Physics Forums: History, Founder & Ownership

[Ratzinger]

Who created Physics Forums? Who is its founder? Does anybody owns it?

 

[Chi Meson]

Here's a clue. It was his birthday yesterday.

 

[zoobyshoe]

PF was created in 2000 by a team of psychiatrists at the Moronvia Institute in DuBuque, Iowa, U.S.A. as a psychological experiment to see how many time a day you could interrupt people's connection to an internet forum before they went berzerk.

 

[ZapperZ]

No one created PF. There is no "intelligent design" involved here.

<ZapperZ runs and hides from the PF God>

Zz.

 

[Lisa!]

PF doesn't have a founder, it has a finder

 

[arildno]

PF is owned by a dog. This dog:
http://www.artglass-pottery.com/Dogs/images/A02453St.Bernard.jpg

 

[quantumdude]

PF doesn't have a founder, it has a finder

I can't believe no one PM'd me about Chief Crazyhead Mattson. You guys usually watch my back better than that!

 

[AngelShare]

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ug/mcknight/nerd.jpg

 

[Mattara]

I would like to know the relationship between Greg and Warren. Are they related, friends or..?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I can't believe no one PM'd me about Chief Crazyhead Mattson. You guys usually watch my back better than that!

haha I always wondered why you never had a response to that

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I would like to know the relationship between Greg and Warren. Are they related, friends or..?

Warren is my mom's cousins dads step son's ex girlfriends classmate

 

[Cyrus]

www.classmates.com and the rest is history.

 

[loseyourname]

Did you watch your school pull off the upset, Greg? You do go to UWM, no?

 

[chroot]

Warren is my mom's cousins dads step son's ex girlfriends classmate

Thrice removed.

Greg and I have never actually met, or even conversed on the phone, believe it or not. I joined PF a number of years ago and spent most of my time being an arrogant jerk to the crackpots. Eventually, somehow, I was promoted to mentor (I guess I softened up!). Later, when Greg realized I could help him with some of the site's programming, he made me a co-admin.

- Warren

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Did you watch your school pull off the upset, Greg? You do go to UWM, no?

Was no upset my friend GO PANTHERS! Now watching marquette get wipped.

 

[Bladibla]

my time being an arrogant jerk to the crackpots

Said like a true scientist

 

[Ratzinger]

So then Greg you must be crazy rich by now like all the other Internet people.

 

[chroot]

He would be rich, but I keep skimming off the top.

- Warren

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

So then Greg you must be crazy rich by now like all the other Internet people.

yup, advertising firms are spending billions on the physics market lol

 

[Ratzinger]

I bet these two Google guys have been knocking on your door lately.

Are we talking seven digits numbers? Or stock options?

 

[chroot]

What're you trying to say? That Google would buy PF? I think you have it all backwards... Greg's been talking about investing his PF profits in some little search engine company for a while now.

- Warren

 

[z-component]

But don't you realize how much money is needed to keep the site up? With the amount of data on PF, the hosting package isn't 100 MB of disk and 500 MB bandwidth! I wonder how much bandwidth PF uses monthly.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

But don't you realize how much money is needed to keep the site up? With the amount of data on PF, the hosting package isn't 100 MB of disk and 500 MB bandwidth! I wonder how much bandwidth PF uses monthly.

Close to 300gig total bandwidth (http, ftp, ssh, backups...) and near 3gig raw data (over a gig for all those latex images!). Good thing we have a dedicated server with unlimited bandwidth and two 160gig drives!

 

[z-component]

Yeah, good thing! I had no idea LaTeX images took that much.

 

[rachmaninoff]

No one "created" PF. It evolved over millions of years from protoforumoids like sci.physics usenet.

 

[Danger]

Okay, this is probably going to sound like a weird question, but I've been thinking about asking for a long time. Since I know very little about how the net works, I'm curious about where PF is. Is it all in one honking huge computer somewhere, or distributed among a bunch of them, or am I just a Solipsist and dreamed the whole thing up?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Okay, this is probably going to sound like a weird question, but I've been thinking about asking for a long time. Since I know very little about how the net works, I'm curious about where PF is. Is it all in one honking huge computer somewhere, or distributed among a bunch of them, or am I just a Solipsist and dreamed the whole thing up?

It's in a datacenter located in New York.

 

[zoobyshoe]

It's in a datacenter located in New York.

That's weird. I always figured there was this big sort of borg cube in your garage that you went out and banged on with a wrench now and then.

 

[Danger]

It's in a datacenter located in New York.

Okay... next question (and no, I'm not kidding): what's a datacentre?

 

[Evo]

Okay... next question (and no, I'm not kidding): what's a datacentre?

It's a building that has (hopefully) redundant power supplies, and multiple carriers with fiber into the building. They rent out space in their building to people that want to place their servers and other equipment in a secure environment.

There are other concerns such as HVAC, fire prevention, you don't want water pouring onto your server in case of a fire, security.

There are obviously different levels of providers, some outright lie about their facilities. I quite often have clients call me saying that XYZ data center says I have fiber into their facility and I don't.

 

[Danger]

So the server is one computer?

 

[Evo]

So the server is one computer?

Basically.

 

[Danger]

Wow! I think that I want one...

 

[Dawguard]

So the server is one computer?

Is that why I often get an error loading the page: it sights a failure to connect to the server, and it doesn't matter what browser I use.

 

[chroot]

The webserver itself is on a single computer, but the database is likely on a much more powerful computer shared by many web servers.

I actually don't know much about the site's new configuration, since it was moved just a week ago.

- Warren