Análisis

Imagen corporativa: La postura visual que nos presenta este banco podría definirse como “apuntando a gente negociante”, lo que nos resulta un poco elitista, pero que se ve fundamentado en el tipo de imágenes que resulta recurrente: hombres estrechando las manos (en señal de haber cerrado algún trato, por ejemplo).

• Color: blanco rojo y azul, emulando los colores de la bandera de Estados Unidos (país de la casa central del banco.) La combinación de estos colores finalmente se interpreta como un carácter empresarial tremendo. Solo algunos textos van enmarcados con negro, pero al parecer es solo por una cuestión de contraste con su respectivo fondo.

• Tipografía: Las tipografías para los textos que mantienen una interacción con el cliente (entiéndase el lema del banco o las posibilidades de navegación que se presentan en el portal) son con serif, pero normal, el resto de los mensajes (las sentencias planteadas por el banco, como los tipos de transe ejecutables) van con palo seco.

• Icono: Formal emulando la bandera de Estados Unidos con cierto grado de tridimensionalidad, letras con palo seco y negrita y al parecer, con un grado de condensación de la tipografía, otorgando formalidad y fortaleza al “nombre” (a la posición, entiéndase por la postura existencial del banco).

Notas:

Color: 5,0

Tipografía: 5,5

Icono: 6,5

http://www.hsbc.cl/

distribución de contenido: principalmente muestra informacion sobre el banco, como página principal da una introducción publicitaria, donde mismo se ven los links encabezando la página, después de un logo determinado.

Links: se hubican bordeando la página, el área publicitaria, hacia la izquierda dan las posibilidades de herramientas para facilitar la navegación de la página.

Banners: se dedica a publicar solo lo que esta dentro de su empresa bancaria, lleva solo un banner que es casi no visible en la parte superior de la página el cual nos lleva a la página principal internacional.

Contenidos: contenidos principales y generales tales como información intriductoria, contactos, productos, grupo hsbc, comercio exterior, corporativa, productos de tesorería.
imagen: sitio web sobrio colores blancos negros rojos. Los cuales responden al logo del ma empresa. En cuanto a imágenes se tiene una imagen animada publicitaria, un mapa el que indica todo el mundo, e imágenes que responden a los conmtenidos de la página.

Tipografía: se acerca a una arial.

Banco JP Morgan Chase: banco internacional, estadounidense

http://www.jpmorganchase.com

distribución de contenido: este sitio muestra contenido acerca su propia empresa bancaria, su bajada despues del logo viene siendo los links propios dle sitio los que nos hablan hacerca de, lleva un site map, y un buscador, en la parte superior derecha, lo que baja en una cuenta online, al lado izquierdo del sitio hay links los que nos llevan a otras sitios webs que hablan acerca de la compañía, la págin también nos entrega noticas de interes acera de aerolineas, y otros servicios dados por el banco.

Colores: principalmente el azul, blanco, negro, naranjo.

Imágenes: solo dos se muestran en la página.

Banco: Scotiabank

http://www.scotiabank.cl/index.shtml

distribución de contenidos: una distribución poco ordenada, mas bien comercial, publicitaria, los contenidos principales se encuentran a los costados, los cuales van acompañados de imágenes.

Links: los links utilizados dan a las distintas distribuciones de informacion de la empresa, y también a sus productos.

Banners: los banners dan a mini webs dentro del mismo sitio los cuales ofrecen ayudas y promociones mismas del banco.

Contenidos: accesos a cuentas, empresa, información al cliente, scotia pass, servicios principales, publicidad.

Imágen: colores, principales rojo, blanco y negro, grises.

Banco BBVA:

http://www.bbva.cl

distribución de contenidos: ocupa bastante mas del espacio de la página, los mayores links comerciales van hubicados en el centro de la página, en la parte superior se muestra todo lo que introduce a la empresa, mapas, ayuda sucursales, links indicativos, la parte inferior muestra consultas y la información corporativa, al lado izquierdo indicadores económicos y banners, publicidad ¨niño adelante ¨.

