Yeah, same way that Apache, various open-source operating systems, and various open-source databases have had so many more widely-exploited bugs in the last 5 years... you know, because Linux, Apache, and MySQL (for example) drive so many more websites than IIS, Windows, and MS-SQL... oh, wait, THAT'S COMPLETELY WRONG. Windows has LESS market share and MORE exploits. Hmm, I wonder why... You know, maybe, juuust maybe, is it possible that Windows is not designed that well from a security standpoint? And UNIX variants really, truly are better in that department?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no software is perfect, and I expect a flood of responses talking about this PHPBB exploit and that MT exploit... but count up the REAL, WIDESPREAD, COSTLY viruses, folks. A couple years ago, my company shut down its entire network--I mean, they cut the power to the switches--TWICE, in one year. Why? Because of REAL, ACTIVE, IN-USE Windows viruses.
The reason google browses at +1 is because it sees what any non-logged-in user would see. Telling it to ignore comments.pl keeps it from doing redundant work. Google will see this story with a few hundred comments at article.pl; it doesn't need to re-index each comment's ``comments.pl'' page. Also, google will follow links but it won't click form buttons--so, it can't reply, change its threshold, etc.
>If you become a popular submitter it is because you submit relevant stories.
Not entirely true. It could be because you submit tons and tons of stories. Countless times in these threads we see posts saying "I submitted this story and it was rejected, here's a link to my writeup which has more/better/clearer/less biased info" and the alternate writeup is indeed better, and usually sooner. Getting a story onto slashdot requires exactly one thing: appearing interesting, yes, but the key is it has to appear interesting to the editor who happens to see it in the queue. Submitting tons of stories increases these chances.
Submitting stories to Slashdot is a numbers game. It is *not* the case that the first or best submission gets accepted, even when it's staggeringly on-topic. The 'Editorial' page of this site's FAQ lists Taco's favorite subjects: "Linux, Legos, Penguins, Sci (both real and fiction)." I submitted a story about a guy who created Star Wars scenes with Lego. Can't get much more on-topic than that. It was rejected. Later that week, someone else's submission of the same site was accepted. The stories that get onto Slashdot depend on exactly one thing: the editor who reads the submission. So: on topic or not, good or bad, if you submit zillions of stories to Slashdot--even if they have mediocre writeups--you'll become a popular submitter. (And sites like Reddit and Digg make finding interesting stories even easier. You could proabably set up a bot to scrape those sites, submit them as stories, and have a high amount of success.) And of course, posting lots of stories probably means you will have mediocre writeups. Great: just what slashdot needs: a system that rewards mediocrity.
If I didn't have two jobs I'd start submitting stories like mad and document how many got posted just to prove this but I don't have the time. But any longtime slashdotter (or the site admins themselves) can tell you the same.
And Taco: I love the site, I think you've done a great thing here, but it turns my stomach to hear you talk about the serious editorial duties you perform when you won't even do 2 quick google searches on each story: one to make sure it isn't a dupe and one to see if the article is totally bogus--a scam, a hoax, factually incorrect, etc. (There was a hoax here a week or two ago, which was already known to be a hoax by the time slashdot picked it up. The hoaxness was mentioned in comments and in a slashback a few days later, but still--it should have never made it onto the front page.)
Also: "Both use their return link to link a web page which is, in my opinion, pretty worthless." Um, hello? You've not heard of Google, page rank, and the uncountable fortunes that await someone with a high google score? Please. You *know* this is a hugely popular site. You *know* the power of it, and google's. Leaving the combined power of these two sites in the hands of anyone with scads of free time is silly.
Here's my take: I don't like 'nofollow' in blogs as a general rule. Lots of good stuff does show up in google because blogs mention it or it shows up in the comments. Slashdot comment spam stays out of google beacause google browses at +1, IIRC, and I think google also sees slashdot without.sig's. That gets rid of a lot of chaff and leaves us with a lot of wheat. So for the submitters: You can give them the gift of visits. You *dont'* have to give them the gift of abusing PageRank. But don't make it a special case, make it a rule--put 'nofollow' into ALL submitter's personal URLs.
"If I had a holodeck, I'd lose the door and never come out until I died of exhaustion. It would be hard to convince me I should be anywhere but in the holodeck, getting my oil massage from Cindy Crawford and her simulated twin sister... I'm afraid the holodeck will be society's last invention."
