Re: [SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
At 12:35 PM 23/07/2007, Zhasper wrote: On 23/07/07, Tom Worthington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... reference the originals from their web sites ... It sounds like you're saying that a convenient way to reduce load on your own server is to make it some random third party's problem. ... It was not a random third party I was referring to, but sponsors who had not only authorized, but demanded, the use of their logo. Given a choice, I expect these organisations would rather you used the official version of their logo, than make your own copies. Caching should result in a minimal increase in load on their server. Ideally (for the sponsor) the reader will click on the link and go to the sponsor's web site and so would have been downloading the original of the logo anyway. The Australian Government logo (Commonwealth Arms) has not been optimized for online use http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/epolicy.html#edocs. But you have to be careful with what you do with the Commonwealth Arms, as there are strict guidelines for its use http://www.pmc.gov.au/guidelines/commonwealth_coat_arms.cfm. I once had to tell the staff of a government minister that they couldn't have the commonwealth arms as a background pattern on the minister's web page. Sticking the MPs face over the top of the pre-eminent symbol of the power and authority of the Commonwealth Government did not seem to be appropriate. By the way I had a message from the Technical Director at Australian Screen, pointing out that they were not throwing hardware at the problem, as media repots suggested, but instead optimizing the server software (which is the sensible thing to do). In the case of the film archive I suggested offering fewer films per web page. They might also change the default setting for the media player from Broadband to Dialup and so it does not start downloading content by default. At present the media player will start downloading the broadband content as soon as you go to a clip web page, in anticipation you want to play it. If you don't want to play it, or want to dialup version, that is a waste. Tom Worthington FACS HLM [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: 0419 496150 Director, Tomw Communications Pty LtdABN: 17 088 714 309 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617http://www.tomw.net.au/ Visiting Fellow, ANU Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
On 23/07/07, Tom Worthington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 12:35 PM 23/07/2007, Zhasper wrote: On 23/07/07, Tom Worthington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... reference the originals from their web sites ... It sounds like you're saying that a convenient way to reduce load on your own server is to make it some random third party's problem. ... It was not a random third party I was referring to, but sponsors who had not only authorized, but demanded, the use of their logo. In that case, I completely misread your intention, and I apologise. Given a choice, I expect these organisations would rather you used the official version of their logo, than make your own copies. Caching should result in a minimal increase in load on their server. Ideally (for the sponsor) the reader will click on the link and go to the sponsor's web site and so would have been downloading the original of the logo anyway. The Australian Government logo (Commonwealth Arms) has not been optimized for online use http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/epolicy.html#edocs. But you have to be careful with what you do with the Commonwealth Arms, as there are strict guidelines for its use http://www.pmc.gov.au/guidelines/commonwealth_coat_arms.cfm. I once had to tell the staff of a government minister that they couldn't have the commonwealth arms as a background pattern on the minister's web page. Sticking the MPs face over the top of the pre-eminent symbol of the power and authority of the Commonwealth Government did not seem to be appropriate. By the way I had a message from the Technical Director at Australian Screen, pointing out that they were not throwing hardware at the problem, as media repots suggested, but instead optimizing the server software (which is the sensible thing to do). In the case of the film archive I suggested offering fewer films per web page. They might also change the default setting for the media player from Broadband to Dialup and so it does not start downloading content by default. At present the media player will start downloading the broadband content as soon as you go to a clip web page, in anticipation you want to play it. If you don't want to play it, or want to dialup version, that is a waste. Tom Worthington FACS HLM [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: 0419 496150 Director, Tomw Communications Pty LtdABN: 17 088 714 309 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617http://www.tomw.net.au/ Visiting Fellow, ANU Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml -- There is nothing more worthy of contempt than a man who quotes himself - Zhasper, 2004 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
Rev Simon Rumble wrote Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:59:51 +0100: ... It can be as simple as getting your developers to do things sensibly. Like, all the everyday graphics hosted on a majorly-well connected web server with no fancy stuff (lighthttpd). ... Even better; use the graphics from someone else's web site. ;-) For example Australian Screen credits a lot of participating organisations and has their logos listed http://australianscreen.com.au/title-index/features/. This does not make for good web design, but if you have to have all those logos, then you might as well reference the originals from their web sites and save the load on your server. The Australian Screen pages list all films in a category on one page, which may be more than anyone would want to look at and so is a waste of resources. As an example 219 documentaries are listed on one page (each with an image) http://australianscreen.com.au/title-index/documentaries/. This is about ten times as many as anyone is likely to look at. If divided into ten web pages, the load on the server would be reduced. For more on this approach, see my Writing for the Web Moodle course: http://tomw.net.au/moodle/course/view.php?id=3. Tom Worthington FACS HLM [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: 0419 496150 Director, Tomw Communications Pty LtdABN: 17 088 714 309 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617http://www.tomw.net.au/ Visiting Fellow, ANU Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
