I'm documenting this here so Google may find it. Right now, if I look for this issue, I see tons of reports for Vista and Windows 7 64-bit that has this problem, but little to nothing for Linux.

I believe I was having this problem on Fedora 15, 32-bit, but can't be sure if it was something different or not. I *can* confirm that this issue happened on an up-to-date install of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, 64-bit. The current kernel on my machine is 3.0.0-14-generic SMP.

My wireless card is a D-Link DWA-552, H/W Ver A1, F/W Ver 1.10. This uses the Atheros chipset and the Ath9k driver. My wireless network uses DHCP and this card connects as Wifi-N on 2.4 GHz with auto 20/40 MHz channels and WPA2 Personal for security.

If I ping a destination there is a spike every 30 seconds. For example, if I ping my home router, which is my next hop in line, I will see pings on the average of 2-4 ms. However, every 30th ping sees a response time between 900-2000 ms. Every 31st ping is between 200-300ms. After that, the next 28 pings are back in the 2-4 ms range.

This isn't really that noticeable for e-mail or standard web browsing, but it is a KILLER for online gaming.

I replaced the card with a Cisco/Linksys WMP600N and no longer have the problem. It has same configuration except it uses a RealTek chipset with the rt2800 driver and has the option for 5 GHz as well as 2.4.

This leads me to believe it may be an ath9k bug, but I don't have the chops to dig much further. That is now in the mainline kernel and I am loathe to challenge the gods with a user request/bug report. (Mostly because I'm not getting an "Oops" and am only assuming this is an ath9k/kernel issue.)

I'm reading thru how to report a bug and may brave that this weekend.

OpenELEC exemplifies one of the reasons I really like Linux and FOSS. It takes an already excellent product, XBMC, and pares it down to a nub.

In case you're unfamiliar with it, XBMC is a software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. It is available for Linux, OSX, and Windows. In short, it plays damn near anything and has a fantastic interface.

OpenELEC takes nothing away from XBMC except the fat. That is, there is no functionality at all. What it does is pare the OS down to the absolute bare minimum needed to run the hardware and software. Nothing extra.

XBMC has a "live" version based off of Ubuntu-minimal. While small, there is still unneeded cruft. OpenELEC is designed for embedded devices, so there is no Windows or OS-X version. It is designed for OEMs to put on base hardware and deliver media center appliances.

In short, it takes about 105 Mb fully installed on my Zotac HD11, ION-2 based terminal. I have it installed on an SD Flash card and it boots from cold to ready-to-rock in 15 seconds. That is using the ION-optimized build.

If you're looking for decent media center software, do yourself a favor and look at XBMC. If you like it, and are planning on building a media center PC for convenience or technology-challenged relatives, look at OpenELEC.

I watched Sucker Punch last night. In my opinion, it is the absolutely perfect movie -- if you are a typical 15 year old boy.

It has absolutely everything in it a young teenage boy would fantasize about.

There are steampunk, mechanized, zombie psuedo-Nazis. (It was a hybrid WW1-WW2 scene, so I think they were more Kaiser-era Germans than Hitler-era).

There is a battle mech, zeppelins, an orc army, a huge dragon, Japanese anime-esque sword fights w/demons, futuristic bullet trains armed with a nuke and killer robots. Much of that is mixed together in scenes with little rhyme or reason.

To top it all off, a quintet of beautiful protagonists who alternate between enslaved dancing prostitutes and ass-kicking, super-ninja chicks equally at home with samurai swords, .45 caliber pistols, fully-auto never-run-out-of-bullets guns and even lift-it-up-like-Rambo-or-Arnold heavy machine guns. Amazingly enough, they show almost no skin. A bunch of anime-style baby doll outfits, but little actual flesh.

They are advised, of course, by a Kung-Fu style master played perfectly by Scott Glenn.

Oh, yeah. And fairly good music that was usually way too loud.

All of this is thinly wrapped in a double-dream like plot that is nothing more than an excuse for babe-a-licious mayhem.

Not being a 15-year old boy anymore, I found it entertaining but only on my third attempt at watching it. On the first two tries I didn't get 15 minutes in before thinking "WTF? Are they serious?" and turning it off. On my third attempt I was in a much more relaxed mood to begin with and just said "No, they aren't serious. Relax, have another drink and enjoy the (mindless) show."

I went to buy a balloon for my daughter's birthday last weekend and was told the store couldn't get any helium. A shortage currently has driven up prices and right now hospitals and other critical infrastructure have priority when purchasing. Helium is used to cool the magnets in MRI machines.

There is a finite and dwindling supply of helium on planet Earth. The vast bulk of it seems to reside in Texas. It looks to run out in the next 25 - 100 years.

