http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/02/28/news-roundup-gmail-crashes-fire-ant-invasions-scientists-in-space/ Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:34:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/02/28/news-roundup-gmail-crashes-fire-ant-invasions-scientists-in-space/#comment-25530 scott Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:23:30 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/?p=26781#comment-25530 Growing up in Texas I used to collect and keep so many various lizards and snakes. You could turn over any rock and there would be a snake under it. After the fire ants came, nothing..just fire ant mounds everywhere...at least in the all the areas around the ranch, it was just fire ants. There was also a noticable drop off in the number of animals: ringtail cats, skunks, racoons, possums, as the ants would invade dens and kill pups. My parents have moved into more a suburban spot, but still rural and they fight off fire ants all the time. You can drive through areas and see endless fire ant mounds scattered about. Growing up in Texas I used to collect and keep so many various lizards and snakes. You could turn over any rock and there would be a snake under it. After the fire ants came, nothing..just fire ant mounds everywhere…at least in the all the areas around the ranch, it was just fire ants. There was also a noticable drop off in the number of animals: ringtail cats, skunks, racoons, possums, as the ants would invade dens and kill pups. My parents have moved into more a suburban spot, but still rural and they fight off fire ants all the time. You can drive through areas and see endless fire ant mounds scattered about.

]]> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/02/28/news-roundup-gmail-crashes-fire-ant-invasions-scientists-in-space/#comment-25529 Chris Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:28:29 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/?p=26781#comment-25529 Gmail allocates 7556 MB per user. According to your stats there are 187,500,000 users. That's about 0.8 exabytes. Multiply that by how many RAID drives they have to back up bad hard drives. Ok they use a lot of compression so they probably don't have that many hard drives, but still wow. Gmail allocates 7556 MB per user. According to your stats there are 187,500,000 users. That’s about 0.8 exabytes. Multiply that by how many RAID drives they have to back up bad hard drives. Ok they use a lot of compression so they probably don’t have that many hard drives, but still wow.

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