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Filed under: Developer, Web services

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) from Amazon

Amazon Elastic Compute CloudAmazon has just launched Elastic Compute Cloud (or EC2), a "Tier 0" service in the same vein as S3 (Simple Storage Service, launched earlier this year), but for processing power instead of storage. Amazon describes EC2 as "a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud ... designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers." Developers can run anything they want on EC2--web servers, database servers, game servers, 3D renderers--though currently only Linux is supported. The way it works is this: You create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) which contains your environment, programs, data, and so on and upload it to EC2 (or choose one of Amazon's "pre-configured, templated images), then use the EC2 web service to configure its security and network access. Then you can programatically "start, terminate, and monitor as many instances of your AMI as needed" on the fly. According to Amazon, each instance "predictably provides the equivalent of a system with a 1.7Ghz Xeon CPU, 1.75GB of RAM, 160GB of local disk, and 250Mb/s of network bandwidth," which is, well, a whole lot of power.

For what you get, EC2 is fairly inexpensive, though that's to be expected having seen the pricing for S3. Here's the rundown:
  • Pay only for what you use.
  • $0.10 per instance-hour consumed (or part of an hour consumed).
  • $0.20 per GB of data transferred outside of Amazon (i.e., Internet traffic).
  • $0.15 per GB-Month of Amazon S3 storage used for your images (charged by Amazon S3).
If you're using it 24/7, that comes out to about $74 per month per instance, which isn't bad when compared to a dedicated server with similar specs. And if you're not using it constantly, the deal is even sweeter. The biggest advantage, though, is that you can start and stop new instances on the fly: Whereas setting up an additional dedicated server can take days, with EC2 it takes minutes, and since it can be controlled programmatically, you can set you programs up to automatically start or stop instances without your interaction.

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware

JungleDisk: Online storage with Amazon S3

Amazon S3Amazon S3, the online storage service from the mega-retailer, has been on my radar for a couple of months, but unless I'm mistaken, JungleDisk is the first desktop-based (rather than web-based) app that takes advantage of the service. Basically, JungleDisk integrates S3 storage with Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux allowing you to manage files stored on the service as though they were ordinary files on a regular hard drive. JungleDisk's intended use is for backing up important files and transferring files between computers, and the web site has a handy calculator for figuring out the cost depending on your use. Want 20GB of storage and 2GB transfer? $3.40/mo. Want 500MB of storage and 2GB transfer? $0.48/mo. Apart from Amazon's fees, JungleDisk itself is free.

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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