Links: informaciones.

Banners: hogar de cristo, fundación ¨niño adelante.

Contenidos: mapas, ayudas, contenidos, atenciñon al cliente, busquedas, personas, empresa, banco en línea, portales, catalogos, créditos, seguros online.

Imagen: colores principales, azules, blanco, naranjo, negro.

Imagenes utilizadas en la mayoría de la página, imágenes animadas.

Empresa: Scotiabank

Análisis

Imagen corporativa: se compone del nombre principal del banco, una palabra debajo que expresa el sector (Sudamérica) al cual va dirigido y de un icono que los representa. Estos elementos están en un color blanco sobre una franja “quebrada” en color rojo. El nombre de la empresa, al poseer un nombre en otra lengua, otorga categoría y da a entender que es para un nivel socioeconómico elevado o por sobre el promedio.

• Color: el color de la tipografía es blanco, lo que da un indicio de limpieza y fineza, quiere representar seguridad pero a la vez simplicidad. En cuanto al rojo del fondo provoca una visibilidad muy alta, hace resaltar el blanco de la tipografía llevando la atención al cliente de manera inmediata, una sensación de liderazgo que quiere provocar el banco. Los dos complementos de blanco y rojo generan un equilibrio el cual manifiesta una empresa “elegante” pero a la vez con gran manejo y que quiere generar gran seguridad.

• Tipografía: se usa una tipografía sin serif, lo que le quita la sensación de un banco “elegante y refinado”, la palabra que acompaña la el nombre de la empresa es muy sutil, Light, lo que no quita merito al nombre.

• Icono: representado por una S quebrada por un círculo que quiere denotar al mundo, no deja muy claro el propósito y el perfil que quiere seguir la empresa.

Notas: Color: 5.5

Tipografía: 4.0

Icono: 4.5

Ich hab mal auf meinem Q6700 den Benchmark laufen gelassen:

Beachtlich, wie ich finde.

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Sean Bienvenidos.

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At the time I was reading Fountainhead I was working at a personal injury law firm as an assistant.  I bounced to another law firm downtown Toronto working as a commercial litigation legal assistant.  I continued to work as an assistant thinking that law school, and being a lawyer was my purpose.  A short period of time into my second legal job I realized that this wasn't the case.  I hadn't met, in almost half a year or more of meeting various lawyers, one person who loved their job.  In fact everyone who was in law told me not to go into it.  There was something very wrong with this profession and a truth to all the stereotypes.

My boss at the second law firm was a Christian that went to bible studies faithfully once a week.  However, at work you would have never guessed.  This profession brought out the worst in him. He constantly swore, was always stressed and basically was not a good example of one who lived a happy healthy Christian life.  He and my submersion into this negative field of work make me realize there was no way my purpose could lie here.  Thus, I decided to pursue a career in Real Estate.

At this time, I still didn't know how  to approach a lot of situations in life.  It was the summer so I was going out clubbing anywhere from 2 to 5 times a week.  Excessive I know, but my girlfriend at the time had hookups to industry parties.  Drinking, schmoozing, and being superficial although time consuming and fun, I realized that it was not what I wanted to do.  Even though the alcohol was open bars at all the parties, it didn't matter, because I didn't even like drinking that much.

After a trip to NYC in the winter, I soon realized that there was something very wrong with my lifestyle.  I dropped most of my friends from my party lifestyle and moved on with my life.  I continued to work towards my Real Estate certification.

Fast forward to February of 2008.  Benchmark number 2.  In December or so, I posted a posting on Craigslist looking for a business partner.  I soon found a smart computer programmer who was enthusiastic about starting a dating site with me.  Doing research and signing up on various dating sites to check out the scene, I soon met someone.  We became close friends.  Let's just call this person C.  What attract me to him most was his intensive attitude towards everything he did.  His intensive personality and passion was a stark contrast with my life.  He knew exactly what he was doing all the time.  Why he was doing something.  Where it was going to get him and the result of every action.  He was systematic in all his motions and reminded me of Roark.

