i've updated the need_for_speed-branch. it should be fully functional now and (hopefully significantly) faster compared to the main-branch of antville (quite a bunch of code was either removed or streamlined). please give it a try and tell me how it performs on your systems (and of course: please report any new - or newly introduced - bugs).

i think we're really close to the mysterious FC now ;-)

Great to have all those commit mails in my CVS list box... ;-)

I just tested the new version for an hour or two, and I'm impressed. Async access logging is very cool. So is using StringBuffers for most internal construction work.

I don't think we could keep the increase story-readcount with each access policy here on antville.org, but it's the right thing to do for the default setup.

I'm still thinking we should use href macros instead of link macros for the default skins, though (not touching the link macro implementation). I think I can sense the difference here on my old iBook. Do you still have benchmarks for that around?