Microsoft and Cray launch the CX1 supercomputer for about $25K each.  The CX1 supercomputer can hold upto 16 Intel Xeon CPUs, 4 Terabytes of storage, and 64 gigs of memory.

The supercomputer will run Windows HPC Server 2008, the only downfall of it.

I would rather see free Linux system running on the servers, that would probably bring down the cost of software and price down to around $15K at least.

At this point I don’t really see the usefulness of this Windows supercomputer but I do like the hardware.

Faenov said that people in markets such as financial services, aerospace, automotive, academic and life sciences who must do simulations and modeling that require a certain level of computing performance have two options, neither of which is easy. “You can go to a corporate environment and try to obtain a large-scale system, or purchase a system and assemble it [yourself],” he said.

via engadget, networkworld

Microsoft Press Release PDF

Today, I saw that Hackszine’s Jason Striegel has postsed a blog post about Memcached and MySQL.

Well, basically Memcached is an open-source software for your web server that allows you to cache almost any MySQL query.

In other words, it caches your MySQL queries.  But to do this, you do need to check the Memcached cache before doing the actual MySQL query.

So what’s the point?

Well, certain Wiki softwares like MediaWiki already comes with built-in support for Memcached.  I have used a similar strategy for one of my custom sites, SiteHoppin.com.

Memcached is also designed for server-farming, meaning you are only limited by number of servers and gigs of ram.

Unlike PHP accelerators, Memcache is really a database cache, thus can give you some extra performance if you implement it right.

Now if the developers at Wordpress started implementing Memcache, that’d do a lot of good for bloggers.

That said, if you want to explore Memcached, you can check out Jason post over at Hackszine.

For MediaWiki implementations, you will have to digg a little deeper. (You can start here)  You can buy this book called Wiki Professional.

Other Resources:

Memcached Official Website

Strategies for Using Memcached and MySQL Better Together
Memcached and MySQL tutorial (PDF)

HeeKyong Yoon from SpringNote.com, was nice enough to chat with me on their cool “wiki” product, SpringNote:

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

FYI, SpringNote.com is a subsidiary of NcSoft.com, the creators of legendary online game, Lineage.

Well, I tried out SpringNote, here’s a screenshot:

It’s very simple to use, just like a real notebook except you have unlimited number of pages plus you get bunch of already-made templates like Bookshelf, Monthly Plan, Recipe, and etc…etc…

What I found most interesting was that it is a “wiki” site but you don’t need to know any wiki markup language and start editing your online notes right away. You also have the option to share your notes or keep them private.

As far as technology goes, I love the fact that SpringNote has incorporated a LOT of AJAX. (probably mostly AJAX)

I might start using it more real soon. The only downside I saw was that SpringNote’s servers are hosted in Korea. Although the site does fairly fast, I measured, 168ms ping times from my PC in San Francisco.

FYI, Zedomax.com get 41ms ping times, 4 times faster as servers are hosted in San Diego, California.

Although they could keep running servers from Korea, I think they can grab much larger audience in the U.S. by simply serving their pages from servers in the U.S. (Besides, it’s probably much cheaper to host it here.)

Other than that, I find SpringNote as the next generation online note web app. I will have to dump my MS Outlook all together and start using SpringNotes, way simpler and easier for mass collaboration.

I just found out that WikiLeaks, a Wiki site that collects thousands of leaked documents, had been suspended in the U.S., but the judge just overturned and they are back on.

Anyways, it’s an interesting Wiki site and you should check it out.

The site resumed U.S. operations shortly after 5 p.m. Pacific Coast time. Its overseas servers were not affected by the litigation. Hours after the decision, WikiLeaks said it “shall not be cowed by those who would silence the truth. It will continue to be a forum for the citizens of the world to disclose issues of social, moral and ethical concern.”

The judge heard arguments from the bank, which said no First Amendment rights were being implicated, WikiLeaks’ domain name owner and a host of media and civil rights organizations that derided the judge’s initial order as an unconstitutional “prior restraint” on speech.

The judge seemed to agree with the media and rights groups. About 30 minutes into the hearing, White said the case concerned “very important issues” and “the court does not want to be a part of any order that is not constitutional.”

via blog.wired

Well, we did a lot of server hacking before with some MySQL, eAccelerator, and httpd.

There’s a lot of major blogs out there I have checked using Web Page Compression Tool that are not using compression. (For one, I checked John Chow’s blog)

Try to check one of your posts instead of checking your main URL as the tool is funky with root domains. (e.g. Check http://zedomax.com/blog/2008/02/23/never-give-up-especially-your-blog-dude/ instead of http://zedomax.com)

Here’s a screenshow of compression test I did for one of John Chow’s posts:

As you can see, John Chow’s blog does not use compression. As a result, he’s losing out on almost 5 times of bandwidth!!!

With level 9 compression, his site could be loaded on your web browser at 21K instead of the whopping 100K.