His actions and personality led me to challenge my life.  What was I doing with it?  How am I going to reach my dreams?  What is my purpose?  Where do my passions lie?  I plowed through blogs, I scribbled in my journal, I questioned everything I did, I critized every aspect of my life.  I became conscious.  Life wasn't just a daze anymore.  I felt like a fog was lifted in my life.  This is why I'm starting this blog, because I want to track the changes in my personal development.  I want to share all the details with the world.  The trials and tribulations that I will go through and where I ultimately end up in life.  There is so much I want to share.  My intention is that this blog will eventually have a loyal base of readers and can help me with my personal development in the long run.

It seems that 16 cores AMD Opteron 8360 SE @2.5 Ghz have a better overall score than 16 cores Intel X7350 @3.0 Ghz (both on DELL Platform R900 and R905).

The VMark Results are here.

((enjoy))

So what did I learn: apart from the gory details, it boils down to that lots of hardware with still juice left after the years have passed, gets put aside because it becomes slow when using it with out-of-the-box operating systems. I'll give you two examples for that, one being my 5-year old Powerbook G4 Titanium (800Mhz) which with OSX (and to be exact, not the latest version of OSX) was simply crawling. Yes - you would say, it's a five year old computer, time to throw it away; but after installing OpenBSD to it, I got fast web browsing with Firefox, email with Thunderbird, pdf and document reading. And to bring a good example of how successful the resurrection was, when I use it to read blogs in Google Reader, or write posts through Wordpress' web interface (both heavyweight javascript), the Powerbook with OpenBSD just flies.

The second example is what I've seen recently in a Windows XP machine (well that's the worst example ever!). The machine is a decent 1GB, Core Duo HP, only about 2 years old and its getting slower and slower. Why ? My suspicion is that with the patches and updates Windows install automatically through the network, it just makes the Window's kernel a mess, with the accumulating mass of patches hogging away on the system's resources. So that's where the "2-year life cycle" of a computer comes from ? Without need to do any preaching to the choir, for those of you who have tasted a piece of Linux, you know that this machine is more than adequate for a production desktop with Linux or any other efficient Unix-type system.

Now the real part of the dark side, concerning my experimentation of compiling customized kernels for openSuse Linux and NetBSD. Basically, kernel compilation is editing a configuration file, which leads to compiling less code and consequentially removing bits and making smaller the core binary (the kernel image) that sits in your computer's memory, and controls the hardware. Since Linux (and Windows) are intended to be installed on many different brands of machines with different hardware, their kernel comes pre-compiled with support for all of those. But if you don't use infrared port or bluetooth with your laptop, do you want the bits for controlling this hardware just eating up your RAM, since they come as part of the pre-compiled kernel ? So what you do, is to edit the kernel compile configuration file appropriately, and then re-compile your kernel to shave off those bits and make the kernel image smaller.

My experimentation so far, has told me that compiling custom Linux kernels is a little more of a pain compared to NetBSD. That's because Linux as a user-centric / supporting everything (joysticks, radio & tv cards etc etc) type of operating system, has a lot more as default in the configuration file of the generic kernel, that need to removed in order to tailor it to your specific hardware. The gain is significant though, in my case about 100MB of more available RAM with the custom-compiled kernel. On the other hand, NetBSD has a much simpler file for configuring your kernel's compilation, and things you need to remove are RAID, PPP etc support (well you need to leave those if you're compiling for a data center and not a laptop).

The other thing I observed when comparing openSuse Linux versus NetBSD, is that the latter has much smaller kernel that the former, with pretty much the same hardware support for an ordinary desktop pc. I haven't drilled down on that yet, but maybe Berkeley BSD's kernels are better written than the one put together by Linus ? To get down to earth again, I am now left with a Core 2 Duo - 2GB memory laptop, which has 1.7GB of memory free for my applications after 0.3GB are eaten by openSuse (did I mention that Windows Vista in the same machine eats 1.2GB by itself ?!!?). NetBSD runs only with only taking about 50MB (!) of RAM, and currently is installed on my old PIII with 256MB memory, making it a very happy computer....