Apple's productivity suite will get upgrades to Pages and Keynote with the possible addition of a modern Office-killing spreadsheet application (rumored to be called "Numbers" or "Sheets"). If it reads and writes Excel files the Apple spreadsheet will be the final nail is Microsoft Office's coffin. Microsoft will waste no time in announcing the end of support for Office for the Mac if this happens.
And then Apple can kiss all of its corporate sales goodbye. Nope, not gonna happen. Maybe a light-duty, somewhat-compatible spreadsheet for people to make little lists with, but Apple knows it will lose more in corporate hardware sales than it can ever make back with their little $99-a-pop suite.
Besides, if there's one thing we have learned, it's that 100% compatibility with MS Office file formats is impossible. Can OOo do it? Can Quark or InDesign perfectly import Word docs? Hell, do MS Office for Mac and Win perfectly read each others' files? No, no, and no.
>They have much much higher hardware sales than Apple and consequently, their tech support must placate many more people.
Um... can't they just hire more people? If Apple sells (totally made-up numbers here) 10,000,000 computers and services their customers with 10,000 people, why can't Dell sell 100,000,000 computers and service their customers with 100,000 people?
The point is, Apple is doing *something* right--paying more, hiring better people, treating them better, running their support center better, making easier-to-support gear, who knows--and the fact that they sell less gear is not the reason that they have better support.
Depends what you're doing. Using google with the exact wording of an error message often gives the solution in the first match. It's still great for me. Spam is an ongoing battle but my searches usually don't result in much--just subject matter differences, I guess. I'm sure if you're looking for digital camera info it's kind of hard. But when the revolution comes and all spammers are lined up along a wall and shot, that problem will go way.
Great article on bug tracking here. Yes, he makes a bug tracker, but this article (and others on his site) goes into detail about *why* and *how*, not just "buy my product." Also good info here.
"If you are developing code, even on a team of one, without an organized database listing all known bugs in the code, you are going to ship low quality code. Lots of programmers think they can hold the bug list in their heads. Nonsense. I can't remember more than two or three bugs at a time, and the next morning, or in the rush of shipping, they are forgotten. You absolutely have to keep track of bugs formally."
... there has not yet been a real, severe, in-the-wild exploit (like Sasser) since XP SP2, right? I hate to admit it as much as the next guy, but MS has been pretty tight for a while--unless there's something I've missed. Have I?
Actually, one thing I hate about Ubuntu is that "Shut down" is hidden under "Log out." For most Users, Windows gets it right--"Shut down" is clearly labeled, and the other options, like Log Out, are hidden. Most users don't know what Log Out is, nor do most users want to leave their computers on 24/7. Turn on, work, turn off.
Also, in the old days, I used to counter the "OMGLOL start to shut down!!!11" trolls by responding "Yeah? Well, Mac OS puts it under the 'special' menu--yeah, there's nothing more 'special' than shutting down an electronic device.":-)
The reason I don't use Opera is because I fell in love with the free FF (Phoenix 0.2, actually) back when Opera gave me a choice of looking at ads or sending in money. I'm not an OSS bigot, just practical. And in the practical world, free beats non-free. I've since tried the free Opera (as I have several times in the past) and it's OK but it's not super-great.
Remember: IE was free, too, and it was even easier to access than FF, but I tried FF, liked it more, and switched. I'll try a product and change if it's great, which IE isn't, FF is, and Opera isn't. To me, at least.
And I'm equally tired of hearing from MySQL haters who bitch and bitch and bitch about how MySQL isn't worth shit and should never be used for anything, anywhere, ever. Need I remind you that the very site you're looking at runs on MySQL and handles literally millions of pageviews per day? OK, fine, I won't. How's this then: hundreds of the 33,000 employees where I work rely on MySQL daily, whether they know it or not. Phone lists, surveys, reporting apps, inventory databases, etc etc etc. MySQL does the job and does it just fine. It has not failed me once in all the years I've been using it.
And SQLite is better? Because it's ACID? HA! HA HA HA HA HA! GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK! That's the only buzzword it IS compliant with. Look at this:
Q: SQLite lets me insert a string into a database column of type integer! A: This is a feature, not a bug. SQLite does not enforce data type constraints. [emphasis added]
and this:
Q: What is the maximum size of a VARCHAR in SQLite? A: SQLite does not enforce the length of a VARCHAR. You can declare a VARCHAR(10) and SQLite will be happy to let you put 500 characters in it. And it will keep all 500 characters intact - it never truncates.
and this:
Q: Does SQLite support a BLOB type? A: SQLite versions 3.0 and leter let you puts BLOB data into any column, even columns that are declared to hold some other type.
