Oprah and Echart Tolle test the Web
March 9th, 2008 Richard Posted in meditation, web and new media | 17 Comments »
I have been a practitioner of mindfullness meditation for some years now, and, one of my favorite teachers is Echart Tolle. I have heard/seen a number of audio and video recordings of different talks he’s given. So I was intrigued when I heard about a 10 week live web class that Oprah Winfrey was doing with Echart Tolle, from my wife, who teaches meditation. The class uses his most recent book, A New Earth, as the text. This whole thing is really cool to me because: a) It is something that would not be possible without the World Wide Web; and b) The web is being used, in a big way, to promote a positive change in the world.
So we sat down to watch the first week of the class, and it seemed to go fine at first, but after a short period of time, it started slowing down and stalling and, finally, pretty much stopped all together. All of our friends who tried to watch, and apparently many people around the world, had the same experience. Of course, most people attributed this to the half a million people sucking up bandwidth interacting with the show’s servers – maybe the web just can’t handle this sort of thing.
However, “according to an executive closely tied to the project”, as told to Shelly Palmer at JackMeyers.com …
… there were up to about 800,000 users when a logical error in the caching servers caused the system to crash. It is important to understand that the only way to ever find a coding error like this is to put a system truly under stress. You can’t simulate 800,000 users in the lab, you need to play with live ammo. Kudos to Oprah and her team for pushing the envelope this hard.
The crash was not caused by a lack of bandwidth, an overwhelming number of users or any infrastructure issues at all. It was a simple coding error – nothing more. The error was identified and is now fixed. It is entirely possible that next Monday’s webcast will enjoy over a million users, maybe more.
Whew, that’s a relief. Well, I’m not too sure about he accuracy of the report, but I will say, the same thing I said last week when the class stopped, which was , whatever happened, Oprah will make sure it’s fixed by the next class (tomorrow), and we’ll be tuned it to see what the web can do.
Update: I’ve learned that, according to Information Week, the initial problem was that the web servers were overwhelmed with “throughput demands of 242 GBps”.
March 9th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
A friend of mine gave me Eckhart Tolle’s “The POwer of Now” audio book a few years ago which I thought was amazing so this is pretty interesting to me.
It seems to me that you actually CAN simulate 800,000 users in the lab using some pretty commonly used software so I’m glad that WASN’T the problem here. It does make me wonder what the limitations are of stress testing technology especially given the spectacular failures that Yahoo! Live is experiencing – altho, that tool may be a little more complex than a software package could handle in the lab. You’d just think that a company like Yahoo! could anticipate the kind of traffic they’d be receiving… makes me think that Microsoft and Yahoo! might be made for each other!
March 10th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Awwwww – if I’d known you were going to slay the tin-foil-hat-troll-of-anger I wouldn’t have bothered to read his meandering manifesto in my RSS feed! lol…
Nice kill.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Well I watched episode 8.5 of inspired TV. Very entertaining way to learn something about fibromyalgia. the inspiration get away sounds very relaxing and cool. Dr. R has a cool hawiaan T-shirt on; I am not sure how Dr. M held it together sometimes wihtout laughing on air. perhaps some serious editing went into this.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Inspired TV is under the link for “who teaches meditation”
Greg
March 11th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I went through youtube videos of Eckhart Tolle and found it quite interesting. It was interesting in the sense that a lot of what he mentioned in the videos was the kind of things I have been listening to all my life. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and listen to many scholars in ‘Veda’ till now and what he says concurs with what the Vedas stands for (more specifically ‘Adwait Vedanta’ or non-duality – essentially refers to the identity of the Self (Atma) and the Whole (Bramhan))
FYI – Vedanta is one of the world’s most ancient religious philosophies and one of the broadest. Based on the Vedas, the sacred scriptures, Vedanta affirms the oneness of existence, the divinity of the soul, and the harmony of religions. Vedanta is the philosophical foundation of Hinduism; but while Hinduism includes aspects of Hindu culture, Vedanta is universal in its application and is equally relevant to all countries, all cultures, and all religious backgrounds. Vedanta is concerned with the self-realization by which one understands the ultimate nature of reality i.e. the Bramhan.
As Vedanta is applicable to all countries, cultures and religion, the initiation by Oprah will certainly take this to a whole new level. I believe people all around the world will gain a lot through these teachings and ultimately be happy. I’m pretty sure Harpo Inc. must have already corrected whatever went sour last time. I agree with Christian that simulating 800,000 users isn’t a big challenge at all. So, there won’t be any obstructions in any of the remaining live-casts. Mamma Oprah has everything under control.
