= --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- ======= -L- -I- -B- -E- -R- -E- -T- -T- -O- July 1998 ========= ======= The iMatix Newsletter Volume III Issue 7 --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- = Copyright (c) 1998 iMatix Corporation - distribute freely Back issues at http://www.imatix.com Comments to: editors@imatix.com Programming -- Technology -- Finite State Machines -- News -- Other Stuff == COMMENT ---...-.-...-.--...-.--...-.-...-.....---..-....--.--..-.-.---.-- This is not a joke. Really. Researchers in the US recently discovered just how important sleep is. People need a certain amount of sleep (8 to 9 hours) every night. If you get less sleep, you get stupider. No joke: every hour of sleep that you don't get, costs you one point of IQ. The effect is cumulative, but not permanent. Let's say you're working on a really important project. You lose an hour of sleep every night. After a month you're down 30 IQ points. If you started at 100, which is the population average, you'd be down to 70, at which level you're having difficulty working the toaster. The population of the US, and Europe is apparently chronically tired. A sure sign of lack of sleep is whether you start snoring during boring events such as company presentations, after-lunch meetings, telephone calls, or trips to the toilet. When you step over someone who has fallen comatose onto the office floor while downloading NT Service Pack 4, you now know why this happened. Anyone who has followed this industry for a while will realise that there must be some external force at work, something so powerful that it can explain why the combined talents of so many, well, talented people, comes up with what can rarely be described politely. Sturgeon's Law states that 90% of anything is junk. So why is 95% of software junk? Or, if you measure it by volume, 99.9%. Yes, we've been suffering from release after release of software built by sleep-stupid geniuses. They'll start a project with a fantastic design, powerful and abstracted. As the work progresses, they get stupider and stupider, losing little IQ points every time they stretch the working day into the night. Finally they're programming at the imbecile level, and people are shocked that there are so many bugs. It's amazing that anything works at all! Forget the macho stuff about 'Hey, I only need five hours' sleep a night'. This is about as smart as saying 'Hey, I can drink ten beers and still drive home at top speed!'. I'm waiting until California legislates mandatory minimum sleeping hours, then I'm going to live there. Pieter Hintjens Antwerpen 1 July 1998 == NEWS -..-..---.-.----.-..-.---..-..---.-..-..----.-.-.---....-.-.---.-..- Xitami Pro in Alpha State! No, not a reference to light sleep patterns, but to our forthcoming Xitami Pro webserver, which is almost ready for alpha testing. This professional server will feature SSL, as well as a raft of other functions for serious web sites. Xitami will be renamed 'Xitami Personal' and we will continue to improve it and make it freely available as before. == FEEDBACK -..-.-.-.--....-.-.-.--..-...-.--.-....-.-.--...-.-.-.----.-.--- From: Kovacs Istvan ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi! I've been watching your fight with '\' and '/' in configuration paths and URL's for some time. :-) Why don't you use some kind of 'canonicaliser' that could eliminate these problems (that is, it should convert all '\' characters to '/', and do whatever else is necessary)? How are you doing, BTW? Congratulations for your (er, Xitami's) 3rd place! A year ago it was a largely unknown software (none of my friends (working for ISP's, or other Internet-related jobs) knew it), and now it's a widely used server! Quite a success story. Should I watch out for an interview with Mr. Hintjens on CNN? ;-) Kofa - - - We have no time for CNN, sadly. All the back slashes in our labs went on strike and we're trying to make Xitami work with only forward slashes, sometimes turned over. But now the Windows NT server has gotten into an argument with the BEos beast about whose slashes are who's. Life in the iMatix AI labs is not always harmonious. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Dale Phillips Subject: Re: Liberetto III/6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ode to the Keepers of Turing: (i.e. OOP FSM) Finite and fixed, functions so pure state to state sub_routine called by sub_routine return to where I started please... What if ... the keepers cried ... IF each state in our finite machine - so fixed and straight was and object?? Come one come all and see the light objects methods and inheiritance cast in same old light ... The End Dale - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Jimi Joergensen Subject: Xitami ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, I thought I would write you a mail and for once not nag you about some detail in the highly regarded and loved Xitami. It works perfect, my server is screaming and the network is burning as always.. Oh well, I have another reason for mailing :-). I have 2 questions: 1) I would expect Xitami to run just as well on Alpha AXP as it does on Intel platform, would there be anything that would prevent this from work just as brilliant as it does now ? 