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I agree that industrialised farming is very upsetting. (I am a life-long vegetarian, by the way!) Have you watched the film Samsara? To quote Jason Kottke, some of the scenes give a "full visual meaning to the mass production of food."

But the analogy holds. On any sort of farm (even a vegetable farm) units of production are fungible commodities. And it turns out that this notion of fungibility is very important in post-virtualisation architectures.

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Indeed. Although, I really expect such a high mind to come out with a much better metaphor of fungibilty (which shouldn't be so hard a concept for sys admins and the like). Other examples: paper napkins vs silk napkins; Stylographic pen vs bic pens. And so on.

I haven't seen Samsara, but I've taken a note. Vegetarian here, too. I just read "Eating animals" (by JS Foer). That's a very good read, but as an European I must say it feels like it's written from a pretty U.S.-centric standpoint.

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