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Web-Based Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Mike Caprio wrote in to
say that there now is a official web-based Hitch Hiker's Guide
available. What is strangest to me is the stunning similiarities
between it and Everything. Pretty cool.
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Don't Panic :)
Well, I want to toss in my 2 cents. Douglas Adams uses macs only so I think it might ge g4 or 5 not pentium anything. And as someone in the wireless industry iridium will never support data. All 10mb/s wireless will be done from land based antennae.
for more info on Adams see: http://www.apple.com/applemasters/dadams/
Yeah, they featured this on tomorrows world last night.
:))
They had Douglas Adams on to plug it...
God that was an awful show. Why is it, everything
the BBC does that involves the net seems to be
presented by overenthusiastic but completely
clueless presenters? Can't they hire a cyncial
tech instead?
OOh.. plus the H2G2 server's running on an NT
box... can we have a quick effort to get 3
simultaneous users and bring it down?
Hey, what do you expect of Vogons?
I was always under the impression that it was Netscape that 'invented' cookies.
Why do people do this?
Grab your flash plugin and drop on by the Ford Prefect section and watch the hilarities! Kudos to Adams. May the fun continue.
something clever
Not quite yet....remember, the real guide spoke out loud...(and transmitted a mental translation matrix for the babelfish) :-)
Posted by Ken Clean Air System:
/. can get /.d (well a little bit anyways) :)
Hey all,
Perhaps im biased being a somewhat happy ASP-MS-SQLer, can someone point me to any whitepapers, articles etc comparing load capabilities between
Apache and IIS.
I have been part of large scale IIS sites and have had some problems with heavy load and IIS difficulties, but from my recent readings here it seems that sometimes
Just trying to seperate the facts from the ideologues. Any info appreciated
Except...
Damn the exceptions.
It would seem that, after browsing about a bit and then actually registering, I need to use MS Blisternet Exploder 4.whatever to actually do anything remotely useful . What a bummer considering I'm not a Windows 9x or NT user (except for at work where I'm not officially supposed to mess around doing personal stuff anyway -- Yeah. Right.) I was so close to contributing to The Guide that I was practically salivating on my keyboard only to find that it's time to grab my towel and clean it off.
Holy cripes on toast! Does that ever suck.
But I still have high hopes. Maybe it will be fixed for those of us in the Real World who maybe don't use much MS-anything and who even from time to time use browsers that aren't even graphical. (Yup, the Real World can be a pretty ecletic place. Kinda neat, isn't it?) Well, maybe...
Sigh.
"www.microsoft.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT3 or Windows 95" is that some kind of error?
/etc/queso.conf
maybe because they are running some totally mutated version of Windows NT? Or is Microsoft really using an older version of their own product?
[/usr/sbin]$ queso www.microsoft.com
207.46.131.137:80 *- Unknown OS, pleez update
weird.... I figured Queso would have detected whatever is routing their web traffic.. .
-Erik-
Seems h2g2.com does not have a DNS entry, or has
spearead around the net yet.
The h2g2 site looks quite nice, but unless they have loads of researchers, it's going to end up like the newsgroups. 100dB noise 0.1dB signal.
An interesting project would be an open web based mulitmedia encyclopedia, same idea as Encarta, but accurate information instead. Similar concept to h2g2 but significantly more limited set of contributers.
Deleted
I wish they would... then I wouldn't have to be one of the First Five Callers After A Slashdot Posting in order to get to see the site.
At least PGG (megadodo) has sense enough to run on a real OS...
We have no intention of excluding anyone - we tested the site using several different browsers. If your browser doesn't work with the site, let us know and we'll fix it.
T1's aren't only available in the US, you know...
Ooops, you're probably right... it's a 2Mb, anyway.
Dammit dammit dammit. We really didn't need our pipe /.ed right now.
Okay, here's the deal. There we were, four of us Digital Village techies, standing in the British Library with Douglas sitting between us and the cameras, and we're quite happily browsing the site no problem.
7:30pm: The programme starts.
7:31pm: 3 gazillion British net users click from the BBC site straight through to h2g2.com all at once. PerlEx and IIS go mental. Boom.
(Fortunately we managed to turn that to our advantage: Douglas got to say that the site was so popular that it couldn't take the strain.)
Now, several hours later, the site is unusable from the outside. However, it's not NT's fault, as the server's fine; it's the pipe. We're only on a T1. We're frantically moving various images off to mirror sites now, hopefully that should help all you guys actually get in and see the thing.
We're really proud of it, as it goes, and some other people seem to quite like it too. Everything didn't inspire the site but we did look at it several times while we were designing. (Everything is similar in some ways, but not many - however, I still have a lot of admiration for Everything's features, and we'll be trying to send h2g2 in that direction as time goes on, as well as many other directions too... we've got a lot of big plans, and we're not going to sit still)
So, yeah, it runs on NT, but there are reasons for that. (even though that may be unthinkable to some /.ers, who obviously have never had to do a professional site on a tight budget and deadline) And a good chunk of the blame for any site instability goes to Perl and PerlEx (which manages to throw away 50MB every time it restarts an interpreter... can someone please show ActiveState how to check for memory leaks?)
