The article states a really big improvment, but is seems hard to swallow. The article fails the mention what system they were running before, aside from mentioning "propietary Unix". I don't know, maybe they had some 10-year old system running the database before and with that I could buy the big improvement but with crucial information omitted in the article, feels kind of like puffed up hype.
I had company-sponsored broadband for two yearrs, along with a cell phone and a cell phone bill being paid for the company. I don't anymore and I'm very happy. Having a company-paid broadband line or a cell phone makes it easier for the company to require you to do tidbits of work during your free time.
With no company phone or 'net access it needs to be something major for me to even respond to a request. Previously with a company phone I've had people call me at 1) 7AM 2) Sunday's at 10PM... and I'm a software developer, not tech support.
I found this article to be rather insightful. I personally run a small IT/science-news site (in Finnish) and I'm really having a hard time figuring out visitors of the site. Of course I can get some data from the log analyzing software (awstats and webalizer are being used for the site) but it really doesn't tell me what I want. It seems that the website logs don't always tell the truth. For example I'm getting about 20-30 hits a day with a referrer pointing to a site that's a search engine for blogs (${god} knows why the site has been tagged as a blog) but browsing through the actual logs reveal the hits to belong to a indexing-robot of the site that's a little too enthusiastic.
The most reliable way to find out about the visitors on a given site would be a user survey, although not complete as not everyone would fill it out, but it would give an idea about the habits of your most frequent visitors. I, if I were an advertiser, would be interested in more than just number of hits and visits and most advertisers would be baffled by stuff like "we got XXXYYYZZZ HTTP requests last month". Personally I would prefer to advertise on sites with a well-built sense of community and an active userbase that's keen to interact with the website, when I browse a site for the first time or a site that I visit infrequently, I rarely click on banners or ads. I'm more prone to clicking ads on sites which I visit daily or so, it gives me a feeling of supporting the site I like and I just might buy something from the advertiser if they are offering something that I need, therefore focused advertising is the key, hence again you need to know your users.
Logs tell you numbers but you need the visitors themselves to tell you who they really are and how often they visit your site.
Are they really prepared for this? Assuming that the movies are compressed down to 600-700MB, what happens when the 'latest blockbuster' is released an everyone tries to download it at once.
Good point, and with the mention of RealNetworks in the article, I have a disturbing mental image right now of a TV showing a text that reads "Buffering".
I am a geek. I admit it fairly. And I'm young enough to have been involved with computers since 8. Luckily enough my parents forced me to go outside every now and then and miracolously I developed actual social skills. What bothers me is not the development of new social networking technologies, bu the notion that it seems that a lot of teenagers (and even children) are using them and making friends from around the world, sure that's great for developing an international and open view of the world but waht about real social skills? With IRC, MSN, AIM, Yahoo! and countless other real-time systems I fear that soon well have a generation of people that have no actual real social skills and cannot accomplish anything away from the computer. With ever-improving social networking systems, it's easier to find people that share your interests online than it would be in the real world, so why bother with the "real world"?
If for nothing else, creating new geeks still requires (at least some form of) social/physical contact (although it propably wont take too long before there's a RFC for that, that circumvents this "problem").
Well, I tend to agree in some ways an disagree in some. If the problems with Windows security holes and such would only affect the computer in question then I would be all for not allowing the updates to be loaded on a pirated machine but with the current system the legimate users of Windows (and other internet users as well) suffer from the neglicence of the users of pirated software. It doesn't only limit to spam, but also network worms which can be a nuisance with the amount of network traffic they create. I think Microsoft would do a favor to all of the internet with allowing patches to be applied to non-licenses (pirated) versions of Windows.
<bad-analogy>
I would compare it to stolen cars. For example, if a car would have a really really serious design flaw that would make it blow up during rush hour taking along with two blocks, would you want the car manufacturer to fix the car even though it was stolen?
</bad-analogy>
Slashdot Mirror
Almost got it right...
1. Use a DDOS on the ICANN's website so they can't respond for 5 days.
2. Ask to buy their domain
3. Wait 'till they can't answer....
4. ???
