I think it's time to take such an advise seriously. Today's investments go to either successful late stage startups or seed ones[1]. And this trend is likely to continue for a while.
Also, there was a good discussion about profit[2] a week ago. I recommend to take a look.
Consider their scenario. 100,000 db operations and 50,000 updates per sec. In this case, simple cache costs more than without. Eviction is expensive.
Also, it's no surprise replication doesn't scale because Updates get propagated.
Not sure details, but they succeeded to relax the tight requirements of ACID transactions. So this is a good case when RDBMS(or traditional database) fails.
I guess their design is more like MMO, hope to hear from the guy.
No. Memcached on a reasonable server will do millions of requests per second. 50,000 updates per second is nothing for any modern cache.
Also, replication has nothing to do with whether or not "without a cache" is a meaningful statement. The point is that by holding their entire data set in RAM, they've nullified the need for a cache. Effectively, their database is their cache.
And considering the data isn't even written to disk for about 15 minutes, it's really more cache than database anyway.
"with no cache" means no cache in app server layer. I guessed that's how the guy uses the words "no cache".
Getting rid of cache out of app server layer has great benefit on a cloud.
Having cache in app server layer needs synchronizations to keep data consistent. Scale out design was made before cloud era, when we have our own dedicated system on our site. LAN can afford expensive sync communications, but on a cloud?
Still makes sense if a scenario is read intensive. But when update intensive?
That's why I see this interesting. Increasing memory is a cheap option on a cloud. So it's great if it scales by letting database utilize more memory.
You are right: "no cache" means no cache in the app layer, so no eviction logic and inconsistencies between an app-layer-cache and a database.
And yes the best thing a cloud can offer is lots and lots of memory. That's where it's good. And I/O (disk & network) is where it's weak.
That article doesn't argue that bank bailouts were the big problem. It argues that bank influence, specifically Goldman Sachs, is the big problem. There is a difference.
As I wrote, the bank bailouts weren't a huge money-suck and the subprime crisis wouldn't have happened without govt intervention. (We can argue about why govt intervened, but that doesn't change the fact that it did.)
You can't say either about the other govt bailouts.
Note, I'm excluding the GSE's (like Fannie Mae) bailout from "made money" - that is still losing money.
I think we agree. But my point is that statements like that from O'Reilly (and Bill Gates, at other times) allow shallow-thinking people to start formulating ideas that businesses shouldn't make a profit.
Yes, money is a means to an end, rather than the end itself. You can't take it with you, and stored money is useless unless deployed as investment.
But there is no other viable way to that end, as much as people like to pretend there is. When we lose sight of this, we slip into muddle-headed thinking and everyone loses out. Eventually, an unprofitable enterprise will lose staff, investors, suppliers and will die.
It's as though we're all riding a train called 'profit' to our destination, but everyone in the dining car is pretending we're really levitating on a magic carpet of good intentions to our destination, because is is impolite to talk about the train that is carrying us along. The 'train' needs to be brought back into our conversations.
It's as though we've traded the Victorian distaste for discussions about sex with a modern distate for discussions about making money, even though everybody does it as much as they can.
> Eventually, an unprofitable enterprise will lose staff, investors, suppliers and will die.
I agree you can't lay too much emphasis on this. I have experienced it at startup, though the CEO tried hard to get out of the way along, and found the successful exit.
Yet, the worst was not running out of money, but the lack of our vision and will to achieve it. Or the vision might have been false, something good for us, not for customers. Anyway, in 3 years, we have burned out.
So I think the most important thing is something keeps you motivated, which drives you to try anything for the vision relentlessly.
Articles like "The Real Role Of Anonymous In Occupy Wall Street"[1] and "Exploring Occupy Wall Street's 'Adbuster' Origins"[2] clarified things, but didn't sound good enough.
The author might have succeeded to connect dots that had been separated.
[1] http://doublerecall.com/