March 11th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
One thing I should point out, regarding Basanta’s comment, is that, while Eckhart Tolle’s teachings are certainly consistent with eastern religions (big generalization, I know); especially, to me, his idea about “the witnessing presence” in relation to mindfullness; he also uses a lot of quotes/stories from the Christian Bible, and, in fact, a lot of the discussion in the first class, revolved around questions about the relevance/consistency of the class for/to Christians/Christianity.
March 11th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Sheesh…I have not actually watched Oprah since college (circa 1989-1991)when I had A LOT of free time. She is a positive person who promotes positive things and I think it’s pretty cool she is a vehicle for such things as this.
The one thing that bugs me about her is that people like Dr. Hall, Basanta, Christian, and myself, etc. have been exposed to, explored, and implemented facets of this into their daily lives but just because O has touched it with her golden hand…it must be true. I am not faulting her; she has the ability to do it and it is a good thing (okay, Martha Stewart).
Ultimately, the exposure to this is positive…I must remember that.
March 11th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Ooops…that was me.
March 12th, 2008 at 8:47 am
I think I know where you’re coming from, Holli. I guess what I see in it is good and bad as well.
The Good: Mass exposure to what is really a positive way to think about and organize your life and behavior.
The Bad: I just always cringe when something gets all pop-culture-fied and disengenuous and fake people get their hands all over something they don’t really understand or have any intention of incorporating any bit of it into daily life. It’s almost like when a band you love sells their song for a commercial – at least for me it tends to alter how I feel about or experience that song. At the same time more people get to hear and (hopefully) appreciate it…
…so yeah. I guess “Ultimately, the exposure to this is positive…I must remember that.” is a good summation/mantra.
My apologies for misconstruing any or all of your points, Holli.
March 12th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Nothing was misconstrued…that is exactly what what I meant (your responses)
March 12th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
In regards to Tolle’s discussion of spiritual awakening the three things that must be met for it to occur. I would agree with his suggestion there must be “a readiness on the part of the reader, an openness, a receptivity to spiritual truth, which is to say, a readiness to awaken.” My question I guess is what does he mean by spiritual truth?
His second statement is that “the text must have transformative power. This means the words must have come out of the awakened consciousness rather than the accumulated knowledge of a person’s mind. Only then will a text be charged with that power, a power that goes far beyond the informational value of the words.” This sounds like marketing language. Like he’s trying to sell a book. I think an awakened consciousness can be derived from accumulated knowledge.
Finally, he says “the terminology used needs to be as neutral as possible so that it transcends the confines of any one culture, religion, or spiritual tradition. Only then will it be accessible to a broad range of readers world-wide, regardless of cultural background.” This statement I am not completely in agreement with; truth is crosscultural but this statement reaks of mediocrity, when you require a terminology that is so bland so acceptably palatable to all people groups then it becomes meaningless, it is just feel good words.
Sometimes in reaching self actualization you have to feel offended, abrasive, and hurtful to help you realize truth. No road to enlightenment has ever been achieved by neutral weak flimsy language.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
That is an enormous amount of streaming users. I have spectated a number of gaming events where announcers cast the matches and video is streamed of the games, and it’s always been very difficult for the servers’ bandwidth to keep up with the number of users, which I would assume numbers only in the hundreds or low thousands.
I’m not really an expert, but I’m sure there are cases where simulation testing simply won’t produce the same results as a real, live stress test.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Oops, that was me!
March 19th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Definitely hard to do well! Just look at the problems that Yahoo’s new Live project is having – that one crapped out with less than 100 simultaneous viewers. Not sure if they have it all worked out yet or not at this point!
March 31st, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I’m with Christian on one of his previous points, about it becoming pop-culture-fied. Like Brittany Spears and Kaballah. Ugh, I had that in my memory? I need to dispose of that brain cell.
Oh yeah, Dr. Phil used to seem pretty relevant too, until he got his own show and became pop-culture-fied. Now its the SOS. BTW, I am not an avid view of his but can flip to it every month or so and see the same thing. Like an upscale Jerry Springer.
April 1st, 2008 at 7:33 am
Worse yet – Maury Povich. I don’t watch that kind of television at all, but it seems that anytime I flip by it he’s always doing paternity tests. Always.
I advocate nuking his entire studio from orbit. Its the only way to be sure.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:07 pm
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