I'll bite, it is not the usability I question, for sure these devices do what they promise, at least to some extent. It is the hype surrounding them that I address as that's what sells them. If we would compare devices on usability and features alone products like Apple's iPod and the Mac mini would not be able to compete with a lot of other products from manufacturers that aren't able to excel in marketing and hyping a product like Apple does. Rest assured that iPods are considered a symbol of social status among teens and that this is a major driving force in sales and also a cause for their popularity.
No, not even as an external firewire drive, a 2.5" drive enclosure with firewire and USB costs you about $25, add a 60GB 2.5" HD for $100 and you've got the 3x the storage capacity for 1/2 the price. And I don't really have need for portable storage, we all have broadband these days right?
That a problem for you Mr Anonymous Coward? At least I'm not hiding in anonymity. It is called entertaining different trains of thought, hence getting input from different people with a different perspective. How else are you going to form a well informed opinion?
Just recently Apple launched the Mac mini, an iPod on steroids to some, a feature rich yet compact Mac to others. But is it? Read on to find out why it is much, much more than that.
Apple's Mac mini, product of marketing genius?
Just recently Apple launched the Mac mini, an iPod on steroids to some, a feature rich yet compact Mac to others. But is it? Read on to find out why it is much, much more than that.
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/17 76/
Oh, I tried that on a number of games CDs I have here before, for backup purposes. That won't work, as when the game application reads back the CD it simply asks you to install the correct CD every time. What does not get copied correctly is the few first sectors on the CD which hold a checksum. That checksum is already written to on CDR, indicating that it is, you guessed it, a CDR. Hence not all CDs can be copied bit-for-bit and be an exact digital copy of the original.
I think you covered things pretty well, but you seem to be under the impression that the mere thought of something being copyrighted is evil. I don't agree, I think copyrights should be in place to stop widespread copying of content and ideas, which is not just harmful to large corporation but also Joe average that just had this great idea he'd like to copyright.
You'll agree with me that the movie producers want to protect their investment, certainly in cases where the initial run of DVDs has to make enough revenue to break even, or make a profit, if I were them I'd want to make sure I stay in business, and be profitable, as well.
What I dislike, and I agree fully with you there, is the fact that they enforce upon the consumer their own set of laws that prevent me from playing back the content I bought unless I do so in exactly the way they intended me to use it. If such a scheme is used on a DVD, CD or other media, I want it to be clearly listed on the cover, so I can steer clear of it. This wasn't the case here, which I think is misleading.
In the end, some form of DRM will show up in the next few years. If I had a say in this I'd say on-disc DRM is a good solution, the disc checks whether the content and the disc unique serial id match and if so unlocks the content, no internet connection needed. Much like many PC games and other software CDs can't be copied as the disk verification is in the first few sectors which are already written to on blank CDRs, you can never create a bit-for-bit identical copy, so the copy is broken and doesn't work. It does however not stop the p2p-ing and breaking of the DRM, but this is a lost cause as is, no copy-protection scheme is full proof.
The on-disc DRM also voids the arguments of people that, rightfully, question whether a DRM license server will still be able to validate their content in five, or ten years from now if online verification is needed. It does however not allow for making backups, and storing the original in a safe location, but then again who does that with DVDs? It wasn't even technically feasible until dual-layer DVDRW drives entered the market, so I think people would be fine with that, I sure would.
As for DRM on live TV, making it impossible to record your favorite shows, or even skip commercials, I think that is a severe limitation of my desire to watch the content that I like when and where I chose to. If I'm to ever switch to a digital TV system I want it to be as flexible as a analog VCR in terms of recording and playing back anything I'm interested in watching. If not, I'm not going to bother with it.
That's a few thoughts about this whole issue, feel free to reply.
I see comments left and right basically saying 'why don't you just rip it'. Well frankly that doesn't work, or at least not with the apps I tried. If someone has a brilliant solution that does allow me to bypass the DRM, and play back the files when, and where, I feel like, I'd appreciate it if he/she could shoot me an email at the address noted in the article.
Sander Sassen
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
For comparison, as otherwise this is a nonsense statistic, how much does a conv. powerplant kill? How about a nuclear powered one? A waterturbine? Only then we can pass judgement on whether a wind turbine is more harmful to the wildlife.
That's correct, we're using RH9 with the Apache webserver, obviously running on a MySQL database and using HTTP compression to serve out those pages quickly.
