The anagram thread (used to be: RE: Is My Program Good)

[Vladamir]

I saw this rather odd posting this morning and didn't even have to think about not trying it out. It was just too suspicious looking. I applaud the response from everyone especially the moderator Joquim for banning this person from the forum. I would not be surprised if they came back using a different name.

I'm fighting all kinds of problems with Ads on the web at this point. The darn things are everywhere these days. And what baffles me is that the people who pay for these pay-per-click stuff are getting ripped off because many of the people who arrive at their site are there only be accident and have no intention of making any kind of purchase. I'm hoping that the payers finally wise up and stop using bogus services like InfoAtoms and AdChoices. But I guess P.T. Barnum was right. There's a sucker born every minute.

Thanks to everyone for making the effort to rid the world of these scum bags.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Actually, they aren't going to 'wise-up'. The cost for putting the ads up there is pretty small. If only one tenth of one percent are legitimate interests, that justifies the trivial cost.

However, one thing you would have to consider is this: Ad revenue is paying for all kinds of things, such as Google, and this particular site. If there was no ad revenue, what else would be keeping the lights on? My annual fees for this site wouldn't even buy a cup of gas for Brad Jones's Ferrari Testosteroneosa, let alone pay for the servers. If our annual fees aren't going to pay for the site, then who will? Right now, it's ad revenue. If that goes away, then, unless VBF can get a government grant (and therefore be paid for by taxpayers, which isn't going to happen), then VBF will, itself, go away.

Frankly, the internet can appear free because people are finding ways to make money around the edges rather than charging for it directly. If that model changed, it would rock the world.

[SeanGrebey]

Actually, they aren't going to 'wise-up'. The cost for putting the ads up there is pretty small. If only one tenth of one percent are legitimate interests, that justifies the trivial cost.

However, one thing you would have to consider is this: Ad revenue is paying for all kinds of things, such as Google, and this particular site. If there was no ad revenue, what else would be keeping the lights on? My annual fees for this site wouldn't even buy a cup of gas for Brad Jones's Ferrari Testosteroneosa, let alone pay for the servers. If our annual fees aren't going to pay for the site, then who will? Right now, it's ad revenue. If that goes away, then, unless VBF can get a government grant (and therefore be paid for by taxpayers, which isn't going to happen), then VBF will, itself, go away.

Frankly, the internet can appear free because people are finding ways to make money around the edges rather than charging for it directly. If that model changed, it would rock the world.

No offense to this site, it's a great tool. But how much could it really be costing to run a year? It's a forum.

[dbasnett]

...My annual fees for this site wouldn't even buy a cup of gas for Brad Jones's Ferrari Testosteroneosa, let alone pay for the servers...

I would've never guessed. They do a good job knowing what I am looking at. Last week I had water softener woe's and did a fair amount of research, and now in the upper right corner on the forum I see water softener ads.

I see that they removed the original post. What was it.

[Vladamir]

I understand that certain things in life are known as a "necessary evil". And I'm sure ad revenue falls under that. But ad revenue and trickery are two different things. Like dbasnett reports, I too have noticed that searching for certain items often places ads for similar products in my browser window. And I won't complain about it. But when I search for something and then I click on one of the search results and then end up at a totally bogus site which has nothing to do with my search request....it's just very frustrating at times.

I wish there was some way to retaliate against sites like this and give them a taste of their own medicine.

[Joacim Andersson]

Moved to the General Discussion/Chit Chat forum.

I applaud the response from everyone especially the moderator Joquim for banning this person from the forum.

What did you say you called me?

[Shaggy Hiker]

He got the first two and last two letters right. Studies have shown that the rest doesn't matter (at least in their order, but in this case there was more than just the order wrong).

[techgnome]

No offense to this site, it's a great tool. But how much could it really be costing to run a year? It's a forum.

And what does the forum run on? Servers... electricity... staff... internet... there are costs... and they don't just run on one server... there's a whole farm... which means office space, cooling,, and who knows what else. It all adds up. and then there's its sister sites...

