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I recently benchmarked postgres 9.2.4 on a Dell PowerEdge at Rackspace with a four disk raid 10, a two disk raid 1 for the WAL logs, and 48GB of RAM. It's good up to around 14000 transactions per second until you exceed what fits into RAM. Then it drops off to around 2000. That was the select benchmark with no writes involved.

Note that much of this is tracing the physical limits of the hardware moving pages around memory and/or disk, not usually Postgres itself anymore. I've been tracing this shape of curve for years now. If you don't want the fall-off against larger than RAM workloads to happen so fast, you can use faster storage like SSD to pull that upwards a lot. Just have to make sure the storage supports reliable writes, which means only a few models of SSD--Intel's 320, 710, and DC S3700 models are popular.

In older versions there were a few places where the database would obviously bottleneck internally. As of 9.2, the main one that's left is that trivial statements run by a single client aren't as fast as, say, MySQL. A lot of that is that things like being able to replace operators has some penalty against a naive, unpluggable data type implementation.

There are plenty of places online selling Doctorates.

One classic claims to convert your "life experiences" into credit for a doctorate, no classes needed.

Heck, you can even become a pope online: http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/popecard.html

I hope you save this for last.

I have been volunteered to teach this ping in my son's Den. I will admit to having a similar reaction to most here when I first heard of it. (My initial reaction to "explain why it is important to have a rating system" was "Well, you have to know who you are better than !" Whoops.)

I have decided however to concentrate on the more technical aspects. We are talking about 8-9 year olds here, so I'm going to start with how to install a system, including what the different jacks are, the difference between composite, component, HDMI, etc. I'm also going to cover some history of video games, Space War, Pong, Atari 2600, show some classic gaming systems. Also cover online safety, and exchanging Nintendo friend codes (which I've found most of the other kids and parents actually don't know how to do).

Then top it off with some time in the basement arcade:
http://www.westnet.com/~chris/arcade/MyBasement/

*No* modern, desktop-usable file systems today guarantee new files to be there if the power goes out except if the application specifically requests it with O_SYNC, fsync() and similar techniques (and then only "within reason" - actually the most guarantee that the file system will recover itself, not the data). It is universally true - for UFS (the Unix file system), ext2/3, JFS, XFS, ZFS, raiserfs, NTFS, everything. This can only be a topic for inexperienced developers that don't know the assumptions behind the systems they use.

The same is true for data ordering - only by separating the writes with fync() can one piece of data be forced to be written before another.

This is an issue of great sensitivity for databases. See for example:

• http://postgresql.mirrors-r-us.net/docs/8.2/static/runtime-config-wal.html
• http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-performance/2004-09/msg00080.php
• http://www.westnet.com/~gsmith/content/postgresql/TuningPGWAL.htm

That there exist reasonably reliable databases is a testament that it *can* be done, with enough understanding and effort, but is not something that's automagically available.

This page has some very simple disk testing which you can run in Linux or with cygwin for disk IO bandwidth: http://www.westnet.com/~gsmith/content/postgresql/pg-disktesting.htm

We ran that test on our servers on the raw hard drives with NTFS filesystems, and then on Truecrypt-encrypted disks with NTFS filesystems. Believe it or not, the Truecrypt disks actually read and wrote data faster than the raw disks. The advantage wasn't huge, but it was a consistent 2 MB/s.

Conduct your own tests.

My sig comes from Borges, an author I deeply recommend. If you don't know him, and if you're interested, you can start by reading this book. This short story, The Library of Babel, is particulary interesting if you like math, computers, and something like that.

Every flight ive been on in canada in the last 4 years has checked ID right when you board the plane. I suppose it could be different in amerika but that would strike me as kind of stupid

Don't some of our TV programming and films make it over the border? After seeing those, are you surprised to see U.S. government and industry collaborating on something that's kind of stupid?

They check ID against your boarding pass at security. They don't (at least here in the U.S.) check either against the "no-fly" list, at least for domestic flights. (IIRC I did have to zip my passport over a reader on flights to Japan, and I'm presuming that it checked me against the list.)

You buy a ticket with a fake name, say "Omar K. Ravenhurst", and stolen a credit card number. The ticketing system finds no "Omar K. Ravenhurst" on the no-fly list, so lets the transaction through,

With a little PDF manipulation, you print out a boarding pass for "Omar K. Ravenhurst", and one for your real name, "John Smith".

You show the "John Smith" ID and boarding pass at security, then the "Omar K. Ravenhurst" boarding pass at the gate. You're allowed on the plane. and the party starts.

Or heck, you show the "Omar K. Ravenhurst" pass at security, and claim to have forgotten your ID. They let you through, just like they let through the author of TFA. You're allowed on the plane. Hilarity ensues.

