New generation web servers - lighttpd, nginx, Cherokee

New generation web servers have evolved recently, and gradually taken up the market share from Apache and IIS, which still dominate the web server market nowadays.

Of course, there are always many brands of web server made available to the market, but so far they haven't managed to make some major impact to the market share of Apache and IIS, until the emergence of these new generation web servers - lighttpd, nginx and Cherokee.



These 3 web servers have some common similarities which form the key factors for their successful breakthrough in the web server market.

• They are all in the open source world. lighttpd and nginx are distributed under BSD license while Cherokee is distributed under GPL Version 2 license.
• They are all developed in C Language and designed for Linux/FreeBSD/Unix platform. They can also run in Windows (although it is really a bad idea to use Windows as Windows OS itself is a major source of performance issue for multiuser network server applications) by riding on Cygwin. With some minor porting, Cherokee can run in Windows by itself without any Cygwin component.
• They are all designed to be lightweight, which consume as little CPU and memory resource as possible. This make them a good choice for virtualized server environment and also for use in embeded systems.
• They are all designed with high performance to be able to handle large amount of traffic with fast respond time. They make good use of the Linux kernel’s fast, state-of-art interfaces to accelerate request handling. Benchmarking tests show that they can easily perform twice faster than Apache and many times faster than IIS.
  
• They are all modular, which is highly configurable for required features and options based on actual need.
  
• They can all work with PHP and MySQL, which is the current major trend for web applications.
• They all support virtual hosting, which is a basic feature that must exist in any web server application nowadays.
  
• They all support modern features such as load balancing, video streaming, etc.

Among the 3 of them, lighttpd (a.k.a. Lighty) first came into attention a few years back, and is now in used by popular websites such as YouTube, SourceForge, Meebo, Wikimedia, Flickr, Imageshack, Sendspace, The Pirate Bay, Mininova, etc.

Now, lighttpd is overtaken by nginx (pronounced as Engine-X) to become the current favourite, which powers popular websites such as Rambler, WordPress.com, Yellow Pages, Hulu, Zimbra, etc.

Cherokee came into picture around 2006, and has quickly gained popularity with massive development and extensive features. One thing to make it stand out from the rest is a very user friendly web-based administration interface called cherokee-admin. Following its development trend, it has the potential to overtake the rest and become the most preferred web server of choice.

The cost behind Maybank EzyCheque Instant Cash

My first credit card is a Maybank classic card which I have kept for almost 10 years.

I can't remember since when, Maybank will send me every year without fail a promotional letter about EzyCheque Instant Cash promotion attached with a RM2000 cheque that I can bank in to my bank account before the expiry date as stated in the letter.

This Maybank EzyCheque Instant Cash facility always says it is "0% or interest-free for 6 months", but also with a so called "low cash advance fee of 3.88% or RM77.60". However, it is only "0% or interest-free" if I settle the repayment of RM333.33 every month for 6 months subsequently, there will be interest charges for late repayment and also penalty charges for early settlement (which could be caused by card cancellation, balance transfer, etc.) before the 6th month.

Let's say I accept the offer, and follow the scheme exactly, then I'll:

• Get RM2000 after I bank in the cheque.
• Charged RM77.60 for cash advance fee in my next credit card bill.
• Charged RM333.33 in my next 6 months of credit card bill.

What will be the actual cost then? Here is the calculation:

• I get RM2000 - RM77.60 = RM1922.40 from the bank.
• I pay back RM333.33 x 6 = RM1999.98 to the bank.
• Therefore, the cost incurred is RM1999.98 - RM1922.40 = RM77.58
• That will translate into RM77.58/RM2000 x 100% = 3.88%

Of course, this 3.88% in 6 months is comparatively cheaper than getting a normal credit card cash advance or personal loan. However, it only make sense to utilize this EzyCheque Instant Cash facility if I can earn back at least RM77.58 with it in the near future.

If I were to:

• spend the RM2000 to buy things, I will end up losing another RM77.58 which is good enough to have a nice dinner in a classy restaurant for two.
• use the money to settle any debt which interest rate is more than 7.76% per annum, I can save some money from there.
  
• keep the money in a FD account with interest rate at 2.5% per annum, I will need to keep it for at least 2 years to recover back that RM77.58. After that, if I don't withdraw the money, it will start working for me by bringing interest income.
  
• keep the money in a Flexi-homeloan account with interest rate at BLR-2% = 3.55%, I can save about RM5.70 housing interest every month, which will take me about 14 months to recover back that RM77.58. After that, if I don't withdraw the money, it will start working for me by saving RM5.70 every month until my homeloan is settled.
• invest the money in short term investment and make a return of more than 10% within a year, then I can make some pocket money with it.
• invest the money in long term investment and make an annual return of more than 10%, then I can probably double or even triple it up in years to come.
  

Sometimes, I opted to tear and discard the EzyCheque, and sometimes, I opted to utilize the facility. It all depends on how I'll use the money. The key point is that, by utilizing the facility, we are using our future money (in the subsequent 6 months) at the cost of 3.88%.

It all depends on whether:

• there is an urgent need for the money
• it is a good investment timing

Do not be afraid of that RM77.58 cost if you know that it worth to spend, but also do not waste it blindly.

Beta release of Microsoft Security Essentials free antivirus

Within the next couple of hours, Microsoft will release the first beta version of their Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE, codename Morro) to selected regions.

MSE is an anti-malware software aimed to provide protection against viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans for certain Windows operating systems.

Here are some of the fact findings:

• The core developer team of MSE is in Israel.
  
• This beta release will be made available on 23 June 2009 to the first 75,000 downloads from Brazil, Israel and the United States.
• It is treated as the successor of Windows Live OneCare, which is a subscription based security solution from Microsoft which has been phased out since end of 2008. Retail sales of Windows Live OneCare will be discontinued by end of June 2009.
  
• Its antivirus framework is the same with Windows Live OneCare.
• Subsequent beta release(s) will include China. Its final release to the whole world will be by end of 2009.
• It will be made available free of charge and downloadable from Microsoft website.
• It can be installed in 32-bits and 64-bits version of Windows XP (SP2 and above), Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
• Its installation will need to pass through the Microsoft's anti-piracy Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation process.
• It is designed to be lightweight and use little system resources.
• It is reported to take up about 50MB of RAM when running.
  
• It is able to provide real-time protection with heuristic feature.
• It has a user interface similar like Windows Defender. If Windows Defender is found when installing MSE, MSE will replace itself to Windows Defender.
  
• It relies on Windows Automatic Update feature to update its malware signature database.

And here is a comparison table to compare the features among various security solutions produced by Microsoft.