So to answer the question, a pretty penny and a few ugly ones too I imagine.

-tg

[techgnome]

I would've never guessed. They do a good job knowing what I am looking at. Last week I had water softener woe's and did a fair amount of research, and now in the upper right corner on the forum I see water softener ads.

I see that they removed the original post. What was it.

It hasn't been removed... it's just locked... http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...w-program-good

-tg

[SeanGrebey]

And what does the forum run on? Servers... electricity... staff... internet... there are costs... and they don't just run on one server... there's a whole farm... which means office space, cooling,, and who knows what else. It all adds up. and then there's its sister sites...

So to answer the question, a pretty penny and a few ugly ones too I imagine.

-tg

What does the forum run on? Again no offense meant what so ever to the site, I love it, it's a great help, but for a forum you aren't paying for electricity, staff, farms, internet, etc.. More than likely you are renting a VPS from somebody for a flat fee a month, ~$40 to $100 a month, and running all your sites from the one server.

[thebuffalo]

What does the forum run on? Again no offense meant what so ever to the site, I love it, it's a great help, but for a forum you aren't paying for electricity, staff, farms, internet, etc.. More than likely you are renting a VPS from somebody for a flat fee a month, ~$40 to $100 a month, and running all your sites from the one server.

Obviously you don't understand how big this forum and its sister sites are. If you are looking for a $ estimate, I would say just for VBforums.com to stay running functionally, probably about $2000 a month. That's if they DON'T pay their staff.

[techgnome]

You really think all this is running off of ONE SERVER? Wow... your faith in things is really astounding. That might be how YOU would run a forum, or how I would run one... but I'm not running a dozen sites, half-dozen forums, thousands of users, tens of thousands of hits daily, with close to 20 years worth of postings, articles and who knows what else... not to mention everyone's attachments... that alone is probably enough to fill up a server...
I pay $90/qtr for my webspace... and I can do quite a bit with it... to include a forum on it... but I also know there is no way that it could handle the traffic or the amount of data this place goes through in a day... If this place was running off of a single server, in a VPS environ... there would be no one here... because it would be so slow, none of us would stick around. Or it would crash more often...

-tg

[Vladamir]

Moved to the General Discussion/Chit Chat forum.

What did you say you called me?

Oops, my bad. Didn't have your correct spelling in front of me. Perhaps there should be an advertisement for a Spell Checker on this thread.

[Shaggy Hiker]

No, he just stole that code, too.

[SeanGrebey]

Obviously you don't understand how big this forum and its sister sites are. If you are looking for a $ estimate, I would say just for VBforums.com to stay running functionally, probably about $2000 a month. That's if they DON'T pay their staff.

Fair enough, maybe it is bigger than I realize. Just looking in the main forum page though, and it is the middle of a work week, and there are posts that are 4 hours old on the front page. That doesn't scream $2000 a month and a staff, although in fairness I don't know what other sites they are running. At most though it would seem to need two web servers with load balancing, a SAN or NAS, and a database server. But I am just speculating. Again no offense meant to the powers that be.

[techgnome]

From the "About the Developer.com Network" link - http://www.developer.com/about-developer

The Developer.com Network attracts more than 7 million unique visitors each month via our sites, email newsletters, announcement lists, and online events.

and...

The industry-renowned Developer.com Network sites include Developer.com, DevX, CodeGuru and HTMLGoodies. All the sites are organized into four content channels -- Microsoft and C/C++ technologies, Java and open source development, Web development, and enterprise application development. Within its core subject focus, every channel also covers the most impactful technologies in the software industry today such as mobile, cloud and HTML5.

-tg

[Shaggy Hiker]

More than 7 million unique visitors? I suspect that some of the visitors are more unique than others. There are certainly a few around here that are...."unique". Maybe they get counted twice, but fortunately, they are just the minority.