Besides parades featuring large floating cartoon characters, NASA, the military and microprocessor manufacturers are large consumers of helium.

Interestingly enough, the Moon is speculated to have large deposits of helium that have accumulated from the solar wind. Maybe a lack of supply of this critical element on Earth will spur more interest in returning to the Moon.

The United States is on track this year to become a net exporter of oil-based fuels for the first time since 1949. According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday, the U.S. sent abroad 753.4 million barrels of everything from gasoline to jet fuel in the first nine months of this year, while it imported 689.4 million barrels.

The U.S. was a net exporter of petroleum products in six of the first nine months this year, and the trend accelerated in the third quarter, with September data released Tuesday showing net exports of 919,000 barrels per day, more than any month this year.

It should be noted that this article is about refined petroleum products, and not crude oil. The United States imports about 9 million bbls per day of crude oil, which is 49% of total daily consumption. Also, the refining of crude oil by about 6%. So a single 42 gallon barrel of crude will refine out to 45 gallons of various distillates.

While browsing for videos to keep my son busy while I cleaned up after breakfast, I stumbled upon a trailer for Disney/Pixar's upcoming Planes. Think Cars, but airplanes.

I clicked on that, knowing it would keep him quite for a minute while I finished.

Now, Disney has always been big on music. Most, if not all of their animated features could be classified as musicals. It was no surprise to me that the trailer then started out with a song.

But, when out of my speakers emanated the dulcet tones of White Zombie's More Human Than Human, I paused.

WTF?!

If you aren't familiar with it, after about 5 seconds it has a nice "voice over" of a woman working her way up to a good orgasm. There are several versions floating around the internet, if you are interested.

No, they didn't use that part, but still. How exactly are they going to work that one onto the soundtrack? What is the reaction going to be -- especially with some clueless new parents who aren't familiar with Zombie -- when they hear the beat start up from some car in the next lane and it isn't the Disney version? (It is a song meant to be played loud enough to feel the vibrations 3 lanes over.)

This should be fun.

Deviant posted a in the discussion on the front page that I thought it deserved a bit more focus.

There is an article/slideshow on Business Insider that gives a wonderful overview of what much of the Occupy Wall Street people are complaining about.

The system is too far out of whack. I'm all for capitalism, but the path we're on now is unsustainable. The system itself is threatened and that isn't good.

Right now I'm off to the store to pick up a copy of Inside Job. Later, I really need to do some research that correlates large corporate losses with executives who still, after running things into the ground, got paid exorbitant salaries, bonuses and stock options.

A couple signs of the times.

First, the McDonald's Monopoly game that is going on. The grand prize of $1,000,000 says on the advertisement "Give Up The Second Job!" Ouch. *SECOND* job.

Of course, it is paid out in something like $50,000 a year for 20 years but still...

Second, the positions in IT Security that were advertised at my prior place of work drew over 100 respondents each, before I left. Considering we had 9 openings listed, even with some overlap of candidates I am very glad I wasn't the one that had to go through the whole hiring process. There were close to 1,000 total applications!

Finally, Walmart is bringing back lay-away for this holiday. They did away with it a few years back but it looks like they're expecting year-end sales to be slow. It is just for limited sets of items, but that limit includes toys, clothes and electronics. There is a $50 minimum. People are reluctant to whip out the plastic -- assuming they have any available.

A couple of weeks ago, shortly before Amazon announced the Fire, I purchased a Skytex Skypad Alpha. Here are my impressions.

First, I chose the Skypad because it was the best on paper of the cheap, 7" Android tablets. I was looking for a 7" tablet for my 3-year-old son so he can watch cartoons when we're traveling. I didn't want to deal with a portable DVD player because disks get scratched and lost. I've gone down that road before and it wasn't worth it.

At $155 it was worth experimenting with. In addition to a portable media player for my son, my wife could use it.

Unfortunately, the quality seems to be off. My biggest complaint is that I can't seem to find any way to calibrate the touchscreen. I need to, because entering anything with the on-screen keyboard is impossible. Even using a stylus for the resistive screen won't let me enter anything of length without numerous errors. My WPA key was impossible to enter.

A quick summary is that Android 2.3 isn't designed for tablets. Google knows that but some of the others who are trying to make Android tablets on the cheap and avoid paying for Google's kit are turning a blind eye towards it.

For what I wanted it for -- a 3 year old to bang on and select his own videos that are loaded on a MiniSD card -- it is a solid C-. It works, but isn't great for much else and I won't be disappointed when he eventually trashes it.

