The BBC Magazine has an article on several "what if ..." scenarios on extremely difficult ethical questions.This article was also discussed on Digg. The examples in the article seem to too extreme, but there are real life examples that pose the same questions. For example, the policeman or soldier who has to kill people in their normal line of work. On a larger scale is how politicians and heads of state justify war on other countries to themselves and to the public. Remember when Tony Blair said that that war is for the sake of peace?

Here is a satellite map of sea level rises by a hypothetical 7 meters, using Google Maps with overlays of elevation data from NASA.

Drupal 4.7 was released today after a full year in development.Read the full release announcement for Drupal 4.7 which has the new features. The "offline for maintenance" feature in that release is something I wrote sometime back.Additional coverage on Digg, CreativeBits and Free Software Magazine, Performancing.

In various fields, the Golden Ratio is considered a key to beauty and style. This goes for architecture, painting, sculpture, design, and more, as well as being found in nature as well. The Golden Ratio is also called the Divine Proportion among other names. Its value is 1:1.618. Recent research in the UK has shown that  for web sites, the golden ratio can be harmful, making them harder to navigate.

The Maltese language is the most visible vestiges of Arab heritage in Malta.

The history of Malta includes several centuries of Arab presence that were very influential in what its heritage today is, including language, and place names.

A friend's site that runs Drupal 4.6 is becoming more popular by the month. With increased popularity, comes increased traffic, and the need for more resources.

Problem: Slow Site

After moving to a dedicated server, things were better for a while, then in late March to early April, users were reporting page load times that are too slow. I mean really slow, as in 25 seconds per page per request.

Hardware is not the issue here. This is a Debian Linux server with a dual Pentium 4 2.8GHz with 2GB or RAM.

Investigation: CPU Bound

After logging in and doing some investigation, I saw the following output from vmstat:

A while back, I wrote about RateMyProfessor.com, and yearned for other areas that can use the model.  I specifically mentioned RateMyManager.com and RateMyCompany.com.Well, someone did something about it, and put up JobVent.com, where people can "vent" about the place they work at.As it stands today, companies like Hewitt Associates, Wal-mart, and North West Airlines are among the worst, and Fidelity Investments, Walgreens,  and Northrop Grumman are among the best.

It seems that MySQL has countered Oracle's purchase of Innobase's InnoDB and Sleepy Cat's BDB, by buying its own transactional engine from Solid Tech, and even making it GPL. The obligatory Slashdot discussion here.

The last time I tried to count Drupal sites using the empirical method of searching Google, there were 58,400 sites running Drupal. That  was in January 2006.Today, the same query says 75,800 sites!If this method is accurate, we have 29.79% growth in a mere one quarter.Phenomenal ...