[Spetnik]

I'm unique

[SeanGrebey]

From the "About the Developer.com Network" link - http://www.developer.com/about-developer


and...



-tg

Ah ok, I was more looking at this site. Didn't go dig into the parent site.

[thebuffalo]

Ah ok, I was more looking at this site. Didn't go dig into the parent site.

I'd say VBforums database would easily have to be larger than 10tb, they would all have to be 15k rpm or solid-states too. Also take into consideration that VBF is world-wide, just because right now there isn't much going on, doesn't mean that later it won't get crazy. Also take into consideration the amount of people that come on these forums that are under 18 years old and still in highschool, they aren't even out of school yet ( atleast not anywhere in the U.S. ). To rent a full server thats got a decent Xeon processor, unlimited bandwidth and connections, 16gb of ram, and 10tb of space, this would run you over $400/mo. If its less, you are sharing the server with 1-5 other people. The server I described probably wouldn't even run these forums, and if it did, nobody would use them. They probably have 4-5 servers like I described and then 1 mother server that is 10 times as powerful leading them, like a web farm.

[Joacim Andersson]

Ah ok, I was more looking at this site. Didn't go dig into the parent site.

At the time I'm writing this there are currently 1723 users online.
There are 642,397 threads with 4,028,179 posts and the members count is 137,920, and that is only for this forum.

[dilettante]

Chit Chat is usually a foolish place to try to be constructive, but here goes...


If enough people feel strongly about an ad-free Web I would have expected something akin to the "open source" model of software development to have taken hold. Call it "Open Web" or something, but a better term for "ad free zone" sites could probably be devised.

No, "open source" does not necessarily mean free. I know that. It also gets a lot of explicit commercial support and more totally-behind-the-scenes support from commercial interests than people sometimes think.

Wikipedia is a well known example of an ad-free zone that does exist. They live off donations. Of course as tax time (at least in the U.S.) nears, they do start adding solicitations at the head of their pages. So maybe they don't qualify either?


So it's a little surprising that there hasn't been a more concerted effort to organize and popularize the idea. Or maybe it has been tried and flopped? I.e. not enough people care enough?


As far as forum sites like VBForums go, the advertising could be a lot more painful than it is.

The example that comes to mind here are "newspaper" and "magazine" sites. These may be entirely Web based or they may be the Web-presence of a traditional journalism empire.

These things really suck. Pages can often download megabytes of crap (ads and fat image-laden ad-like links and navigation blobs) for every 1KB or so of meaningful text. Some of them are really obnoxious, giving you 1KB of so of meaningful text and then 10 more "continued" pages so they can shovel you 10 more megabytes of crapola.

And they wonder why there are "problems" with the Web as a news delivery medium!

Despite the costs the profit level must be fantastic. If not, then they must have been making truly fantastic profits off the hard copy medium and they have unrealistic expectations.

[SeanGrebey]

I'd say VBforums database would easily have to be larger than 10tb, they would all have to be 15k rpm or solid-states too. Also take into consideration that VBF is world-wide, just because right now there isn't much going on, doesn't mean that later it won't get crazy. Also take into consideration the amount of people that come on these forums that are under 18 years old and still in highschool, they aren't even out of school yet ( atleast not anywhere in the U.S. ). To rent a full server thats got a decent Xeon processor, unlimited bandwidth and connections, 16gb of ram, and 10tb of space, this would run you over $400/mo. If its less, you are sharing the server with 1-5 other people. The server I described probably wouldn't even run these forums, and if it did, nobody would use them. They probably have 4-5 servers like I described and then 1 mother server that is 10 times as powerful leading them, like a web farm.

I think you are seriously over estimating it, it's a forum, not streaming video, but I'd be curious to know what it actually runs on. Anybody have an answer?

[thebuffalo]

I think you are seriously over estimating it, it's a forum, not streaming video, but I'd be curious to know what it actually runs on. Anybody have an answer?