"And Postgresql is far more robust and performs just as well."
And only recently ran natively under Windows. Sorry, but when you're in a company with 33k employees and a substantial IT department, you don't always get to pick your platform. MySQL was there, it worked, and it continues to do so. Why would I switch?
Let me make the required car analogy: a semi is several orders of magnitude more powerful than a 2WD pickup truck. A semi can haul more, and haul more further, and haul big loads more efficiently, and with a sleeper cab and two drivers can operate 24/7, and you can get refrigerated units to move food, etc etc etc. Why, then, are there millions of 2WD pickups sold? Are they just "shitty vehicles with lots of mindshare"? NO! It's because 99.9% of the population just wants to move a couch or go to Home Depot or something. Maybe it'll take a few trips to help a friend move, but even that takes fewer hours than getting a class-whatever license, plus pickups are easier to maneuver and park in apartment complex parking lots and residential neighborhoods, etc etc etc.
I'm not saying MySQL is better than everythinhg else. The fact is, databases and computers are SO capable now that even the WORST in the field is STILL more than 99% of people need. In other words, MySQL is Just Fine.
In high school, we had an assignment to do a 3-page paper about some Shakespeare story. I forget which one, but it involved some characters overhearing part of a conversation and getting the wrong idea. (It goes without saying that I didn't read the book/play/story/whatever.) I wrote a 2 and 1/3-page paper based mostly on what the teacher said in class* and made comparisons to the sitcom "3's Company" which often relied on the partially-overheard-conversation as a plot device.
Not only did that paper garner an honest-to-God "A+" but the teacher photocopied it, handed it out to the class, and spent a period discussing it as an example of how to write a good paper.
* I think I also used Cliff Notes. You know those? You know how they also have an extra-extra short (3-4 page) summary in the beginning? I think I skimmed that. God am I lazy.
These are all very good tips. There are also several things you can do with just one box:
- PHP has lots of caching options available and other things that can boost performance. Learn them. One good overview is in the powerpoint slideshow here. Just like you can't put a heavy building on a weak foundation, it's very hard to speed up an app that's badly written in the first place.
- SQL can be badly misused. Make sure that your page uses as few queries as possible and that those queries are as good as possible. Don't use PHP for things that SQL does very well--joins, filtering, etc. Your goal should be for every database query to return as much information as you need to build the page and not an ounce more.
- you can take a half-step towards multiple boxes by running multiple servers on one box. Apache is great but it's overkill for static work like serving images--look at tux, boa, lighttpd, thttpd, etc. for those duties. For example, serve the app from www.example.com on Apache and the images from images.example.com via Boa. Or, have Apache on:80 and serve images via Boa on:8080.
- the last thing to do before splitting up to multiple servers is to get one better box. from the box you describe, you might realize a 200-300% improvement with a fast dual-CPU box with 2-4 GB RAM and either a) RAID or b) different disks for different tasks--logs (writes) on one, images (reads) on another, etc.
- be scientific. measure, make one change, and measure again.
- many things can be quickly tested before being fully implemented. turn off logging and see if performance improves. if it doesn't, then there's no reason to go through the trouble of making/var/log/ and NFS mounted share. visit the site using a browser with images turned off to see how much faster it is when images aren't being asked for.
- on a related note, determine where the bottlenecks are before optimizing. There's no reason to split image-serving duties if the only image you have is your logo and a couple nav buttons.
- if possible, when you're done, do a writeup and submit it to slashdot. I always say "the best way to be successful is to find someone who has done what you want to do and copy them" and your experiences might help the next person who's in the same boat you're in now.
- talk to people who have experience building fast servers. there's lots of stuff to know. for just one example, I've often heard that PIIIs and PIII Xeons are better than P4s for almost all server duties. there are religious wars in server land as well--SCSI vs. ATA, etc.--but talk to a few people and patterns will emerge.
You must, must, MUST post a story telling us what your days are like. I'm not trolling, I'm being totally sincere--what is going on in your world that you didn't recognize a story YOU posted YESTERDAY?!? Married life? Horrid in-laws? Kid on the way? Early-onset Alzheimer's? Spending too much time boinking supermodels on top of a mountain of OSTG cash to notice? Seriously, what's going on?
