Great quote from Voldemort author Jay Kreps
“Reading papers: essential. Slavishly implementing ideas you read: not necessarily a good idea. Trust me, I wrote an Amazon Dynamo clone.” Later in the discussion, on complex conflict resolution logic (as used in Dynamo, Voldemort, and Riak): “I reviewed 200 Voldemort stores, 190 used default lww conflict resolution. 10 had custom logic, all 10 of which had bugs.” — https://twitter.com/jaykreps/statuses/528292617784537088 (although IMO I’d prefer complex resolution to non-availability, when AP is required)
(tags: voldemort jay-kreps dynamo cap-theorem ap riak papers lww conflict-resolution distcomp)
Rails migrations with no downtime
Ugh, Rails fail. It is impossible to drop a column from a Rails-managed table without downtime, even if nothing in the code accesses it (!!), without ugly hacks that don’t even seem to work on recent versions of ActiveRecord.
(tags: activerecord deploy migrations rails ruby sql fail downtime)
Belgian and French copyright laws ban photos of EP buildings
An obscure clause in EU copyright rules means no one can publish photos of public buildings in Belgium, like the Atomium, or France’s Eiffel tower at night without first asking permission from the rights owners.
Ah, copyright.(tags: copyright ip stupid belgium france law atomium eiffel-tower)