Under Linux, I am running 4 virtual desktops (well not under KDE desktop manager which is a memory hog, but under Fluxbox window manager), with a couple of Firefox windows - each with a bunch of tabs - open in the first desktop, 4-5 x-terminals in the second, OpenOffice Impress presentation on the third, and Cytoscape with a gene interaction network (in the thousands of nodes) open on the fourth. The amazing thing is that I still have memory left to perform operations in the network in Cytoscape, and the machine never swaps data in the hard-disk. So I see this laptop staying with me for some more years to come, and when apps need more memory (i.e Firefox 7.0) or my data crunching needs grow bigger, I'll just thin down the operating system (switch from Linux to NetBSD).

To conclude, it feels good to hack on the dark side :-) I think I will stay here for a little bit, the next project being to transfer to the Core 2 Duo laptop, the Postgres database that hosts all my data-mining projects and runs on a Quad Xeon server. It will be an interesting thing to see whether a 1000$ present-day laptop, does better than a 4-year old / 10,000$ server...

In the meanwhile, don't throw away your old computer please !

Next appear to be taking the responsibility for their workers in developing countries seriously and it certainly seems to be a priority for them.  Some of their replies to my questions are a little vague, but they have answered every single one of them.  They already seem to be treating their workers well, and are actively involved in projects, both their own and with the Ethical Trading Initiative, to further improve condtions.

Why not encourage them yourself, their e-mail address is enquiries@next.co.uk

Next have replied very quickly to my letter - where are the responses from the other shops and brands I have written to? 

Measuring the effectiveness of your PR process is not a simple task, especially if you don't have the budget for PR-coverage subscriptions. Just as challenging is demonstrating that your organization is better than the competition with leveraging PR to save on ad spending. Following is real-world method to handle these chores. Use Demand Metric's Competitive Ad vs. PR Analysis Tool to start tracking your media coverage and benchmark your ad/PR-spending ratio against your competitors.

Benefits of Analyzing Competitive Ad vs. PR Spending:

• Competitive Insight - tracking ad placements and PR coverage provides a framework for discovering ad spending benchmarks within your competitive environment, and allows you to examine how PR is being leveraged. You may discover that one competitor is heavily pushing a certain message, or that another is deploying a pull strategy based on product-feature benefits.
• Save Money - organizations that effectively use public relations can save volumes of money that would otherwise be spent on advertisements.
• Better Leverage Public Relations - by determining how your competitors are leveraging public relations in their media mix, you can learn how to become more proficient in this area of demand generation.
• Measure Ad/PR Effectiveness - the first step in measuring a marketing program is to document the activities that are involved. Proactively monitoring your most important industry publications will provide a basis for tracking leads and sales that results from advertisements and press releases.

Action Plan:

1. Assess Value - consider the value that a focused advertising/PR tracking initiative would provide your organization. If you are being asked to conduct competitive analysis, this is one section not to be missed.
2. Assign a Task Leader - it will become someone's job to flip through each trade publication upon delivery to identify which competitors are placing ads or generating solid PR. Try to leverage an inexpensive resource for this task.
3. Customize a Reporting Tool - use our downloadable Competitive Ad vs. PR Analysis Tool to kick-start this process internally.
4. Select Relevant Publications - narrow the scope on your measurement process to only those publications considered core to your industry. Add your list of publications to the 'Instructions' tab of the analysis tool.
5. Determine Starting Point - you may wish to backdate your analysis to previous issues, especially if you are trying to assess competitive ad spending benchmarks. Use the same start date for each 'Competitor' tab to ensure you are comparing apples to apples.
6. Document, Document, Document - list the publication, page reference, ad or article size (pages), article/ad topic area, journalist, Ad or PR, and estimated value of the piece. Use standard pricing for PR mentions, and discounted pricing for ads, if and only if, you identify a repeated pattern.
7. Analyze the Data - visit this analysis tool on a quarterly basis and total up the estimated value (or spending) that is being done industry-wide, and determine the ratio of ad spending to PR for you and your competitors.
8. Discuss with Senior Management - share your insights in a management meeting and discuss strategies that you can use to improve your ad/PR spend ratio. Focus on ad/PR content to get a gut-feel for competitive strategies.

