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Knuth Got It Wrong

Posted by kdawson on from the to-be-or-not-to-be-heap dept.

davecb writes "Think you've mastered the art of server performance? Think again. Poul-Henning Kamp, in an article at ACM Queue, finds an off-by-ten error in btrees, because they fail to take virtual memory into account. And he solves the problem in the open source 'Varnish' HTTP accelerator, for all of us to see and use."

18 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. as Knuth told me when I was at his house by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?"

    1. Re:as Knuth told me when I was at his house by interval1066 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I wrote Knuth an email once. He never wrote me back.

      --
      Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
    2. Re:as Knuth told me when I was at his house by Meshach · · Score: 2, Funny

      "Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?"

      Get off my lawn.

      --
      "Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
      Aldous Huxley
    3. Re:as Knuth told me when I was at his house by MrEricSir · · Score: 3, Funny

      Next time, don't title your e-mail "buY h3rb@L c1aL 1s today!!"

      --
      There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    4. Re:as Knuth told me when I was at his house by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Funny

      I called Wirth, once. but I think I called him by name and not by value.

      perhaps I made the wrong judgement call; my phone overflowed.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  2. Crank it to 11 by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Funny

    10 times faster? Yawn. Wake me up when it's 11 times faster.

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:Crank it to 11 by PatPending · · Score: 5, Funny

      10 times faster? Yawn. Wake me up when it's 11 times faster.

      And wake me up when it's 1010 times faster.

      --
      What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
    2. Re:Crank it to 11 by Nadaka · · Score: 5, Funny

      That has to be the one of the better binary jokes around.

    3. Re:Crank it to 11 by Like2Byte · · Score: 2, Funny

      10 times faster? Yawn. Wake me up when it's 11 times faster.

      And wake me up when it's 1010 times faster.

      I give that post an 0xA!

    4. Re:Crank it to 11 by omnichad · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think they mean

      00

      01

      10

      11

      It represents 4 states the same way that 10 (decimal) represents 100 states. In other words, not at all (except for having 2 digits).

  3. This deserves a beer. by turing_m · · Score: 3, Funny

    If you meet him some day, and you think this stuff is worth it, buy him a beer.

    --
    If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
  4. Re:Why trust the OS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Do you really need 3277MB of my RAM?

    Firefox 1.0 programmer I assume... :p

  5. Re:Knuth didn't get it wrong by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Laziness?

    Come on, it's Slashdot!

    --
    Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  6. Yes, but... by l00sr · · Score: 2, Funny

    He's one of the top three UNIX gurus in the entire world. In fact, the Internet today is what it is thanks to his hard work and dedication.

    Still, I'd trust Don Knuth over Poul-Henning any day--at least Knuth can spell his own first name correctly.

  7. Re:Don Knuth pays people who find errors by kybred · · Score: 2, Funny

    I forget the exact amount, but it was like PI or E dollars for every typo. I am not sure what the payment is for an algorithmic error.

    I think it's e ^i(pi/2)

  8. Kdawson got it wrong. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    What's with this retarded, inflammatory and incorrect summary? Oh right, it was kdawson.

    Dear slashdot,
    Please fire kdawson and hire someone who's less of a muck-raker to edit your summaries.

    Thanks.

  9. Re:Journaling Filesystems by DavidR1991 · · Score: 2, Funny

    What is this? The freaking tautology hour?

  10. Re:don't use swap, doofs by dominious · · Score: 2, Funny

    non-sensationalized takeaway: "remember swap is slow; try not to use it."

    Not really. Closer to "Remember, swap is slow. Think about how you use it."

    "Your response has exactly the same length as the parent's quote. Interesting"