[3DGeek]

Qeek

Aaawwww!  You made a clever variation on my handle for a joke?   How cute!  I'm sure everyone is now laughing hard and respecting you 10 times more.

Would you like us to speculate about what the "J" stands for in your handle?  I can certainly think of some unflattering ones.

Some of us are comfortable with our God, you obviously tremble and think your abilities require such to acknowledge you. ha ha Oh our little grasshopper jumping around, Make a Sun, Make a Moon, perform a rain dance and make it rain. You can't, you discard truth for your own ego. God fearing peeps aren't leaving, get over it.

I tremble at nothing (well, maybe if Velociraptors were like the ones in Jurassic Park rather than being the size of chickens I might tremble a bit).

I certainly don't concern myself with the possibility that there might be gods out there - I don't believe in them...why would I tremble?

I precisely cannot discard truth...objective, measurable, definable, testable, truth.   But god(s) are mythology - there is no truth there.  There is not one teeny-tiny scrap of evidence that there is a God - yet things that are said to be true in "The Official Big Book'o'God" are disproven all the time  (No, Bats are not Birds).

Here's how religion most likely came about:

* Some guy (let's call him Joe) in a small stone-age tribe/village gets sick of having to hunt and gather.
* Wouldn't it be nice if someone else would do that and he could sit around in his cave all day and relax?
* Joe comes on the clever idea to invent a supernatural being who commands the tribe to do...whatever.
* Joe says that this god commands everyone to serve him - and that Joe will be the one to intercede between God and Man.
* The tribe are a bit taken aback - but Joe seems convincing...so OK.
* Joe says that he now needs to spend all of his time talking with God and asking him to do neat stuff for the tribe.
* So the tribe will have to work harder to provide sustinance for Joe and "offerings" of food and stuff for the God.
* When they manage to take down a Mammoth - Joe says that God helped them do it because he loves them all.
* When they don't manage to take down a Mammoth - Joe says that God was angry because they didn't adhere to some minutia of "The Rules".
* The tribespeople are unhappy that they don't know what all these "Rules" are.
* Joe says - "That's OK - that's why I'm here - I'll pass on God's rules to everyone."
* The tribespeople wonder why there is no actual evidence of God doing stuff.
* Joe says "Oh - he makes the river run and the soil to grow food and all that.
* The tribespeople wonder whether God can do "X" (choose your own X).
* Joe says "Yes!  Certainly, God can do X - He can do anything!"
* They ask "Why didn't he cure little Suzie of the plague last week?"
* Joe says "God is ineffable - it's not our business to demand that he does things."

This is all rather convenient.

* Joe is now set up for life...he gets to sit back and do more or less nothing - to add more mythology to cover anything inconvenient.
* Joe hates mushrooms - and surprisingly, God rules that mushrooms should not be eaten or you won't make it into heaven.
* Joe likes beer, so God says that beer must be consumed on holy days, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays...holy days are when Joe says that God decrees it's a holy day...generally on Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends).
* As the tribe grows - Joe's sons and daughters join the growing priesthood...add to the mythology...eventually write it down.
* Joe dies.
* Eventually, even the priests themselves forget that Joe just made all of this up so he could get out of doing the hunter-gathering.

...and to this day - a lot of people who don't think too carefully about the nature of the world around them still believe in all of that junk.

[Pete Svarrior]

If those arguments are so easily disproven, why don't you take a minute of your time to do it?

I did respond to one of them to see what would happen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all I got was flat-out denial combined with repeated reassurances that 3DG totally, definitely knows what he's doing. Catering to that kind of person is just a waste of time, and my time just happens to be too valuable to waste.

And just look at him ramble on. His long, condescending (and inaccurate) explanation of ICMP ping just goes to show that this man is on some sort of personal crusade to waste as much of people's time as possible. We just have better things to do.

[Ga_x2]

If those arguments are so easily disproven, why don't you take a minute of your time to do it?

I did respond to one of them to see what would happen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all I got was flat-out denial combined with repeated reassurances that 3DG totally, definitely knows what he's doing. Catering to that kind of person is just a waste of time, and my time just happens to be too valuable to waste.

And just look at him ramble on. His long, condescending (and inaccurate) explanation of ICMP ping just goes to show that this man is on some sort of personal crusade to waste as much of people's time as possible. We just have better things to do.

funny you use that example, cause it proves my point exactly. You came in, missed the point by a mile, and still refuse to address the explanations you received, simply dismissing it on the ground of a supposed higher expertise. Explain precisely where are the problems in this experiment. This is just handwaving.

[StinkyOne]

If those arguments are so easily disproven, why don't you take a minute of your time to do it?

I did respond to one of them to see what would happen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all I got was flat-out denial combined with repeated reassurances that 3DG totally, definitely knows what he's doing. Catering to that kind of person is just a waste of time, and my time just happens to be too valuable to waste.

And just look at him ramble on. His long, condescending (and inaccurate) explanation of ICMP ping just goes to show that this man is on some sort of personal crusade to waste as much of people's time as possible. We just have better things to do.

That is a terrible example. It had nothing to do with flat Earth and was more of a technical issue. One which I more or less agreed with you on. Using ping to measure distances isn't going to give you good data.