We're actually on a 100Mbit connection right on the AMS-IX, one of the fastest internet gateways in Europe. We're doing just fine actually, we just needed to reconfigure Apache to allow for more simultaneous users, the server is not even close to being taxed. In case you're wondering what we're running, I've listed the configuration below.
- 2 x Intel 2.8GHz Xeon with HT
- Tyan Tiger i7501 motherboard
- 2GB of PC2100/DDR266 Registered DDR memory
- 4 x Seagate Cheetah 15K3 HDs, 37GB, U320 SCSI
- Adaptec 2200S U320 SCSI RAID controller
- Disks are run in a RAID10 configuration
Yeah, you bunch of terrorists:) Our poor server was getting a beating, but we're fine now. Just had to reconfigure Apache to allow for more than 5000 users at the same time.
I wanted to give some feedback about the server's performance and address some of the concerns mentioned in this thread. First off, we're competent enough I can assure you. I was actually amazed we kept on running as for example Tom's Hardware is nearly unreachable when they're Slashdotted. They got a rack full of servers and quite possibly a load balancer in front. We just got one single box, so do the math.
But the problems were all software related and Apache took the bulk of it. The problem with Apache is that the per-connection overhead is too high. It's a couple Megs per connection generally, and if you use keepalives (enabled by default), then each connection process will by tied up for as long as 30 seconds (which is the default I think) after the request has been completed.
Additionally, since Apache works with a pool of individual processes to handle connections, there is no way to have a global shared resource between all processes. So, in the case of your database connections, you have a 1:1 relationship between db connections and HTTP processes. The result is that you have HTTP processes with open db connections serving images and so forth that don't even need db links. So, you end up using a lot more db connections than you actually need.
The thing we need to do to be able to handle such loads in the future is change from Apache to something that uses a worker thread model within a single process. Apache 2.0 may be setup to work like this, but I think it uses a hybrid model that still uses processes for dynamic stuff like PHP. Apache 2.0 will definitely help a little, though.
But anyway, what's also happening is that MySQL is only able to handle so many requests and then you're getting HTTP processes piling up waiting for it. So if we can cut down on the number of requests per page that will make a pretty significant difference when spread across thousands of users.
So yes, I think the Apache keep-alives 'did us in' for the most part and the pool of child processes you create becomes unmanageable at some point with many 1000s of connections at the same time. The worst part is that optimizations such as this can't be found in the manual, you'd need to have been in the 'trenches' to know about things like this. Fortunately we have a great team and Vitaliy, our CTO, is really on top of things, and actually had a great time this weekend, or as he put it 'this is better than simulation'.
Overall I'm more than happy with the performance of the server, it was never designed to handle such loads, and yet it kept on running, it never faltered and it certainly did not turn into a smoking heap of rubble as some suggested. We just were a little slow with serving out those pages and must've been unreachable to some with a slower connection.
If anybody else has some additional comments or insights I'd be happy to discuss this further, or go into greater detail. After all we're all here to learn right?
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
As you probably understood from reading the article, we're not a large corporation but just a small startup company with young and enthusiastic people fresh out of university and aspiring to be all that we can be. We therefore are taking this opportunity to learn from this experience as the amount and diversity of traffic we've gotten over the past few days is both beyond anything we simulated. It is an opportunity for us to learn from any mistakes we've made and track down the bottlenecks.
We've been going over the Slashdot comments and your response was one we certainly would like to follow up on. So if you're interested we'd love to hear more and welcome any advice you're able to give us. We'll be adding one or more pages to the article with, for example, software tricks for Apache and Linux and other tips and tricks that will help us, and others, to fine-tune their web server.
Looking forward to your reply.
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
As you probably understood from reading the article, we're not a large corporation but just a small startup company with young and enthusiastic people fresh out of university and aspiring to be all that we can be. We therefore are taking this opportunity to learn from this experience as the amount and diversity of traffic we've gotten over the past few days is both beyond anything we simulated. It is an opportunity for us to learn from any mistakes we've made and track down the bottlenecks.
We've been going over the Slashdot comments and your response was one we certainly would like to follow up on. So if you're interested we'd love to hear more and welcome any advice you're able to give us. We'll be adding one or more pages to the article with, for example, software tricks for Apache and Linux and other tips and tricks that will help us, and others, to fine-tune their web server.
Looking forward to your reply.
