I haven't tested moodle under any load to speak of (just a few simultaneous users) but hadn't noticed a huge issue. Then again, I wasn't looking for one. It might be worth it to profile with xdebug or the zend profiling tool in zend ide. Perhaps there are not enough indexes on tables?
Moodle's got ~140 tables, I think, and Logicampus has about 100. That's not a huge difference, but the more mysql tables open the slower things can get, especially under a heavy load with an unoptimized server config.
Not necessarily trying to get you to switch, but logicampus is another free lms, and scales well. It's target is probably a bit different from moodle, as it's not intended to be a quick 'run a class from this' system, but aimed at running a bunch of classes. Anyway, your issue of speed was what interested me, as I know the logicampus scales rather well. We've got someone running 6000+ students doing a couple hundred classes on what I would consider only moderate hardware (2 cpus, 1.3 ghz I think) without any speed issues at all.
In any event, it's still PHP that has made all this possible. Happy Birthday!
I've written about this before, but I'm *so* waiting for a virus to do one or more of the following:
* alter scheduled appointments in outlook/exchange * alter contact information in outlook/exchange * alter information in ms word and ms excel documents
The key to all this is to do it in small doses - change a 3 to a 4, alter appointments by 1 hour, etc, introduce a few wrong spellings into ms word documents, etc.
People have this view that viruses are horribly destructive, and it decreases the estimation of Windows in some. Others stick by Windows, content to use anti-virus stuff because a virus just generally uses up resources indiscriminately or 'steals' data.
If viruses started attacking the integrity of core MS Office products, not 'just' the operating system itself, more damage would be done to MS' hold on corporate america than any attack on the 'operating system' level by viruses.
Put more simply, most people really don't understand the ins and outs of operating systems, nor the potential damage than can be done to them. Everyone can understand the damage that could be done by having your spreadsheets altered without your knowledge.
Well, at least I *think* everyone could understand that.
Seems it's prepaid only
on
Just a Phone?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I was asking for this for awhile, but people seem to not be able to *just* make a new phone that lets me make calls without also trying to push cameras, IM, texting and other stuff. So now someone says they're responding to consumer demand, but put it in a prepaid only option. Why is this still so hard to get?
The other big issue with cell phones is that NO ONE will sell you a new phone at a decent price without signing multi-year contracts. Even for people like me who've been with the same company for years (7 with sprint), they treat you like dirt.
All major companies adopting the same anti-consumer behaviour seems to be acceptable, but it feels to me somewhat like collusion. Obviously I can't prove this, but I can easily imagine major companies all agreeing to push the same multi-year contract terms at people. If they all do it, there won't be anywhere for pissed off customers to go, except to prepaid, which is also a pricey proposition as far as I can tell.
Except it's 3 years, not one. Had to move last year after only 8 months of being in that contract. Yes, it's a commitment and yes it may seem frivolous to be able to cancel 'because the contract no longer makes sense for me'. However, they have a clause in there that let's them cancel the contract at any time for any reason. All the big companies I've dealt with on issues like this have clauses for themselves - it's not like you can shop around too much if everyone's got the same contracts and won't work with you.
I've already told them I won't ever be using ADT again (had brinks earlier and it wasn't that bad - much better service than ADT). The negative advertising they've had from me over the past few months is much worse than the few hundred dollars they're going to get from me in the next 2 years.
BBC has a large collection of stuff, like EastEnders, which they could easily increase revenue overseas with by actually licensing it to be viewed. They don't seem to handle that appropriately.
BBCAmerica - just a company with rights to rebroadcast some BBC shows - was airing, when they did, years-old EastEnders episodes. In 2000, they were showing 1994-1995. When they ran out of those, they started replaying in 1994 again. They alternately claimed it was not profitable(?) and/or that the BBC wouldn't allow them access to the later stuff, or that it was too expensive. However, they had nonstop groundforce/changing rooms because it was cheap. In one 24 hour period, they showed 17 hours of either groundforce, changing rooms or shoot - one other reality-show-type thing. They repeated the same Changing Rooms multiple times per week, and kept repeating the same seasons over and over. Carol Smiley was pregnant for nearly 2 years, IIRC.
So, BBC, sell it direct. $1/download per episode. You'd increase your revenues and give people less reason to torrent your shows. Just give us access - we're ready to pay.
I realize I'm late to this conversation, and it'll no doubt crop up again shortly on slashdot, but where the heck is VMWARE in all this? Are they not agressively courting schools with huge discounts?
