Slashdot

Update - 14th May: Problem solved. Looks like it's a bug in OpenBSD's "pf" (well, one that was fixed in a later version) - they were ignoring the "wscale" field of the TCP set up packets. Not an issue until people actually started using wscales of anything other than zero, which is a fairly recent phenomenon. I'm going to use this as a final excuse to abandon OpenBSD. Anyway, thanks to everyone who helped, particularly LarsG and jesup.

So here's the thing: a few months ago my wife bought a new PC, with Vista, and it doesn't connect properly to the outside world via my network. The relevent part of the network looks like this:

Vista Box <Ethernet> OpenBSD NAT gateway/router <PPPoE> DSL modem <DSL> Earthlink

This was kind of the first time I'd ever noticed a machine on my network having these kinds of problems, and I thought it was just a Vista thing. My other OpenBSD box, similarly connected, has no problem. Well, except for Multiply and Wikipedia where normal queries work fine but trying to post anything is a PITA. I'll talk about that in a moment.

After a while I just set up a SOCKS proxy on the OpenBSD server and that was enough to get things working. But I also noticed that my HD DVD player was having problems connecting to the outside world - and get this, when pointed at my internal web proxy, it worked too.

Skip forward to Ubuntu 8.04. I install this, and suddenly my laptop - which worked fine with 7.0something - has exactly the same problems as the Vista box. And probably the same issue as the HD DVD player - I haven't yet taken advantage of Toshiba's offer to send me the source code to the latter.

My network is the same as it ever was. The version of OpenBSD I'm running is ancient. I. Have. Not. Changed. Anything. Just upgraded one operating system on a device that no longer works and added two other devices. Anything that was working is still working. Anything "new", be it a new PC with Vista or an old PC with an upgraded version of Linux is not.

Conclusion: something has changed. Someone's introduced something new and funky into the way TCP/IP works, that's excited Microsoft and the Linux people, and it's totally screwed up my connection.

I've Googled around. Nobody else seems to be having the same issue. Or perhaps they are and I'm not using the right keywords. PPPoE has a known MTU/MRU issue, but the PPP client I use actually rewrites the headers of outgoing packets to force the other end to use the smaller packet size. Until "the upgrade" this worked fine.

I'm going to temporarily post this in my old Slashdot journal too in case anyone there can think of anything. What's changed? What was introduced in the last year or so that could be causing problems with a NAT/PPPoE connection?

1. While crude, the UI generally doesn't get in the way (and what the hell's going on with the nested boxes at Slashdot? I seriously cannot make head or tail of what's supposed to be a reply to what unless it's either very obvious from the content of the comment, or I open a potential "parent" in a new window. When I left this was a "new" feature in a context where I was already finding it hard to follow threads given every other non-trivial comment had to be opened in a new window, but having left and gone back... urgh!)
   
2. A nested comments mode, as God intended. Though it's not the default, causing much anguish amongst seasoned users.
3. Rich-text editor for JEs that can switch to HTML source editing mode for clearing up problems. Unfortunately I do hit problems quite often. Also just one mode, equivalent to Slashdot's "Plain Old Text" for replies.
   
4. Images, videos, cool!
5. Tags instead of topics
6. Reading your friends' JEs all mixed together in chronological order is encouraged, not a hidden link restricted to five-at-a-time known only to a secretive elite. (This is not a comment reflecting an inferiority complex BTW, I was in that secretive elite...)
   

1. If you thought Slashdot's "fans/foes/friends/freaks" crap was over-complex, you haven't seen Multiply. I'd really like to go back to having my JEs accessible to all logged in users except those I explicitly ban. I don't even know what half this "Contacts/Distant Network/Close Network/Ethernet Network/FOX Network" crap means. Apparently some people are allowed to find out my birthday, but I don't know why or who exactly.
   
2. I'm having the same networking (TCP/IP, not social) problem with Multiply I did with Wikipedia, notably any submissions I make from my home network don't make it. Weirdly, the text generally does (though there may be a size aspect to it) but it appears to "time out", the tags are lost, and the access is restricted to "You" (ie me.) I can get around it by getting Chloe to access the JE via the T-Mobile EDGE/UMA network and make the changes, but that's a PITA.
3. I don't have much of a network. I can spam the Circular Refuge group, but I really would prefer to limit my JEs to people who are explicitly interested in them. Plus I'd like my JEs associated with my journal.
4. UI may not get in the way, but boy is it ugly. And while I can customize my own site, I can't customize the look and feel of my Inbox.
   