5. Profit
Actually advertising is not Google's only product. Google also sells services based on its search technology to companies.
On their website you can find a some of their customers and there are pretty big players in that list.
The article states a really big improvment, but is seems hard to swallow. The article fails the mention what system they were running before, aside from mentioning "propietary Unix". I don't know, maybe they had some 10-year old system running the database before and with that I could buy the big improvement but with crucial information omitted in the article, feels kind of like puffed up hype.
I had company-sponsored broadband for two yearrs, along with a cell phone and a cell phone bill being paid for the company. I don't anymore and I'm very happy. Having a company-paid broadband line or a cell phone makes it easier for the company to require you to do tidbits of work during your free time.
With no company phone or 'net access it needs to be something major for me to even respond to a request. Previously with a company phone I've had people call me at 1) 7AM 2) Sunday's at 10PM... and I'm a software developer, not tech support.
I found this article to be rather insightful. I personally run a small IT/science-news site (in Finnish) and I'm really having a hard time figuring out visitors of the site. Of course I can get some data from the log analyzing software (awstats and webalizer are being used for the site) but it really doesn't tell me what I want. It seems that the website logs don't always tell the truth. For example I'm getting about 20-30 hits a day with a referrer pointing to a site that's a search engine for blogs (${god} knows why the site has been tagged as a blog) but browsing through the actual logs reveal the hits to belong to a indexing-robot of the site that's a little too enthusiastic.
The most reliable way to find out about the visitors on a given site would be a user survey, although not complete as not everyone would fill it out, but it would give an idea about the habits of your most frequent visitors. I, if I were an advertiser, would be interested in more than just number of hits and visits and most advertisers would be baffled by stuff like "we got XXXYYYZZZ HTTP requests last month". Personally I would prefer to advertise on sites with a well-built sense of community and an active userbase that's keen to interact with the website, when I browse a site for the first time or a site that I visit infrequently, I rarely click on banners or ads. I'm more prone to clicking ads on sites which I visit daily or so, it gives me a feeling of supporting the site I like and I just might buy something from the advertiser if they are offering something that I need, therefore focused advertising is the key, hence again you need to know your users.
Logs tell you numbers but you need the visitors themselves to tell you who they really are and how often they visit your site.
Are they really prepared for this? Assuming that the movies are compressed down to 600-700MB, what happens when the 'latest blockbuster' is released an everyone tries to download it at once.
Good point, and with the mention of RealNetworks in the article, I have a disturbing mental image right now of a TV showing a text that reads "Buffering".
I am a geek. I admit it fairly. And I'm young enough to have been involved with computers since 8. Luckily enough my parents forced me to go outside every now and then and miracolously I developed actual social skills. What bothers me is not the development of new social networking technologies, bu the notion that it seems that a lot of teenagers (and even children) are using them and making friends from around the world, sure that's great for developing an international and open view of the world but waht about real social skills? With IRC, MSN, AIM, Yahoo! and countless other real-time systems I fear that soon well have a generation of people that have no actual real social skills and cannot accomplish anything away from the computer. With ever-improving social networking systems, it's easier to find people that share your interests online than it would be in the real world, so why bother with the "real world"?
If for nothing else, creating new geeks still requires (at least some form of) social/physical contact (although it propably wont take too long before there's a RFC for that, that circumvents this "problem").
Well, I tend to agree in some ways an disagree in some. If the problems with Windows security holes and such would only affect the computer in question then I would be all for not allowing the updates to be loaded on a pirated machine but with the current system the legimate users of Windows (and other internet users as well) suffer from the neglicence of the users of pirated software. It doesn't only limit to spam, but also network worms which can be a nuisance with the amount of network traffic they create. I think Microsoft would do a favor to all of the internet with allowing patches to be applied to non-licenses (pirated) versions of Windows.
<bad-analogy> I would compare it to stolen cars. For example, if a car would have a really really serious design flaw that would make it blow up during rush hour taking along with two blocks, would you want the car manufacturer to fix the car even though it was stolen? </bad-analogy>