If you don't like the way things are announced, change it. There's absolutely nothing in the world to prevent you from condensing the kernel changelog into a list of security problems that have been fixed, and then publishing your findings in a concise and easy-to-digest form for others to consume.
Why didn't they use the automated system in the first place? As a programmer I'd be a little pissed if I spent a lot of time working on a system as complicated as docking a shuttle, only to find out its second string to human piloting. Maybe it should be if the automated system fails, THEN try it with human interaction.
Why should they use the automated system in the first place? As an astronaut I'd be a little pissed if I spent my entire life working toward living on the space station and learning the intricacies of operating these sorts of crafts, only to find that my life's work is second string to a fucking computer. Maybe if human piloting fails, THEN try it with the automated systems.
Ah, yes. The old "it cost more, therefore it must be better/newer/faster" generalization.
So, go have a look at what's actually available. You'll see that while the prices do vary wildly, there is very little variation in terms of the actual products (aside from packaging) other than a handful of products that appear to actually be independently engineered (which is not necessarily a good thing).
Just to pick one particular product: B&H sells it for $11.95. Computer Geeks has the same one for $7.99. Our hack-friendly friends at Sparkfun sell their copy for $10.99.
Meanwhile, buy.com has the same thing for $3.37 plus shipping. Deal Extreme is even cheaper at $1.85 including shipping, but you have to wait for it to cross the Pacific.
So...uh. Should I buy the expensive one from B&H, or the cheap one from Deal Extreme? B&H will certainly handle returns better in case the thing breaks or whatever, but for the price I can buy a small handful of these widgets from DX and spread out the MTBF myself.
I like the pronounceable passwords generated by GNU Keyring on my ancient PalmOS device (a Handspring Visor).
It produces things like: biaf2cik3eg
Sure, it's a limited keyspace. But it's far easier for me to remember the sound of the password while I wait around for muscle memory to remember the keystrokes for me. But the sequence of keys is also similar to those used in normal writing, so I find that muscle memory remembers these pretty quickly. And, being consciously remembered as a sound also makes it easier to figure out later if I don't use a password for awhile and forget.
It's so, so much less painful than things like 9$k[IkO2F03, which while obviously much stronger, is something I'll need to record some place for later reference, because it will otherwise be immediately forgotten.
And the sooner you stop adding your own thoughts and expression to my verbiage, and just take what I write as it is without trying to read between the lines, the sooner you'll see that I'm not presenting anything but personal anecdotes.
If I were trying to raise any additional points, or dismiss anyone's particular ailment, I assure you that I'd spell these particular concepts out as plainly as possible.
That I say I've "done X, Y, and Z and turned out OK", certainly does not imply that everyone should immediately go forth and do X, Y, and Z. It doesn't imply anything, in fact. It's just an anecdote.
Since you're already familiar with Google Voice: Replace "normal voice service" with "SIP over WiFi," and you'll immediately understand how this works.:)
I haven't met a ham yet that wasn't a proper thinking sort of fellow, with a willingness to help other folks solve problems (especially if the problems are interesting to them).
Sometimes, though, it's not something so complicated that outside help is needed.
I once troubleshot a WiFi link that spanned two buildings, a block or two apart. Things had been stable since we installed it a year or two prior, but suddenly it would drop out completely a few minutes at a time, between 11:45 and 12:30.
The likely culprit? A leaky microwave oven operated at some nearby business at lunch time. The fix was completely unscientific: We changed channels, and the interference ceased being a problem.
Perhaps in the case of this particular Ask Slashdot, there is a 2nd-shift worker who tends to nuke their dinner every night when they get home.
Of course, if it is a microwave and it's nuking the entire band such that the interference cannot be avoided by using a different channel, then the only solution is to find the offending microwave and destroy it. (Ideally, this happens after you and the other affected neighbors pool a few dollars to help buy the person a new microwave, which is a far more sensible approach than complaining to the FCC or somesuch.)
My argument is that it is equally cheap to get five meals from McDonalds as it is to make five meals with of spaghetti using a previously-posted recipe.
If you want to discuss healthfulness, you'll have to find another thread.
I merely submit that I seem to be fine, and that I don't stay up at night worrying about mercury from broken CFLs or tuna, let alone lead from paint chips causing my kids to grow extra eyes.
Nor do I worry about the effects of watching an occasional 3D movie.