Original Thread

So I tried, I failed, I explained the problem, I suggested compromises (and would have been willing to hear any had any been proposed), and the last comment I've had, from pudge (who else), essentially did everything but explicitly call me a liar. The editors have spoken, and they're not willing to countenance any fixes that might reduce the impact of truncating all comments over 4k in size from D1 discussions. Note: not simply undo the bugs they've introduced, but actually anything at all, anything, that might reduce the impact upon their fucking up of D1.

I'm finding it a chore to read Slashdot. So I guess, the obvious step now, is to stop reading Slashdot.

I may have a play around at Multiply, though it's been a while and I didn't like it much when I last used it. I wrote a Greasemonkey script to change the links to https so I can write in relative privacy from work, but that's the least of the issues. If that site doesn't work either, then I'll probably lay off the journaling for a while.

I've enjoyed being here. Despite my annoyance at them at the moment, I have to thank CmdrTaco and Pudge for keeping it running for so long. I especially thank the friends and fans who make journaling here worth the effort. Time to move on.

So the AT&T system we bought about two years ago has finally annoyed us too many times. Shortly after we bought it, one of the handset's charging circuits broke. The others have a habit of misbehaving, they'll refuse to pick up a call and we'll be scrambling for the other working handset. Call quality isn't that great, it's passable but complaints that nobody can hear us are common.

Now, something wonderful has happened in the US concerning cordless phones, and it's this: they've finally approved a frequency band for DECT and after some trepidation, the consumer electronics industry has decided to go with it. I'm surprised, to be honest, that they continue to sell the old 2.4GHz crap, that stuff is just as expensive to make as DECT but the interference with Wifi/Bluetooth et al means it'll never be as high a quality. And as for the 5GHz and 900MHz devices, well, it's not as if you can even sell those, modified or unmodified, in Europe.

So what's DECT and why is this "wonderful"? DECT is a microcellular system that's been popular in Europe since the mid-nineties. It's completely standardized, it uses its own spectrum (alas, the US spectrum and Rest Of World spectrum is different), in its most basic form it's fairly capable, and the standardization means you can add handsets from any manufacturer or replace your old base station from any manufacturer. Call quality is great, 32kbps ADPCM. It's got the same kind of range as Wifi. It's a very nice system.

There are, in Europe, one or two mobile phones that double as DECT handsets, though that's uncommon. But it gives you some idea of what standardization can allow for.

When I first came to the US, I bought a Siemens Gigaset system which was clearly based upon their DECT designs but was operating in the 2.4GHz range. These worked very, very, well, the only downsides being that they were non-standard (there was no standard for them to use), that when I eventually went Wifi both they and the wireless network suffered when both were in operation, and that the system was eventually discontinued. I couldn't understand why no attempt had been made to create a US standard, or just to adopt the DECT system. I'm guessing, in the end, it was the success of Wifi and Bluetooth in the US, and DECT in Europe, that convinced many in the electronics industry that it was time to cooperate on a standard. In the former case, I don't just mean "Because Wifi and Proprietary 2.4GHz phones were fighting each other", I mean that people were suddenly buying wireless networking stuff specifically because it was interoperable.

So last week I ordered a couple of Siemens E450s, for about $50 each (I got them refurbished. Usual price is about double to triple that.) One arrived yesterday, the other will arrive RSN. These are "DECT 6.0" phones, essentially DECT systems designed for the US DECT spectrum. My thoughts so far?

Well, I kind of like it but it does have some bizarre flaws and I'm completely baffled as to why it would. They are:

1. The headset jack is on the bottom. Which means you can't leave the headset plugged in while you're charging the phone. And just to add insult to injury, it has a rubber cover on it that has to be scraped off with a fingernail while you're trying to plug the headset in, so you really want to leave the headset in all the time because inserting it whenever you start a call is going to be a PITA.
2. There's no mute button. You can put the caller on hold (complete with cheesy hold music that sounds like a Commodore 64 is playing it, but you can't mute someone. This is more of an issue for L. than it is for me, she has friends who'll talk for hours without expecting you to say anything, so L'll do things like go to the bathroom, muting the phone so the friend doesn't hear what she's doing. Not going to happen with this one.
3. Non-standard battery. Well, that's not exactly uncommon these days, but it's a flaw nonetheless - my old Gigaset used regular AA rechargeable batteries, and I thought this did from the Amazon.com description, but apparently not.

