History Physics Forums: History, Founder & Ownership

AI Thread Summary
Physics Forums was established in 2000 by a group of psychiatrists at the Moronvia Institute in Dubuque, Iowa, as a psychological experiment rather than through traditional founding. The forum lacks a singular founder; instead, it is humorously described as having a "finder" and is claimed to be owned by a dog. Discussions reveal a lighthearted camaraderie among members, with references to personal connections and humorous anecdotes about the site's history. The current operational setup includes a dedicated server in New York, with significant bandwidth and data requirements. The evolution of the forum has led to a substantial number of posts and threads, highlighting its growth and community engagement over the years.
Ratzinger
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Who created Physics Forums? Who is its founder? Does anybody owns it?
 
Science news on Phys.org
Here's a clue. It was his birthday yesterday.
 
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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.
 
No one created PF. There is no "intelligent design" involved here.

<ZapperZ runs and hides from the PF God>

Zz.
 
PF is owned by a dog. This dog:
http://www.artglass-pottery.com/Dogs/images/A02453St.Bernard.jpg
 
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ug/mcknight/nerd.jpg
 
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I would like to know the relationship between Greg and Warren. Are they related, friends or..?
 
  • #10
Tom Mattson said:
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 :biggrin:
 
  • #11
Mattara said:
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
 
  • #12
  • #13
Did you watch your school pull off the upset, Greg? You do go to UWM, no?
 
  • #14
Greg Bernhardt said:
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
 
  • #15
loseyourname said:
Did you watch your school pull off the upset, Greg? You do go to UWM, no?

Was no upset my friend :biggrin: GO PANTHERS! Now watching marquette get wipped.
 
  • #16
my time being an arrogant jerk to the crackpots

Said like a true scientist
 
  • #17
So then Greg you must be crazy rich by now like all the other Internet people.
 
  • #18
He would be rich, but I keep skimming off the top.

- Warren
 
  • #19
Ratzinger said:
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
 
  • #20
I bet these two Google guys have been knocking on your door lately.

Are we talking seven digits numbers? Or stock options?
 
  • #21
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
 
  • #22
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.
 
  • #23
z-component said:
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!
 
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  • #24
:eek: Yeah, good thing! I had no idea LaTeX images took that much.
 
  • #25
No one "created" PF. It evolved over millions of years from protoforumoids like sci.physics usenet.
 
  • #26
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?
 
  • #27
Danger said:
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.
 
  • #28
Greg Bernhardt said:
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.
 
  • #29
Greg Bernhardt said:
It's in a datacenter located in New York.
Okay... next question (and no, I'm not kidding): what's a datacentre?
 
  • #30
Danger said:
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.
 
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  • #31
So the server is one computer?
 
  • #32
Danger said:
So the server is one computer?
Basically.
 
  • #33
Wow! I think that I want one...
 
  • #34
Danger said:
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.
 
  • #35
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
 
  • #36
Dawguard said:
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.

Right, having a web server redundacy setup would be enormously expensive.

warren, the web server and db server are on the same machine, unlike the last datacenter where the db was on a different machine.
 
  • #37
Greg Bernhardt said:
haha I always wondered why you never had a response to that :biggrin:
The surprising part is that he had a post on page 1 of that thread(well that was before your post):-p
 
  • #38
So what was the first post, the first question asked on PF?

And who was the first supermentor?

Please open the book of Genesis for us.
 
  • #39
Ratzinger said:
So what was the first post, the first question asked on PF?

And who was the first supermentor?

Please open the book of Genesis for us.

Not sure about the first post because we had to wipe the db in order to move and upgrade the software. The first mentor was Phobos who recently retired.
 
  • #40
I remember having a CD with the PF database on it several years ago.. but I think I lost it :cry:
 
  • #41
Monique said:
I remember having a CD with the PF database on it several years ago.. but I think I lost it :cry:
I still have one left, but that was still PF2, PF1 will be lost forever :cry:

If we didn't wipe twice we'd be over a million posts!
 
  • #42
Greg Bernhardt said:
I still have one left, but that was still PF2, PF1 will be lost forever :cry:
That's terrible. :cry:
 
  • #43
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  • #45
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  • #46
Greg Bernhardt said:
I still have one left, but that was still PF2, PF1 will be lost forever :cry:
Ouch.

It would be nice to have this whole thing on a DVD set. There is so much valuable information here, especially in the Math and Science forums.

Greg Bernhardt said:
If we didn't wipe twice we'd be over a million posts!

As of a minute ago, PF had:

Threads: 91,355
Posts: 860,097
Members: 33,578
 
  • #47
Evo said:
That would be the second version of PF, but nice to see posts from back then.

Too funny, the first thread was Lisa! :biggrin:
Was Lisa! really a member? or a joke?
 
  • #48
yomamma said:
Was Lisa! really a member? or a joke?
It was just a thread title, referring to Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, but he used Lisa!.
 
  • #49
Evo said:
It was just a thread title, referring to Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, but he used Lisa!.
I know, I was just going off topic about the member Lisa!
 
  • #50
When I first saw the thread title (Lisa!) I thought it was a joke! Now I am just freaked out :bugeye:
 

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