Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Today I got a message saying "please update your credit card details on
> our website"...
> 
> 
> 
> ...and it *wasn't* spam. It was actually from a real company that I
> really do transact with. How rare is that?
> 

I just received mail from "Paypal", which said that they think my
account has been compromised. It even has notes to check possible
privacy issues with real address to Paypal's security information. Just
the links are pointed to false site and the sender address wasn't
actually Paypal's.

I forwarded it to Paypals spoofbox.

-Aero

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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> 
> I forwarded it to Paypals spoofbox.

And they answered. 10 minutes to check out that kind of mail - that's
some kind of service.

> -Aero

-Aero

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Credit card is billed yearly. (I forget which month though...)

On the 11th of Jan every year, apparently. I just received this year's 
invoice. ;-)

I wonder if Amazon works out any cheaper...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I wonder if Amazon works out any cheaper...

It's pretty easy to calculate. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> I wonder if Amazon works out any cheaper...
> 
> It's pretty easy to calculate. :-)

It is??

I'm still trying to figure out the price structure for EC2. I mean, do 
they bill you for how many hours an instance runs for? Or just how many 
hours of CPU time it uses? If you get a 4-CPU instance, do they bill you 
4x that?

On top of that, how much CPU time does each call to Apache actually use? 
I also need to know how many hits I get in a year to compute how much a 
year will cost me. Only them will I be in a position to figure out if 
it's actually any cheaper.

Currently I'm wondering if EC2 would be any cheaper/faster for running 
POV-Ray. But I suspect the answer is going to be "no"...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> It is??

Yep.

> I'm still trying to figure out the price structure for EC2. I mean, do 
> they bill you for how many hours an instance runs for?

Yes.

> Or just how many hours of CPU time it uses? 

No. Altho that would be pretty cool. :-)

> If you get a 4-CPU instance, do they bill you 4x that?

They have different per-hour prices for different capability machines. Along 
with different CPUs, they have different amounts of disk and memory 
available. But the price list is right there.  It's per wall-clock hour, 
rounded up, and counting the time it takes to boot.

> On top of that, how much CPU time does each call to Apache actually use? 

Irrelevant, since it's not billed by CPU time. You'd have to guestimate your 
I/O bandwidth, tho, yes.

> I also need to know how many hits I get in a year to compute how much a 
> year will cost me. Only them will I be in a position to figure out if 
> it's actually any cheaper.

I was assuming you had a handle on this. :-)

> Currently I'm wondering if EC2 would be any cheaper/faster for running 
> POV-Ray. But I suspect the answer is going to be "no"...

Cheaper / Faster than what?  Do a trial trace and see how long it takes on 
your current setup and on one of Amazon's.  I've noticed it can fluctuate a 
bit over time, maybe 10% up and down, presumedly as other users on the 
machine use some capacity, but it's pretty minor.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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>> I'm still trying to figure out the price structure for EC2. I mean, do 
>> they bill you for how many hours an instance runs for?
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> Or just how many hours of CPU time it uses? 
> 
> No. Altho that would be pretty cool. :-)

Right. So if you turn on an instance and it doesn't do anything, it will 
still cost you hundreds of dollars per month?

Hmm... My interest in this whole idea just evapourated. :-}

>> I also need to know how many hits I get in a year to compute how much 
>> a year will cost me. Only them will I be in a position to figure out 
>> if it's actually any cheaper.
> 
> I was assuming you had a handle on this. :-)

Nope. I guess I might be able to get some useful statistics out of the 
management system, but don't hold your breath.

>> Currently I'm wondering if EC2 would be any cheaper/faster for running 
>> POV-Ray. But I suspect the answer is going to be "no"...
> 
> Cheaper / Faster than what?  Do a trial trace and see how long it takes 
> on your current setup and on one of Amazon's.  I've noticed it can 
> fluctuate a bit over time, maybe 10% up and down, presumedly as other 
> users on the machine use some capacity, but it's pretty minor.

Faster than my current dual-core AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+ 2.2 GHz with 
brass knobs on. Cheaper than, say, hiring an ordinary virtual server 
from somebody, or just buying a faster PC.