I am sitting next to a web farm, 2 secondaries and 1 primary. It only efficiently runs about 80 people at one time (internally). These are i7, 8gb ram, 1tb each. Also in the rack are 2 proliant servers 5tb, xeon 2.2ghz 6core, 32gb ram.

Imagine 1000 people connected to 1 webpage at the same time, and 10% of them hit refresh at the same time, you think just some simple server can do that? Most operating systems limit you to 50-100 connections at one time, so they could even be paying the license fees for all that. I don't know what operating system they run these on so that could not be a factor, but I am telling you, this website (VBF) costs are around 2000 american dollars per month, most likely more.

Our servers are around $350/mo electrical wise.

Just go look at the codebank and all the 1st party attachments.

Or open your developer mode in your browser and check your load times, then multiply that by 1000.

[TysonLPrice]

He got the first two and last two letters right. Studies have shown that the rest doesn't matter (at least in their order, but in this case there was more than just the order wrong).

Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs.

cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The
phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,

it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

[techgnome]

The fnnuy prat is taht plope lkie me wtih mlid dyslexia do that ntlaruy ... I can also read upside down and backwards pretty readily... comes in handy when reading books to the kids...

-tg

[TysonLPrice]

That was cool, a little difficult at first because I was trying to read it. But once I just started reading it as if I were reading it spelled correctly I could do it no problem!

Here a twist on that. I was suprised at some of my co-workers thatuse English as a second language can handle the nuances:

1.The bandage was wound around the wound.
2.The farm was used to produce produce.
3.The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4.We must polish the Polish furniture.
5.He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6.The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7.Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8.A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9.When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10.I did not object to the object.
11.The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12.There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13.They were too close to the door to close it.
14.The buck does funny things when does are present.
15.A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16.To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17.The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18.After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19.Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20.I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21.How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
22.The accountant at the music store records records of the records.

[techgnome]

Every language has their nuances like that... the English language just seems to be more brutal about it... I was watching something on History channel last night about how the brain works (specifically memory) and the person mentioned that the Chinese language uses the same word for three different meanings (13 and death being two of those) where the only difference is the inflexion when you pronounce it...

-tg

[Shaggy Hiker]

I think that it has been tried, but unless it's a huge website like wikipedia, I cannot see how it could work. I know that I will never, ever, ever, ever, not maybe, not sometimes, not ever donate to a website. It's not because I'm a four letter d word, but it's because I know I shouldn't give money away when I do something with that money. Ok so maybe I am that four letter word because I refuse to donate, but a priest of all people once told me to never donate anything as it will rarely do much good. But rather go out and do the work yourself, as that is were a difference will be made. I just never forgot that.

That's a most excellent rant. I can just imagine the spittle flying, which is even funnier because I suspect that you weren't all that worked up about it when you wrote it. However, you did manage to make a nearly coherent series of statements there that would sound more reasonable if there were some spittle involved. What the heck does "shouldn't give money away when I do something with that money" even mean, anyways? Eventually, you manage to sound like a solid disciple of Battle Programming 3.0, though Moti was talking about undermining companies you dislike by doing the work they are offering, but doing it for free to undercut them. You are talking about volunteering time rather than money, which is much more benign, but still in the spirit of Battle Programming (how much richer life is with books like that to reference).

I hope you take this in the spirit it was meant: That statement was AWESOME. You sound like a total freak. I loved every syllable of it, even though I don't understand most of them. My first thought was a wry, "Dude, the word "douche" has six letters.", because I frankly can't think quite what word it is that you are suggesting (it has to be derogatory in some way, so dolt, dink, and dork are possible, but none have a definition that seems to apply...oh wait, I think I just figured it out....it's kind of like the latter two, but with a c in it, right?).

In any case, that was an awesomely humorous post.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs.

