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Slashdot Posting Bug Infuriates Haggard Admins
Last night we crossed over 16,777,216 comments in the database. The wise amongst you might note that this number is 2^24, or in MySQLese an unsigned mediumint. Unfortunately, like 5 years ago we changed our primary keys in the comment table to unsigned int (32 bits, or 4.1 billion) but neglected to change the index that handles parents. We're awesome! Fixing is a simple ALTER TABLE statement... but on a table that is 16 million rows long, our system will take 3+ hours to do it, during which time there can be no posting. So today, we're disabling threading and will enable it again later tonight. Sorry for the inconvenience. We shall flog ourselves appropriately. Update: 11/10 12:52 GMT by J : It's fixed.
*Clap clap clap*
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
... roll over to be a last post?
welcome our 2 to the power of X overlords.
Last post!
Alright, who's the joker who posted the 16,777,216th comment?
:D
Thanks for breaking slashdot, jerk
LegendMUD
Its like y2k, only worse!
As if a thousand geeks all made the same damn "last post!" joke at once. . . . . .
...why wasn't this problem discovered on the dev system in advance?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
"2^24 comments ought to be enough for anyone" -- CmdrTaco
That's cool, I'll just pretend I'm on Digg, with its 1981 Commodore 64 BBS-style threading.
Wait..sorry Commodore fans. I know it had better threading than Digg.
Haggard admins? Does this mean that the Admins will go buy some meth and get a massage?
... should have been enough for anyone.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
No threading? Welcome to Farkdot.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Dupe! I TOTALLY posted this story like, last WEEK man! (I laugh, but I betcha someone might post this in seriousness)
USE colorful confetti ON heavily-armed clown
Flogging and Haggard in the same sentence? If we can get "crystal meth" in, we'll hit the trifecta!
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Brillant!
I always wondered where Paula Bean ended up...
mod parent up
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Uhhhh who's your daddy?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Mod parent ... wait..
Take all the time you need, I'm more than willing to refrain from posting durin.... Oh shit!
And this is why you should not have arbitrary limits in your programs, ladies and gentlemen. Not even limits on the values your numbers can represent
Now this is a real Slashdotter! This guy knows how to build an infinite computer!
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Would not have happened if Slashdot used PostgreSQL.
Let the flamewars begin...
Unthreaded flame wars are much less enjoyable.
The number 2^24 is of interest to digital computer artists, as that is the number of unique colors combined in the commonly implemented "True Color" RGB8 space. That color space is looking pretty limiting in some respects, but that is truly a lot of unique colors when you think about it. A 16 megapixel image does not need to repeat any color used.
If all slashdot posts from the history of Slashdot were sorted into color bins,Once that were done, people could simply post their replies as a reference to existing posts. "Hey, #938D3A to you, buddy!" "Know what I think of that? #F2C2A9!"
[
One day, Cmdr Taco is designing his database, and he sits down at a table with three integers on it. First, he tries the baby bear's integer, but exclaims "2 meager bytes is way too small for my appetite."
Next, he tries Papa bear's integer, but proclaims "4 bytes is way too big for my little site, I'd just end up wasting so much."
Finally, he tries Mama bear's integer, and extols "3 bytes is just right," not noticing it was really the same as Papa Bear's bowl in disquise.
This