Their basic system is $189. Kinda steep for schools, but would mightily help this 'we can't migrate' syndrome. If VMWARE could offer bulk discounts for, say, $40/seat (for windows) and bundle it with a disk image of Mandrake or Suse or something else, schools could readily adopt this, roll it out, and run big pilot programs.
OK, OK, perhaps it's not VMWare's ultimate goal to help people migrate to OSS, but the opp is there to sell a lot of licenses to large installed bases.
Students/teachers could still run all Windows apps when needed, but try out new stuff too on multiple platforms. It would beat an OSX migration which I know some macfans want to push into schools. Keep existing hardware, keep benefits of existing windows compatibilty, 'upgrade' to expand available application base and eventually migrate to a more virus free environment.
Besides, when is VC necessary for a successful OSS project? Or frankly, a successful closed source, commercial product? I see plenty of Windows apps that are developed by small companies, with no VC funds, just trying to offer a superior product in a (sometimes) small niche. Download.com is full of this stuff.
With download.com stuff, much is shareware/crippleware, and it's much easier to get away with that in a technical sense with closed-source binary-only software.
"Hey, I like this checkbook software trial. Sure, I'll pay the $25 to buy the code to unlock it so I can print more than 1 check per day."
VERY hard (impossible?) to do with OSS. The whole O thing is that it's OPEN.
What the parent poster was saying was that he wants everything under his control to be as fast as possible. You can control your database speed (don't use one with 1-2 second delays per connection), app code (optimize, cache, etc), and even your outgoing bandwidth (big data center, etc). You can't control the end user's speed, but you also can't control however many end users there are.
If 'web development' was an area where slow data performance was acceptable, Amazon, Yahoo, and others wouldn't need to bother with indexes, DB upgrades, or other attempts to make their data performance faster. Because, after all, it's just 'web development', right?
A car is something that gets you to your job, and you invest thousands in (tens of thousands for most people). $50/hour for a few hours isn't all that much.
$50/hour for 3-4 hours ($150-$200) is often 20-40% of the original computer cost. When Dell is offering $549 packages deals with a flat screen, most people's knee-jerk reaction is that $50/hour is 'too high'. And it is too high, for most people and what they do. If it's related to their work, they can expense it. If it's just an email/gaming machine, they can buy a new one that's faster anyway.
As a huge beatles fan, I have to say they had some lyrics that, when written out, look pretty silly (maybe not as bad as 'what's your solar sign?')
Some examples: "I would like you to dance, Take a cha-cha-cha-chance."
"Lovely Rita meter maid Lovely Rita meter maid"
"We all live in a yellow submarine"
and so on.
The point is that often times the song is just as much about the music as the lyrics. The Beatles had some fab songs with fab lyrics, but sometimes the lyrics were secondary to the totality of the performance (and they generally had first-rate performances, regardless of the song!)
BTW, I've not heard the supermodel song, so I don't know what the performance of that song is like. Is it fast? Slow? Loud? Quiet?
What types of topics would you look for in an 'advanced' book? I do agree with you - the overwhelming mass of PHP books are all 'beginner' targetted (beginner programming and/or beginner with PHP). I don't want yet another book that tells me how to set up MySQL, thank you.
To that end, one PHP book that did have some good advanced sections was George Schlossnagle's book "Advanced PHP Programming" (I think that's the title).
Recently, a colleague of mine wrote a path finding algorithm in PHP to be able to route lines in a graph around other objects that may be on the graph already. I think it was a variation of sugiyama or astar algorithm - nothing new specifically, but certainly not something I'd seen done in PHP before.
Reply back here or email mgkimsal2@yahoo.com if you'd like to carry this thread on outside/.
However, the overseas license money is essentially just gravy, so perhaps it could be used to lower the current television license for UKers. ??? If the overseas license was only for downloading content, and that content was delayed by a few days or a week, then a lower cost for us outsiders might be even more palatable. ???
You can watch EastEnders for free on interactive cable already.
Not if you live in the US.:(
I would certainly pay something to d/l and watch old EastEnders (and Corrie!) espisodes. Granada and BBC are sitting on huge goldmines there and not doing anything with them. I'd pay $1/episode for EastEnders (30 minute episode) and same for Corrie. Given there are *thousands* of each of these which a few generations haven't had the chance to see, making these available to purchase would be fantastic, both for the fans and for the coffers.