Bottom-Line:

Not all organizations are effectively using PR to save money on advertising costs. Start tracking your ad/PR spending in relation to your competitors to demonstrate the effectiveness of your PR capabilities. If you aren't using PR at all, strongly consider reading our report Building Successful PR Campaigns to get started.

Related Reports & Tools:

Building Successful PR Campaigns

Competitive Ad vs PR Analysis Tool

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All organizations claim to have "core competencies" but few actually benchmark their capabilities to track and measure improvements over time. Take the time to evaluate your business from a high-level, and commit to continuous improvement. Use Demand Metric's Core Competencies Assessment to set a baseline for your organization, and work to improve your score before your next self-assessment.

What are the Core Competency Areas?

• Strategic Planning & Governance - are Goals, Objectives, Measures, & Initiatives tracked and measured?
• Customer Relationship Management - are you customer-centric?
• Demand Generation - are you satisfied with the flow of qualified leads?
• Performance Measurement - are Key Performance Indicators in place?
• Market Intelligence & Research - do you have accurate market data?
• Product Management - are you satisfied with your time-to-market?
• Sales - are sales what they should be give the state of the organization?
• Organizational Development - are your training programs up-to-date?
• Human Resources - do you have the skill-sets you need for new projects?
• Systems & Technology - are your systems scalable enough for the future?

Action Plan:

1. Benchmark Competencies - use Demand Metric's Core Competencies Assessment Tool to measure your effectiveness across the preceding 9 areas of organizational capability. The assessment takes about 5 minutes. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and work to improve your score.

2. Re-assess in 6 Months - take the assessment again to demonstrate a measurable improvement to your organization's core competencies. Present the improvements to your senior management team and discuss results.

Related Reports & Tools:

Core Competencies Assessment

GAP Analysis Tool (Advanced)

GAP Analysis Tool (Basic)

Generating Business Strategy Plans

Performing a Solid GAP Analysis

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It's an ineresting proof of the fact that adding more vCPU to a VM not always take you the expected benefit.

As an aside note, in this post there are interesting considerations about the scalability in term of performance of Web servers.

((enjoy))

Why do we need additional reporting?

Sustainability measured solely in financial terms does not adequately satisfy the needs of shareholders, customers, communities, and other stakeholders for information about overall organizational performance. With CSR increasingly becoming an intrinsic component of corporate reputation, the economic, environmental or social advantages of a corporate that reflect in its community support, philanthropic activities, improved brand identity, proper waste disposal or better employee working conditions are now considered to be key factors for the competitive advantage as well as sustainable outcomes. The GRI framework is a benchmarking and corporate governance tool which provides principles and indicators that organizations can use to measure and report their economic, environmental, and social performances. The Reporting Framework is made up of core elements such as Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, Sector Supplements, and Indicator Protocols.

G3 Guidelines published in 2006 is the third version of the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. The Reporting framework consists of two parts:

Part 1: Reporting Principles and Guidance that includes:
• Principles to determine Report Quality: materiality, stakeholder inclusiveness, sustainability context, and completeness.
• Principles to define report quality: balance, comparability, accuracy, timeliness, reliability, and clarity.
• Guidance on how to set the report boundary.

Part 2: Includes the three types of Standard Disclosure:
• Profile
• Management Approach
• Performance Indicators

An Accepted Tool of Sustainability Reporting

Several large corporations follow the GRI Reporting Framework for sustainability reporting as it provides credibility, consistency, and comparability. In 2007, 1200 reports based on GRI Guidelines were registered with the Global Reporting Organization. Of these, 1,100 reports were from the multinational companies (MNCs) and 120 reports were from Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). The rest of the reporters included public agencies such as ministries and city representatives; NGOs and other funding organizations.

In Asia, 267 reports based on GRI Framework were published. Korea (3%) and Japan (6%) were the two top Asian nations for publishing sustainability reports following the GRI standard.