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
As you probably understood from reading the article, we're not a large corporation but just a small startup company with young and enthusiastic people fresh out of university and aspiring to be all that we can be. We therefore are taking this opportunity to learn from this experience as the amount and diversity of traffic we've gotten over the past few days is both beyond anything we simulated. It is an opportunity for us to learn from any mistakes we've made and track down the bottlenecks.
We've been going over the Slashdot comments and your response was one we certainly would like to follow up on. So if you're interested we'd love to hear more and welcome any advice you're able to give us. We'll be adding one or more pages to the article with, for example, software tricks for Apache and Linux and other tips and tricks that will help us, and others, to fine-tune their web server.
Looking forward to your reply.
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
As you probably understood from reading the article, we're not a large corporation but just a small startup company with young and enthusiastic people fresh out of university and aspiring to be all that we can be. We therefore are taking this opportunity to learn from this experience as the amount and diversity of traffic we've gotten over the past few days is both beyond anything we simulated. It is an opportunity for us to learn from any mistakes we've made and track down the bottlenecks.
We've been going over the Slashdot comments and your response was one we certainly would like to follow up on. So if you're interested we'd love to hear more and welcome any advice you're able to give us. We'll be adding one or more pages to the article with, for example, software tricks for Apache and Linux and other tips and tricks that will help us, and others, to fine-tune their web server.
Looking forward to your reply.
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
Uhm, we didn't factor that one in, need a couple more boxes and a dedicated high-bandwidth connection for that as we're suffering from too many clients at the same time and network congestion.
Overclocker-fan-boy audience? Ouch! That's not nice, we're not targetting them, plenty of sites that do, just not us.
The upgrade to Apache 2 is in the works, but that just wouldn't help us right now, would it? We'll also update the kernel and install Promise' latest drivers. Appriciate the constructive critisism but a little more detail please, afterall we're all here to learn right?
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
You obviously don't know what you're talking about, else you wouldn't give that kind of a response. There's over 2000 clients accessing pages with a high hit-count, a flash animation and other dynamic content, that's not an easy task I can assure you.
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
People are negative because the server has been unreachable for some, but they tend to conveniently forget that we did not design for 2000+ simultaneous clients, just a couple of hunderd really. Just thought I'd let you know, as we only have one of these whereas most websites (like Anand and Tom) have a rack full of them. Still we're handling the load pretty well and are serving out the pages to about 1500 clients.
Have a good weekend,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
Slashdot Mirror
I'll bite, it is not the usability I question, for sure these devices do what they promise, at least to some extent. It is the hype surrounding them that I address as that's what sells them. If we would compare devices on usability and features alone products like Apple's iPod and the Mac mini would not be able to compete with a lot of other products from manufacturers that aren't able to excel in marketing and hyping a product like Apple does. Rest assured that iPods are considered a symbol of social status among teens and that this is a major driving force in sales and also a cause for their popularity.
No, not even as an external firewire drive, a 2.5" drive enclosure with firewire and USB costs you about $25, add a 60GB 2.5" HD for $100 and you've got the 3x the storage capacity for 1/2 the price. And I don't really have need for portable storage, we all have broadband these days right?
That a problem for you Mr Anonymous Coward? At least I'm not hiding in anonymity. It is called entertaining different trains of thought, hence getting input from different people with a different perspective. How else are you going to form a well informed opinion?
Sorry, properly html formatted now:
7 76/
Apple's Mac mini, product of marketing genius?
Just recently Apple launched the Mac mini, an iPod on steroids to some, a feature rich yet compact Mac to others. But is it? Read on to find out why it is much, much more than that.
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1
Apple's Mac mini, product of marketing genius? Just recently Apple launched the Mac mini, an iPod on steroids to some, a feature rich yet compact Mac to others. But is it? Read on to find out why it is much, much more than that. http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/17 76/
Oh, I tried that on a number of games CDs I have here before, for backup purposes. That won't work, as when the game application reads back the CD it simply asks you to install the correct CD every time. What does not get copied correctly is the few first sectors on the CD which hold a checksum. That checksum is already written to on CDR, indicating that it is, you guessed it, a CDR. Hence not all CDs can be copied bit-for-bit and be an exact digital copy of the original.
Sander Sassen
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
Thanks Richard,
I think you covered things pretty well, but you seem to be under the impression that the mere thought of something being copyrighted is evil. I don't agree, I think copyrights should be in place to stop widespread copying of content and ideas, which is not just harmful to large corporation but also Joe average that just had this great idea he'd like to copyright.
