Totally off-topic but interesting post -> wired.com/2011/04/judges-mental-fatigue

Actually, I don't know whether it is interesting or horrifying.

So, is cron obsolete? Apparently there is a point of view that thinks so - see github.com/coldfix/udiskie/issues/102#issuecomment-213171649 and following comments.

I'm not sure I want to use systemd instead of cron, but what do others think?

Another clear VTC:

Recently I've found uGet stopped working (fail to launch).

what should I do to fix this?

@derobert it seems you've forgotten to leave from mount /dev/chat that's why room is not frozen after 117d. How about deleting it @terdon?

@Pandya Why?

Anyway, you're the room's owner. You can kick derobert and delete it if you like.

@terdon how can I? (I didn't find options/features for that). can you help me?

@Pandya Why do you want to delete it?

Ah, and maybe room owners can't delete. In any case, there is no reason to delete. Just leave it there, the system will deal with it eventually.

no-necessity/obsolete/outdated

Yeah, leave it.

done

@terdon from faq, Rooms worth retaining which are inactive for 14 days will be frozen. ; When is it called inactive? (no one should be in the room?)

btw, @terdon should I try to fix this or it is better to re-install uGet?

So, are sufficiently downvoted closed questions with no answers eventually garbage collected? I forget the rules.

@Pandya What version of uget? And what distribution/release are you running?

It might be a hardware problem. Or it might be a package problem (less likely).

@Pandya I think inactive means nobody has posted anything.

Not sure though.

@FaheemMitha Hi! man uget-gtk shows uget-gtk 1.4.9. I am using Trisquel 7.0

@Pandya No idea, I don't even know what uget is.

ok

@Pandya Ok, Ubuntu derivative.

I get:

apt-cache policy uget
uget:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1.10.4-1
  Version table:
     2.0.4-1 0
         50 tor+httpredir.debian.org/debian unstable/main amd64 Packages
     1.10.4-1 0
        500 tor+httpredir.debian.org/debian jessie/main amd64 Packages

@Pandya ^^ Is that the package you are talking about?

@terdon If you want to know, ugetdm.com

Though if you are running something older than jessie, I have to wonder.

Oh wow. A download manager! I haven't used one of those in years.

I hope I wasn't out of line here...

But people seem to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to get <some_low_value> hardware working. Life is too short, imo.

@terdon You mean, like wget?

@FaheemMitha ^^

@Pandya Yes, but it's the same software, right? I suggest first checking your hardware. If you can repro on a different machine, file a bug report.

I can't check it for you because I'm not running Trisquel. And I suspect few are. Why aren't you using Debian, just out of curiousity?

Another option would be to rebuild the software yourself from the package sources.

@FaheemMitha Does Broadcom networking hardware deal with download manager?

@Pandya Huh?

Sorry, I've no idea what you mean.

> I suggest first checking your hardware

@FaheemMitha ^^ from you

@Pandya Yes, I was talking to you. What does Broadcom have to do with it?

wait... I've just found possible fix/solution... askubuntu.com/a/365711

@Pandya Ah. Well, if it is a software bug, that's really bad, and you should report it. DO NOT delete your files.

Make copies of them. Try to repro on a different machine, perhaps. Then send it upstream. They may ignore it, but you did your part.

No, actually, this version is very old, so reporting is probably useless. Upgrade to a newer version.

I've backup it and deleted.

wow.. it is working now

this seems software bug right? @FaheemMitha

@Pandya Definitely.

Segfaults are quite rare. Hence I thought it might be a hardware issue.

In normal usage, anyway.

ok

@FaheemMitha I'm using Trisquel because it is endorsed by GNU (because of 100% free/libre) and I'm familiar with Ubuntu.

@Pandya Well, endorsed by GNU is nice, but I don't worry too much about that. In terms of quality control and support, nothing beats Debian.

I see no reason to use anything else, at least within the family of Debian derivatives.

I can think of reasons one could prefer to use something else completely. E.g. FreeBSD, Gentoo, Arch...

Though I also think to use plain Debian in future @FaheemMitha

@Pandya Have you ever used it?

no

@Pandya Ok. Well, give it a try, and see what you think.

@FaheemMitha I believe Debian is really universal operating system.

They also call it GNU/Linux!

> The Debian project, which was at one time sponsored by the Free Software Foundation, switched to calling its product "Debian GNU/Linux" in early 1994

from wikipedia ^^

upload.wikimedia.org/wikisource/en/3/39/…

good-bye!

@FaheemMitha No, that's just a downloader. Download managers tend to be gui things that claim to download things faster. I don't think I've used one since I was on Windows almost 20 years ago.

@terdon Faster than what?

@Pandya That is what they sometimes call it. Originally due to Bdale Garbee, I believe.

@FaheemMitha Faster than it would go without a download manager. As I said though, I haven't touched one since the 90ies. At the time, using one would make my downloads go faster than when not using it.

@terdon Any idea how it performs that magic trick?

Nope. Not even if it does. I would guess it splits into smaller files/separate processes and downlaods them in the background or something. I really don't know though.

@terdon I thought of writing a cron vs systemd timer question. Thoughts?

@terdon Ok.

That seems like the sort of question that people love to close as subjective or opinionated or something...

But it would be more interesting than the latest in an endless supply of my "hardware isn't working" questions.

@FaheemMitha @terdon They performed that trick by using Range: requests to download multiple parts of the file in parallel. It was faster if the server was overloaded (and balanced per TCP stream) by taking more than your fair share, or if the bandwidth*delay product was too high (quite possible with older versions of Window's tiny TCP windows)

@derobert Sounds like cheating to me...

well, if it was to get around bandwidth*delay problems, that's not too bad—though of course properly tuning the TCP stack would be better.

Do these tricks work with Linux networking too?

Linux has had sufficient TCP window sizes for as long as I can remember

@FaheemMitha Go for it ! I've also wondered

@FaheemMitha wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd/Timers

@derobert Yes, I've seen that.

@terdon Ok.

@derobert Possible patch to the Debian udiskie package. Thoughts?

Is it just me, or does this seem like a pretty good performance: Bach: Cantatas BWV 82 & 170 | Damien Guillon