On 23/07/07, Tom Worthington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Even better; use the graphics from someone else's web site. ;-) For example Australian Screen credits a lot of participating organisations and has their logos listed http://australianscreen.com.au/title-index/features/. This does not make for good web design, but if you have to have all those logos, then you might as well reference the originals from their web sites and save the load on your server. It sounds like you're saying that a convenient way to reduce load on your own server is to make it some random third party's problem. What you're describing is called hotlinking, amounts to theft of bandwidth and resources, and is generally frowned upon. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking and http://altlab.com/hotlinking.html for explanations of why. See http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000278.html for a sample of the treatment you can expect if you persist in this behaviour. -- There is nothing more worthy of contempt than a man who quotes himself - Zhasper, 2004 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
Zhasper wrote: On 23/07/07, Tom Worthington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Even better; use the graphics from someone else's web site. ;-) For example Australian Screen credits a lot of participating organisations and has their logos listed http://australianscreen.com.au/title-index/features/. This does not make for good web design, but if you have to have all those logos, then you might as well reference the originals from their web sites and save the load on your server. It sounds like you're saying that a convenient way to reduce load on your own server is to make it some random third party's problem. What you're describing is called hotlinking, amounts to theft of bandwidth and resources, and is generally frowned upon. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking and http://altlab.com/hotlinking.html for explanations of why. See http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000278.html for a sample of the treatment you can expect if you persist in this behaviour. However, in this case, linking to the logos, which belong to and are promoting the organisations concerned, provides valuable direct feedback to these organisation as to how much publicity they are getting through this particular channel. For example, see the Creative Commons code generated for inclusion on your website by http://creativecommons.org/license/ M -- Marghanita da Cruz http://www.ramin.com.au/itgovernance Phone: 0414 869202 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
On 23/07/07, Marghanita da Cruz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Zhasper wrote: On 23/07/07, Tom Worthington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Even better; use the graphics from someone else's web site. ;-) For example Australian Screen credits a lot of participating organisations and has their logos listed http://australianscreen.com.au/title-index/features/. This does not make for good web design, but if you have to have all those logos, then you might as well reference the originals from their web sites and save the load on your server. It sounds like you're saying that a convenient way to reduce load on your own server is to make it some random third party's problem. What you're describing is called hotlinking, amounts to theft of bandwidth and resources, and is generally frowned upon. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking and http://altlab.com/hotlinking.html for explanations of why. See http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000278.html for a sample of the treatment you can expect if you persist in this behaviour. However, in this case, linking to the logos, which belong to and are promoting the organisations concerned, provides valuable direct feedback to these organisation as to how much publicity they are getting through this particular channel. Point conceded. If your intent is to assist the organisation concerned with valuable direct feedback, and said organisation wants said feedback, hotlinking is okay. That said, it's something you should check with them first. They may have limited resources, or expensive bandwidth, or something similar, and might prefer that you hosted the images yourself. They may not want to run the risk of your site being slashdotted, leading to the DSL connection in their office (where their webserver lives) being congested. Also, they may not understand what you're doing and you might find yourself serving unintentional goatses... The original poster's only rationale (unless I misread their email) was to reduce load on MY webserver by making it THEIR problem. I don't think that's covered by this (or Peter's) exception.. For example, see the Creative Commons code generated for inclusion on your website by http://creativecommons.org/license/ M -- Marghanita da Cruz http://www.ramin.com.au/itgovernance Phone: 0414 869202 -- There is nothing more worthy of contempt than a man who quotes himself - Zhasper, 2004 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
This one time, at band camp, Zhasper wrote: What you're describing is called hotlinking, amounts to theft of bandwidth and resources, and is generally frowned upon. Theft? That's like comparing copying data to theft, rape and murder on the high seas . Hotlinking is part of the inherent design of the Internet. It's a feature, not a bug. If you don't want people to do it, there are ample technical means to stop it. But yes, it does leave you open to someone switching in a disturbingly gaping arse. -- Rev Simon Rumble [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.rumble.net The Tourist Engineer Geeks need vacations too. http://engineer.openguides.org/ The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. - Somerset Maugham -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
