Things you always wanted to know the answer to [Vol. 3]

Things you always wanted to know the answer to [Vol. 3]

TOPIC CLOSED
TOPIC CLOSED
Author
Discussion

jeremyc

Original Poster:

23,335 posts

283 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
Continued from here

LordGrover

33,532 posts

211 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
Ta

McWigglebum4th

32,414 posts

203 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
How does the machine that cracks open walnuts work?

If i do it by hand i end up with edible sawdust

TTmonkey

20,911 posts

246 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
Why do threads need to be closed at 500 pages exactly?

scarble

5,277 posts

156 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
They don't, but 500 is a nice round number and gives the mods a bit of breathing room before the real limit, 512.
512 because the 32 bit operating system of the servers can't handle threads with over 512 pages due to addressing limitations in the data storage tables.
One day they will upgrade to 64 bit and we will have threads 1000 pages long and the mods will have 24 pages worth of buffer before they really need to close a thread.
It's something to do with 512 = 32*16, beyond that is beyond me.

AstonZagato

12,652 posts

209 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
McWigglebum4th said:
How does the machine that cracks open walnuts work?

If i do it by hand i end up with edible sawdust
You don't use a nut cracker. You put a blade into the end and twist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz68jJUeQAY

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alessi-Nut-Splitter-Walnut...

illmonkey

18,112 posts

197 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
scarble said:
They don't, but 500 is a nice round number and gives the mods a bit of breathing room before the real limit, 512.
512 because the 32 bit operating system of the servers can't handle threads with over 512 pages due to addressing limitations in the data storage tables.
One day they will upgrade to 64 bit and we will have threads 1000 pages long and the mods will have 24 pages worth of buffer before they really need to close a thread.
It's something to do with 512 = 32*16, beyond that is beyond me.
You're having a laugh right? The table can't manage 10240 records (20x512)?


Shaw Tarse

31,543 posts

202 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
TTmonkey said:
Why do threads need to be closed at 500 pages exactly?
10,000 posts hactually nerd

scarble

5,277 posts

156 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
illmonkey said:
You're having a laugh right? The table can't manage 10240 records (20x512)?
For each thread, the address space for each thread is a predefined limit. Consider how many threads, posts and users there are in the entirety of PH and it makes sense that they need to impose limits.
Having the size predefined makes for massive performance benefits.
It's probably more for a memory limitation than storage though, as a thread is being viewed it has to be loaded into memory (obviously) and if threads can be infinite in length then as a thread is loaded the software would need to either dynamically measure the size or allocate an infinite amount of memory.

Edited by scarble on Monday 23 February 09:41

illmonkey

18,112 posts

197 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
scarble said:
illmonkey said:
You're having a laugh right? The table can't manage 10240 records (20x512)?
For each thread, the address space for each thread is a predefined limit, predefined limits are necessary for optimum performance. Consider how many threads, posts and users there are in the entirety of PH and it makes sense that they need to impose limits.
The limitation you are saying with 500 pages of 20 posts is 10240, that is 1 table, the rest of the data, my post count etc is in other tables, right.

So, the table that contains the data is limited to 10240? Even though the DB will only be fetching 20 posts + related data at once, due to paging? The tables should be indexed, so it's not a big strain.


scarble

5,277 posts

156 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
Ah I'm not sure it loads each page separately, probably for popular threads it loads the whole thing, excess page loading times annoy people, people don't load as many pages, ad impressions go down.

Of course this is purely speculation, only the PH monkeys would know for sure.

SpeckledJim

31,608 posts

252 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
StevieBee said:
Why is the BBC so obsessed with Cricket?

I accept that there are many that like the game but I can't help thinking that the level of coverage they give it is entirely out of kilter with the numbers of people that actually give a toss (no pun intended).

More people pay to go and watch motor sport in the UK than cricket by a very considerable margin so why so much coverage?
Because cricket is cheap to buy and cheap to cover, and whilst F1 is enormously popular it is also enormously expensive.

Other forms of motorsport would be cheap, but are not enormously popular (which is a shame, because most of it is better than F1).

Lots and lots of non-F1 motorsport is available on non-BBC digital TV, but almost nobody watches it.

scarble

5,277 posts

156 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
If only we knew when and what channel banghead

I know there is or was some British GT, Rallycross and iirc Formula 3 available on the youtube channel of some TV channel or other.

fomb

1,402 posts

210 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
scarble said:
For each thread, the address space for each thread is a predefined limit. Consider how many threads, posts and users there are in the entirety of PH and it makes sense that they need to impose limits.
This makes me wonder if you know how to computer. It's a database, there's no address space in a database, there's a primary key. I would assume the limit is imposed for performance reasons. Maybe the caching tier is dramatically faster this way, maybe it's to do with aggregates such as post counts for a thread, but it's definitely naff all to do with memory address space.


McAndy

12,338 posts

176 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
scarble said:
If only we knew when and what channel banghead

I know there is or was some British GT, Rallycross and iirc Formula 3 available on the youtube channel of some TV channel or other.
Motors TV. WRC, Rallycross etc. Channel 71 on my recently retuned Samsung.

ITV4. BTCC, DTM, single seaters etc.

Channel 4: GT racing. Most weekend mornings during the season.

rohrl

8,712 posts

144 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
scarble said:
If only we knew when and what channel banghead

I know there is or was some British GT, Rallycross and iirc Formula 3 available on the youtube channel of some TV channel or other.
If you have Sky check out Motors TV on channel 447. There are all sorts of obscure races and championships on there.

LordGrover

33,532 posts

211 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
Motors TV is on either freesat or freeview too - I get it and don't have sky.

ambuletz

10,691 posts

180 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
the past couple of weeks I have been rocking a moustache & goatee combo. Today I decided to have a shave and a trim, leaving me with a moustache + soul patch.

First thing everyone says to me in the morning at the office is 'i never notice you had a moustache, since when?'

Whats up with that?

DervVW

2,223 posts

138 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
Are QI phone chargers worth it. Are the slower than a plug and do they work like old transformer plugs with loops of wires next to each other?

BlackVanDyke

9,932 posts

210 months

Monday 23rd February 2015
quotequote all
How can the entire neighbourhood know about a nasty drug dealer and yet they still be plying their trade and enjoying their freedom? mad
TOPIC CLOSED
TOPIC CLOSED