However, all that was before Amazon announced the Kindle Fire at $199. There is no way I can see anyone in their right mind paying $150 or so for the Skypad when for an extra $49 you can get the Fire. If they knock the price down to $99, then yes. Short of that, I can't recommend this unit at all.

For anyone who reads this, and is looking for a job in InfoSec, here are two openings:

U.S. International Trade Commission IT Specialist (INFOSEC) (Washington, DC)

State of Florida INFO TECH BUSINESS CONSULTANT MGR. (Tallahassee, FL)

[Note: This is a cross-post of something I wrote on Google+]

In the past couple of weeks there were some high-profile calls by wealthier people -- Warren Buffet and Matt Damon (the actor), to name two -- to increase taxes on the rich. They *want* to pay more taxes.

My question is this. Why don't you do it yourself?

I mean, set up a 401(c)(3) tax-exempt charity that will accept donations from everyone, rich and not-so-rich alike. Those funds are then taken and distributed as taxes would be.

For example, taxes pay for our schools. There are no shortage of stories where teachers have to provide, out of their own pocket, extra supplies for their classes. Pay for those directly. Pay for school maintenance and repairs. Build buildings. Hell, give bonuses to teachers, administrators and staff as you feel needed. The first $15,000 of a gift to an individual annually is tax-exempt. I don't know one teacher that would refuse a $15k bonus.

A focused, dedicated group of private individuals should easily be able to reduce the needless bureaucracy and do this efficiently.

Don't stop with education. Provide private grants to needy people to subsidize power, heat and food. Build libraries. Set up public wireless networks.

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. But the idea that government is the only one able to provide these types of services is harmful to society.

In 19th-Century French Philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville's book Democracy in America, the author explores what makes America different from Europe. One of the major points is the plethora of "fraternal societies" where individuals join and do what was once the function of only governments in Europe -- actively build and support civil society.

To sum up, it is not necessarily only the government's job to do these things. Fostering the notion that this is the exclusive domain of government is detrimental to a civilized society.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma04/mccain/fraternalorders/page1a.htm

While e-books like the Kindle and Nook have become popular, they are really not much more than a direct translation of paper books to portable, electronic media.

I've been waiting for an e-book that embraces the full multimedia potential of tablet computers. Maybe I've just missed them before, but I believe the standard bearer for something more than just words-on-the-page e-books has just arrived.

"The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore" by former Pixar designer William Joyce is something altogether different.

I've now been using Fedora 15 with the default Gnome 3 interface for about a month, and here are some of my thoughts.

For the past few years I've been a KDE enthusiast. It always struck me as more consistent, better designed and neater both in code and appearance than Gnome.

When KDE 4 came out I took the developers at their word, that it wasn't really on parity with 3.5 and to keep using that if what we prized was completeness. I dabbled with 4.x and didn't switch over until about 4.3.

My "killer apps" on KDE were always K3B, Amarok and the way KIO allowed for seamless network operations in almost every application. I also used KBarcode to print address labels with PostNet barcodes and Kate for most editing, including web development and basic programming.

The problem is, KIOs seems to have been neutered on 4.x and Amarok turned into a steaming pile of shit. I *despise* what they did to it with 4.x. KBarcode didn't make the transition and as things have evolved I just don't burn discs like I used to, so K3B sort of just faded for me.

So, when changing my home PC from Kubuntu I wanted to take a look at Fedora. The main reasons, which I outlined in a previous journal entry, were to move to something closer to what is essentially the industry standard of Red Hat, and to play a bit more with SE Linux.

Gnome vs KDE was a decision after I sat down and evaluated how I used the computer. Looking at what applications I used during the past six months or so, I came up with the following list.

1. Web browser. I spend 90%+ of my time in here. Firefox and Chrome are currently battling it out for my favorite -- Firefox is the reigning champ, but Chrome is looking to dethrone it soon. More in a later journal.

2. Text editing. From text notes to HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript and Perl. Kate is an excellent text editor, and I'd need to find a suitable replacement.

3. File manipulation. Moving files around, mostly different network and internet locations. Konqueror is king in this. Dolphin, the current KDE file browser, sucks. Did I not mention that in my critique of KDE 4 above? No? Then I'll say it again here to make up for it. Dolphin SUCKS!

And...that is about it. Really. You see, a lot of the stuff I used to use stand-alone programs for, like Gramps for genealogy records and Amarok for playing music, I now do thru a web browser.

At the beginning of the year I moved all my media files -- movies and music -- off of my home machine to a server in my basement. Everything is streamed from there and for that, good-old XMMS beats the pants off of Amarok. I have both MP3 and FLAC copies of most of my music, so streaming it is simple.

So, what it boils down to from the OS perspective is that I need decent file manipulation and proper handling of multiple desktops and open applications.