But I would hope that the server system comes second in you guys minds to the fact that it's the Hitchhiker's Guide! The real thing! Online! And you can contribute!
Come on... hands up everyone who doesn't want to be a Guide Researcher. Thought so.
So, traffic permitting, we hope everyone can log on, join in and fulfil at least one childhood dream.
-- Yoz
Lemme see. Take my Palm IIIx, add a cellular modem, a "Don't Panic" sticker, and a whole lot of spare batteries...
EUREKA! IT FLOATS!
Keith Russell
Whatever happened to peaceful coexistance?
This sig intentionally left blank.
Yup, that's what I've always thought, especially the Web.
"www.microsoft.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT3 or Windows 95"
is that some kind of error?
maybe because they are running some totally mutated version of Windows NT?
Or is Microsoft really using an older version of their own product?
I knew that fellow, many many years ago. He was a good friend of mine when he was actively working on it, but I haven't heard from him in an age. The site is certainly very clever and is definitely worth a look.
I don't think he's done any changes to the site in years. I think it's set up for Netscape 2.0, so if you happen to have a copy of it lying around somewhere it would probably work.
D
----
Actually, come to think of it, this sounds more like a server memory-management bug than a PerlEx plugin bug.
Microsoft support, anyone?
...that the HHGTTG runs on IIS/NT. Alright, Netcraft told me so. Damn. Poor souls.
-- Fast, Cheap, Well. Pick two.
What about the millions of PGG Articles? Will they be wasted? Hey I do not like it. It is a commercial site. I really do not like it. PGG seems better. Yeah. It must be a vogon site.
--
"Basically the message is: Steal It!
DNA is suspose to be launching The Digital Village's "fantastic new internet project" tonight on the BBC1 show Tommorow's World Tonight. You can read the press release. From what I've read at various places it is a follow up to the original Infocom game, but multi-player and online. They have something going on at fordprefect.h2g2.com as well.
Seems to me that any site that excludes more than it includes is NOT the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - If it truely was what it claims to be, then Mac users, Netscape users, BeOs users, Linux users, etc., would be able to fully use the site.
Sorry, this is just a sham wannabe.
/.'d....
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Oopp.. Accidently pressed the button..hehe
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
The is the home page for the ... Vogon Heavy Industries. Alast it doesn't seem to like Netscape4.5(Linux) Djj
I've always thought of the Net as the *real* Hitchiker's Guide. I can't quote from memory (although I should be able to, read it enough:), but wasn't it described as a full compendium of human knowledge containing much useful informtion, but also a great deal that is erroneous, downright wrong, and often dangerous.
Sounds like the Net to me.
Douglas Adams is a visionary. Take a good (P5 1ghz) laptop, throw in a cellular connection (iridium 10mb/s), slap a big "Don't Panic" sticker on the front, and you're there.
When this things comes out let's have a Perfectly Normal Beast BBQ, maybe Elvis could play....
+&x
The h2g2.com server seems quite distressed ever since the post on /. I was using the site this morning and it was speedy... NT & IIS under heavy load, ick.
Been there, dealt with that. I never use PerlEx unless I have to... in fact (don't hit me) I program in ASP using ActiveState PerlScript now. Memory leaks all gone. PerlEx runs in the memory space of IIS, it has none of it's own. If you forget to undef ANYTHING before a PerlEx script terminates, IIS doesn't clean up after it.
It's actually better to use straight-up perl.exe, as long as you have plenty of memory in the server if it gets loaded.
I wouldn't blame ActiveState, I blame M$ for not giving developers clear specs for how to write software for it's crappy systems.
Chill out baby, everything's copacetic.
-Zen I'm gonna make the _world_ my bitch.
Does the page have any relationship
to the hitchhikers guide?
If i remember right, in the manual
for the "Hitchhikers Guide to the
Galaxy" Infocom game, Megadodo is
the company that manufactures the guides.
Still /.ed
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
There's been a project guide for about 6 years now which can be found at http://megadodo.com. Anyone can submit articles to it, and it has thousands, some of which are hilarious.
PDG--"I don't like the Prozac, the Prozac likes me"
"Where is my mind?"
Its rather funny that you say that cuz the I'm friends with the PGG(Megadodo) site and he's been outa the Linux loop for so long that I had to help him install RH 5.2
PDG--"I don't like the Prozac, the Prozac likes me"
"Where is my mind?"
There's been a project guide for about 6 years now which can be found at http://megadodo.com. Anyone can submit articles to it, and it has thousands, some of which are hilarious.
PDG--"I don't like the Prozac, the Prozac likes me"
"Where is my mind?"
Aww man... if they were going to do this, at least they could've done it right.
-
BlackNova Traders