That's cool with me. Unlike a lot of folks, I've got IQ to spare. 5 or 10 points really doesn't push me that far up or down the curve.
But then, who knows? Perhaps playing with lead toys (lead is chewy, did you know that?) is the reason why I've got points to spare. Any standardized testing I've had occurred years after I stopped playing with the lead soldiers that my dad made for me when I was little.
It's not like this oil is anything new. It's been under huge pressure for a very long time, and was largely contained by the sandstone until we started drilling through it. Turning the valves off, if they existed, would work just fine as long as the hole itself didn't leak and the closing of the valves happened slowly enough to prevent the momentum of the moving fluid from ruining things.
I have nothing else to add, except: There's a reason why they teach a little bit of geology in school.
When I was a kid, I spent hours looking into a View Master, studying the details in those tiny little slides.
I also had toys made entirely out of lead. Mercury was cool. And I played with real electricity, complete with real shocks. And, once or twice, I nearly set my bedroom on fire.
I'm still here. And I'm even healthy.
Here's a big *shrug* to everything related to this story.
Given the total time to measure a single web page is useless because the sample set would be very small (one web page? really?). Increasing the sample size, however, results in too much data: Suppose it tests 50 web sites. And suppose there are 20 ISPs tested. 50*20=1000, which is way too fucking many data points for layfolk to digest.
Besides, web sites change. They aren't static things. One day it might be big, the next it might be small. Ads rotate. If they were just measuring time, then the data would be mostly useless later.
So: By applying a very small amount of math, they get to include latencies for DNS lookups and such, and reduce the dataset to a single, easy-to-digest number. While I agree that using megabits-per-second is confusing to most, I'm really not sure that using some invented metric ("Surfmarks" or somesuch) would be an improvement in honesty, though doing so probably would keep such pedants as yourself happier.
It's not about downloading -- it's about browsing. The question is not about "how many bits can one shove through this pipe," but instead "what is a quantitative measurement of the actual speed one can expect when going clicky-clicky on links on web sites."
So instead of maximum aggregate speed (which is easy to determine with speedtest.net and the like) this "Surfspeed" figure includes latencies for things like DNS. Round-trip times. Route lookups. Geographic caching (Akamai). The time it takes for the geolocation service to figure out where you are. Hops to the host(s) in question. Congestion of those hops. How long it takes for the fucking ad servers to wake up and start spitting out ads.
Should any of that matter? Of course not. But over here in the really real world, things aren't perfect, and it all makes a difference.
Get it? It's not at all intended to be an idealized measurement of maximum throughput.
To use a car analogy: Given a selection of different vehicles of different performance characteristics, how long does it get a bushel full of DVD-R from point New Jersey to San Francisco, including refueling, maintenance, personal needs (more comfortable cars == less stopping), road conditions, weather, traffic, and dodging kids on bikes?
It's easy to come up with an idealized route and ETA. But it it's much harder to include some real data.
And all of that theory is meaningless compared to actually measuring how long it takes a given vehicle to do that job, which is what this Surfspeed measurement tool proclaims to do.
I don't have an iPhone. But I do have an iPod Touch, which for this discussion is close enough.
One of my favorite things to do with it was to load up Pandora and listen to it over some speakers out back by the fire ring, with friends and drinks and such. I think this is a perfectly normal thing for folks to want to do. It works great for this application, and the battery lasts plenty long doing it.
But the combination of friends and drinks and conversations these days always seems to come a need to Google some trivia or fact of some kind.
With the iPod, the music has to stop for this to happen. With the Droid I've been using for a few months, it easily does both at the same time.
And nevermind the perfectly reasonable task of listening to Pandora in the car, with turn-by-turn GPS nav happening. It works good.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't like the way things are announced, change it. There's absolutely nothing in the world to prevent you from condensing the kernel changelog into a list of security problems that have been fixed, and then publishing your findings in a concise and easy-to-digest form for others to consume.
I was going to post something about my TI Silent 700, but there's no reason to do so now.
Thanks for ruining everything.
Why should they use the automated system in the first place? As an astronaut I'd be a little pissed if I spent my entire life working toward living on the space station and learning the intricacies of operating these sorts of crafts, only to find that my life's work is second string to a fucking computer. Maybe if human piloting fails, THEN try it with the automated systems.
Ah, yes. The old "it cost more, therefore it must be better/newer/faster" generalization.
