Google's nearly two-hour Gmail outage yesterday was the result of a miscalculation regarding the capacity of its system, the company said late on Tuesday.

Gmail (Google Mail) was down from about 12:30pm PDT (8:30pm BST) Tuesday 2nd Sep 2009 to about 2:30pm PDT (10:30pm BST), affecting millions of Gmail customers who depend on the service for everything from fantasy football roster updates to business-critical information. The problem was caused by a classic cascade in which servers became overwhelmed with traffic in rapid succession.

According to Google, the problem began when it took several Gmail servers offline for maintenance, a routine procedure that normally is transparent to users. However, the twist this time around was that Google had made some changes to the routers that direct Gmail traffic to servers in hopes of improving reliability, and those changes backfired.

"As we now know, we had slightly underestimated the load which some recent changes (ironically, some designed to improve service availability) placed on the request routers — servers which direct web queries to the appropriate Gmail server for response," Google explained in a post to its Gmail blog late Tuesday.

"At about 12:30 p.m. Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system 'stop sending us traffic, we're too slow!' This transferred the load onto the remaining request routers, causing a few more of them to also become overloaded, and within minutes nearly all of the request routers were overloaded," wrote Ben Treynor, vice president of engineering and site reliability czar.

Google fixed the problem by allocating traffic across the rest of its prodigious network, a luxury that it enjoys given the resources it has put in place to operate the world's leading search engine. But what's next?

Google said it would focus on making sure that the request routers have sufficient headroom to handle future spikes in demand, as well as working out a way to make sure that problems in one sector can be isolated without bringing down the entire service. "We'll be hard at work over the next few weeks implementing these and other Gmail reliability improvements — remains more than 99.9 percent available to all users, and we're committed to keeping events like today's notable for their rarity," Treynor wrote.

Several Google Apps customers who use Gmail for internal email at their businesses and organisations did not return calls on Tuesday seeking information on the degree to which they were affected, making it difficult to know the magnitude of the failure. However, Google has put an awful lot of time and money this year behind promoting Gmail as a back-end email software alternative to products from Microsoft and IBM, and embarrassments like this will not help it sell the service to other organisations.

"We know how many people rely on Gmail for personal and professional communications, and we take it very seriously when there's a problem with the service," Treynor wrote. "Thus, right up front, I'd like to apologize to all of you — today's outage was a Big Deal, and we're treating it as such."

This article was originally posted on CNET News.

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Will Mars Look as Big as the Moon on August 27? Nope

Written by Fraser Cain

Every year around this time, an email circulates across the Internet speculating that on August 27th, Mars will look as big as the Moon in the sky. And every year, I go ahead and debunk it. Here'sa link to last year's version. Once again, I'd like to inoculate all my Universe Today readers, to make sure you understand what's going on, and you're prepared to explain to your eager friends why this non-event isn't going to happen.

Say it with me. Mars won't look as big as the Moonon August 27th.

This strange hoax first surfaced on the Internet back in 2003. An email made the rounds with the following text:

The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification

Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month. Share this with your children and grandchildren. NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN

There are a few problems with this. The first problem is that the email doesn't actually mention the date; it just says August 27th. This means it can live on for years and years, going around and around the Internet, forwarded by gullible people to their friends.

The second problem is that it's wrong. Mars isn't going to be making a close approach on August 27. The close approach this email is discussing happened back in 2003. It did indeed get closer than it had in at least 50,000 years, but this was a very small amount. On August 27th, 2003, Mars closed to a distance of only 55,758,006 kilometers (34,646,418 miles). The Moon, by comparison, orbits the Earth at a distance of only 385,000 km (240,000 miles). Mars was close, but it was still 144 times further away than the Moon.

Instead of appearing as a huge red orb in the sky, Mars looked like a bright red star. Observers around the world set up their telescopes, and took advantage of this close encounter. But you still needed a telescope. And if you read the email carefully again, you'll see that it's trying to explain that.

There's an extra paragraph break. The last sentence of second paragraph is hanging. It says, "At a modest 75-power magnification ", but there's no period. The next paragraph starts up with the text, "Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye." In other words, if you put one eye into the telescope and looked at Mars, and kept your other eye looking at the Moon (which isn't actually humanly possible), the two orbs would look roughly the same size.

Mars and Earth do come together every two years, reaching the closest point on their orbits – astronomers call this "opposition". And we're in one of those years. But it's not going to happen on August 27th. Instead, we'll make our opposition on December 18th, 2007. At this point, Mars will be 88.42 million km (55 million miles) – further away than its 2003 opposition.

NASA is taking advantage of the upcoming opposition, and will launch the Phoenix Mars Lander in August. The spacecraft will make its shortest possible journey to reach Mars, arriving early next year.

And by next July, it'll be time to write this article all over again.

Source: http://www.universetoday.com/2007/07/25/will-the-mars-look-as-big-as-the-moon-on-august-27-nope/

THE BARABUS TKR - WORLD'S FASTEST CAR STILLS, WALLPAPERS

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The Barabus TKR is the fastest supercar ever released. It is an Italian built car. The Barabus TKR has a twin-turbo 6.0 liter V8 engine.
The most notable feature of this car is its speed itself. It can touch a speed of 60 mph in just 1.67 seconds! This speed is achieved because of the body and chassis which is made of carbon fibre. In a age where a 1-60 mph time of 4 seconds is considered supercar category, the 1.67 seconds of Barabus TKR is incredible. The top speed of Barabus TKR is 270 mph.
The price of Barabus 1005bhp TKR is £360,000. The Barabus TKR will take its debut in the British Motor Show, London.
The Barabus TKR is an apt competitor to the Bugatti Veyron, which costs about £600,000.

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SSC ULTIMATE AERO- WORLD'S 2nd FASTEST CAR

The SSC ultimate aero has a top speed of 257mph. The 0-60 mph time is 2.7 seconds. It possess a twin-turbo V8 engine with 1183 bhp. The base price of SSC ultimate aero is $654,400. Tested in March 2007 by the Guinness world records, the SSC Ultimate Aero took the lead as the fastest car in the world beating SSC ultimate aero. But now Barabus TKR has taken the place.

BUGATTI VEYRON - WORLD'S 3rd FASTEST CAR STILLS

The Bugatti Veyron was the worlds fastest car till The SSC ultimate Aero overtook it in March 2007. It has a top speed of 253 mph and 0-60 time of 2.5 seconds. It possess an Aluminium, Narrow Angle W16 Engine with 1001 hp. The base price is £600,000 ($1,700,000) which is the highest price tag.