Google+ disk space cockup creates notification spam-storm

Google+ blitzed early adopters of the social networking service with spammy notifications over the weekend following a technical glitch. The Chocolate Factory said the problem was due to the service having run out of disk space. The spam messages carried some of the hallmarks of those generated by dodgy apps of the type that …

[David Harper 1]

In the words of Nelson Muntz

HAAAA HAAAAAA!

[Heff]

Still amazing stuff

Social network site admits to technical failure, opens line of dialogue, states problem, and apologises?

what the hell is that? Take me back to the goodold days where shit would just randomly stop working and start working with no transparency from the provider at all. I mean, ffuuu, if they carry on down this route of conversing with users, who knows where we'll end up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Disk space?

I assume it was actually some kind of quota, as I can't believe the big G relies on physical disk space rather than some kind of massive distributed FS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Disk Space ...

Google.

Running out of.

That's like a pub with no beer!

[James Delaney]

What!

A pub with no beer?! That's it. I'm going home.

[ratfox]

But there's nothing so lonesome, so morbid or drear...

Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer!

[Anonymous Coward]

Make your mind up, John

Are they disks or discs?

You seem to have a rather unusual trait to arbitrarily choose between US/UK spellings or one convention/alternative convention on a word-by-word basis...

I would suggest referring to them as disks would be more appropriate, since it is likely that the storage system uses SSDs in some capacity - which do not have traditional spinning circular-shaped recording media inside them.

[Nick Ryan]

Disk vs Disc

Hard Disk, Floppy Disk

Optical Disc (CD, DVD Blu-Ray)

That's seems to be the "traditional" split of usage.

[David Gosnell]

Disc/disk

A rule of thumb I heard and generally like and apply (which would work with the above examples) is that discs are circular, disks are rectangular (or at least their casings). Inevitably some exceptions, but works in almost all everyday cases.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I agree with both of you...

The article has been corrected but originally both variants existed in close proximity. I was pointing out the inconsistency of this.

[Chrome]

Disc/disk

I've always seen it as:

1) Disc: The actual word disc. Describes a round flat object (ref: accretion disc, LI styling) like an optical disc

2) Disk: Foreshortening of the word diskette: describes floppy disk(ette), magneto-optical disk(ette) etc.

Words are fun!

[Jason Bloomberg]

Mea Culpa or ...

Clever advertising; look how popular it is, it 'brought Google down'?

[Bilgepipe]

Hmm

Off to good start, then, this Google+ thing.

[banjomike]

They need a doubled-sided floppy disk...

... not those old fashioned single sided things.

[bertino]

A hole punch is all that is required.

If memory serves! Seem to remember using a hole punch to make single sided 5 1/4 floppies into double sided? This is in BBC Micro days. Anyone else remember this?

[Field Marshal Von Krakenfart]

Yes,

It was quite the 'in' thing to have the special punch that took a square notch out of the floppy to make into a flippy thereby doubling your C64 storage capacity from 170K to a massive 340K.

Of course that should be "special punch that made a square notch in the floppy"... and I even used the pedantic icon to save you the bother..

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, yes ...

I was astounded to see my stepfather do this and even more astounded to discover it actually worked just fine.

He didn't use a special punch though -- just a regular paper punch well-positioned.

[Dunstan Vavasour]

Nothing to see here

A service in the very early stages of field trials had a fault, the fault was fixed. The end.

[DAN*tastik]

Marketing?

We are so overwelmed by requests that we find it impossible to keep up! Quick, jump on the boat before the whole internet runs out of disc space for your OMG's and LULZ!!!1!!1!

All you're friends our all readey their 2!!! OH MY LULZ!!! :))) ! <3 <3 <=3

Find our wot there havin 4 breakfast! Quuuick!

[Mike Hopkins]

Cynic

I can't help but think that this is probably a great way of creating some free advertising for a service in its infancy. Hype.

Personally if the Google+ service died every day from now until the end of days I would still prefer it to Facebook.

[ArmanX]

Sometimes, all people want is something that isn't the other thing.

"What is it?"

"Not Facebook!"

"What's it like?"

"Facebook!"

"...Oh, what the hell, I guess that's all I really wanted."

--XKCD

[Number6]

Newborns

All newborns are prone to produce copious amounts of vomit without warning.

[Nigel 11]

Spam?

Does a mail loop bug really constitute Spam, given that you probably wanted the first copy of this information? Perhaps "Vindaloo" would be more appropriate.

[Gert Selkobi]

Refreshingly honest.

Admitting that they should have been prepared for it, but weren't?

I like the honesty.

Could still be a bit of hype generation.

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHA

And then again: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA......and some people bash MS for being stupid. What a fail.

[Donald Becker]

New backup server

Hmmm, my first thought: "Has someone found a way to use G+ as a backup server, and spread the word using a social network?"

Wouldn't you have to consume 10-100GB at a time for the service to run out of space?

[Jim Preis]

All is well

I just dropped a 1ZB thumb drive off at the front desk. They're good.