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Speed of Light Measurement Using Ping

Thomas Colthurst writes "You've no doubt already read the story of ping, but have you ever used it to measure the speed of light?" Here's a case where all that cat5 on college campuses can actually be used for education ;)

12 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. I just measured it by Guitarzan · · Score: 5, Funny

    And according to Unreal Tournament, the speed of light is about 50 miles per hour.

  2. It looks like... by Nathdot · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...someone is very close to getting some sweet government funding to play quake all day!!!

    M: "Joel, did you get those speed of light measurements this time?"

    Joel: "No, It looks like we'll have to fire up another game. You wanna play one-on-one or co-op M?"

    M: "Sweeeeet!!!"

    :)

  3. Re:Memories of high school by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    In high school, I measured geeks' resistance to pain and hunger by beating you up and taking your lunch money.

  4. Yawn. by Multiple+Sanchez · · Score: 3, Funny

    Do the same thing with pong, then I'll be impressed.

  5. This makes no sense to me.... by antistuff · · Score: 3, Funny

    why go through all that trouble when all you need is a flashlight and a stopwatch?

  6. "educational" network by GePS · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Here's a case where all that cat5 on college campuses can actually be used for education ;)"


    Did I just hear education implied when talking about a college campus network? All these marvelous filesharing programs do little but propogate porn.

    Hell, perhaps you could somehow measure the speed of light by observing how fast the search "teen sex" on Kazaa fills up.

  7. A few recommendations: by swagr · · Score: 5, Funny

    1. Ping a machine farther away for more accurate results.
    2. Have the entire lab flood-ping it to collect statistics at a faster rate.
    3. Get some other shools doing this at the same time so you can compare results.

    I recommend slashdot.org.

    --

    -... --- .-. . -.. ..--..
  8. Norway? by The+Ape+With+No+Name · · Score: 3, Funny
    My original impetus for writing PING for 4.2a BSD UNIX came from an offhand remark in July 1983 by Dr. Dave Mills while we were attending a DARPA meeting in Norway...."


    Why on earth was a US Defense department group having a meeting in Norway? I need to get my boss to start having meetings in Maui. Sheesh.

    --
    Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
  9. First typo post! by Karn · · Score: 3, Funny

    "ping -i .01 > tempfile1.txt" where ">" (the so-called 'pipe' symbol)

    Then what's this thing: | ?

    :)

    --


    Why do I keep typing pythong?
  10. physics class by abe+ferlman · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is a little off topic, but not much so bear with me.

    A friend of mine found physics easy in high school, but found his teacher unbearable. So he would always convert his (generally correct) answers into inconvenient units, you know, pico-thises, nano-thats.

    One time the question was "what is the speed of light?"

    His answer? "1 lightyear/year"

    --
    microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
    1. Re:physics class by Hal-9001 · · Score: 3, Funny

      The average distance from the sun to the earth is 1.5 x 10^23 angstroms, plus or minus a whole lot of angstroms.

      --
      "It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
  11. My favorite part of the ping story by Horizon_99 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Dunno how many of you read it but this is hilarious:

    "The best ping story I've ever heard was told to me at a USENIX conference, where a network administrator with an intermittent Ethernet had linked the ping program to his vocoder program, in essence writing:

    ping goodhost | sed -e 's/.*/ping/' | vocoder

    He wired the vocoder's output into his office stereo and turned up the volume as loud as he could stand. The computer sat there shouting "Ping, ping, ping..." once a second, and he wandered through the building wiggling Ethernet connectors until the sound stopped. And that's how he found the intermittent failure."


    -Horizon
    "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition." - Carl Sagan