Deprecated - Performance and scalability

Hello guys!
I'm looking for some articles/readings that might help me about removing locking tables. In the first place, I don't have understanding yet about locking tables. I sought help from here, yet, I found nothing. As part of my objective I also tried to seek readings that points out locking tables creates problem.
Thanks!

I need some help... badly! I've been banging my head off the ole drupal wall for days now trying to figure out something which I thought should be simple. But I full except that it is not simple because of the way I have my structure setup... maybe I've gone too far down a one way road and now I'm hitting a brick wall.
Ok here's what I have:
a primary menu which opens up various nodes. (These menu items are mirrored with terms in a taxonomy vocabulary)
each of these nodes has a sub-menu, which takes its items from nodes that are linked to the specific taxonomy term

Hi everybody!

i get this message on all pages of my site when i open it in firefox and there are no side bars. IE has no issues. Pls help.

user warning: Can't create/write to file '/tmp/#sql_a52_0.MYI' (Errcode: 30) query: SELECT DISTINCT b.* FROM blocks b LEFT JOIN blocks_roles r ON b.module = r.module AND b.delta = r.delta WHERE b.theme = 'garland' AND b.status = 1 AND (r.rid IN (2) OR r.rid IS NULL) ORDER BY b.region, b.weight, b.module in /home/research/public_html/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 172.

i m using mysql. i would like to know is there a limit of no of row of tables?

i used to develop application using sybase. i do not have experience in developing applications involve very very large tables. i had experience with tables having few millions rows only.

One of our multiple sub-sites is loading very slowly, but only in FireFox. In IE 7 it loads very quickly. Has anyone else experienced this or can anyone offer some advice?

The site in question is http://govdocs.cpl.org -- As stated, our other sub-sites load fine, such as http://genref.cpl.org and http://history.cpl.org and our top-level http://www.cpl.org