Gnome 3's weaknesses, such as their implementation of dynamic desktops with no keyboard shortcuts, can be remedied with Gnome Shell extensions.

So far, Gedit has been acceptable. It just takes getting used to as it does things slightly differently than Kate, but not so much so that I've been unable to work.

http://www.brighthub.com/hubfolio/matthew-casperson/blog/archive/2011/05/25/efficient-application-switching-with-gnome-3.aspx

This is why I'm more interested in Google ChromeOS than things like Fedora, Ubuntu, KDE and Gnome. So much of what I do has moved into the cloud and web browser, that the underlying OS just needs to focus on speedily getting me online. But -- and here is Chrome's weakness -- be able to actually do some useful work offline. Right now, even with a good connection, some things just have too much latency to comfortably do via the Internet all the time. Text editing and web development is one of them.

So, to conclude, Gnome 3 is fine for me but has started to fade into irrelevance as everything I do moves to "the cloud".

[Note: "The Cloud" doesn't necessarily mean Google, Amazon or the like. It also includes my file/LAMP server in the basement that is accessible from anywhere -- if you have the magic keys. The point is my data has migrated off of my local system, which is devolving into a glorified Internet terminal.

I now have a Google+ account and have invites to send. If anyone wants an invite, give me the e-mail address you want the invite sent to.

I am a KDE person. I've tried Fluxbox, Gnome 1 & 2, XFCE and half-a-dozen other desktops but have always come back to KDE. I like the way it works, and that I can customize it to work the way *I* want to.

So far, I had avoided Gnome 3 for two reasons.

The first is QT impresses me. It is clean, efficient, functional, professional and essentially a world-class framework. GTK and Gnome always struck me as an ad-hoc, sloppy mess of baling wire and duct tape group of code. Gnome was "we can make it work" to QT's "we can make it work and do it right". Your opinion may vary.

The second reason is found in documents like this one. Folks, if I wanted some pretentious asshole to tell me "we know better than you" and "you will work this way because we have decided it is the way you will work", I would have just bought a Mac and been done with it.

Now I'm the first to admit that frequently I am that pretentious asshole saying they know better and you should listen to what I say because I'm right and you're wrong. Actually, I get paid fairly well for doing just that. But there is a difference. I always say "this is the right way, you *SHOULD* do it that way" but leave the choice up to you. I don't tell people "you *WILL* do it this way, you have no choice".

It is the difference between how I treat my 20-something year-old children and the 3-year old. Gnome treats me like the 3-year old and I resent it. And they're wrong about some things, which is the unforgivable sin.

Still, I hadn't actually tried it for myself so when I decided I needed to reload my main machine from scratch, I opted to go with the default version of Fedora and not the KDE version and give it a fair shake.

[Sidebar: Why reload from scratch? Because I had the 64-bit version of Kubuntu on my main desktop and needed the Citrix Receiver to work properly. Citrix doesn't do native 64-bit and while it'll work with the 32-bit compatibility libraries loaded, plus some extra files extracted by hand from packages hosted elsewhere. It is a royal pain to actually set up and I was tired of messing around with it. Besides, all I have is 4 Gb of RAM so a pure 64-bit machine really brought me no benefits.]

[Sidebar: Why Fedora when I was running Kubuntu before? Because everything at work, and every other place I've ever worked, is Red Hat on the servers with some Fedora thrown in on development boxes. I also am doing a bit of work with SE Linux and support for that in Fedora/RHEL is superior to Ubuntu.]

So, for the last two weeks I've been running the default install of Fedora 15, with Gnome 3 and so far, it is pretty nice. I've just now gotten around to reading the FAQ on Fedora's website, so it answered some of my questions about how to fix certain pet peeves.

Most of the differences are just that, different. After two weeks of use, I've gotten used to the changes and for the most part they work fine for me. Some are better, some aren't. There is very little that rises to the level of "deal breaker".

[Rest of Rant Removed]

I had a nice rant against Gnome 3 going there, all of which revolved around various "pretentious asshole -- you WILL do it OUR way" items. However, after much digging, I found out that while the main developers still seem to believe Gnome is Mini-Me to Steve Jobs' Dr. Evil, things are greatly mitigated by various Gnome Shell Extensions.

My only real remaining complaint is that the entire thing seems designed around a smaller-screen, touch-based interface. The problem for me is I have a 22", 1920x1080 resolution screen and not a tablet. At least give me the OPTION to configure things to work better on a big screen.

That and their mangling of workspaces. But I need to see if there is a shell extension to make it do what I want before I return to my rant.

The result so far is that I can easily work with Gnome 3 and the applications it has without having to revert to KDE.