[Ga_x2]

You won't get good data, obviously, but it's a quick and cheap way to spot glaring errors in the distances, by eyeballing a possible maximum distance. I notice that Pete in his answers has accurately avoided this point, while protesting that it won't give you the exact distance. Which is trivially right.
In the tom's beloved bipolar map, for instance, to go from Texas to Japan you have to cross all Europe and Asia. I don't know the precise distance of that (because he won't give concrete data at gunpoint) but I bet it's higher than the 6600 miles figure it came up with that single ping. So that particular map is not correct.
Unless you want to assert that the ping can be faster than the speed of light.
Is it clear now?

[Pete Svarrior]

That is a terrible example. It had nothing to do with flat Earth and was more of a technical issue.

It was presented as a disproof of FET and the smoking gun that 3DG was working towards for a long time. It was also fundamentally incorrect not just on a technical level, but rather on a conceptual one. The responses I've received (including the one I'm about to address) serve as a fantastic explanation of why I (and many others) view this demographic with particular disdain.

I notice that Pete in his answers has accurately avoided this point, while protesting that it won't give you the exact distance.

That's not what I did at all and lying about it won't help your case. I explained that your "minimum distances" will be off by several orders of magnitude, to the point where they will be entirely useless.

The issue here isn't just that the distances will be inexact, but rather the extent to which they will be inexact. The issue is that light travels just under 9000km in 30ms, and that an actual ICMP ping time will be much slower than just length of wiring divided by c.

Finally, I raised the point of ascertaining the machines' locations, which you have no easy way of doing. It's great that you *think* your machines were in Texas and Japan, but they probably weren't. In the real-world Internet a ping time of 35ms suggests that your machines were most likely located on the same continent, possibly even in the same country/state.

In one post, you've demonstrated what I was claiming better than I ever could. The whiny RE'er demographic does not pay attention to either their own points or the objections raised to them. They are not interested in anything other than the feel-good effect of "golly, we sure showed those gosh darn FE'ers!" Engaging with them is an utter waste of time and resource, and so they rarely end up being engaged in any way. There are simply better things for us to do.

[Psychotropic]

Finally, I raised the point of ascertaining the machines' locations, which you have no easy way of doing.

This is exactly the main problem.  As you said though, implicitly, this problem can be addressed.  I had more in mind for this reply, but Ga_x2 covered it for the most part.

[Pete Svarrior]

this problem can be addressed

Hypothetically, but at that point you've lost all of the method's alleged benefits: it's no longer easily reproducible or verifiable. And even once you've gone through the arduous effort, your data will be practically unusable.

[3DGeek]

That is a terrible example. It had nothing to do with flat Earth and was more of a technical issue.

It was presented as a disproof of FET and the smoking gun that 3DG was working towards for a long time. It was also fundamentally incorrect not just on a technical level, but rather on a conceptual one. The responses I've received (including the one I'm about to address) serve as a fantastic explanation of why I (and many others) view this demographic with particular disdain.

I notice that Pete in his answers has accurately avoided this point, while protesting that it won't give you the exact distance.

That's not what I did at all and lying about it won't help your case. I explained that your "minimum distances" will be off by several orders of magnitude, to the point where they will be entirely useless.

The issue here isn't just that the distances will be inexact, but rather the extent to which they will be inexact. The issue is that light travels just under 9000km in 30ms, and that an actual ICMP ping time will be much slower than just length of wiring divided by c.

Finally, I raised the point of ascertaining the machines' locations, which you have no easy way of doing. It's great that you *think* your machines were in Texas and Japan, but they probably weren't. In the real-world Internet a ping time of 35ms suggests that your machines were most likely located on the same continent, possibly even in the same country/state.

I still don't see what the heck you're complaining about.

The data says that the distance can be NO MORE THAN (35ms x speed-of-light).   It can certainly be LESS...maybe MUCH LESS.

I can only say with confidence that these two locations cannot POSSIBLY be more than 6,600 miles apart.  There is not time for something moving at the speed of light to get there and back in the time that it actually did.

So...if you said "The distance between Texas and Tokyo is only 1,000 miles" - then I could not prove you wrong with this technique.   There could easily be enormous delays in the system - maybe the packet get's routed via Siberia and Sydney Australia along the way.

BUT if you said "The distance between Texas and Tokyo is 8,000 miles" - then I have concrete proof that you're wrong...light cannot travel between those two places (and back again) in 35ms.

[Pete Svarrior]

I still don't see what the heck you're complaining about.

I'll ignore the rest of your post since it's entirely based in the misunderstanding declared above.

So, just to restate what's already been said multiple times... perhaps this time you'll somehow understand it:

You fallaciously assume that the machines separated by a 35ms ping are located where you claim there are. They are almost certainly not, given the time you've measured. It is more likely that both of them are located on the same continent.

As a rule of thumb, you should expect your "maximum distances" to be at least an order of magnitude out of whack (I'm being optimistic and generous to your "method" here). If they're not, it's likely that you messed up. And if they are, your data becomes useless for your purpose.

[juner]

Since this is nothing remotely close to a Q&A thread and has devolved into another ping time discussion, I am locking it.