Someone else mentioned a Bill Bryson audiobook - I'd also recommend "In a sunburned country" about his travels in Australia. It's over 10 hours on CD, and is very worthwhile. It's not *funny*, but his writing has a dry wit to it. Additionally, it's read by the author, so he knows best how to present the material.
Also, I've recently gone through "When Genius Fails" - again, a long one at 9.5 hours. Purchased from audible.com for $9.95 (first purchase discount). Great look at the fall of a big hedge fund in the '90s. (Financial nerds would like this one!)
As others have pointed out, podcasting is probably going to be a good source of large amounts of content - for long commutes that's what you'll need. However, I'm not sure there's always enough compelling content out there yet. I take that back - there's probably enough compelling content out there for your commute, but finding it and having it be relatively consistent will be difficult.
BBC and CBC might be worth checking out to see what programs they have you can grab and burn (maybe none, but I seem to remember some BBC radio shows being available some time ago).
Good luck! If you find some good stuff, post it back here!
I had a position with a large company which had a clause stating that they owned all IP created while I was working for them. *ALL* IP. So, I asked the HR people if that meant that they would own and take responsibility for the MS Word viruses that I liked to write in my downtime (for research purposes). "Certainly not!" was the reply.
I asked for a clarification of what IP I created that they *would* claim ownership for. I never got a clear answer to that (in writing), and didn't stay at that company too long, but I *hope* it made some people think about those stupid clauses.
I really wish someone working for a big global Fortune 500 with one of these types of employment clauses *would* release a destructive worm, then get out of the whole thing by stating that (s)he had a contract that Company X legally owned everything (s)he had produced.
OK - if it's *replacing* something else, then yes, I can see it might reduce costs. If it's just an additional CD or file on a CD, I can't see it reducing costs. I could see it potentially *increasing* costs, but I don't know what their support costs are for other bundled software.
From what I recall, there is another product called 'openoffice' which has a trademark on that name. The openoffice.org team gets around that issue by enforcing the ".org" in their literature and promotion efforts.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't tested moodle under any load to speak of (just a few simultaneous users) but hadn't noticed a huge issue. Then again, I wasn't looking for one. It might be worth it to profile with xdebug or the zend profiling tool in zend ide. Perhaps there are not enough indexes on tables?
Moodle's got ~140 tables, I think, and Logicampus has about 100. That's not a huge difference, but the more mysql tables open the slower things can get, especially under a heavy load with an unoptimized server config.
Not necessarily trying to get you to switch, but logicampus is another free lms, and scales well. It's target is probably a bit different from moodle, as it's not intended to be a quick 'run a class from this' system, but aimed at running a bunch of classes. Anyway, your issue of speed was what interested me, as I know the logicampus scales rather well. We've got someone running 6000+ students doing a couple hundred classes on what I would consider only moderate hardware (2 cpus, 1.3 ghz I think) without any speed issues at all.
In any event, it's still PHP that has made all this possible. Happy Birthday!
http://phpweblogs.com/phpcake.jpg
:)
Yeah, we're a bit over the top for PHP. The whole company had cake and ice cream to celebrate.
sybase, initially. it's been many years since then, so my assumption is that it's been quite modified since then.
I've written about this before, but I'm *so* waiting for a virus to do one or more of the following:
* alter scheduled appointments in outlook/exchange
* alter contact information in outlook/exchange
* alter information in ms word and ms excel documents
The key to all this is to do it in small doses - change a 3 to a 4, alter appointments by 1 hour, etc, introduce a few wrong spellings into ms word documents, etc.
People have this view that viruses are horribly destructive, and it decreases the estimation of Windows in some. Others stick by Windows, content to use anti-virus stuff because a virus just generally uses up resources indiscriminately or 'steals' data.
If viruses started attacking the integrity of core MS Office products, not 'just' the operating system itself, more damage would be done to MS' hold on corporate america than any attack on the 'operating system' level by viruses.
Put more simply, most people really don't understand the ins and outs of operating systems, nor the potential damage than can be done to them. Everyone can understand the damage that could be done by having your spreadsheets altered without your knowledge.
Well, at least I *think* everyone could understand that.
I was asking for this for awhile, but people seem to not be able to *just* make a new phone that lets me make calls without also trying to push cameras, IM, texting and other stuff. So now someone says they're responding to consumer demand, but put it in a prepaid only option. Why is this still so hard to get?
The other big issue with cell phones is that NO ONE will sell you a new phone at a decent price without signing multi-year contracts. Even for people like me who've been with the same company for years (7 with sprint), they treat you like dirt.
