The site got slashdotted again ! Better servers needed.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

I was wondering - why is the site and the forum are sooooo sloooooooow.

The answer is here - we are being slashdotted. Again.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/02/10/189246/Online-Only-Currency-BitCoin-Reaches-Dollar-Parity

Well, I guess this is both good and bad.

[gigitrix]

This+Security Now= Me thinking about "double parity" 

[sirius]

Redirected bitcoin.org to bitcoin.it, at least the forum works now. For some reason this server was very slow even though only 50% mem and 5% cpu usage.

[Nefario]

At least it will get information about bitcoin out there so people who are more inclined to be it's natural userbase (Libertarians, anarchists, cypherpunks) can discover it.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Redirected bitcoin.org to bitcoin.it, at least the forum works now. For some reason this server was very slow even though only 50% mem and 5% cpu usage.

Sirius: I'm an author of a PHP Open Source project dedicated to optimizing sites against "Slashdot/Digg effects" (well it's not directly for that but that's a positive side effect).
Contact me if you are interested in speeding up the site dramatically.

[xel]

Wonder how will this affect us... good or bad?

I suppose difficulty may go up (but not by insane x10 number like year ago?), but perhaps also drive value up (demand)? Or will all the new users-miners just start generating to get free coins?

[ptd]

Wonder how will this affect us... good or bad?

I suppose difficulty may go up (but not by insane x10 number like year ago?), but perhaps also drive value up (demand)? Or will all the new users-miners just start generating to get free coins?

Value and difficulty are intricately interwined. Difficulty is proportional to the cost per bitcoin generated, if bitcoin increases in value then it becomes profitable to generate, more people generate and difficulty goes up. An interesting consequence is that difficultly can be expected to halve everytime the rate of generation halves.