Here’s a few questions we’re asked quite a bit (and the answers, of course):

How did you get the name “The Coffee Desk”?
Just how many people write your stories?
What’s the most amount of hits you’ve ever gotten on a single story?
What is The Coffee Desk run on?
Are you Anti-$this_company or anti-$this_product?
Do you like coffee?
Do you like fishsticks?
Are the comments here moderated?
Do you withhold comments that speak negatively of The Coffee Desk or it’s authors?
Why wasn’t my comment posted?
What is your relationship with Slashdot?
Why does the RSS icon look weird in Opera?
I don’t see any ads, how do you keep the site running?
What’s with all of the “Vote for this story” stuff in the sidebar?
What’s with the Android phone at the top?
Is that mouse logo at the top legal to display?
Many of your stories have a humorous spin on them. What gives?
Hey, you stole $this_story or $this_idea!
What is the meaning of your site motto?
What is your target audience?
What is your definition of a “Geek”?
Any easter-eggs in the site?
You’re site was down today!
Teach me how to hack!
Do you do this for a living?
Do you distribute the server logs or anything like that?
Your spelling is pretty good!
But I found a spelling/grammar error!
Just how much coffee do you drink in a day?
Can we copy/reproduce the images/stories on your website?
Do you have _any_ corporate/website/other affiliations?
Google led me here, but I didn’t find an answer. …?
Why does the top of your site load slow/last?
Why does your site look weird in $OUTDATED_BROWSER?
A story has wrong facts contained within it, what do I do?
I have a question not answered here. Where do I put it?

Q: How did you get the name “The Coffee Desk”?
A: After wanting to start a geek news website for a while, I came across a WordPress design that now serves as the backbone of the site, and as soon as I laid eyes on it I saw the similarity between this theme and my actual desk and knew that this was a perfect news website name.

Q: Just how many people write your stories?
A: The number varies, but there’s about four of us that write stories on a pretty regular basis. Some post more stories than others, and every now and again we have a “guest writer” come in and write a story or two, so it really varies.

Q: What’s the most amount of hits you’ve ever gotten on a single story?
A: We don’t really keep track of hits, but high-traffic sites like Digg and Slashdot link to us frequently and so we get quite a bit of traffic coming through. The first time we got Slashdotted, we had to do a major site/server upgrade, because we crumbled under the hits. But now we can handle a much heavier load, as our new setup survives several hundred connections per second.

Q: What is The Coffee Desk run on?
A: We’re going to post about this eventually with pictures, but we run a cluster of Linux servers running Apache2, Lighttpd, MySQL, PHP and some custom optimized HTTP clustering/distribution software. The hardware is pretty commodity (even a few Pentium III boxes in the mix!), but custom optimized versions of all the software we run allows us to do a lot with the little we have.

Q: Are you Anti-this_company or anti-this_product?
A: No, and no. We make every attempt to not blatantly bias any of our stories, although some claim we lean in certain directions rather than others. That said, we *do* see things for what they are, and don’t attempt to “kiss up” to any companies since we’re independent, so any negative commentary on an event we write about is merely our take on the situation as a whole from a normal user/developer standpoint, and our experience in this industry may lead us to see certain patterns many may not have considered.

Q: Do you like coffee?
A: Yes, as hardcore geeks caffeine is a pretty normal part of our daily routine and therefore coffee is a decent medium for getting our fix.

Q: Do you like fishsticks?
A: No.

Q: Are the comments here moderated?
A: Yes, they are not posted unless we approve of them first.

Q: Do you withhold comments that speak negatively of The Coffee Desk or it’s authors?
A: No, we do not. We have had comments critical of a story or it’s author, but we post them anyways as long as they aren’t spammy or too violent, but we don’t censor any comments merely because of criticism of our authors or stories.

Q: Why wasn’t my comment posted?
A: Well, we do have a JavaScript-based anti-spam system we use, so ensure that JavaScript is enabled in your browser if you wish to post a comment. Other than that, comments that appear to be “human-authored spam”, e.g. “That’s cool, but check this out: www.mycoolsite.com” will not pass our moderation, but we don’t mind regular name-linking (the “website” field in the form) or links that appear alongside valid reader input.

Q: What is your relationship with Slashdot?
A: We read Slashdot, and don’t post any story they already have posted. We may later mirror Slashdot with an automated RSS-to-post system so we become less of a “Slashdot-supplemental”, but other than that we read Slashdot and they link to us quite a bit.