All major companies adopting the same anti-consumer behaviour seems to be acceptable, but it feels to me somewhat like collusion. Obviously I can't prove this, but I can easily imagine major companies all agreeing to push the same multi-year contract terms at people. If they all do it, there won't be anywhere for pissed off customers to go, except to prepaid, which is also a pricey proposition as far as I can tell.
argh!
Wasn't there something called planetfeedback.com which was supposed to do something similar? Are they still around?
Except it's 3 years, not one. Had to move last year after only 8 months of being in that contract. Yes, it's a commitment and yes it may seem frivolous to be able to cancel 'because the contract no longer makes sense for me'. However, they have a clause in there that let's them cancel the contract at any time for any reason. All the big companies I've dealt with on issues like this have clauses for themselves - it's not like you can shop around too much if everyone's got the same contracts and won't work with you.
I've already told them I won't ever be using ADT again (had brinks earlier and it wasn't that bad - much better service than ADT). The negative advertising they've had from me over the past few months is much worse than the few hundred dollars they're going to get from me in the next 2 years.
BBC has a large collection of stuff, like EastEnders, which they could easily increase revenue overseas with by actually licensing it to be viewed. They don't seem to handle that appropriately.
BBCAmerica - just a company with rights to rebroadcast some BBC shows - was airing, when they did, years-old EastEnders episodes. In 2000, they were showing 1994-1995. When they ran out of those, they started replaying in 1994 again. They alternately claimed it was not profitable(?) and/or that the BBC wouldn't allow them access to the later stuff, or that it was too expensive. However, they had nonstop groundforce/changing rooms because it was cheap. In one 24 hour period, they showed 17 hours of either groundforce, changing rooms or shoot - one other reality-show-type thing. They repeated the same Changing Rooms multiple times per week, and kept repeating the same seasons over and over. Carol Smiley was pregnant for nearly 2 years, IIRC.
So, BBC, sell it direct. $1/download per episode. You'd increase your revenues and give people less reason to torrent your shows. Just give us access - we're ready to pay.
I realize I'm late to this conversation, and it'll no doubt crop up again shortly on slashdot, but where the heck is VMWARE in all this? Are they not agressively courting schools with huge discounts?
Their basic system is $189. Kinda steep for schools, but would mightily help this 'we can't migrate' syndrome. If VMWARE could offer bulk discounts for, say, $40/seat (for windows) and bundle it with a disk image of Mandrake or Suse or something else, schools could readily adopt this, roll it out, and run big pilot programs.
OK, OK, perhaps it's not VMWare's ultimate goal to help people migrate to OSS, but the opp is there to sell a lot of licenses to large installed bases.
Students/teachers could still run all Windows apps when needed, but try out new stuff too on multiple platforms. It would beat an OSX migration which I know some macfans want to push into schools. Keep existing hardware, keep benefits of existing windows compatibilty, 'upgrade' to expand available application base and eventually migrate to a more virus free environment.
Besides, when is VC necessary for a successful OSS project? Or frankly, a successful closed source, commercial product? I see plenty of Windows apps that are developed by small companies, with no VC funds, just trying to offer a superior product in a (sometimes) small niche. Download.com is full of this stuff.
With download.com stuff, much is shareware/crippleware, and it's much easier to get away with that in a technical sense with closed-source binary-only software.
"Hey, I like this checkbook software trial. Sure, I'll pay the $25 to buy the code to unlock it so I can print more than 1 check per day."
VERY hard (impossible?) to do with OSS. The whole O thing is that it's OPEN.
Wrong.
What the parent poster was saying was that he wants everything under his control to be as fast as possible. You can control your database speed (don't use one with 1-2 second delays per connection), app code (optimize, cache, etc), and even your outgoing bandwidth (big data center, etc). You can't control the end user's speed, but you also can't control however many end users there are.
If 'web development' was an area where slow data performance was acceptable, Amazon, Yahoo, and others wouldn't need to bother with indexes, DB upgrades, or other attempts to make their data performance faster. Because, after all, it's just 'web development', right?
A car is something that gets you to your job, and you invest thousands in (tens of thousands for most people). $50/hour for a few hours isn't all that much.
$50/hour for 3-4 hours ($150-$200) is often 20-40% of the original computer cost. When Dell is offering $549 packages deals with a flat screen, most people's knee-jerk reaction is that $50/hour is 'too high'. And it is too high, for most people and what they do. If it's related to their work, they can expense it. If it's just an email/gaming machine, they can buy a new one that's faster anyway.
