Over at NewTeeVee, there is a detailed look at the way that the streams were served and who served them. They also have a great discussion of the P2P and Torrent downloads, serving as an alternate method of getting the high quality streams out to a larger audience.

But John Furrier poses an interesting question, just before he quotes the entire NewTeeVee post: What’s the largest audience for a live stream?

Most of the streams that were viewed by people at NBC and other media providers were delayed. And while the concept of streaming is still valid, it doesn’t fulfill the promise of an “as it happens” delivery of streaming media.

So folks, what is the largest live video stream audience?

As everyone should know by now, GrabPERF has moved to some pretty swell co-lo digs provided by our friends at Technorati. This saved us a bunch of money, both in connectivity and in power.

Now, after nearly 6 months of inactivity, I have decided to sell the original GrabPERF servers. I have no more need for them, and if I was ever to do something like GrabPERF again, I would do it on much more modern hardware.

These two twin PIII 600MHz machines have done stellar work, given that they are at least seven (that’s right, 7) years old. They are rock solid running Linux; your mileage may vary running other OSes.

These are defintely NOT desktop machines. People at the local Air Base asked me to keep the noise down. They have less than stellar video cards and no sound cards. These are servers.

These workhorses can be seen in an annotated context here. Until you go there, here is the old GrabPERF rack, just for the memories.

Technorati Tags: for sale, GrabPERF, servers

Over the last two days, the Gawker Media sites measured by GrabPERF have shown significant degradation during peak hours.

Live data can be viewed here.

Most folks who read the affected blogs in feed readers will likely not notice the problem. However, no reason for the degradation has been released.

UPDATE: Gawker posted on the performance issue this afternoon [here]. Apparently there was a fermentation-related incident near one of the servers and specialist teams are working to resolve the issue — I hear they brought in these guys.

[NB: Beating a server does not make it go faster, Nick.]

Technorati Tags: GrabPERF, Web Performance, Gawker, Wonkette, LifeHacker, Defamer, Gizmodo, Gawker Media

And what if some people did?

A study in obedience.

Technorati Tags: speed limit, 55

I was reading online (Slashdot) that some videos from Iraq are censored in the US.

Yup, it’s true

So much for “Do no evil”.

Any wagers on where the first internment camp will be opened in the United States? Guantanomo Bay and Eastern European “democracies” are not included in this pool.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Video, censor, censorship

UPDATE: Turns out this is a “feature” of the Google Video uploader. [here]

For all you local vloggers, there is a vlogging mini-conference coming up in Worcester, MA.

When: Monday, October 3rd, 6 p.m.
Who: You and your interested friends
What: “Meet the Vloggers” Worcester
Why: To learn more about videoblogging and build community
Directions to WPI: http://www.wpi.edu/About/Visitors/directions.html
Campus map to find the Campus Center:

http://www.wpi.edu/About/Visitors/Images/walkingmap.pdf

(The Campus Center is #6, behind Alumni Gym (#3) and next to Olin Hall
(#23). The star is where they are building a new Admissions building and the
circle in the center of campus is a fountain. These are just mentioned as
landmarks.)

Jan McLaughlin, a videoblogger (vlogger) from New York, will be visiting and
we will be presenting about videoblogging. This will include everything from
what equipment to use to how to drive traffic to your site, how to build
community through videoblogging and how to subscribe to news feeds using RSS
so you can watch other peoples’ videos. This will be a fun, interactive
presentation. I hope you can make it.

Thanks to Carl Weaver for the info.

This morning, my server was the victim of a sustained DDoS lasting approximately 45 minutes. The entire flow of traffic came from the usual group of trackback and comment spam morons.

Now, the good news: b2evolution came through the event with flying colours. The antispam feature built into the product prevented ANY attempts by these morons at inserting comments and trackbacks from being successful.

I have added one more layer filtering to handle these morons. Since they use such a limited number of keywords in their REFERER fields, I just wrote a mod_rewrite rule to send them off to my infamous TCP Port 9080.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*(pharmacy|poker|casino|blackjack|cialis|viagra| \
     porn|nude|girls|drugs|sex|animal|holdem| \
     stud|hydrocodone|vicodin|slut|anal|xanax|video| \
     oxycontin|russia|-online|online-).*
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://www.newestindustry.org:9080/ [R,L,NS]

This should deal with 90% of the morons. If I missed any keywords, drop me a comment.

Technorati: iptables, mod_rewrite, comment spam, trackback spam, DDoS

Get it while it’s hot! [here]

Via Gizmodo!

In this post, where Scoble returns to his unabashed MSFT hyping (YAWN!), he does take time to remind us of Alan Turing.

One of the most influential thinkers in the mathematical, computing and intelligence sciences, Alan Turing was persecuted by the British government for being a gay man.

Did I mention that he was one of the people who finally broke the Enigma code, twice? The original code, and the refactored cipher.

If you ever get the chance, watch the film Breaking the Code. Derek Jacobi, who played Turing onstage for years prior to this film, captures the wide-eyed, yet courageous approach that this man brought to his life.

No, this is not a shameless attempt to drive me to the top of the rankings. It is a legitimate comment on a quiet little secret of the new Google Video Search.

Google co-founder Larry Page has announced that the company wants the public to send in its homemade videos – and he doesn’tÂ’t mind how naughty they are.

“There might be an adult section, or something like that. I don’t think that is going to be a big issue,” Page told attendees at the National Cable and Telecommunications Show in San Francisco on Monday, where he was speaking on a panel.

Ouch! John Cheesman points out the HR nightmare that this will pose.

Then again, Google is just admitting what no other respectable online firm will: Internet porn is a huge untapped market for services.

Porn has been the innovator in the internet. It was the Commercial Internet for a long time. But none of the Web services firms are willing to approach or admit that they have major online adult entertainment companies as clients.

As a Web measurement geek, I have always seen this niche as a gold mine. Adult entertainment sites live or die on Web performance. Developers for adult sites are able to push the limits and demand more from their applications. They want to know where and how people connect to their site. They need to optimize their code and image/streaming delivery like few other sites do.

It’s time to get off the ivory tower and accept that adult entertainment could drive the online services revenue opportunity for a long time to come.