So, go have a look at what's actually available. You'll see that while the prices do vary wildly, there is very little variation in terms of the actual products (aside from packaging) other than a handful of products that appear to actually be independently engineered (which is not necessarily a good thing).
Just to pick one particular product: B&H sells it for $11.95. Computer Geeks has the same one for $7.99. Our hack-friendly friends at Sparkfun sell their copy for $10.99.
Meanwhile, buy.com has the same thing for $3.37 plus shipping. Deal Extreme is even cheaper at $1.85 including shipping, but you have to wait for it to cross the Pacific.
So...uh. Should I buy the expensive one from B&H, or the cheap one from Deal Extreme? B&H will certainly handle returns better in case the thing breaks or whatever, but for the price I can buy a small handful of these widgets from DX and spread out the MTBF myself.
(The rest of your post is spot-on.)
You didn't. And I didn't say you did. I simply said I am. Me saying that I'm a liberal does not imply that I believe you've accused me of being one.
We'll do this again after you improve your English comprehension a bit, strawman.
I like the pronounceable passwords generated by GNU Keyring on my ancient PalmOS device (a Handspring Visor).
It produces things like: biaf2cik3eg
Sure, it's a limited keyspace. But it's far easier for me to remember the sound of the password while I wait around for muscle memory to remember the keystrokes for me. But the sequence of keys is also similar to those used in normal writing, so I find that muscle memory remembers these pretty quickly. And, being consciously remembered as a sound also makes it easier to figure out later if I don't use a password for awhile and forget.
It's so, so much less painful than things like 9$k[IkO2F03, which while obviously much stronger, is something I'll need to record some place for later reference, because it will otherwise be immediately forgotten.
YMMV.
I am a liberal, you insensitive clod.
And the sooner you stop adding your own thoughts and expression to my verbiage, and just take what I write as it is without trying to read between the lines, the sooner you'll see that I'm not presenting anything but personal anecdotes.
If I were trying to raise any additional points, or dismiss anyone's particular ailment, I assure you that I'd spell these particular concepts out as plainly as possible.
That I say I've "done X, Y, and Z and turned out OK", certainly does not imply that everyone should immediately go forth and do X, Y, and Z. It doesn't imply anything, in fact. It's just an anecdote.
Move on.
(the question states that it goes down between two measures of time, about 90 minutes apart -- not that it is down for that entire period.)
Everything we do is dangerous.
Since you're already familiar with Google Voice: Replace "normal voice service" with "SIP over WiFi," and you'll immediately understand how this works. :)
Seconded.
I haven't met a ham yet that wasn't a proper thinking sort of fellow, with a willingness to help other folks solve problems (especially if the problems are interesting to them).
Sometimes, though, it's not something so complicated that outside help is needed.
I once troubleshot a WiFi link that spanned two buildings, a block or two apart. Things had been stable since we installed it a year or two prior, but suddenly it would drop out completely a few minutes at a time, between 11:45 and 12:30.
The likely culprit? A leaky microwave oven operated at some nearby business at lunch time. The fix was completely unscientific: We changed channels, and the interference ceased being a problem.
Perhaps in the case of this particular Ask Slashdot, there is a 2nd-shift worker who tends to nuke their dinner every night when they get home.
Of course, if it is a microwave and it's nuking the entire band such that the interference cannot be avoided by using a different channel, then the only solution is to find the offending microwave and destroy it. (Ideally, this happens after you and the other affected neighbors pool a few dollars to help buy the person a new microwave, which is a far more sensible approach than complaining to the FCC or somesuch.)
The topic is money, not healthfulness.
My argument is that it is equally cheap to get five meals from McDonalds as it is to make five meals with of spaghetti using a previously-posted recipe.
If you want to discuss healthfulness, you'll have to find another thread.
It is?
And here I was thinking that the leaking bit of the oil well was the pipe that sits within the hole.
Oh, well.
I merely submit that I seem to be fine, and that I don't stay up at night worrying about mercury from broken CFLs or tuna, let alone lead from paint chips causing my kids to grow extra eyes.
Nor do I worry about the effects of watching an occasional 3D movie.
YMMV, but again: *shrug*
There is a way:
In fact, let me Google that for you.
Yes.
I think that bit was covered under the generalization of "as long as the hole doesn't leak."
Did you have a point?
That's cool with me. Unlike a lot of folks, I've got IQ to spare. 5 or 10 points really doesn't push me that far up or down the curve.
