It does at least five things other companies and sites - eBay, MP3, Toys R Us, Fatbrain.com, BN.com - have done first or do better...
It's funny. When AMD competes with Intel, or anyone competes with Microsoft, we cheer them on, praising the virtues of capitalism and competition and blasting Intel and Microsoft as monopolistic. However, when Amazon competes with eBay, we feel vaguely uneasy, start to like the company less, and generally think to ourselves "couldn't they have done something they weren't already doing?".
I'll admit that I feel the same way in both cases. Apparently, the public will tolerate and even protect a single supplier they like, but do everything to attack a single supplier they dislike. And for whatever reasons, we like eBay and eToys but we don't like Intel and Microsoft.
I might be projecting too much here, but this is why I don't have as many warm fuzzies for Amazon any more, and I think maybe it's the root of the general sense of disgruntlement that led to Katz' article -- not Amazon's diversification per se, but entering into head-to-head competition with popular, well-liked sites without even giving them a nod for having pioneered the space.
Tangent and bait: "I don't read books any more..."
on
Review:Open Sources
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· Score: 1
CmdrTaco writes:
Frankly I don't read books any more- just web pages. I just don't have time- plus that whole paper thing doesn't appeal to me any more.
Nobody I know can quite tell if this is serious, tongue-in-cheek, "geek posturing", or some combination of the above.
Does the New Geek really not read books? Is this because they live on the edge of a transition to new media, because they prefer "here-and-now" hands-on experience to "old-and-stuffy" accumulated learning, or because they believe that nothing in the "old world" could possibly pertain to the "new world" they live in?
Is this anti-intellectualism, snobbery, short-sightedness, or pragmatic foresight?
And is our beloved CmdrTaco espousing it or making fun of it?
Well, I'm going to post to the linux-ppp mailing list. We'll see if we can get some response on this issue (at least some clue about how I might go about tracking the problem down).
I have observed the exact same problem. It happens with every kernel after 2.1.108, where there was a "major PPP rewrite". I've sent detailed bug reports to the PPP maintainer and to the listed author of the rewrite with no answer (I even said "what can I do to help track this down", but no reply -- grr!), and I've searched all over dejanews and mailing list archives, but (until today) haven't found anyone with the same problem.
To anyone who would offer suggestions:
1. Yes, we're using the latest pppd. 2. Yes, we have routing set up correctly. 3. Yes, we have our PPP options set up correctly.
If you don't believe me, then note that the exact same configuration works *great* in 2.1.108 and below, and that IP, ICMP, and UDP all work fine; it's only TCP that breaks.
The only clue I have is that people with later kernels and PPP have suffered from "TCP stalls". This is a different, but similar problem, where TCP becomes very very slow sometimes. Perhaps the extra latency of the Ricochet turns "very very slow sometimes" into "never works ever"? Kinda dubious, but...
It's too bad Amit didn't include his e-mail, I'd like to get in touch with him.
P.S. Several times recently, I've had a problem, tried to diagnose it or search for a fix, with the same results -- some combination of the following:
1. I search DejaNews and mlist archives, and find others with the same (or similar problems), who have posted about them but gotten no reply (or maybe one or two unhelpful replies).
2. I post myself, and get no reply (or maybe one or two unhelpful replies).
3. I e-mail the maintainer, and get no reply.
4. I fix the problem, and post a patch to a mailing list, and get no reply.
5. I mail the patch to the maintainer, and get no reply, and it isn't folded in. In both (4) and (5), I include "bug fix patch!" prominently in the subject line.
This gets frustrating after a while. I think a major problem with open source (and Linux in particular) is that the low S/N ratio of public channels makes it very difficult to be heard, especially if you're not a well known contributor, or you have a relatively esoteric problem that doesn't happen to (directly) affect loads of other people.
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It's funny. When AMD competes with Intel, or anyone competes with Microsoft, we cheer them on, praising the virtues of capitalism and competition and blasting Intel and Microsoft as monopolistic. However, when Amazon competes with eBay, we feel vaguely uneasy, start to like the company less, and generally think to ourselves "couldn't they have done something they weren't already doing?".
I'll admit that I feel the same way in both cases. Apparently, the public will tolerate and even protect a single supplier they like, but do everything to attack a single supplier they dislike. And for whatever reasons, we like eBay and eToys but we don't like Intel and Microsoft.
I might be projecting too much here, but this is why I don't have as many warm fuzzies for Amazon any more, and I think maybe it's the root of the general sense of disgruntlement that led to Katz' article -- not Amazon's diversification per se, but entering into head-to-head competition with popular, well-liked sites without even giving them a nod for having pioneered the space.
Does the New Geek really not read books? Is this because they live on the edge of a transition to new media, because they prefer "here-and-now" hands-on experience to "old-and-stuffy" accumulated learning, or because they believe that nothing in the "old world" could possibly pertain to the "new world" they live in?
Is this anti-intellectualism, snobbery, short-sightedness, or pragmatic foresight?
And is our beloved CmdrTaco espousing it or making fun of it?
Well, I'm going to post to the linux-ppp mailing list. We'll see if we can get some response on this issue (at least some clue about how I might go about tracking the problem down).
I have the same problem, and no, there are no checksum errors. (In fact, there are no errors at all in dmesg or anywhere else.)
I have observed the exact same problem. It happens with every kernel after 2.1.108, where there was a "major PPP rewrite". I've sent detailed bug reports to the PPP maintainer and to the listed author of the rewrite with no answer (I even said "what can I do to help track this down", but no reply -- grr!), and I've searched all over dejanews and mailing list archives, but (until today) haven't found anyone with the same problem.
To anyone who would offer suggestions:
1. Yes, we're using the latest pppd.
2. Yes, we have routing set up correctly.
3. Yes, we have our PPP options set up correctly.
If you don't believe me, then note that the exact same configuration works *great* in 2.1.108 and below, and that IP, ICMP, and UDP all work fine; it's only TCP that breaks.
The only clue I have is that people with later kernels and PPP have suffered from "TCP stalls". This is a different, but similar problem, where TCP becomes very very slow sometimes. Perhaps the extra latency of the Ricochet turns "very very slow sometimes" into "never works ever"? Kinda dubious, but...
It's too bad Amit didn't include his e-mail, I'd like to get in touch with him.
P.S. Several times recently, I've had a problem, tried to diagnose it or search for a fix, with the same results -- some combination of the following:
1. I search DejaNews and mlist archives, and find others with the same (or similar problems), who have posted about them but gotten no reply (or maybe one or two unhelpful replies).
2. I post myself, and get no reply (or maybe one or two unhelpful replies).
3. I e-mail the maintainer, and get no reply.
4. I fix the problem, and post a patch to a mailing list, and get no reply.
5. I mail the patch to the maintainer, and get no reply, and it isn't folded in. In both (4) and (5), I include "bug fix patch!" prominently in the subject line.
This gets frustrating after a while. I think a major problem with open source (and Linux in particular) is that the low S/N ratio of public channels makes it very difficult to be heard, especially if you're not a well known contributor, or you have a relatively esoteric problem that doesn't happen to (directly) affect loads of other people.