Our take on Singapore

As this briefing was held in Singapore, we should take a moment to reflect on the island state's status. Although the actual practices and policies have long been in place, the concept of sustainability reporting is still considered to be relatively new in Singapore. According to CSR Asia, Singapore indeed has a very low percentage of companies reporting on CSR. GB feels that consumer pressure, Government imposed mandatory requirements and increasing awareness of the companies regarding sustainability are the only effective ways to encourage more Singapore based companies to get involved in sustainability reporting.

Claro que este cambio implica que los programadores han de adaptarse a un nuevo paradigma, donde es importante programar la aplicación para que aproveche los múltiples núcleos, fomentando el paralelismo de tareas. Esta forma de trabajar era importante en aplicaciones de servidor, pero al menos en Java los propios contenedores (JBoss, BEA, etc) gestionaban de forma transparente los threads relacionados con J2EE. Con los nuevos procesadores esta metodología se ha extendido al escritorio, donde el uso adecuado de threads mejora la experiencia del usuario.

Las optimizaciones en paralelismo han llegado a los lenguajes de programación y con Java 6 SUN ha intentado mejorar el sistema de threads de Java. En InfoQ han escrito dos artículos estudiando las mejoras introducidas. Como resumen rápido para los impacientes, si queréis aprovechar mejor los threads usad Java 6 y actualizad la JVM constantemente.

El programa, en su página de descarga, cuenta con una versión que podremos descargar en formato .zip que no requiere instalación, por lo que podremos utilizarlo como cualquier programa portable desde una unidad externa ya sea pendrive, disco externo, cd o dvd, etc., e incluso desde nuestro propio equipo.

Además de la información que podremos encontrar en las diferentes ventanas que nos ofrece el programa, si lo minimizamos, nos mostrará en pantalla del escritorio un "cartel" con temperatura, revoluciones, voltaje, etc, del microprocesador.

Una gran utilidad con una más que completa información de nuestro equipo. Por cierto, el programa actualizó ayer a su versión 1.85.

De interés:
- Conoce los componentes de tu PC.
- Toda la información de tu equipo con SIV.
- Toda la información de tu equipo con SIW.
- Todos los detalles de tu tarjeta grafica con GPU-Z.
- Coretemp, temperaturas de tu microprocesador.
- Controla tu disco duro con Hdd Health.
- Quitar hardware con seguridad.

Here are the benchmarks (24" iMac with GF 8800GS - 2 Gb Ram):

Geekbench (32-bit) and 10.5.2.

Geekbench (32-bit) and 10.5.3.

Geekbench (32-bit) and 10.5.4.

Cinebench R10:

10.5.2

Rendering (Single CPU): 3222 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 5954 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 1.85

Shading (OpenGL Standard) : 6082 CB-GFX

10.5.3

Rendering (Single CPU): 3217 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 6160 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 1.91

Shading (OpenGL Standard) : 6139 CB-GFX

10.5.4

Rendering (Single CPU): 3235 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 6168 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 1.91

Shading (OpenGL Standard) : 6139 CB-GFX

Xbench:

10.5.2

10.5.4

I forgot to save the Xbench results for 10.5.3, sorry.

Linux.com :: Using Bonnie++ for filesystem performance benchmarking

Bonnie++ benchmarks three things: data read and write speed, number of seeks that can be performed per second, and number of file metadata operations that can be performed per second. Metadata operations include file creation and deletion as well as getting metadata such as the file size or owner (the result of a fstat(2) call).

Linux.com :: Using Bonnie++ for filesystem performance benchmarking

The Bonnie++ benchmark is a great yardstick to see if you are getting the performance from your hardware that you think you should. You can search around for Bonnie++ results that other people have produced and published using similar hardware. If you are making changes to how your RAID or filesystem is created, Bonnie++ is invaluable for testing whether the changes you think should improve performance actually have a noticeable and positive effect.

Bonnie++ now at 1.03c (very stable)!

