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I love these kind of issues, here are two classics: - Open Office won't print on Tuesdays: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161/comment

I love these kind of issues, here are two classics: - Open Office won't print on Tuesdays: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161/comments/28 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161... - Can't send email more than 500 miles: http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
One thing about the famous "500 miles" post that I realized doesn't make sense: ---- An odd feature of our campus network at the time was that it was 100% switched. An outgoing packet wouldn't incur a router delay until hitting the POP and reaching a router on the far side. So time to connect to a lightly-loaded remote host on a nearby network would actually largely be governed by the speed of light distance to the destination rather than by incidental router delays. Feeling slightly giddy, I typed into my shell: $ units 1311 units, 63 prefixes You have: 3 millilightseconds You want: miles * 558.84719 / 0.0017893979 ---- But surely for Sendmail to register a "connect" with a remote SMTP server would require at least one (or many?) round trips to the remote server, so one-way speed of light time doesn't seem like it would really be relevant. Am I missing something?
- NateEag 7y ago
  Possibly the introduction wherein the author says: "The story is slightly altered in order to protect the guilty, elide over irrelevant and boring details, and generally make the whole thing more entertaining." If memory serves he goes into further detail about the alterations and some common objections to the story in his FAQ: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
- tomcatfish 7y ago
  I believe one version of this story explains that the math (and the situation) has been simplified for the sake of this story in order to make it readable. Makes sense, I can share this story to people without any computer knowledge, but something explaining how connections are established would be wholly incomprehensible to them.
- jwandborg 7y ago
  The speed of electricity in copper is lower than the speed of light in a vacuum. The speed of light in fiber optics seems to be even lower.
mywittyname 7y ago
That last one is brilliant.
dpkonofa 7y ago
What in the world could possibly be the reason in that first story for the 'file' program to look for the string 'Tue' and change to the Jam filetype? That's gotta be a very niche case, right?

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

One thing about the famous "500 miles" post that I realized doesn't make sense: ---- An odd feature of our campus network at the time was that it was 100% switched. An outgoing packet wouldn't incur a router delay until hitting the POP and reaching a router on the far side. So time to connect to a lightly-loaded remote host on a nearby network would actually largely be governed by the speed of light distance to the destination rather than by incidental router delays. Feeling slightly giddy, I typed into my shell: $ units 1311 units, 63 prefixes You have: 3 millilightseconds You want: miles * 558.84719 / 0.0017893979 ---- But surely for Sendmail to register a "connect" with a remote SMTP server would require at least one (or many?) round trips to the remote server, so one-way speed of light time doesn't seem like it would really be relevant. Am I missing something?

NateEag 7y ago
Possibly the introduction wherein the author says: "The story is slightly altered in order to protect the guilty, elide over irrelevant and boring details, and generally make the whole thing more entertaining." If memory serves he goes into further detail about the alterations and some common objections to the story in his FAQ: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
tomcatfish 7y ago
I believe one version of this story explains that the math (and the situation) has been simplified for the sake of this story in order to make it readable. Makes sense, I can share this story to people without any computer knowledge, but something explaining how connections are established would be wholly incomprehensible to them.
jwandborg 7y ago
The speed of electricity in copper is lower than the speed of light in a vacuum. The speed of light in fiber optics seems to be even lower.

mywittyname 7y ago

That last one is brilliant.

dpkonofa 7y ago

What in the world could possibly be the reason in that first story for the 'file' program to look for the string 'Tue' and change to the Jam filetype? That's gotta be a very niche case, right?