Quote of the week [LWN.net]

As the Linux networking maintainer, I feel the need to reiterate my statement of a month ago, and to provide some supporting facts on my end so that there is no confusion in the community on these issues.

I am no longer associated with either the Netdev Society or their event, the NetDev conference.

Neither is endorsed nor supported by me.

— David Miller

to post comments

Quote of the week

Posted Apr 26, 2018 19:05 UTC (Thu) by bernat (subscriber, #51658) [Link] (20 responses)

Anyone knows the story behind this?

Quote of the week

Posted May 3, 2018 7:17 UTC (Thu) by kronat (subscriber, #117266) [Link] (19 responses)

> Anyone knows the story behind this?

up (does an 'up' makes sense in LWN comment section?)

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 4:51 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (18 responses)

What is an 'up'?

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 5:32 UTC (Fri) by liw (subscriber, #6379) [Link] (14 responses)

"Up" is an ISO standardised unit of direction, defined as the route that fastest takes you away from the center of mass of the nearest planetary body. "Down" is the opposite direction.

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 10:05 UTC (Fri) by peter-b (guest, #66996) [Link] (1 responses)

Surely "up" is defined as the direction of steepest decrease in gravitational field strength.

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 15:47 UTC (Fri) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]

Large scale gravity/geomagnetic anomalies - such as the one in Northern Canada - might mean that local "up" is planar following the surface of the earth (subject to the small corrections necessary for height of terrain) ...

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 10:15 UTC (Fri) by liw (subscriber, #6379) [Link] (6 responses)

Admittedly, this makes "up" on Pluto depend on which planet it's closest to. Might be Uranus or Neptune or Jupiter, depending.

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 11:53 UTC (Fri) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link] (5 responses)

No, on Pluto the nearest planetary body is Pluto.

Quote of the week

Posted May 5, 2018 14:12 UTC (Sat) by ghane (guest, #1805) [Link] (4 responses)

> No, on Pluto the nearest planetary body is Pluto.

UP!

(I am quite disillusioned by "progress": when I was a child, man walked on the moon,we had supersonic passenger travel, and nine planets. Now we have no manned programme, no Concorde, and only eight planets.

And I am still waiting for my flying car.)

Quote of the week

Posted May 5, 2018 17:10 UTC (Sat) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

On the other hand, you can publish this opinion without writing or typing a letter, stuffing it in an envelope, affixing a stamp, sending it to a newspaper office and hoping it would be selected for inclusion on the letters page.

Quote of the week

Posted May 5, 2018 17:58 UTC (Sat) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link]

> only eight planets

No, now we have nearly four thousand known planets. That's quite incredible progress.

(In any case, planetary body != planet. Plenty of moons and asteroids are considered to be planetary bodies.)

Quote of the week

Posted May 5, 2018 21:33 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

You don't think destruction of a planet (by fiat of pen!) counts as progress? E. E. "Doc" Smith would doubtless beg to disagree ;)

Quote of the week

Posted May 9, 2018 10:58 UTC (Wed) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

This "Pluto is no longer a planet!" thing is silly. Pluto is still a planet - a "dwarf" planet but still a planet. And we have plenty more of these! And exoplanets! This is great time to be a planetary scientist :)

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 12:27 UTC (Fri) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (1 responses)

So if you're over halfway to Mars on a spaceship accelerating at 1G, the floor you're standing on is up? And what if you're on a gas mining colony floating in the Sun's atmosphere?

The only direction we can be sure of is that the enemy's gate is down.

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 14:20 UTC (Fri) by liw (subscriber, #6379) [Link]

Yes, exactly. This is why space space exploration is difficult.

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 16:24 UTC (Fri) by felix.s (guest, #104710) [Link] (2 responses)

That doesn't define a unit at all. If up is a unit, what are two ups?

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 19:03 UTC (Fri) by nijhof (subscriber, #4034) [Link]

Well, if you add a down quark to two ups you get a proton

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 23:46 UTC (Fri) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]

7 up = 1 uncola

Quote of the week

Posted May 4, 2018 22:42 UTC (Fri) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (2 responses)

> What is an 'up'?

Presumably an "up vote" meaning "I would like to know more about this too".
Either that, or the poster is talking about Uni-Processors and accidentally posted the comment against the wrong article.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/upvote

Quote of the week

Posted May 5, 2018 21:32 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Traditionally one starts talking about dualling banjos at this point, I believe (though a mere two is a tiny embedded system in this day and age).

Quote of the week

Posted May 16, 2018 10:02 UTC (Wed) by kronat (subscriber, #117266) [Link]

Exactly.

But it seems no one cares about what happened behind the scenes.