WWW Full Up ?

[sidevalve]

Just a Silly thought, What happens to all the garbage put onto the net ? I mean the sort of stuff that gets put on facebook etc such as "what granny said at christmas" or " a picture of an amusing potato" ? I mean even the people that put it on have forgotten about it within a week [maybe a few hours]. Are there really millions of gigabytes of pointless crud out there in some vast hard drive ? Surely it doesn't just sit there for ever, and if it does, then why ?

 

[HovR]

Not a singular vast hard drive, but many hard drives.

Each website will have it's own server, or multiple servers depending on how large and popular the website it. So for example, if someone does post a picture of an amusing potato on Facebook, it will just sit there until either the owner removes it, or Facebook clears out images.

As it happens, companies like Facebook earn so much ad revenue they can afford to buy more and more storage space, so they never need to clear out all this junk.

 

[MrJamie]

I remember seeing something about how googles server farms were so big they had to have their own bespoke power and cooling setup, because they cache so much of the internet. Youll just get more and more storage as various websites and server farms grow and even if they do take things down, theyre often stored in multiple places by search engines and mirrored/caching sites. The internet will just get bigger and more crud filled, but search engines should help you find the more relevant (and recent) things youre looking for. Its not just the web though, I seem to remember a statistic that the majority of email communication was unsolicited spam and chat rooms, online gaming chat is increasingly logged and stored somewhere. Its really impossible to comprehend the amount of crap floating around online

 

[defy-one]

You're correct about server farms or estates as they are known. Imagine a data suite the size of a football pitch. 8 servers per cabinet which is a little wider than a single wardrobe.
We are given a grid reference and cabinet number to locate the server we need to work on. I personally know of 7 such estates in Central London, no doubt replicated across the country, and the world

 

[slowmotion]

If all the cr@p that's ever been posted online is still being saved, doesn't that mean that this vast sea of garbage can still be accessed? If it can still be accessed, doesn't that imply that ever greater computing power is needed to find it. Will the whole system become increasingly flabby and sclerotic? Actually, has it already?

 

[NotthatJasonKenny]

Everything you ever put on the net is kept. Even if you think you have deleted it...you haven't. Multiple servers cache the net from the company who own the pages you post on to companies that run archive services like the way back machine where you can type in a website address and see it as it was when it was first built, try it http://archive.org/web/web.php http://archive.org/web/web.php .

A lot of stuff is not accessible by normal search engines and is often referred to as the deep web, learn more about that herehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web.

I try to tell this to my teenage daughter, the future is going to be so different, anything they type into the net can and will be used for/against them one day, maybe in a job interview for example!

I already look at Facebook before I interview someone and in America interviewees have been asked for Facebook logins and passwords so employers can check them out! There is even a bill going through to make that illegal.

The futures frightening really...everything you type can be read by someone who may have an influence in your life and I for one welcome our new overlord masters...*




* Simpsons quote if you don't get it.

 

[MrJamie]

I dont really use Facebook because I dont like its concept or its privacy/sharing, but I do have an account under an alias which I use for online gaming groups, but im always amazed the amount of private stuff people post on there, particularly middle-aged people having public arguements with their ex's while theres a custody battle going on. Ive been wondering if very career driven people would get to the point of making a Facebook account and keeping it clean purely for employmentm because not having one might look abnormal or suspicious. If i were ever interviewing anyone id google them and facebook them first.

 

[subaqua]

You're correct about server farms or estates as they are known. Imagine a data suite the size of a football pitch. 8 servers per cabinet which is a little wider than a single wardrobe.
We are given a grid reference and cabinet number to locate the server we need to work on. I personally know of 7 such estates in Central London, no doubt replicated across the country, and the world

correct. data centres are the Tardis' of the real world. a great example of how to fit a quart into a pint pot. Milton keynes has a fair few for different companies. and there are a few in Central london that you wouldn't even realise are there. they have resilient independent HV networks to them, and the company i work for has a dedicated division for this "mission critical" work

 

[sidevalve]

Everything you ever put on the net is kept. Even if you think you have deleted it...you haven't. Multiple servers cache the net from the company who own the pages you post on to companies that run archive services like the way back machine where you can type in a website address and see it as it was when it was first built, try it http://archive.org/web/web.php http://archive.org/web/web.php .

A lot of stuff is not accessible by normal search engines and is often referred to as the deep web, learn more about that herehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web.

I try to tell this to my teenage daughter, the future is going to be so different, anything they type into the net can and will be used for/against them one day, maybe in a job interview for example!

I already look at Facebook before I interview someone and in America interviewees have been asked for Facebook logins and passwords so employers can check them out! There is even a bill going through to make that illegal.

The futures frightening really...everything you type can be read by someone who may have an influence in your life and I for one welcome our new overlord masters...*




* Simpsons quote if you don't get it.

That is a scary thought and anyone saying the old "if you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear" really needs a reality check. Literally ANYTHING can be twisted / used out of context to prove [or disprove] whatever the relevant regime, government, company or investigator wants. A silly prank by a student can, years later, cause untold results. I'm all for security but perhaps sometimes the price is higher than the risk.
To the OP however, it's a sad world when we use so many resourses on so much cack.

 

[2Loose]

NotThatJasonKenny - not everything is kept, just a great deal of it but your warning to your daughter is incredibly valid all the same....especially as far as Facebook and its ilk is concerned as data is money nowadays.

This is the soon to be opened Facebook datacentre the size of 11 football fields and taking the power of 16000 homes. Nice video tbh. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...ebook-centre-to-open-near-Arctic-Circle.html#

 

[2Loose]

I do love the 'if you have nothing to hide, nothing to fear' argument. Ask them to leave their bedroom curtains open or post their bank account and sortcode and they soon shut up...

Jeremy Clarkson used this argument and someone set up a direct debit to charity in his name - 'nuff said.