Now the compression might not be for all of you with slow CPUs. Our Zedomax.com runs on Quad-CPU server which has a lot of CPU processing power.

Here’s a screenshow of my server under normal load:

As you can see, most of the time, my CPU is idling at 80.8%! That means my CPU is pretty much sitting on its ass instead of doing work for me.

Now, if you have a similar situation, compression will help your site load faster and also bring your load down so you can handle more traffic.

Here’s how to enable compression if you have a dedicated or access to root on your server:

(Most servers have zlib installed, if you don’t have zlib installed, you will have to install that first, you can check it by making a test file and putting <?php phpinfo() ?> and search for zlib)

Add the following lines to your /etc/php.ini:

zlib.output_compression = on
zlib.output_compression_level = 5

and then restart apache! (of course):

httpd -k restart

Now, go check one of your posts on the Compression Test Tool here.

As you can see above, I just compressed one of my blog posts by a whopping 76.1%!

If you are using Super Cache plugin for Wordpress, make sure to go to options and do this too:

Now, your server will run faster since there’s less data being transmitted to your visitors, meaning you save bandwith, time, and most importantly, the ability to handle more traffic.

At 70% increase in bandwidth, that could translate to that many more visitors too as bandwidth is directly proportional to amount of time a visitor stays on your site. (Yes, I did take Calculus in college, I failed miserably before passing.) The less time a visitor takes to load a page on your blog or your site, the more time and bandwidth you have for other visitors.)

I was searching through the web for many ways to use compression for server optimization but I couldn’t find any so I sort put everything together here.

Hopefully, it helps you.

And one more thing, you can also check out this great tutorial on your httpd.conf setup.

You can always check out HOWTO decrease load on your server by 5 times also.

Okay, I will have to tell you the truth tonight about one of the biggest social networking sites, SpambleUpon, or most people call it, StumbleUpon.

They are making so much money off bloggers, basically StumbleUpon “scrapes” bloggers’ content and makes millions of dollars off you!  Even though no one has really “sued” them, they are in big trouble if bloggers start sueing them one by one.

Google should really ban them for “splogging”, every one of SU users’ blogs are “splogs” made up of content written by bloggers like you and me. (My traffic actually boosted after SU banned me, I think I was getting penalized for duplicate content by using SU.  Besides, don’t rely on backstabbing social networks who make millions dollars off your content and simply ban you later for “spamming”???  Are you kidding?  Go look at my DIYs, they are all original.  Lol…at least my blog isn’t full of splogs.  Here’s a post you can read about how to protect yourself against splogs although it won’t work with SU.)

Why?

Well, every “blog”, they say, is a “splog”, every image consisting of an image scraped off a “copyright protected” blog (Mind you, every “blog” is actually naturally protected from scraping, this site has about 10 other sites’ images w/o their written permission) . So, we simply took at the most top-left blog on their “Top Stumbler” list.

Well here it is:

As you can see, the image is “scraped” off another “original” blog. If you go to any of their “splogs”, the results is the same. They almost store 0% of their “splogs” images on their servers and simply scrape and live off other blogs.  SU is like a real big mosquito that lives off your blood, your blog post that “you” wrote and uploaded images. Their future will only rely on other bloggers’ content and NEVER their own.

So, what can you do?

You can always file a “copyright enfrigement” notice and lawsuit to SU, which their headquarters addresses I couldn’t even find, AND uninstall that hideous toolbar that takes too much of your life, time, and 50 pixels of height on your browser. (Most of their admins are “fake” people behind stupid 50×50 pixel images. They “pretend” they created a special technology when I could re-create a similar service within days.)

Then, simply head over to SiteHoppin, where every site is not “splogged” and is simply “bookmarked”.

Okay, here’s the 5 second wrap up:

1. Every blog on StumbleUpon is a “splog” made up of scraped images and text from other blogs

2. The only reason they don’t get sued is because they send websites traffic and a lot of website owners are happy about that.

3. Every blog in the world has now a “copyright enfringement” against SpambleUpon. If your content is on SU, you deserve the right to sue them for scraping your content.

Now, we don’t have to sue them. You do. So, in all, just stay away from these SpambleUpon guys and stick with the American Dream, SiteHoppin, where “real” developers develop w/o scraping bloggers’ content.

Now maybe we may be a little bitter but at least we fight for our right to be conscious about the “real truth” behind everything. Yeah, SU fucked up this time bad….real bad…let the truth be known even if you do continue to use SU, you will remember this when you get banned.

Here’s the address to send your copyright infringement letters about their “Splogs”: (This is the only real contact info you can find on their site baby)

StumbleUpon, Inc.
Attn: Copyright Agent
StumbleUpon, Inc.
140 Second Street, 3rd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
phone: 415-979-0640
fax: 415-896-2600
email: copyright AT stumbleupon.com