You are correct in what I was refering to. I wasn't about to provide a citation, because what I had said wasn't technically correct anyways. Getting the first and last letters right is not sufficient if all the letters between those two are chosen at random, so the misspelling of Jociam Andrensosn's name wasn't quite conforming to the finding of that study. On the other hand, what good is a model if you can't misapply it?

[Joacim Andersson]

a priest of all people once told me to never donate anything as it will rarely do much good. But rather go out and do the work yourself, as that is were a difference will be made.

Good advise, never donate to Wikipedia - Go out and create a new wiki yourself, that will work!

Getting the first and last letters right is not sufficient if all the letters between those two are chosen at random, so the misspelling of Jociam Andrensosn's name wasn't quite conforming to the finding of that study.

But apparently you can add letters? How many n's are there really in my last name?

[Shaggy Hiker]

I can't spell very well even when I'm NOT trying to make a joke out of scrambled letters. As far as I am concerned, you are certainly worthy of an extra n, or two.

[Jacob Roman]

I'm fighting all kinds of problems with Ads on the web at this point. The darn things are everywhere these days. And what baffles me is that the people who pay for these pay-per-click stuff are getting ripped off because many of the people who arrive at their site are there only be accident and have no intention of making any kind of purchase. I'm hoping that the payers finally wise up and stop using bogus services like InfoAtoms and AdChoices. But I guess P.T. Barnum was right. There's a sucker born every minute.

Thanks to everyone for making the effort to rid the world of these scum bags.

Don't like ads? Are ads letting you down? Do ya hate em with a passion? Then get yourself Mozilla Firefox along with the addon Adblock Plus! You will never see one annoying ad ever again. No popups! No Banners! No ads before a video! No ads in the middle of your video! And NO ADS AFTER YOUR VIDEO!!! And get this...Its absolutely free!!! Over 5 million people downloaded this and counting. Get it today! This ad will be the last ad you will ever see on the web! GUARANTEED!!!!! Or your money back.

[FunkyDexter]

It's Friday afternoon and I'm bored. I haven't got any work left to do and I've got to kill time so I thought to myself, "What can I do for fun while appearing to be busy? I know, I'll try and find annagrams for Joacim Andersson". Here goes:-

A Mojo Rancidness
Joins Arcane Mods
I'm not very good at annagrams and those two took me half an hour. I've got another two hours to kill.



edit> Ooh, just got one for TheBuffalo: Halo Buffet. That one was easy.

edit2> I'm pretty much giving up on Joacim. Your names just got too many letters in it and it's making my head hurt. There's lower hanging fruit.
Brad Jones : Jar de Snob.
Jacob Roman : Job Coma, Ron (OK, I added a comma on that one but correct punctuation is important)
Spetnik : Pet Sink
Techgnome : Get no mech
Martin Liss : Slim Trains

Edit again> TysonL Price is proving tricky. I've got Cripes Only but I just can't get rid of the spare T.
And don't get me started on ShaggyHiker. Two Hs, Two Gs and a Y instead of a proper vowel... that's just not fair.

Yet another Edit> Si The Geek : Gee He's Kit

[InvisibleDuncan]

Defy runt kex.

[techgnome]

turkey den fx

[Joacim Andersson]

Anagrams are easy!
ShaggyHiker: Sike hag rygh

See how easy that was... The problem isn't finding an anagram, the problem is to figure out in which language something like "Sike hag rygh" actually has some kind of meaning....

[Shaggy Hiker]

Looks kind of like Welsh.

[boops boops]

You may recognize some of these:

KREGG SAY HIH
O MAJOR DANCE SINS
HE OAT BLUFF
MAJOR BACON
BUILD CAN IN VINES
DAM RIVAL
KEY T-REX FUND
Y ADD 9?
SPIT NEK
BEEN GREASY?
THE C-MONGE

Did I miss anyone?

BB

[boops boops]

Because adding 9 is simple Boo Boss Pop

Correct. But I did forget:

ENCRYPT SOIL
BATS DENT
ATTEND LITE

so poops bob...