Or you do what many 19-year-olds do every day and get a fake ID and match it up with your stolen card number. It's not like terrorists can't counterfeit ID cards, or get "genuine" ones from the DMV with fake birth certificates or by bribing an employee. (And "REAL ID" bullshit won't much change that.)

Or you do what many of the actual 9/11 terrorists did and use your actual goddamn ID, because the odds are damn good that you're not on the list anyway since this is your first suicide hijacking...

http://www.westnet.com/~gsmith/content/postgresql/ has what you're looking for--"5-Minute Introduction to PostgreSQL Performance"--and points you in the right direction to dig deeper from there.

I'll second that. If you've never played it, download MAME and grab the ROMS .

Or if you are nuts, buy your own machine. (No, it is NOT for sale.)

I'm a pope. I've got the laminated card to prove it. You can have one too.

You forgot the infinite part. Read Borges'"The Library of Babel". Like I said, you need to read more of the classics, so you know what's already been done, and so you have a few more pieces in your tinkertoy set.

Most cold dark "matter" is dark energy, which in turn is dark information. The stuff that nemories are made of.

If this Chandra experiment is successful, we should hook it up to Google to search all the info we don't know about what didn't happen.

Indeed. Heck, follwing up on the submitter's question of "why stop there?", we probably now have the computing power to store the Universal Library. Let's put all possible knowledge at our fingertips.

"Show me any autistic individual with a non-Aquarian sun, and I'll show you a natal chart for the same individual with either several other planets in Aquarius, or a strongly aspected Uranus. (the planet associated with Aquarius)"

You could probably do the same for a sizable fraction of the population, too. I'm sorry, but that assertion has about the same value as (and in fact is very similar to) the Discordian Law of Fives.

Want to prove me wrong? First, define "several" and then determine what percentage of the year fits your definition above. If it's > 40%, I'd say the predictive power is minimal. Second, collect a couple hundred birthdates of autistic people and see where they fall in the year. If the results are statistically significant, then you've got something.

I'm glad to see that the Discordian Calendar fits your requirements !

If these responses aren't fake, then it may just e the kids they picked. My experience has been the exact opposite, that kids will play a good game no matter what it looks like.

I have a collection of arcade games in my basement Asteroids, Centipede, Star Wars, Pole Position, Major Havoc, etc). http://www.westnet.com/~chris/arcade/MyBasement

My kids (aged 2 and 4) love them. All the kids in my family, ranging up to 13 years old, won't come out of the basement at family gatherings. Pole Position seems to be popular with really little kids. Star Wars (one they specifically pan) is popular with just about everyone though.

This was thought of years ago, only without the "newton week" crap.

...just mount /dev/random as a petabyte drive. Admittedly it might be hard to find your data in there - but chances are it is in there somewhere.

With enough disk space Google could become Borge's The Library of Babel. Effectively, everything that could ever be written would be stored and referenced through a simple pointer. Binary would be UUencoded of course.

If so, why the hell new generations don't play Bomber Man, Lost Vikings, Prince of Persia, Larry 1, The Incredible Machine, Lotus, etc?

I have a collection of early 80's arcade games in my basement (Asteroids, Tempest, Battlezone, Centipede, etc). Any time kids are over, we can't get them out of the basement. They go nuts over the old games.

My cousin now has a Ms. Pac Man and Rally X for his kids, in addition to all the "classics" collections for their PS2. These same kids also love my Atari Lynx -- and they have their own Gameboy systems.

The full Borges story is here. Like much of his work, it's a good read.

Like this: ScanSoft's ASR used in SWAT Global Strike Team.

In the network speech area, there's tons of cool stuff running on all the major platforms.

Todd

Aside from popping up every ten years to sue Apple Computers, has Apple Corps actually put out any sort of product? A quick Google for Apple Corps brings up several other sites long before Apple Corps' placeholder website; has Apple Corps made an effort to protect its trademark, aside from prosecuting this single case?

Some of the hits on Google, in order of appearance:

• A web-based game named "Apple Corps"
• A Macintosh users' group in Dallas.
• A gay and lesbian marching band in NYC.
• A Macintosh users' group in Maryland.
• A teacher's activism group in Atlanta
• The organization actually prosecuting this case

Let's see, these translation system require about one gigabyte of two-way translated text to train. They get them from gouvernemental diaries from bilingual countries and from online bilingual newspapers.

Where would you find one gigabyte woth of manually translated code to train with? The Great Programming Language Shootout and the 100 bottles of beers page together hardly add to one gigabyte.

