (I'm a Ruby programmer, don't bite).

Secondly, isn't the overhead for a database mostly disk IO? I realize a finely tuned DB/server is probably CPU-bound instead, but that's generally assuming that the working set fits snugly into RAM and gets cached. Which may not quite be the case when you operate the scale at which you'd resort to HBase/HyperTable.

"Hey Doug: Please undo your purchase of the hbase adword. There are plenty of open forums for disseminating your message and on which hbasers can respond should they wish but your purchase of the hbase adword leaves us only one response and thats to outbid you. The only winner in that game will be google."

I really don't understand why some people persist in engaging in language/platform wars; particularly professionals operating at this level.

Who really cares if one product is running on top of a JVM and the other is compiled machine code - isn't the real issue the performance, reliability and features?