The advantage of a virtual machine, of course, is that it can run overnight.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Right. So if you turn on an instance and it doesn't do anything, it will 
> still cost you hundreds of dollars per month?

72 dollars a month, roughly.  Why would you turn it on and not have it do 
something?  The point of being able to turn it on and off is to run it only 
when you have something for it to do.

If you want to serve static web pages, use S3, not EC2.

> Faster than my current dual-core AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+ 2.2 GHz with 
> brass knobs on.

No. Probably slower than that at the low end, potentially faster than that 
at the high end. ("Low end" being the $0.10/hour and high end being 
$0.80/hour.)

On the other hand, you can turn it on, run it for three hours to do the 
render, and turn it off again.

> The advantage of a virtual machine, of course, is that it can run 
> overnight.

Yep. And turn off when it's done.  Just remember to save the output.

I have code for managing all this I haven't packaged up elegantly, but 
that's what it's intended for.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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>> Right. So if you turn on an instance and it doesn't do anything, it 
>> will still cost you hundreds of dollars per month?
> 
> 72 dollars a month, roughly.  Why would you turn it on and not have it 
> do something?  The point of being able to turn it on and off is to run 
> it only when you have something for it to do.

If you want to use it just for yourself, sure. If you want it to provide 
a service to other people... well, no way to know when those service 
requests will arrive, eh?

> If you want to serve static web pages, use S3, not EC2.

S3 only stores data. There's no way of accessing it from the outside 
world again. (As far as I can tell.)

I'd actually like to run custom CGI. But paying 72$/month for a server 
that gets maybe 4 hits per month seems... excessive.

>> Faster than my current dual-core AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+ 2.2 GHz with 
>> brass knobs on.
> 
> No. Probably slower than that at the low end, potentially faster than 
> that at the high end. ("Low end" being the $0.10/hour and high end being 
> $0.80/hour.)
> 
> On the other hand, you can turn it on, run it for three hours to do the 
> render, and turn it off again.

Three hours does not concern me. I have an animation running that's 
likely to take about a week to render. But it'll take way longer if I 
can only have the machine turned on for a few hours a day. (Especially 
since POV-Ray takes about 30 minutes JUST TO FIGURE OUT WHERE IT LEFT OFF!!)

>> The advantage of a virtual machine, of course, is that it can run 
>> overnight.
> 
> Yep. And turn off when it's done.  Just remember to save the output.
> 
> I have code for managing all this I haven't packaged up elegantly, but 
> that's what it's intended for.

Looks like you'd need to script it to run POV-Ray, run VirtualDub, 
somehow copy the data to S3, and then automatically shut down ASAP 
before you go bankrupt!

The more I look at this, the more infeasible it looks.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> If you want to use it just for yourself, sure. If you want it to provide 
> a service to other people... well, no way to know when those service 
> requests will arrive, eh?

Sure. Then it's doing something.

>> If you want to serve static web pages, use S3, not EC2.
> 
> S3 only stores data. There's no way of accessing it from the outside 
> world again. (As far as I can tell.)

It serves any file there via HTTP, with a URL like
http://s3.amazon.com/mybucket/myfile.zip
or some such.

> I'd actually like to run custom CGI. But paying 72$/month for a server 
> that gets maybe 4 hits per month seems... excessive.

There is that.  What CGI is this?

> Three hours does not concern me. I have an animation running that's 
> likely to take about a week to render. But it'll take way longer if I 
> can only have the machine turned on for a few hours a day. (Especially 
> since POV-Ray takes about 30 minutes JUST TO FIGURE OUT WHERE IT LEFT 
> OFF!!)

That's a pretty good use of it.

> Looks like you'd need to script it to run POV-Ray, run VirtualDub, 
> somehow copy the data to S3, and then automatically shut down ASAP 
> before you go bankrupt!

Not sure what the virtualdub part involves, but you can log in remotely, you 
know. Posting the stuff up to S3 isn't hard either. I can give you a script 
that pushes a directory up to S3 if you want, too.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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