Coding a compiler to translate between coding languages is much easier then manually translating one gigabyte worth of code. Plus the compiler will always give correct result (modulo bug), whereas the statistical approach is merely "likely" to be correct.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

Indeed -- What Would Elvis Do? That strange sound you just heard was my karma flying away... :^)

As Borges once said about the Libaray of Babel wayback now...

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings.
Looks like he wasn't too far off...

...The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible.

Well, maybe not...

Have you heard the Wedding Present song Shatner and if so,
what do you think?

No, yesterday was Boomtime. Today is Prickle-Prickle, 34th day of the season of Bureaucracy (of course).

"I'm King of the Universe. I don't know what I'm doing in a place like this."

Getting dangerously close to being b'hai, bud.
(Currently my favorite optimistic theory vs "God, by definition, is also the biggest ASSHOLE in the universe".)

I firmly believe that EVERY child when they get into 4th grade should be taught basic gun safety and should be taught to respect guns.

When you consider the statistics on teenage smoking, I'm dubious that education is the issue. Despite 20 years of health warnings, the teenage smoking rate is rising. 19% of teenage males and 27% of females smoke.

In any case, the unsafe use of fire arms is not the reason that guns are a problem. It's because they are used in crimes. You can see the limitations of the education approach if you were to say that every 4th grader should be taught not to commit a crime with a gun.

Didja notice the map in the decoded message is Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map Projection of Earth? Nifty cool. Also, there's a marking on the map over what appears to be Siberia. The location of the transmitter, perhaps?

One night a gang of vigilantes gathered for a pogrom against San Francisco's Chinatown. All that stood in their way was the solitary figure of Norton. A sane man would not have been there in the first place. A rational man would have tried to reason with them. A moralist would have scolded them. A man as daft as Norton usually seemed would have loudly ordered them to cease and desist in the name of His Royal Imperial authority. All such tacks would probably have been futile, and Norton resorted to none of them. He simply bowed His head in silent prayer. The vigilantes dispersed

Truly a man of peace, we need more like him today. Do you have the titanic nads to do what Emperor Norton did -- and succeed?

To rot your brain with more Discordian propaganda about Emperor Norton, see here.

" One night a gang of vigilantes gathered for a pogrom against San Francisco's Chinatown. All that stood in their way was the solitary figure of Norton. A sane man would not have been there in the first place. A rational man would have tried to reason with them. A moralist would have scolded them. A man as daft as Norton usually seemed would have loudly ordered them to cease and desist in the name of His Royal Imperial authority. All such tacks would probably have been futile, and Norton resorted to none of them. He simply bowed His head in silent prayer. The vigilantes dispersed."

Everybody understands Mickey Mouse,
Few people understand Herman Hesse,
and nobody understands Emperor Norton.

Truly a man of peace, we need more people like him now. How many of you have the titanic nads to do what Emperor Norton did -- and succeed?


To learn more about Emperor Norton and rot your brain with more Discordian proaganda, see here.

" One night a gang of vigilantes gathered for a pogrom against San Francisco's Chinatown. All that stood in their way was the solitary figure of Norton. A sane man would not have been there in the first place. A rational man would have tried to reason with them. A moralist would have scolded them. A man as daft as Norton usually seemed would have loudly ordered them to cease and desist in the name of His Royal Imperial authority. All such tacks would probably have been futile, and Norton resorted to none of them. He simply bowed His head in silent prayer. The vigilantes dispersed."

Everybody understands Mickey Mouse,
Few people understand Herman Hesse,
and nobody understands Emperor Norton.

Truly a man of peace, we need more people like him now. How many of you have the titanic nads to do what Emperor Norton did -- and succeed?


To learn more about Emperor Norton and rot your brain with more Discordian proaganda, see here.

Do they come with an eye in the middle?

But you can if you are emperor! (The fact that he did fire congress is just one more reason he should be patron saint of the internet.)

Maybe pi is what happens if you take the place described in Jorge Luis Borges' "The Library of Babel" and run it through an encryption or compression scheme we haven't hit on yet.

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings...

Tolkien said it all, and there's been no one of similar genius to push the field farther.

Flying, beside being more expensive, would take me longer since the airport is not in the heart of Manhattan. Intercity bus is cheaper but less reliable, less comfortable, and the bus terminals on both ends of the trip are less conveniently located. I couldn't sleep on the way up (or read on the way back) if I drove up, and parking in Manhattan is an expensive adventure.

But from now on, I'll be buying tickets with cash. Perhaps under the name Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst.

From

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

Right here.
I'd paste it, but there's this lameness filter thing.
And yes, it will compile and run on any system.
--Shoeboy

http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/ads/nipple /nipple_surgery_2.html