Bonnie++ is a benchmark suite that is aimed at performing a number of simple tests of hard drive and file system performance. Then you can decide which test is important and decide how to compare different systems after running it. I have no plans to ever have it produce a single number, because I don't think that a single number can be useful when comparing such things.

Earlier this week, Stanford University's law and business schools published an analysis of the analysts - specifically four of the biggest rating services: ISS, the Corporate Library, GovernanceMetrics International (GMI), and Audit Integrity.

Corporate governance rating firms provide indices to evaluate the effectiveness of a firm's governance and claim to be able to predict future performance, risk, and undesirable outcomes such as accounting restatements and shareholder litigation. We examine these claims for the commercial corporate governance ratings produced for 2005 by Audit Integrity, RiskMetrics (previously Institutional Shareholder Services), GovernanceMetrics International, and The Corporate Library. Our results indicate that the level of predictive validity for these ratings are well below the threshold necessary to support the bold claims made for them by these commercial firms. Moreover, we find no relation between the governance ratings provided by RiskMetrics with either their voting recommendations or the actual votes by shareholders on proxy proposals.

Governance on the whole remains an art form, and until we have sufficient collective experience, we are unlikely to be able to declare definitive ratings or indices, much less use them to predict future performance. 'Must try harder' seems an appropriate summary on both practitioners and observers.

My first analysis was that this problem was caused by "direct" requests (those with a server cookie) always being considered before the load balanced ones. But while fixing this design idiocy, I discovered a real problem : it was perfectly possible for a fresh new request to be served immediately without passing through the queue, causing requests in the queue to be delayed for at least as long as the queue timeout, until they might eventually expire. Now *that* explains the horrible peaks on Alexander's graphs. My problem was that it was a real misdesign, which could not be fixed by a 3-liner patch. So I spent the whole week reworking the queue management logic in a saner manner and running regression tests.

The fix has further repercussions:

[T]he good news is that not only this fixes a number of 503 errors and long response times when running with a low maxconn, but as an added bonus, the "redispatch" option is now naturally considered when a server's maxqueue is reached, so that it will now not be necessary anymore to trade between large queues and the risk of returning 503 errors.

Willy also realized that his redesign work would lead the way to priority-based request scheduling in the future, which is great news.

With the new release in hand, I have finally found the time to sit down and do a rematch. The conclusion? In short, the patch works as intended: It eliminates the odd spikes while still providing smoother performance than Nginx. The spikes that remain are present with Nginx as well, and their regularity implies some kind of periodic activity, possibly on the box itself, although a much more likely culprit is Ruby's garbage collection. Damn you, curiously slow and old-fashioned interpreter implementation!

Finally, some people requested CPU usage data from vmstat. For this new benchmark I updated my scripts to run vmstat concurrently with ab, hoping there would some meaty differences for charting, but it turns out that there is no significant difference between HAProxy and Nginx — at best, CPU usage looks a trifle smoother with HAProxy, but this could be a fluke. I suspect you have to amp up the load considerably to achieve a sensible comparison. Still, I have included the vmstat data in the raw data tarball for anyone who is interested.

Anyway, enjoy the graphs. Many thanks to Willy for working out a solution so promptly and expertly.

Nginx vs HAProxy at 3 concurrent connections

Nginx vs HAProxy at 10 concurrent connections

Nginx vs HAProxy at 30 concurrent connections

Orijinalini görmek için tıklayınız : Program İndir Q-R

Nuovi rumors (intendo con rumors voci di corridoio, e non quello che si sente dopo una bella mangiata di pasta e fagioli :) ) sulla prossima distribuzione Ubuntu, CodeName Vien...emmm.....Intrepid Ibex (non laceratemi per l'errore, volevo solo stuzzicare la vostra attenzione :D ), annunciano che PROBABILMENTE (e qua il condizionale e' d'obbligo) la nuova Distro Ubuntu sfrutterà il nuovo e fiammante file system ext4. Ma quali sarebbero le differenze, o ancor meglio le migliorie, rispetto alla vecchia Ext3?

