Re: No captcha

Yeah, no captcha for me either - just username, password and auth code (I have 2 factor auth enabled).

LOB support?

In what way do you think Postgres lacks LOB support? It has a large object datatype (lo) and APIs for chunked/random access to individual objects including JDBC/ODBC support, and it has a byte array (bytea) datatype which which most people generally use for storing images etc. these days.

@Chris Dixon

PostgreSQL allows concurrent insert/update/delete activity on a table, when creating an index using CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY. It does this in a vaguely similar manner to the script the story is about, by keeping track of the tuples that have changed whilst the index is being built, and then updating it with those changes before making it available for use.

The big difference is, that the code to do this is built into the server at a low level, rather than what can only be described as a very scary trigger based hack implemented outside of the database. I suppose that doesn't matter for Facebook though - who cares if the odd status update gets lost?

@Chris Dixon

It's not correct to say that all databases require full table locks to create indexes. PostgreSQL for example, has had concurrent index builds for years using CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY. Even the standard CREATE INDEX only locks writers, unlike some databases which apparently also lock out readers.

Title

There's no reason the cloud cannot be in your own data center. Some of the vendors have some really cool features these days that are a sysadmin's dream for management, efficiency and availability of services. Eucalyptus is also cool, but has a fair way to go to catch up.