Measuring light speed by pinging a computer

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The Los Alamos National Laboratory has a paper explainin how to measure light speed using the ping command included with most operating systems. It’s very interesting.

An additional explaining: light speed is constant (c=3e8, aprox.), but propagation speed is not constant. It depends on the medium (being exact, it depends on the propagation constant, ß, of the medium) and can be calculated using one of the following equations:

vp=1/sqrt(μ*ε), where μ and ε are constant parameters that depend on the medium.

or:

vp=2*pi*f/ß, where ß is the propagation constant of the medium.

For optical mediums a simpler expression is given using material’s effective refraction index (ñ), but I cannot remember the expression now O:-)

AOL-Time Warner maybe to buy Redhat

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The first time I saw the news I thought it was a hoax. Three days have passed since, and nobody from AOL nor Red Hat has denied the information, so let’s believe there’s some point in it.

The original article is here (The Washington Post). What people is saying: Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Ars Technica, Barrapunto [Spanish], Cat-Linux [Catalan].

Also interesting is this article in Newsforge, which I agree: Red Hat with AOL/TW recources will be powerful enought to battle Microsoft.

Update: There’s no buy-out, according to CNet.

New ways to get Debian GNU/Linux on CDs

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The Debian Project has new pages dealing with how to get their ISO images of their GNU/Linux.

The new pages are here. There are links to some (few) sites that host the ISO images and information on two ways of constructing your own image from package files (the ones that carry the two hundred mirrors Debian has in the world): the (ugly) pseudo-image kit and the (new) jigdo.

With comments!!!

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Good thing! Now you can comment on my articles. You simply have to click on “comment” and write. Thanks to Yaccs for this great service.

By the way, if you can help me setting up a Postnuke, PHP Nuke, Slash, Scoop or similar weblog system, I’ll be very grateful. I have little free time and want to host my own weblog.