functional_test

I understand some of the reasons people didn't like Mongo, but this always vexed me. The default write level was very clearly documented and you could always change it as necessary. Surely it would be necessary to read the documentation of a database before rolling it out to production?

I use it to store a lot of historical time series data that doesn't change once written (at least, not often). I can easily achieve the write performance necessary to record the data streams live. Since it's all append-only, I don't need to worry about fragmentation. With replication, it's possible to access the data with very high throughput which is useful when the data is being accessed by a cluster, for example.

I also use it as a metadata "scratch space" for highly available applications (things where failures are not acceptable and must run for days at a time). Again, with replication and automatic fail overs, I've been able to maintain 100% uptime outside of maintenance windows. Obviously that can't last, but so far it's been >2 years with no major problems.

EDIT: I should point out that although the size of the metadata objects can be highly variable, since I usually had a small number of them relative to the time series, fragmentation was still not an issue.

He's right that MongoDB could use improvements like string interning so you don't need to worry about field names. But overall, I think this article is very misleading.

If you use MongoDB in production, you should definitely take he time to learn about the durability options on the database side AND in your driver. By using them appropriately, you can have as little or as much as you like. Data sets larger than 100GB are no problem either -- right now I'm running an instance with a 1.6TB database.

As always, use the right tool for the right job. If you need joins/etc. and don't need unstructured data, Mongo probably isn't a great choice (even with the aggregation framework).

The article also mentioned the other effects of the tsunami: telephone poles, styrofoam, pieces of buildings, etc. were all still floating. Again, an accident, but it's hard to deny that it's preventable; at least one town was saved by a sea wall that was relatively inexpensive to build [1].

That said, overfishing is probably the worse problem since it's not tractable to enforce regulations (since police aren't on site to ensure that there isn't too much "extra" catch thrown back, etc.). At least it would be possible to mandate the construction of seawalls.

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386978/The-Japanese...

Maybe I misread the parent, but I took it less as a defense of Microsoft, and more as a meta-comment about the frequency of comments which have no actual substance beyond opinion.

You should probably watch Gattaca - the answer to your question is pretty much the whole point of that film. Or if you don't want to watch, at least to read the first two paragraphs of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca.

Since you're being downvoted, but no one has commented to explain why (it's not just that your opinion is unpopular), I feel like I should put in my thoughts. I once felt the way you do, but upon reflection I don't any longer, so I thought I should share why.

While you may believe that current surveillance has gone too far, advocating for no security is much too far the other direction. As usual, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

Without any visas or border control, you have no way to prevent ingress and egress of known criminals, people carrying infectious diseases, or any of myriad other actually real threats. Just because people exaggerate threats like terrorism does not mean there is nothing to defend against.

It is also important to prevent people who have no means of sustenance from moving into your country and becoming a burden. In no way am I implying that exceptions should not be granted for asylum or other exceptional circumstances. However, being in a country is a bit like being in a club -- everyone pays dues (taxes) and there are perks too. Why should club members want to give everyone the perks while they have all the responsibilities?

Your thought that people should try to be closer to one another is admirable, but I think if you reflect on it further, you'll agree that some forms of restriction are necessary.

Honestly, how many times does the link between vaccines and autism have to be disproven before people get it?

On the other hand, there is a direct link between not being vaccinated and getting sick. Probably why they want to vaccinate against everything. Even chicken pox can cause more severe disease like shingles [1].

You wouldn't want your kids riding in a car with only the safety features that existed when you were a child. Why would you do the same for their health?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_zoster

I always wonder when I see things like this -- are there actually people who will work for free just to apply for a job?

I do not mean this as snark. And I certainly would be open to the idea of a trial period or working on an in house project after the interview. But to ask someone to put in hours just for the possibility of an interview seems like a very asymmetric request. Am I off base here?

EDIT: It's probably worth noting that I work more on the software side than the design side.

Oracle? =)

Initially I had the same thought as the parent post, but this is a good point. No one ever really heard about 10gen; it was always MongoDB. Their events were always Mongo titled (MongoDB Days) and even their emails are @mongodb.com. In a way it was already their primary brand, might as well make it official.

You're confusing concurrency [1] and parallelism [2] -- this is addressed on the bullet point before the one you quoted.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrency_(computer_science)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_computing