Call quality is good though. The speakerphone is very, very, good, it's obviously doing some awesome echo cancellation or something because despite our best efforts we couldn't make it sound like a speakerphone when we called the house. I also liked the size and shape and general look of the handset, and the build quality looks good to me though that's hard to judge. There are some nice additional features, one of which definitely appealed to L: The system has a "monitor" mode so, for instance, you can put one handset in a baby room, put the living room handset on speaker, and listen to what's going on in the baby-room, just like a baby-monitor.

The E450 doesn't, for now, get the Squiggleslash Award for Not Being Crap, the bizarreness over the headset and lack of mute function means that it isn't what it could be, and appears to not be what it could be because of cluelessness on the part of Siemens. But it says something that even with those flaws, it just seems infinitely better than virtually every phone I've bought in the US with the exception of the original Siemens Gigaset system.

That's the theory anyway. Someone comes along with something shinier than the old product you kind of liked, despite its warts, and you're told it's strictly optional - oh sure, they'll be encouraging you to use it because it's "better", but if you don't want it, the old thing you liked better will always be available.

And so went the argument with Slashdot's D2. If you didn't like D2, well, D1 would always be there.

Except... except... it's disappearing. D1 today isn't what D1 was three days ago, and that wasn't what it was two weeks ago, and that wasn't what it was six months or a year ago. And most of the changes, well, they've been for the worse. You know what D1 was good - well, for relative definitions of good, at least compared to D2 - at? Letting you read the comments. Set your preferences to "Nested" with all but the largest comments included in full, and you could read the entire conversation with the space bar*.

True, they fucked it up when threads grew over 100 comments, as threads frequently do, especially if one of the first sub-threads was itself over 100 comments, but it was bearable.

From a usability point of view, "just hit the space bar when you've finished the current page" is a pretty good model. There's no mousing over to Fitts-law inefficient links, there's no constant moving from the mouse to the keyboard and vice-versa. It works. Kinda.

But it's going to pot, the end of an era. D1 is being rendered unusable and Malda really, seriously, doesn't care.

We're really not trying to change D1, but the fact is that almost nobody uses it any more. And unfortunately in some cases, since D1 & 2 share some code, some changes to improve D2 affect D1. It's unintentional, but inevitable. We're working to make the Slashdot experience the best we can for as many people as possible, and for edge cases (people who reject ajax for example) we don't always meet their needs perfectly. It's not malicious, it's just a law of returns- making 90% happy takes X hours. Making 99% happy makes 2X hours, making 99.9% happy takes 3X hours. And you can never make everyone happy all of the time- you just add 9s to that decimal.

There are plenty of criticisms of the new system, ranging from opinion (whitespace, formatting, layout) to interferances with the old system (the mod2 history) but all we can do is take the concerns and do the best that we can to address them, always trying to balance our very limited manpower against a population that will NEVER be 100% satisfied.

"Almost nobody" uses D1, so when they screw around and change D2, and the change impacts D1 (I'm failing to see what could have changed in D2 that suddenly made D1's ability to show entire comments inefficient, but whatever), well, it would be wasting too much effort because there just aren't enough of us.

D1 now has the stupid formatting. Moderation history is a PITA - even if I thought AJAX was preferable here, the new system just plain isn't. Preferences are a PITA. It's no longer possible to read a thread where people are posting interesting, informative, insightful posts without clicking on every other bloody comment because all the good ones are, for no good reason beyond ancient concerns about bandwidth and spam abuse, truncated. So, no, D1 is no longer an option. It has gone away, to be replaced by an inferior knock-off with none of its advantages and all of the bugs that drove us up the wall.

This is the second time in Slashdot's history where the changes made have been so drastic and so utterly wrong that I've considered leaving it. I sincerely hope Malda fixes the bugs. This is a wreck, a product of the "oh! shiny!" mentality that computing people are so infamous for. Usability is taking a back seat. I'm not asking for the numerous faults and bugs of D1 to be fixed, just for it to be no worse than it was three weeks ago.

* Ok, in some browsers you have to use Pg Dn. Same difference.