2) How big is the overhead (memory / CPU) pr. virtual host ? The case here is that I could very well end up, within a month or two, with a solution that required me to have something in the order of 20000 - 25000 virtual-hosts on a single server. /Jimi - I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific... - - - Sure Xitami will run on Alpha AXP. Actually, with Jimi's help we hope to make this available in binary form for a future release. Did you say twenty-thousand virtual hosts? No, I thought I was imagining it. Must get more sleep. Snork snork. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Pieter Hintjens To: Terry Steichen Subject: Free software ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Terry, Thanks for your questions. > Re: Free software as an effective marketing alternative - You know, > as strange as that sounds, I'm seeing more and more of that. I > think it's in process of becoming the new 'rage'. I'm curious, just > the same - is the majority of your income from consulting services > then? And most of these services are related to use of your free > software? We regard free software as (a) an important marketing tool, perhaps the only one available to a small but ambitious company with global plans; (b) a mission to spread our techniques and tools as widely as possible, and (c) a good way to test and refine technology (such as SMT) on which our consulting business depends. It's a mixed bag, but works well and I think the results prove it. Our specific strategy with Xitami is fairly classic: bring out a good, reliable, popular free product, and use this as the basis for a commercial product family. - Pieter Hintjens From: "Terry Steichen" Subject: Free software ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks for your response. I am immensely impressed with what you're doing. Until a couple of years ago I had a software company (developing and marketing an agent-based system to monitor/manage file servers). The product met an important market need, but getting attention (let alone market penetration) as a small company was terribly hard. Eventually, I just had to let it go. But I've never stopped thinking about how to do it better, and I think your group is on to the way to do that. It so goes against the grain (to give away well-designed software), that it's difficult to grasp seriously and permanently. But, it does work. A week or so ago I noticed that a distributor of electronic components, Microcom Technologies (www.microcomtech.com) announced it was giving away a version of its Web-mining software (www.partminer.com). It took me a while to figure out how it would work for them, but now that I've examined it a bit, I'm very impressed. It's increasingly clear that if you give the market something it considers valuable (ie, Xitami), it will use it and become favorably inclined toward the provider (ie, iMatix). Then the 'trick' is to allow (not pressure) the market to expand on the free (already valuable) stuff to make it even more valuable. That process is what traditional advertising strives to do; but, especially in the Internet age, such advertising is only marginally effective and often terribly costly. All of this on the heels of Netscape's (desperation-driven) opening up of its source, and IBM's adoption of Apache. Something very important and very profound it happening. And I think you're positioning iMatix correctly in this emerging trend. Regards, Terry Steichen == LINKS OF THE MONTH -..-..---.-.--...-.-..---..-....---..-.-.-.--...-.-..-. http://serverwatch.internet.com/webreview-xitami.html "If you need speed but don't want the baggage that comes with most other web servers, Xitami may be your answer. Xitami's strength is in its diminutive but stalwart footprint which is built around iMatix's high performance SMT (Simple Multi-Threading) kernel. Xitami has a loyal -- perhaps even fanatic -- following that is growing steadily due to its price tag (free!) and its tried and true performance. To the delight of many, Xitami resuscitates older Pentium boxes, making these dust-collectors serviceable once again." http://serverwatch.internet.com/top10.html Xitami hit number 2 and then went back to number 4 in the Top 10. We suspect that if enough people click on the 'Download' button, it could actually hit number 1. (Hint, hint.) http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_2212.html Build Your Own Intranet Right Now. == TERMINATE THE PROGRAM -...---...-..----....-.---..---...-...---.-...---.- Tired of Liberetto? Falling asleep on the keyboard? Why don't you go home this evening, run a nice warm bath, and soak until your skin starts to go wrinkly. Drink a nice mug of hot milk, then go to sleep. It'll be better tomorrow. If that does not help, then we can't help either, so just ask us to take you off this list.