You'll agree with me that the movie producers want to protect their investment, certainly in cases where the initial run of DVDs has to make enough revenue to break even, or make a profit, if I were them I'd want to make sure I stay in business, and be profitable, as well.
What I dislike, and I agree fully with you there, is the fact that they enforce upon the consumer their own set of laws that prevent me from playing back the content I bought unless I do so in exactly the way they intended me to use it. If such a scheme is used on a DVD, CD or other media, I want it to be clearly listed on the cover, so I can steer clear of it. This wasn't the case here, which I think is misleading.
In the end, some form of DRM will show up in the next few years. If I had a say in this I'd say on-disc DRM is a good solution, the disc checks whether the content and the disc unique serial id match and if so unlocks the content, no internet connection needed. Much like many PC games and other software CDs can't be copied as the disk verification is in the first few sectors which are already written to on blank CDRs, you can never create a bit-for-bit identical copy, so the copy is broken and doesn't work. It does however not stop the p2p-ing and breaking of the DRM, but this is a lost cause as is, no copy-protection scheme is full proof.
The on-disc DRM also voids the arguments of people that, rightfully, question whether a DRM license server will still be able to validate their content in five, or ten years from now if online verification is needed. It does however not allow for making backups, and storing the original in a safe location, but then again who does that with DVDs? It wasn't even technically feasible until dual-layer DVDRW drives entered the market, so I think people would be fine with that, I sure would.
As for DRM on live TV, making it impossible to record your favorite shows, or even skip commercials, I think that is a severe limitation of my desire to watch the content that I like when and where I chose to. If I'm to ever switch to a digital TV system I want it to be as flexible as a analog VCR in terms of recording and playing back anything I'm interested in watching. If not, I'm not going to bother with it.
That's a few thoughts about this whole issue, feel free to reply.
Sander Sassen
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
I see comments left and right basically saying 'why don't you just rip it'. Well frankly that doesn't work, or at least not with the apps I tried. If someone has a brilliant solution that does allow me to bypass the DRM, and play back the files when, and where, I feel like, I'd appreciate it if he/she could shoot me an email at the address noted in the article. Sander Sassen http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
For comparison, as otherwise this is a nonsense statistic, how much does a conv. powerplant kill? How about a nuclear powered one? A waterturbine? Only then we can pass judgement on whether a wind turbine is more harmful to the wildlife.
> Logging on to Beagle2 > Connection openend at 33Kbps > Login: beagle > Password: ...
>Wrong password!
> Password: ...
> Wrong password!
> Password: ...
> Wrong password, please remove jumper 121 to reset password, system halted
That's correct, we're using RH9 with the Apache webserver, obviously running on a MySQL database and using HTTP compression to serve out those pages quickly.
Sander Sassen
ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
Keep 'm coming guys, you're nowhere near to taxing the server. Which is a nice dual Xeon running on RH9 with the Apache webserver.
Sander Sassen
ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
We're actually on a 100Mbit connection right on the AMS-IX, one of the fastest internet gateways in Europe. We're doing just fine actually, we just needed to reconfigure Apache to allow for more simultaneous users, the server is not even close to being taxed. In case you're wondering what we're running, I've listed the configuration below.
- 2 x Intel 2.8GHz Xeon with HT
- Tyan Tiger i7501 motherboard
- 2GB of PC2100/DDR266 Registered DDR memory
- 4 x Seagate Cheetah 15K3 HDs, 37GB, U320 SCSI
- Adaptec 2200S U320 SCSI RAID controller
- Disks are run in a RAID10 configuration
Sander Sassen
ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
Yeah, you bunch of terrorists :) Our poor server was getting a beating, but we're fine now. Just had to reconfigure Apache to allow for more than 5000 users at the same time.
Cheers,
Sander Sassen
ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
Gotcha, thanks, edited these out!
AMD's Fab 30, Simply Fabulous5 81/
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1
But the problems were all software related and Apache took the bulk of it. The problem with Apache is that the per-connection overhead is too high. It's a couple Megs per connection generally, and if you use keepalives (enabled by default), then each connection process will by tied up for as long as 30 seconds (which is the default I think) after the request has been completed.
Additionally, since Apache works with a pool of individual processes to handle connections, there is no way to have a global shared resource between all processes. So, in the case of your database connections, you have a 1:1 relationship between db connections and HTTP processes. The result is that you have HTTP processes with open db connections serving images and so forth that don't even need db links. So, you end up using a lot more db connections than you actually need.