Come prima cosa, la miglioria principale rispetto alla vecchia versione è l’Extent. Per coloro che non masticassero bene l'informatichese, L'Extent e' una è una modalità di allocazione dati che riduce quasi completamente la frammentazione (ed in questo Linux è, senza parzialità alcuna, anni luce avanti rispetto ad NTFS di windows).

Ancora, dando un'occhiata ai BenchMarks (sempre per chi è a digiuno di informatica, i benchmark sono una sorta di "prova di carico del sistema", che viene stressato fino alla nausea), si può notare che l'Ext4 supera NOTEVOLMENTE l'Ext3 in ogni suo aspetto, con particolare riferimento alla struttura sequenziale.

La prima caratteristica, che è la miglioria principale rispetto alla versione 3, è l’Extent. In termini umanamente comprensibili, è una modalità di allocazione dati che riduce quasi completamente la frammentazione.

Ext4 è compatibile, anzi, “backward compatible” con ext3, il che significa che possiamo montare partizioni ext4 come se fossero ext3 e viceversa, a condizione che la partizione ext4 non utilizzi gli extent, che ovviamente non sono disponibili nella versione precedente.

Si prospetta quindi un bel futuro per la Distro più amata del momento, che pare stia tagliando ogni sorta di traguardo possibile ed immaginabile in così pochi anni..una distro quasi....INTREPIDA! ;)

1. Before (or during) your next meeting, seminar, or conference call, prepare yourself by drawing a square. I find that 5" x 5" is a good size. Divide the card into columns - five across and five down. That will give you 25 one-inch blocks.
2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:

synergy
revisit
benchmark
fast track
touch base
strategic fit
expeditious
value-added
result-driven
mindset
core competencies
to tell you the truth (or "the truth is")
proactive
empower (or empowerment)
client focus(ed)
best practice
24/7
win-win
knowledge base
paradigm
bottom line
out of the loop
think outside the box
at the end of the day
game plan

3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.
4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout "BULLSHIT!"

Testimonials from satisfied "Bull shit Bingo" players:
"I had been in the meeting for only five minutes when I won." - Adam, Atlanta
"My attention span at meetings has improved dramatically." - David, Florida
"What a gas! Meetings will never be the same for me after my first win." - Dan, New York City
"The atmosphere was tense in the last process meeting as 14 of us waited for the fifth box." - Ben, Denver
"The speaker was stunned as eight of us screamed 'BULLSHIT!' for the third time in two hours." - Paul, Cleveland

Enjoy your meetings !!!

Der neue Mozilla-Browser Firefox 3 hängt in Sachen Geschwindigkeit und Speicherverbrauch die Konkurrenz deutlich ab. Im ZDNet-Test mit dem SunSpider-JavaScript-Benchmark belegt Firefox 3 klar den ersten Platz, gefolgt von Safari 3.1.1 und Opera 9.5. Während sich die drei noch auf ähnlichem Leistungsniveau befinden, belegt der Internet Explorer 7 mit Abstand den letzten Platz. Achtmal so lange wie der schnelle Firefox benötigt der Microsoft-Browser für die JavaScript-Tests.

weiterlesen bei ZDnet.de

Quelle: ZDnet.de

And with this launch, AMD gain a very real chance to fight back with their upcoming HD4780.

Tom's Hardware's GTX 260/280 Review

Anandtech's GTX 260/280 Review

Guru3D's GTX 280 Review 

So what's the say?

The GTX 280 is about on-par with the 9800GX2 in performance, or perhaps 2-3% under. Which means that The Inquirer's benchmarks were garbage, and I apologise for the misinformation on their behalf.

It's retailing for US$649, which is rather steep considering the GX2 is around US$150 cheaper and offers virtually the same performance, albeit with improved CUDA.

The GTX 260 on the other hand is almost half the price of it's bigger brother, and is only about 18% slower, which basically knocks the 9800 GTX out of contention at that price point (the GTX 260 is about 10-15% faster than the 9800 GTX). It's currently about $50 more, but we might see the price difference between the two cards drop soon, depending on how nVidia decides to run things.