As a huge beatles fan, I have to say they had some lyrics that, when written out, look pretty silly (maybe not as bad as 'what's your solar sign?')
Some examples:
"I would like you to dance,
Take a cha-cha-cha-chance."
"Lovely Rita meter maid
Lovely Rita meter maid"
"We all live in a yellow submarine"
and so on.
The point is that often times the song is just as much about the music as the lyrics. The Beatles had some fab songs with fab lyrics, but sometimes the lyrics were secondary to the totality of the performance (and they generally had first-rate performances, regardless of the song!)
BTW, I've not heard the supermodel song, so I don't know what the performance of that song is like. Is it fast? Slow? Loud? Quiet?
What types of topics would you look for in an 'advanced' book? I do agree with you - the overwhelming mass of PHP books are all 'beginner' targetted (beginner programming and/or beginner with PHP). I don't want yet another book that tells me how to set up MySQL, thank you.
/.
To that end, one PHP book that did have some good advanced sections was George Schlossnagle's book "Advanced PHP Programming" (I think that's the title).
Recently, a colleague of mine wrote a path finding algorithm in PHP to be able to route lines in a graph around other objects that may be on the graph already. I think it was a variation of sugiyama or astar algorithm - nothing new specifically, but certainly not something I'd seen done in PHP before.
Reply back here or email mgkimsal2@yahoo.com if you'd like to carry this thread on outside
However, the overseas license money is essentially just gravy, so perhaps it could be used to lower the current television license for UKers. ??? If the overseas license was only for downloading content, and that content was delayed by a few days or a week, then a lower cost for us outsiders might be even more palatable. ???
I know, I know... :) I just saw the christmas 2004 episodes last week - still have a lot of catching up to do!
You can watch EastEnders for free on interactive cable already.
:(
Not if you live in the US.
I would certainly pay something to d/l and watch old EastEnders (and Corrie!) espisodes. Granada and BBC are sitting on huge goldmines there and not doing anything with them. I'd pay $1/episode for EastEnders (30 minute episode) and same for Corrie. Given there are *thousands* of each of these which a few generations haven't had the chance to see, making these available to purchase would be fantastic, both for the fans and for the coffers.
Someone else mentioned a Bill Bryson audiobook - I'd also recommend "In a sunburned country" about his travels in Australia. It's over 10 hours on CD, and is very worthwhile. It's not *funny*, but his writing has a dry wit to it. Additionally, it's read by the author, so he knows best how to present the material.
Also, I've recently gone through "When Genius Fails" - again, a long one at 9.5 hours. Purchased from audible.com for $9.95 (first purchase discount). Great look at the fall of a big hedge fund in the '90s. (Financial nerds would like this one!)
As others have pointed out, podcasting is probably going to be a good source of large amounts of content - for long commutes that's what you'll need. However, I'm not sure there's always enough compelling content out there yet. I take that back - there's probably enough compelling content out there for your commute, but finding it and having it be relatively consistent will be difficult.
BBC and CBC might be worth checking out to see what programs they have you can grab and burn (maybe none, but I seem to remember some BBC radio shows being available some time ago).
Good luck! If you find some good stuff, post it back here!
I had a position with a large company which had a clause stating that they owned all IP created while I was working for them. *ALL* IP. So, I asked the HR people if that meant that they would own and take responsibility for the MS Word viruses that I liked to write in my downtime (for research purposes). "Certainly not!" was the reply.
I asked for a clarification of what IP I created that they *would* claim ownership for. I never got a clear answer to that (in writing), and didn't stay at that company too long, but I *hope* it made some people think about those stupid clauses.
I really wish someone working for a big global Fortune 500 with one of these types of employment clauses *would* release a destructive worm, then get out of the whole thing by stating that (s)he had a contract that Company X legally owned everything (s)he had produced.
Those clauses would be amended like lightning.
OK - if it's *replacing* something else, then yes, I can see it might reduce costs. If it's just an additional CD or file on a CD, I can't see it reducing costs. I could see it potentially *increasing* costs, but I don't know what their support costs are for other bundled software.
http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-other.html#7
From what I recall, there is another product called 'openoffice' which has a trademark on that name. The openoffice.org team gets around that issue by enforcing the ".org" in their literature and promotion efforts.
How would it *reduce* Dell's cost to distribute OpenOffice with their systems?
YOU'LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT!