Storage: Storage requirements, more often than not, are grossly overestimated. There you have it, the clandestine reality you're not supposed to know. But you likely already do. Only thing is, it's not that simple. A typical enterprise situation involves "authority without responsibility," explains Mario Apicella in Thin provisioning, fat savings. "For larger companies that buy millions of dollars of storage, thin provisioning is too good an opportunity to pass on because in addition to the financial aspects they also save kilowatts/hr or at least push back in time the demand."

Columnist's corner: Lamenting for the bygone days of old-fashioned film, Tom Yager points out that in the case of digital photography more really is less. And we're all the worse for it. "Having 12 or 36 images on a roll put me on a budget to shoot only that which was worth remembering," he explains in Digital living means digital junk. "Some things don't make the analog-to-digital leap so well ... for our sake and the sake of those who might want to know something about us after we're gone, perhaps we should take pictures as if we're on our last roll of film, and write like we're using our last sheet of paper. Anything we commit to digital posterity in that frame of mind is worth archiving."

Notes from the field: Robert X. Cringely is hardly the nostalgic type. But in More thoughts on terror and bombs, he reflects on the six months since his weekly column morphed into a basically daily blog. His two most commented-upon posts are about the Creation Museum and, more recently, Star Simpson. The latter drew many harsh responses. "Several readers believed Simpson should have been shot and/or carted off to Guantanamo Bay for a few years," Cringe reports. "I realized later I should have offered up more details of the incident, since many posters seem to have the wrong idea about what happened."

The news beat: A report published by StopBadware.org finds that trusted Web sites are being hacked and don't even know it. Microsoft launches an enterprise antipiracy program that it claims will help large customers "get legal" if they're found in violation. Apple competitors are touting their own openness in relation to the iPhone. And with its support of Rich Internet applications, Adobe has become a target for malicious hackers.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on October 3, 2007 10:53 AM