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Very interesting... Yeah... about 8 years ago I was reading something and saw that word. I wanted a deeper understanding of what it meant so I looked it up... then I thought, that would be a cool title to give to cool people. Been using it ever since.

Oh, and your test results thing didn't cause me any real trouble. I was kind of just waiting to see if the upload speed ever got better after Time Warner fixed the signal level problem, and there wasn't any noticeable difference in performance from what it had been in the past at 0.8Mbps. I was a little worried that a new Gigabit Ethernet switch (that I put in just prior to this issue) had gone flakey on me, but again, everything seems to be working right, so I kind of just ignored it. I didn't have a good feel about how much upload speed affects web performance when no really huge files are involved. Obviously the effect is around an order of magnitude smaller than the effect of download speed since, since the download is roughly an order of magnitude faster than the upload speeds at many ISPs. I had forgotten what a Greek Sophist was and had to go look it up. Hopefully I can help on another day. I'm a retired engineer so I'm always looking for interesting tech stuff.

Thanks so much. I'm both surprised and honored. Yes, you are right, a true bug in one means that there's a bug in all. And as for it being a scary time to fly, amazingly, the reliability and safety of the aircraft is way better than in the old analog days. Mostly because the size and weight of those old systems wouldn't allow you to put redundancy everywhere you needed it. Now the probability of a catastrphic failure due to electronics or software failure is extremely low because with a redundant system, the probability is the product of the failure rates. So if one channel has a probability of catastrophic failure of 1.0 E-06 per flight hour, then the probability of having both channels go out is 1.0 E-12. These numbers are really small, but with thousands of aircraft flying all the time, they are racking up millions of hours a month, so the numbers have to be incredibly small or there'd be planes falling out of the sky regularly. The safety critical flight control systems on the planes are usually triple channel redundant. Engine systems are dual redundant because there are two engines. So as for is there too much redundancy, economics keeps it to a minimum, but as the number of aircraft flying increases, better safety numbers are always being sought. As for the weight of that redundancy, it's all about gas mileage (making money). The aircraft design weight is set by competition amongs the plane manufacturers; each one wanting to earn more money with better mileage and lower ticket costs to steal sales away from the other guy. So in order to get the weight down with the added redundancy, smaller lighter electronics and new stronger lighter hardware in the control systems is required. It's usually more expensive. So redundancy usually only goes into the real safety critical systems. It's getting to be the same in cars. Well enough rambling about the aircraft world. Thanks again for the promotion. I do test regularly using your tools, and check in the forums every week or two.

Well, I feel better knowing that there was an issue with your download speed as well... because this bug didn't effect the download test. ... dang, scary time to fly. I think I would have rather flown in an analog plane at that time. I guess having two redundant software systems only helps if one completely fails... not if there's a bug, because if there's a bug in one, there will be a bug in the other one too. Right? Sometimes I wonder how much more a comercial airliner, for instance a 737, weighs due to it's redundancy... and how much extra fuel is spent each year for unnecessary redundant systems... systems only in place to make the consumer feel safer. You worked in that industry... do you feel that it's a little over redundant or do you think it's just right because of the nature of what's being dealt with. I mean... does everything really need a backup? Is it, to a point, being done to make consumers feel safer about airline travel? In all fairness, you caught this bug before anyone else... I've promoted your account to sophist. I'm going to tell you the same thing I told Smith6612... Cheers! -D

Interesting. Glad you found it. When I look in my test results, I can see exactly when the fix went in. I was a bit puzzled when the upload speed showed low but I didn't notice any performance hit. Because of that, I didn't push it with Time Warner. Their fix of the download speed wild variation due to the signal level made the performance right again. Software bugs are tough. Before I retired I worked at GE Aircraft Engines in Evendale OH. I was an electronic engine control circuit designer. In the 1980s we transitioned from purely analog controls to digital controls. Each engine control had two independent channels of hardware running the same OS and AS. In those days there weren't very good software design and validation tools and standards. We were always terrified of the subtle software bugs that could lock up the Software and cause an engine shutdown. Commercial airlines always have a minimum of two engines and the ability to fly with one engine out. But both engines (4 control channels) run the same software. So there was always that small probability of a bug that would take out all of the engines at the same time. Miraculously (due to a lot of SW engineers checking code) it never happened. We had a couple of control channel shutdowns due to subtle software errors or hardwarevfailures over the years, but never a common mode one that took everything down. Back then the software was a lot simpler, and the engine controls had hydro mechanical backups. These days, there are no hydromechanical backups because they are very heavy, and the software is orders of magnitude more complex. But the design and validation process tools are also orders of magnitude more sophisticated. But every time there is a new set of requirements that result in a software change, there's always the potential for something to slip by. Thankfully, a simple core of hardware and software safety nets that were developed that could be ported to new processors, memory, and control chips, and the wheel didn't have to be reinvented. Subtle software glitches are very tough to catch. On Sun Aug 19 2012 @ 1:10:48 pm the world was right again.

I knew there was another topic on this I needed to reply to... I just lost track of where it was. Actually, I hate to say it but there was in fact a bug that was discovered. Had had to do with the character set being misinterpreted. I should have caught it sooner. https://testmy.net/ip...ad/#entry336113 It doesn't mean that you didn't have an issue... but it was definitely being exaggerated in the results because of the character set issue. What actually helped to catch this bug was that the member who posted the topic above tested on old.testmy.net and compared the results. Which were out of line. That site is static and doesn't change... the main site however is constantly being developed and bugs are bound to happen during that process. This one was such a small thing but the impact was great. When you contacted me I wasn't expecting to see a bug because there no heavy development on the upload test since my last waiting period. I start and stop development on different sections and put them under a period of waiting so that any bugs can surface... in this way I can know, "okay... no bugs... keep building." or "I've got a bug, much be something to do with the last round I did on that script." -- I have a lot of code and I've found that's the way that works best for me... with the smallest impact on my users when there is a bug. ​I dismissed it as a problem with your connection because nobody else had said anything. The problem was that the character set wasn't being necessarily changed by the code... some kind of update to the apache server was fooling with it also. This was only effecting the upload test by the way. And I don't think it effected everyone... under some circumstances it may have been defaulting to the intended character set. Apparently I had some reading to catch up on about some new standards that were coming down the pipe regarding character sets... programming is constantly evolving and adjustments need to be made, this is why I can never stop building. Other websites out there wouldn't have big a problem with this issue, they might have a few characters on the page show up incorrectly but not really a big deal. Only hackers and geeks use 8bit characters when they type. But because of the nature of what TMN is doing to your browser during the test something like that had a big impact in this situation. The cumulative difference of all the characters of the test information being misinterpreted by your browser obviously impacted results. This is now being basically hardwired into the configuration via .htaccess so it can never happen again... unless I accidentally delete that file, but trust me... if that happened the whole site would be messed up and it would be a very obvious problem. I'm really sorry if the results confused you or caused you any trouble. I make mistakes sometimes but I always learn from them.