Q: Why does the RSS icon look weird in Opera?
A: We’re working on it…

Q: I don’t see any ads, how do you keep the site running?
A: Ads are annoying, period. Since we host the site ourselves using a shared data center, we don’t really have any site expenses other than the domain name and shared electricity/bandwidth expenses. Then there’s our little army of oompa-loompas… (kidding)

Q: What’s with all of the “Vote for this story” stuff in the sidebar?
A: Those are just there in case you like a story. We’d appreciate it if more readers would vote for stories on sharing sites like Digg, Fark, Reddit and other viral sites, so if you like a story and have an account at one of those sites, don’t hesitate to share it!

Q: What’s with the Android phone at the top?
A: Yeah, we’re Android fans. We used to have an iPhone up there, but we just kinda replaced it with Android one day. Who knows, we just might replace it again one day. UPDATE: we’ve replaced the Android phone with the iPhone again.

Q: Is that mouse logo at the top legal to display?
A: As far as we know, that’s just a made-up logo. If you know what it is or are the owner of said logo, shoot us an email on the contact page and we’ll take it down or just change it.

Q: Many of your stories have a humorous spin on them. What gives?
A: We have a sense of humor, so expect it. Every now and again we’ll post stories just for the humorous aspect of it, and who knows we might just become a humor-only news website eventually…

Q: Hey, you stole this_story or this_idea!
A: No, we really didn’t. If we get something from somewhere else, we list the source at the bottom of the page, but we don’t like to copy other news outlets’ stories. Period.

Q: What is the meaning of your site motto?
A: Our site motto has changed over the course of the site’s uptime, so whatever it is currently may not be set in stone or may just be a cop-out in response to some current event.

Q: What is your target audience?
A: We try to target most professionals in the IT industry, but anyone willing to read our stories are welcome to. Some of our jokes are pretty techy, so you may or may not get them, but we try to keep the target audience pretty broad overall.

Q: What is your definition of a “Geek”?
A: Anyone with a pretty good understanding of technology, programming, etc. or any other field that requires a wealth of knowledge. Anybody can be a geek, and in modern times it’s more of a status symbol than a meaning (or an insult), but we generally target people within the IT field.

Q: Any easter-eggs in the site?
A: Well, there is currently just one: click command, then space on the keyboard at the top for a Spotlight(R)-clone named “Notlight”. It doesn’t work in most browsers, but it’s just a funny thing we stuck in the site for anyone who reads this FAQ, our source code, or just clicks a lot…

Q: You’re site was down today!
A: It happens. But any problems are not because of server failures, as they stay on year-round: most of the time, it’s our ISP. But we maintain a pretty decent uptime record, and downtime is pretty rare (this technically isn’t a FAQ)

Q: Teach me how to hack!
A: No.

Q: Do you do this for a living?
A: No, we all have day jobs or are students (or both), this is just a side project we started for fun.

Q: Do you distribute the server logs or anything like that?
A: Nah, since we don’t advertise or run ads, we don’t do anything with the logs other than let them sit there on the servers’ hard drives. We analyze them every now and then to see HTTP referrals and consistency, but other than that we value our users’ privacy and don’t do anything to jeopardize that.

Q: Your spelling is pretty good!
A: Thanks, we all use spellcheck and proofread our articles.

Q: But I found a spelling/grammar error!
A: Sometimes spelcheck and poofreading failes.

Q: Just how much coffee do you drink in a day?
A: Responses are as follows: Anthony: 1 or 2 pots and many energy drinks, Chris: two or three cups, Mark: hates coffee (gasp!) but drinks Red Bull, Peter (ert3): none, Mike: has a dependency, Rafe: a pot of coffee, a Bawls energy drink, and at least a liter of Mountain Dew a day.

Q: Can we copy/reproduce the images/stories on your website?
A: Pingbacks/trackbacks welcome with credit/linking, images are free to use under the same principle. Basically, just give credit where credit is due, and a link is always nice…

Q: Do you have _any_ corporate/website/other affiliations?
A: Nope, 100% independent

Q: Google led me here, but I didn’t find an answer. …?
A: Well, you’re always free to ask…

Q: Why does the top of your site load slow/last?
A: The top of our website (e.g. the keyboard and Android emulator) is all one image, and that one image tends to load slow because of both NFS/disk latency on our part and general bandwidth delays. Also, some browsers like Firefox load the image in a weird order compared to the rest of the page and it gets displayed last.

Q: Why does your site look weird in $OUTDATED_BROWSER?
A: We can’t please everybody. We _know_ we look alright in Firefox 3, the latest Opera, and the latest Safari, so perhaps consider upgrading your browser. If you are using Internet Explorer by choice, then this probably isn’t the site for you anyways – Digg would be more suitable.

Q: A story has wrong facts contained within it, what do I do?
A: Please inform us in the comments of said article so we can fix the issue. We don’t like to provide any misinformation, and we have a good track record of not doing so that we’d like to preserve.

Q: I have a question not answered here. Where do I put it?
A: Leave a comment here, and we’ll post it.

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