What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap

> Even without compression and data duplication, very few people have a good understanding of how much data they have at any given time, because machines measure data in bytes but people measure data in abstractions.

I have to beg to differ, as I know this value for where I work. Sure, don't know it to a byte, but I know enough digits * price per GiB/month = reasonable estimate of cost. (And I know the before and after compression.)

Of course, his real point is:

> different bytes have sharply different values associated with them

This is true. However, I don't think that I should be charged by the value of my byte, ever. This is something I despise ISPs for, in that they forbid you to run servers, because what? those bytes have a different flavor?

Same thing here: some bytes are more valuable that others, but I want to be charged by the level of service you're giving me per byte. If you're giving my really-valuable bytes and my not-so-valuable bytes the same service, I expect the same price. If there's a service difference, show me that, and show me the difference in cost for you to provide a different level of service.

Of course, I think he gets this, because if you read he suggested tiers of service, they not only scale up the available storage, but also other things, like "Custom legal / compliance documentation". Different service -> different price.