Month: January 2013

Dead Link: Stand-alone jemalloc

Dead Link: Stand-alone jemalloc

jemalloc started out as the memory allocator for a programming language runtime in 2005, but language design changes made the allocator superfluous. At the time, FreeBSD was in need of an SMP-scalable allocator, so I integrated jemalloc into FreeBSD’s libc, and then made a long series of improvements to scalability and fragmentation behavior.

In late 2007, the Mozilla Project was hard at work improving Firefox’s memory usage for the 3.0 release, and jemalloc was used to solve fragmentation problems for Firefox on Microsoft Windows platforms. You can read here about the fruits of that labor. I made many enhancements to jemalloc while developing for Mozilla, and all of the generic algorithmic improvements were incorporated into FreeBSD’s jemalloc. More recently, Mozilla sponsored integration of Apple Mac OS X support into the stand-alone jemalloc.

Since 2009 I have adapted jemalloc to handle the extreme loads Facebook servers commonly operate under. Facebook uses jemalloc in many components that are integral to serving its website. Facebook supports numerous open source projects, and is to thank for sponsoring many of the features that first appeared in the stand-alone jemalloc.

Varnish Community | Varnish makes websites fly!

Varnish Community | Varnish makes websites fly!

Varnish is a web application accelerator. You install it in front of your web application and it will speed it up significantly.

Varnish is a caching HTTP reverse proxy. It receives requests from clients and tries to answer them from the cache. If Varnish cannot answer the request from the cache it will forward the request to the backend, fetch the response, store it in the cache and deliver it to the client.

When Varnish has a cached response ready it is typically delivered in a matter of microseconds, two orders of magnitude faster than your typical backend server, so you want to make sure to have Varnish answer as many of the requests as possible directly from the cache.

Varnish decides whether it can store the content or not based on the response it gets back from the backend. The backend can instruct Varnish to cache the content with the HTTP response header Cache-Control. There are a few conditions where Varnish will not cache, the most common one being the use of cookies. Since cookies indicates a client-specific web object, Varnish will by default not cache it.

This behaviour as most of Varnish functionality can be changed using policies written in the Varnish Configuration Language (VCL). See The Varnish Users Guide for more information on how to do that.

David Gerwitz: Copy your Palm Desktop to your Android phone.

David Gerwitz: Copy your Palm Desktop to your Android phone.

See also: Palm, a Silicon Valley soap opera

EDITION: EU
Search
MUST READ: To keep their Curiosity Rover exploring Mars, NASA’s team has switched to remote working
Did you know you can use Palm Desktop with your Android phone?
This $49 piece of software provides a sync conduit (remember conduits?) from your copy of Palm Desktop to your Android phone.

David Gewirtz
By David Gewirtz for DIY-IT | May 11, 2012 — 06:18 GMT (07:18 BST) | Topic: Mobility

There was a time, not so long ago, that I was a dedicated Palm user. Heck, I started PalmPower Magazine, way back in 1997. I livedoff my Palm device, from the very earliest PalmPilot to my once beloved Treo phone.

See also: Why old people still like their PDAs

Through it all was Palm Desktop. Palm Desktop was the desktop application that made using the Palm devices so smooth. All it had was an address book, calendar, to-do list, and note/memo fields, but it was so much easier entering data using a full-sized keyboard on the Palm Desktop, and knowing that once I pushed the Sync button, it would be with me, everywhere.
The last version of Palm Desktop was updated about four years ago. Palm stopped selling Palm OS devices around 2008-2009, with the introduction of the Tungsten TX, Treo 680, and small Centro phone marking the final generation.

As we all know from recent history, Palm decided to move to a completely new operating system, webOS, taking none of its ecosystem or thousands of enthusiastic developers with it. Shortly later, HP bought Palm for an all-cash $1.2 billion deal, and shortly after that, HP proceeded to take all things Palm out back of the barn, and shoot it dead.

See also: Palm, a Silicon Valley soap opera

It was a bizarre ending for what was once the most successful mobile product out there.

Interestingly enough, there are still lots of people out there nursing along their old Palm devices and Palm Desktop copies, trying to get a few more months out of them before having to face the inevitable migration to a new environment.

I know people who had Palm devices that died, and they’ve scoured eBay for replacements, or just run with all their data on a badly limping copy of Palm Desktop.

Don’t scoff. Palm Desktop was brilliant and fit millions of people’s working styles perfectly.

Now, up until recently, I’ve been telling people they’d have to move to a new environment, whether it’s Outlook, Gmail, or even the Apple infrastructure, because there’s just no Palm solution.

But now there is. Thanks to reader Kevin Smith (I know!), I’ve been made aware of a piece of software from CompanionLink called CompanionLink for Palm Desktop. This $49 piece of software provides a sync conduit (remember conduits?) from your copy of Palm Desktop to your Android phone.

UPDATE: Read the comments before you buy this software. Some readers have complained about challenges using it. I haven’t used it, so do your research first.

Yep, you can — essentially — turn your Android phone into a Palm device, at least when it comes to the Big Four. They sync most of the Big Four data you’d like to sync.

So if you’re converting from Palm to say, the Google ecosystem with Android, or you just want to eek out a few more years of Palm Desktop on that one remaining XP machine you’ve got (or you’re running a virtual XP on your Windows 7 or Windows 8 box), now you’ve got the answer.

Good luck. And may the sync be with you.

Screenshot courtesy CompanionLink.

RELATED TOPICS: GOOGLE SMARTPHONES MOBILE OS SECURITY HARDWARE REVIEWS
David Gewirtz
By David Gewirtz for DIY-IT | May 11, 2012 — 06:18 GMT (07:18 BST) | Topic: Mobility