But then, who knows? Perhaps playing with lead toys (lead is chewy, did you know that?) is the reason why I've got points to spare. Any standardized testing I've had occurred years after I stopped playing with the lead soldiers that my dad made for me when I was little.
So, again: *shrug*
I care, because I browse web pages. Anything slower than instantaneous is an indication that there is room for improvement.
Why is it a difficult concept to grasp?
Even on my reasonably-quick quad-core desktop, web browsing often consists of the following:
*click*
*wait*
*wait*
*wait*
*wait*
*wait*
*page appears*
*wait*
*page reformats*
*wait*
*can i start reading it yet?*
Removing any instance of *wait* is an improvement for me. Perhaps you like watching the throbber, but I've got better things do to.
Right.
Sure.
I mean: No.
It's not like this oil is anything new. It's been under huge pressure for a very long time, and was largely contained by the sandstone until we started drilling through it. Turning the valves off, if they existed, would work just fine as long as the hole itself didn't leak and the closing of the valves happened slowly enough to prevent the momentum of the moving fluid from ruining things.
I have nothing else to add, except: There's a reason why they teach a little bit of geology in school.
That's all good for Norway. I'm sure it must be a very nice place to live and work in.
In more capitalist societies, folks are lucky to find themselves still having a job after they have kids.
Hmm.
Ten McDoubles == $10.
Five small fries == $5.
Five big meals for $15, from McDonalds.
Next?
(I'm ignoring the health aspects, on purpose.)
When I was a kid, I spent hours looking into a View Master, studying the details in those tiny little slides.
I also had toys made entirely out of lead. Mercury was cool. And I played with real electricity, complete with real shocks. And, once or twice, I nearly set my bedroom on fire.
I'm still here. And I'm even healthy.
Here's a big *shrug* to everything related to this story.
Given the total time to measure a single web page is useless because the sample set would be very small (one web page? really?). Increasing the sample size, however, results in too much data: Suppose it tests 50 web sites. And suppose there are 20 ISPs tested. 50*20=1000, which is way too fucking many data points for layfolk to digest.
Besides, web sites change. They aren't static things. One day it might be big, the next it might be small. Ads rotate. If they were just measuring time, then the data would be mostly useless later.
So: By applying a very small amount of math, they get to include latencies for DNS lookups and such, and reduce the dataset to a single, easy-to-digest number. While I agree that using megabits-per-second is confusing to most, I'm really not sure that using some invented metric ("Surfmarks" or somesuch) would be an improvement in honesty, though doing so probably would keep such pedants as yourself happier.
It's not about downloading -- it's about browsing. The question is not about "how many bits can one shove through this pipe," but instead "what is a quantitative measurement of the actual speed one can expect when going clicky-clicky on links on web sites."
So instead of maximum aggregate speed (which is easy to determine with speedtest.net and the like) this "Surfspeed" figure includes latencies for things like DNS. Round-trip times. Route lookups. Geographic caching (Akamai). The time it takes for the geolocation service to figure out where you are. Hops to the host(s) in question. Congestion of those hops. How long it takes for the fucking ad servers to wake up and start spitting out ads.
Should any of that matter? Of course not. But over here in the really real world, things aren't perfect, and it all makes a difference.
Get it? It's not at all intended to be an idealized measurement of maximum throughput.
To use a car analogy: Given a selection of different vehicles of different performance characteristics, how long does it get a bushel full of DVD-R from point New Jersey to San Francisco, including refueling, maintenance, personal needs (more comfortable cars == less stopping), road conditions, weather, traffic, and dodging kids on bikes?
It's easy to come up with an idealized route and ETA. But it it's much harder to include some real data.
And all of that theory is meaningless compared to actually measuring how long it takes a given vehicle to do that job, which is what this Surfspeed measurement tool proclaims to do.
I don't have an iPhone. But I do have an iPod Touch, which for this discussion is close enough.
One of my favorite things to do with it was to load up Pandora and listen to it over some speakers out back by the fire ring, with friends and drinks and such. I think this is a perfectly normal thing for folks to want to do. It works great for this application, and the battery lasts plenty long doing it.
But the combination of friends and drinks and conversations these days always seems to come a need to Google some trivia or fact of some kind.
With the iPod, the music has to stop for this to happen. With the Droid I've been using for a few months, it easily does both at the same time.
And nevermind the perfectly reasonable task of listening to Pandora in the car, with turn-by-turn GPS nav happening. It works good.