Amos Shapira wrote Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:29:10 +1000: Aussie film archives launch and then crash - ZDnet mentions how a 2.5years project ... melted on the first morning it went public. ... This has happened before with new instantly popular sites. It can happen with Linux based systems as well as others and adding more hardware does not necessarily help if a million people suddenly want to look at your site. It happens that I was talking with staff at the National Film and Sound archive on Monday and warned them there was likely to be a problem with the new web site. A similar problem occurred with the UK based Aerial Reconnaissance Archives in 2004. There is a discussion of the issues archived in the ANU's Link mailing list at http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/2004-January/054679.html. The UK designers had made the job for their server particularly difficult by giving every image on the site a different URL for each person who looked at it. This made sense for tracking use of the valuable historical photos, but not when applied to to the logos on the home page. It made it impossible to cache the images. When the BBC ran a news item about the site the server was overloaded. Fixing the URLs for the images on the main pages seemed to help. A similar problem occurred with the Sentinel fire tracking system which the Australian Government launched a few days before bushfires in Canberra in 2003 http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/enet.html. When the fires broke out the system became overloaded. A separate server with userids and passwords for firefighters was installed, but I also suggested putting some canned output from the system for the general public to look at. The canned output could be cached and did not tie up the database server generating a new map for each user. Tom Worthington FACS HLM [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: 0419 496150 Director, Tomw Communications Pty LtdABN: 17 088 714 309 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617http://www.tomw.net.au/ Visiting Fellow, ANU Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
This one time, at band camp, Tom Worthington wrote: The UK designers had made the job for their server particularly difficult by giving every image on the site a different URL for each person who looked at it. Sounds similar to the 1901 Census site. When it launched on 1st January 2002, the PR flacks kicked in and, with everyone on holidays or being lazy at work, they flocked to the site. It ended up being down for many months while they increased capacity. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2136572.stm Of course, a good idea with these sites would be to work out a method to stagger the traffic. If you only anticipate ridiculous load in the first few days after launch, it's silly to build capacity to cope with that one-off demand. Instead, have some kind of ticketing system for those days to manage the demand. -- Rev Simon Rumble [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.rumble.net The Tourist Engineer Because nerds travel too. http://engineer.openguides.org/ Every year the international finance system kills more people than the second world war. But at least Hitler was mad, you know. - Ken Livingstone -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
On 20/07/07, Rev Simon Rumble [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course, a good idea with these sites would be to work out a method to stagger the traffic. If you only anticipate ridiculous load in the first few days after launch, it's silly to build capacity to cope with that one-off demand. Instead, have some kind of ticketing system for those days to manage the demand. E.g. use services like Akamai for your static stuff? That way you can probably rent their service during periods of overflow but save your money when the capacity is not required. Just wondering aloud, with hope to learn how feasible is this option. --Amos -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
Amazon's EC^2 might be a potential answer On 20/07/07, Amos Shapira [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 20/07/07, Rev Simon Rumble [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course, a good idea with these sites would be to work out a method to stagger the traffic. If you only anticipate ridiculous load in the first few days after launch, it's silly to build capacity to cope with that one-off demand. Instead, have some kind of ticketing system for those days to manage the demand. E.g. use services like Akamai for your static stuff? That way you can probably rent their service during periods of overflow but save your money when the capacity is not required. Just wondering aloud, with hope to learn how feasible is this option. --Amos -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- There is nothing more worthy of contempt than a man who quotes himself - Zhasper, 2004 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
This one time, at band camp, Amos Shapira wrote: E.g. use services like Akamai for your static stuff? That way you can probably rent their service during periods of overflow but save your money when the capacity is not required. Possibly. It can be as simple as getting your developers to do things sensibly. Like, all the everyday graphics hosted on a majorly-well connected web server with no fancy stuff (lighthttpd). Don't do session management for every browser, unless you really have to. PUBLISH every page that doesn't end up having different content for every user, rather than slurping it out of the database every time. -- Rev Simon Rumble [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.rumble.net The Tourist Engineer Just because you're on holiday, doesn't mean you're not a geek. http://engineer.openguides.org/ A politician is like a nappy. He should be changed regularly, and for the same reason - Column 8, Sydney Morning Herald -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
