0.056: the emperor and his new clothes

Oh my. It seems I have ruffled the feathers of fellow blogger Tony Pearson.

Seems he can't understand why one little voice would dare disrupt the majestic unveiling of the emperor's new wardrobe, especially since it was crafted by none other than the master magician of storage himself, and now forms the cornerstone of IBM's newest invention - Web 2.0 Storage!

Move over, Al Gore! We need some room on that there podium!

My apologies Tony, sir, I mean not to offend, sir, but merely to point out that the emperor, well sir, the emperor...umm...you see sir, the clothes he's wearing, sir...well, umm...they aren't new, sir! Nor are they made of magical thread, sir. In fact, sir, yes indeed, sir...they look almost exactly like the clothes EMC made 6 years ago when they created the CAS market. Oddly similar, sir, as anyone who looks can plainly see!

But please, sir, I mean not to offend.

But apparently, sir, you did. The implications of the your response are repugnant and unprofessional.
 

the truth about the elephant

The elephant wasn't sacrificed by Edison in a cruel and inhumane Barnum and Bailey stunt, as Tony's excerpted story would lead you to believe.

No, like the escaped San Francisco tiger, the elephant had it coming.

Seriously - the truth is that the elephant, whose name was Topsy, had killed three men in three years, and her owners finally decided to put her down. Hanging was proposed, and immediately declared cruel and unusual by the ASPCA. And so electrocution by A/C current was selected instead as being the most humane, given that it was the accepted method of capital punishment for humans for the prior 13 years. Topsy was also fed cyanide to minimize the pain, and the entire event took 6 seconds.

Yes, Edison taped the event with another of his inventions, the Kinetograph. Only LATER did he used it to underscore the relative safety of DC vs. A/C current.

Don't take it from me - you can read the factual story about Topsy on Wikipedia and the complete story that Tony excerpted over on Wired.com.

Now, although I am extremely offended by Tony's connection of my technical analysis of IBM's shiny new Christmas present with the capital punishment of a rogue elephant, and more than a bit frustrated that he continues to headline *my* personal opinions as those of my employer, there is an somewhat oxymoronic twist to all this.

edison was right

There are many who assert that he was prescient. In fact, if we'd listened to him 103 years ago, some say, our data centers might be more than an order of magnitude more efficient today, and we wouldn't be staring at the looming energy crisis trying to figure out how we're going to get more into ever-smaller spaces.

As we speak, the global Green / energy efficiency movement is strongly proposing (demanding, in some countries) a return to pure DC power for data centers. Not because it's safer, as Edison sought to demonstrate, but because DC power is more efficient, since that's what all of our IT equipment uses internally to make things go. Virtually every piece of equipment in the data center takes A/C in, and then converts it to DC to run the disk drives, fans, memory and logic boards. And all the step-down transformers and A/C to DC conversions (and then back to A/C, in the case of a UPS) - all these are wasting as much as 10 to 20% or even more of the power going into a typical data center! And these transformers generate heat, which must then be cooled by HVAC units, which consume even MORE power...well, you get the picture.

So as horrific as his late Victorian era tactics may have been, the world itself might not be on this brink of an energy crisis if we'd only listened to Thomas Alva Edison 103 years ago.

Thankfully, we didn't reject most of his other inventions.

and in closing...

Perhaps a modicum of Victorian-era courtesy would be justified:

Sir Tony, I sincerely apologize if I have inadvertently offended by pointing out that the emperor's clothes aren't all that unique or special, sir. I'm sorry, honest I am.

But unfortunately, it's true.

Sir.

Comments

[Tonyu Pearson]

Apology accepted.

I am sorry you were offended by my comparison of DC versus AC. I apologize to you as well. I was not attacking you personally, but rather your logic that somehow XIV was a replacement for DS8000 or SVC, both designed for different workloads and requirements. And you were not the only one from EMC to imply an XIV-DS8000 connection that doesn't exist, and you were not the only EMC blogger to imply that IBM threw away too much money on this acquisition. DS8000 for one area of the storage business, and XIV for another area. Just as AC is better for some things, and DC better for others.

[Dan]

Oh no ... a revival of the "War of the Currents" with Edison, Westinghouse and Tesla (not the rock band - but I do like Edison's Medicine). Isn't that argument about 100 years old now? Like the DS8000 ?(sorry - couldn't resist) :^)