The thing we need to do to be able to handle such loads in the future is change from Apache to something that uses a worker thread model within a single process. Apache 2.0 may be setup to work like this, but I think it uses a hybrid model that still uses processes for dynamic stuff like PHP. Apache 2.0 will definitely help a little, though.
But anyway, what's also happening is that MySQL is only able to handle so many requests and then you're getting HTTP processes piling up waiting for it. So if we can cut down on the number of requests per page that will make a pretty significant difference when spread across thousands of users.
So yes, I think the Apache keep-alives 'did us in' for the most part and the pool of child processes you create becomes unmanageable at some point with many 1000s of connections at the same time. The worst part is that optimizations such as this can't be found in the manual, you'd need to have been in the 'trenches' to know about things like this. Fortunately we have a great team and Vitaliy, our CTO, is really on top of things, and actually had a great time this weekend, or as he put it 'this is better than simulation'.
Overall I'm more than happy with the performance of the server, it was never designed to handle such loads, and yet it kept on running, it never faltered and it certainly did not turn into a smoking heap of rubble as some suggested. We just were a little slow with serving out those pages and must've been unreachable to some with a slower connection.
If anybody else has some additional comments or insights I'd be happy to discuss this further, or go into greater detail. After all we're all here to learn right?
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
As you probably understood from reading the article, we're not a large corporation but just a small startup company with young and enthusiastic people fresh out of university and aspiring to be all that we can be. We therefore are taking this opportunity to learn from this experience as the amount and diversity of traffic we've gotten over the past few days is both beyond anything we simulated. It is an opportunity for us to learn from any mistakes we've made and track down the bottlenecks.
We've been going over the Slashdot comments and your response was one we certainly would like to follow up on. So if you're interested we'd love to hear more and welcome any advice you're able to give us. We'll be adding one or more pages to the article with, for example, software tricks for Apache and Linux and other tips and tricks that will help us, and others, to fine-tune their web server.
Looking forward to your reply.
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
As you probably understood from reading the article, we're not a large corporation but just a small startup company with young and enthusiastic people fresh out of university and aspiring to be all that we can be. We therefore are taking this opportunity to learn from this experience as the amount and diversity of traffic we've gotten over the past few days is both beyond anything we simulated. It is an opportunity for us to learn from any mistakes we've made and track down the bottlenecks.
We've been going over the Slashdot comments and your response was one we certainly would like to follow up on. So if you're interested we'd love to hear more and welcome any advice you're able to give us. We'll be adding one or more pages to the article with, for example, software tricks for Apache and Linux and other tips and tricks that will help us, and others, to fine-tune their web server.
Looking forward to your reply.
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
As you probably understood from reading the article, we're not a large corporation but just a small startup company with young and enthusiastic people fresh out of university and aspiring to be all that we can be. We therefore are taking this opportunity to learn from this experience as the amount and diversity of traffic we've gotten over the past few days is both beyond anything we simulated. It is an opportunity for us to learn from any mistakes we've made and track down the bottlenecks.
We've been going over the Slashdot comments and your response was one we certainly would like to follow up on. So if you're interested we'd love to hear more and welcome any advice you're able to give us. We'll be adding one or more pages to the article with, for example, software tricks for Apache and Linux and other tips and tricks that will help us, and others, to fine-tune their web server.
Looking forward to your reply.
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
As you probably understood from reading the article, we're not a large corporation but just a small startup company with young and enthusiastic people fresh out of university and aspiring to be all that we can be. We therefore are taking this opportunity to learn from this experience as the amount and diversity of traffic we've gotten over the past few days is both beyond anything we simulated. It is an opportunity for us to learn from any mistakes we've made and track down the bottlenecks.
We've been going over the Slashdot comments and your response was one we certainly would like to follow up on. So if you're interested we'd love to hear more and welcome any advice you're able to give us. We'll be adding one or more pages to the article with, for example, software tricks for Apache and Linux and other tips and tricks that will help us, and others, to fine-tune their web server.
Looking forward to your reply.
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
The upgrade to Apache 2 is in the works, but that just wouldn't help us right now, would it? We'll also update the kernel and install Promise' latest drivers. Appriciate the constructive critisism but a little more detail please, afterall we're all here to learn right?
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
Kind regards,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com
Have a good weekend,
Sander Sassen
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com