Actually, the amazing thing was you got all of the performance with just a *quarter* of the cache--128k vs. 512k. But, as you say, it was on the same die and ran at full-speed, compared to the PII's off-chip half-speed cache. And, of course, it could be overclocked to give performance similar to a PII/450 at a much lower price. Somewhere on Ars is the classic article.
Just like any bulb, it's the heating and cooling from turning on and off that kills them, not just pure hours on. I manage several conference rooms and each room has a projector. These rooms have been used an average of 8 hours/day, 2-3 days/week, for 4 years and I haven't replaced a bulb yet. I imagine the published life specs are based on the idea of someone turning it on, doing a 30- or 60-minute presentation, and turning it off.
Also, low-end projectors are barely usable in a brightly-lit room. (Like a living room with large windows or glass doors letting in sunlight.) Well, they're "usable" for computer use, when the point is to be able to read numbers on a spreadsheet, but they're hardly suitable for the full range of color you get in movies and TV shows. And this thing is substantially *less* bright? Yeah, leave it on all day every day if you want, but you won't get much enjoyment until the sun goes down unless you own good drapes.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, same way that Apache, various open-source operating systems, and various open-source databases have had so many more widely-exploited bugs in the last 5 years... you know, because Linux, Apache, and MySQL (for example) drive so many more websites than IIS, Windows, and MS-SQL... oh, wait, THAT'S COMPLETELY WRONG. Windows has LESS market share and MORE exploits. Hmm, I wonder why... You know, maybe, juuust maybe, is it possible that Windows is not designed that well from a security standpoint? And UNIX variants really, truly are better in that department?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no software is perfect, and I expect a flood of responses talking about this PHPBB exploit and that MT exploit... but count up the REAL, WIDESPREAD, COSTLY viruses, folks. A couple years ago, my company shut down its entire network--I mean, they cut the power to the switches--TWICE, in one year. Why? Because of REAL, ACTIVE, IN-USE Windows viruses.
Comments.pl shows individual comments like this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=173521&cid=144 38389 or lets you reply to them (like the one I'm typing in now) but articles, with comments, is what google sees when it visits article.pl.
The reason google browses at +1 is because it sees what any non-logged-in user would see. Telling it to ignore comments.pl keeps it from doing redundant work. Google will see this story with a few hundred comments at article.pl; it doesn't need to re-index each comment's ``comments.pl'' page. Also, google will follow links but it won't click form buttons--so, it can't reply, change its threshold, etc.
>If you become a popular submitter it is because you submit relevant stories.
.sig's. That gets rid of a lot of chaff and leaves us with a lot of wheat. So for the submitters: You can give them the gift of visits. You *dont'* have to give them the gift of abusing PageRank. But don't make it a special case, make it a rule--put 'nofollow' into ALL submitter's personal URLs.
Not entirely true. It could be because you submit tons and tons of stories. Countless times in these threads we see posts saying "I submitted this story and it was rejected, here's a link to my writeup which has more/better/clearer/less biased info" and the alternate writeup is indeed better, and usually sooner. Getting a story onto slashdot requires exactly one thing: appearing interesting, yes, but the key is it has to appear interesting to the editor who happens to see it in the queue. Submitting tons of stories increases these chances.
Submitting stories to Slashdot is a numbers game. It is *not* the case that the first or best submission gets accepted, even when it's staggeringly on-topic. The 'Editorial' page of this site's FAQ lists Taco's favorite subjects: "Linux, Legos, Penguins, Sci (both real and fiction)." I submitted a story about a guy who created Star Wars scenes with Lego. Can't get much more on-topic than that. It was rejected. Later that week, someone else's submission of the same site was accepted. The stories that get onto Slashdot depend on exactly one thing: the editor who reads the submission. So: on topic or not, good or bad, if you submit zillions of stories to Slashdot--even if they have mediocre writeups--you'll become a popular submitter. (And sites like Reddit and Digg make finding interesting stories even easier. You could proabably set up a bot to scrape those sites, submit them as stories, and have a high amount of success.) And of course, posting lots of stories probably means you will have mediocre writeups. Great: just what slashdot needs: a system that rewards mediocrity.
If I didn't have two jobs I'd start submitting stories like mad and document how many got posted just to prove this but I don't have the time. But any longtime slashdotter (or the site admins themselves) can tell you the same.
And Taco: I love the site, I think you've done a great thing here, but it turns my stomach to hear you talk about the serious editorial duties you perform when you won't even do 2 quick google searches on each story: one to make sure it isn't a dupe and one to see if the article is totally bogus--a scam, a hoax, factually incorrect, etc. (There was a hoax here a week or two ago, which was already known to be a hoax by the time slashdot picked it up. The hoaxness was mentioned in comments and in a slashback a few days later, but still--it should have never made it onto the front page.)
Also: "Both use their return link to link a web page which is, in my opinion, pretty worthless." Um, hello? You've not heard of Google, page rank, and the uncountable fortunes that await someone with a high google score? Please. You *know* this is a hugely popular site. You *know* the power of it, and google's. Leaving the combined power of these two sites in the hands of anyone with scads of free time is silly.
Here's my take: I don't like 'nofollow' in blogs as a general rule. Lots of good stuff does show up in google because blogs mention it or it shows up in the comments. Slashdot comment spam stays out of google beacause google browses at +1, IIRC, and I think google also sees slashdot without
I believe what you'd want to use on a computer is the '77' variety.
Yeah, just make sure you don't get Super 77 from them instead. That would be a big "oops."
There's only one way to keep our earnings up in '06--show more ads!
(Just hope no one tells them that's why I've almost completely quit going to movies.)
Space terrorists will be easy to spot. They'll be the ones in astronaut school who don't want to learn how to take off or land, just steer. :-)
Nope, the Holodeck is the most dangerous invention. Just ask Dilbert-creator Scott Adams:
"If I had a holodeck, I'd lose the door and never come out until I died of exhaustion. It would be hard to convince me I should be anywhere but in the holodeck, getting my oil massage from Cindy Crawford and her simulated twin sister... I'm afraid the holodeck will be society's last invention."
For those about to reply OMG! Nuclear power ZOMG!!!111!!11One!!! You should perhaps read the wikipedia article.
:-)
I did read the Wikipedia article, and it says "The pebble bed reactor (PBR) is an advanced nuclear reactor design. OMG its teh nucular!!!!!11"
What's your point?
Apple's productivity suite will get upgrades to Pages and Keynote with the possible addition of a modern Office-killing spreadsheet application (rumored to be called "Numbers" or "Sheets"). If it reads and writes Excel files the Apple spreadsheet will be the final nail is Microsoft Office's coffin. Microsoft will waste no time in announcing the end of support for Office for the Mac if this happens.
And then Apple can kiss all of its corporate sales goodbye. Nope, not gonna happen. Maybe a light-duty, somewhat-compatible spreadsheet for people to make little lists with, but Apple knows it will lose more in corporate hardware sales than it can ever make back with their little $99-a-pop suite.
Besides, if there's one thing we have learned, it's that 100% compatibility with MS Office file formats is impossible. Can OOo do it? Can Quark or InDesign perfectly import Word docs? Hell, do MS Office for Mac and Win perfectly read each others' files? No, no, and no.
>They have much much higher hardware sales than Apple and consequently, their tech support must placate many more people.
Um... can't they just hire more people? If Apple sells (totally made-up numbers here) 10,000,000 computers and services their customers with 10,000 people, why can't Dell sell 100,000,000 computers and service their customers with 100,000 people?
The point is, Apple is doing *something* right--paying more, hiring better people, treating them better, running their support center better, making easier-to-support gear, who knows--and the fact that they sell less gear is not the reason that they have better support.
Depends what you're doing. Using google with the exact wording of an error message often gives the solution in the first match. It's still great for me. Spam is an ongoing battle but my searches usually don't result in much--just subject matter differences, I guess. I'm sure if you're looking for digital camera info it's kind of hard. But when the revolution comes and all spammers are lined up along a wall and shot, that problem will go way.
Great article on bug tracking here. Yes, he makes a bug tracker, but this article (and others on his site) goes into detail about *why* and *how*, not just "buy my product." Also good info here.
"If you are developing code, even on a team of one, without an organized database listing all known bugs in the code, you are going to ship low quality code. Lots of programmers think they can hold the bug list in their heads. Nonsense. I can't remember more than two or three bugs at a time, and the next morning, or in the rush of shipping, they are forgotten. You absolutely have to keep track of bugs formally."
... there has not yet been a real, severe, in-the-wild exploit (like Sasser) since XP SP2, right? I hate to admit it as much as the next guy, but MS has been pretty tight for a while--unless there's something I've missed. Have I?
Actually, one thing I hate about Ubuntu is that "Shut down" is hidden under "Log out." For most Users, Windows gets it right--"Shut down" is clearly labeled, and the other options, like Log Out, are hidden. Most users don't know what Log Out is, nor do most users want to leave their computers on 24/7. Turn on, work, turn off.
:-)
Also, in the old days, I used to counter the "OMGLOL start to shut down!!!11" trolls by responding "Yeah? Well, Mac OS puts it under the 'special' menu--yeah, there's nothing more 'special' than shutting down an electronic device."
The reason I don't use Opera is because I fell in love with the free FF (Phoenix 0.2, actually) back when Opera gave me a choice of looking at ads or sending in money. I'm not an OSS bigot, just practical. And in the practical world, free beats non-free. I've since tried the free Opera (as I have several times in the past) and it's OK but it's not super-great.
Remember: IE was free, too, and it was even easier to access than FF, but I tried FF, liked it more, and switched. I'll try a product and change if it's great, which IE isn't, FF is, and Opera isn't. To me, at least.
And I'm equally tired of hearing from MySQL haters who bitch and bitch and bitch about how MySQL isn't worth shit and should never be used for anything, anywhere, ever. Need I remind you that the very site you're looking at runs on MySQL and handles literally millions of pageviews per day? OK, fine, I won't. How's this then: hundreds of the 33,000 employees where I work rely on MySQL daily, whether they know it or not. Phone lists, surveys, reporting apps, inventory databases, etc etc etc. MySQL does the job and does it just fine. It has not failed me once in all the years I've been using it.
And SQLite is better? Because it's ACID? HA! HA HA HA HA HA! GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK! That's the only buzzword it IS compliant with. Look at this:
Q: SQLite lets me insert a string into a database column of type integer!
A: This is a feature, not a bug. SQLite does not enforce data type constraints. [emphasis added]
and this:
Q: What is the maximum size of a VARCHAR in SQLite?
A: SQLite does not enforce the length of a VARCHAR. You can declare a VARCHAR(10) and SQLite will be happy to let you put 500 characters in it. And it will keep all 500 characters intact - it never truncates.
and this:
Q: Does SQLite support a BLOB type?
A: SQLite versions 3.0 and leter let you puts BLOB data into any column, even columns that are declared to hold some other type.
all this and more can be seen at http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html
"And Postgresql is far more robust and performs just as well."
And only recently ran natively under Windows. Sorry, but when you're in a company with 33k employees and a substantial IT department, you don't always get to pick your platform. MySQL was there, it worked, and it continues to do so. Why would I switch?
Let me make the required car analogy: a semi is several orders of magnitude more powerful than a 2WD pickup truck. A semi can haul more, and haul more further, and haul big loads more efficiently, and with a sleeper cab and two drivers can operate 24/7, and you can get refrigerated units to move food, etc etc etc. Why, then, are there millions of 2WD pickups sold? Are they just "shitty vehicles with lots of mindshare"? NO! It's because 99.9% of the population just wants to move a couch or go to Home Depot or something. Maybe it'll take a few trips to help a friend move, but even that takes fewer hours than getting a class-whatever license, plus pickups are easier to maneuver and park in apartment complex parking lots and residential neighborhoods, etc etc etc.
I'm not saying MySQL is better than everythinhg else. The fact is, databases and computers are SO capable now that even the WORST in the field is STILL more than 99% of people need. In other words, MySQL is Just Fine.
PS: MySQL is ACID when used with InnoDB tables which came out about 3 years ago. Time to update your troll.
In high school, we had an assignment to do a 3-page paper about some Shakespeare story. I forget which one, but it involved some characters overhearing part of a conversation and getting the wrong idea. (It goes without saying that I didn't read the book/play/story/whatever.) I wrote a 2 and 1/3-page paper based mostly on what the teacher said in class* and made comparisons to the sitcom "3's Company" which often relied on the partially-overheard-conversation as a plot device.
Not only did that paper garner an honest-to-God "A+" but the teacher photocopied it, handed it out to the class, and spent a period discussing it as an example of how to write a good paper.
* I think I also used Cliff Notes. You know those? You know how they also have an extra-extra short (3-4 page) summary in the beginning? I think I skimmed that. God am I lazy.
These are all very good tips. There are also several things you can do with just one box:
:80 and serve images via Boa on :8080.
/var/log/ and NFS mounted share. visit the site using a browser with images turned off to see how much faster it is when images aren't being asked for.
- PHP has lots of caching options available and other things that can boost performance. Learn them. One good overview is in the powerpoint slideshow here. Just like you can't put a heavy building on a weak foundation, it's very hard to speed up an app that's badly written in the first place.
- SQL can be badly misused. Make sure that your page uses as few queries as possible and that those queries are as good as possible. Don't use PHP for things that SQL does very well--joins, filtering, etc. Your goal should be for every database query to return as much information as you need to build the page and not an ounce more.
- you can take a half-step towards multiple boxes by running multiple servers on one box. Apache is great but it's overkill for static work like serving images--look at tux, boa, lighttpd, thttpd, etc. for those duties. For example, serve the app from www.example.com on Apache and the images from images.example.com via Boa. Or, have Apache on
- the last thing to do before splitting up to multiple servers is to get one better box. from the box you describe, you might realize a 200-300% improvement with a fast dual-CPU box with 2-4 GB RAM and either a) RAID or b) different disks for different tasks--logs (writes) on one, images (reads) on another, etc.
- be scientific. measure, make one change, and measure again.
- many things can be quickly tested before being fully implemented. turn off logging and see if performance improves. if it doesn't, then there's no reason to go through the trouble of making
- on a related note, determine where the bottlenecks are before optimizing. There's no reason to split image-serving duties if the only image you have is your logo and a couple nav buttons.
- if possible, when you're done, do a writeup and submit it to slashdot. I always say "the best way to be successful is to find someone who has done what you want to do and copy them" and your experiences might help the next person who's in the same boat you're in now.
- talk to people who have experience building fast servers. there's lots of stuff to know. for just one example, I've often heard that PIIIs and PIII Xeons are better than P4s for almost all server duties. there are religious wars in server land as well--SCSI vs. ATA, etc.--but talk to a few people and patterns will emerge.
You must, must, MUST post a story telling us what your days are like. I'm not trolling, I'm being totally sincere--what is going on in your world that you didn't recognize a story YOU posted YESTERDAY?!? Married life? Horrid in-laws? Kid on the way? Early-onset Alzheimer's? Spending too much time boinking supermodels on top of a mountain of OSTG cash to notice? Seriously, what's going on?
Actually, the amazing thing was you got all of the performance with just a *quarter* of the cache--128k vs. 512k. But, as you say, it was on the same die and ran at full-speed, compared to the PII's off-chip half-speed cache. And, of course, it could be overclocked to give performance similar to a PII/450 at a much lower price. Somewhere on Ars is the classic article.
The other day I spent over an hour fixing a friend's computer. She couldn't visit secure sites with IE. To help me determine if the problem was with IE itself or the system's networking in general, I downloaded Firefox, and it couldn't get online at all. A little googling showed me the problem was due to Norton Internet Security being fucked up. Learning that, I had to jump through many hoops to uninstall it.
Fuck Symantec.
Yup. When the iPod came out, the Nomad was the gold standard against which it was measured. For about twenty minutes or so, but still. :-)
I just realized--that article is pretty much Slashdot's own "Dewey Defeats Truman."
"This is a spoof article. Please compare it with the original and you will see how little it has been changed."
:-)
He didn't even change the indefinite article in the graphic--"This is a Ajax free site" [emphasis added]
"It appears to be a rat-PDA, and a poorly-made rat-PDA at that."
Just like any bulb, it's the heating and cooling from turning on and off that kills them, not just pure hours on. I manage several conference rooms and each room has a projector. These rooms have been used an average of 8 hours/day, 2-3 days/week, for 4 years and I haven't replaced a bulb yet. I imagine the published life specs are based on the idea of someone turning it on, doing a 30- or 60-minute presentation, and turning it off.
Also, low-end projectors are barely usable in a brightly-lit room. (Like a living room with large windows or glass doors letting in sunlight.) Well, they're "usable" for computer use, when the point is to be able to read numbers on a spreadsheet, but they're hardly suitable for the full range of color you get in movies and TV shows. And this thing is substantially *less* bright? Yeah, leave it on all day every day if you want, but you won't get much enjoyment until the sun goes down unless you own good drapes.