title: Ruby net/ping returning false for google? (Works from command-line)
body: <p>I can ping google from my local machine, but can anyone tell me why I might be getting "false" when I run the following in IRB on the same machine? Really frustrating as a ping is supposed to be the most simple network op and I just can't get it to work!</p>
  
  <pre><code>1.9.2-p290 :001 &gt; require "net/ping"
   =&gt; true 
  1.9.2-p290 :003 &gt; pinger = Net::Ping::External.new("http://www.google.com")
   =&gt; #&lt;Net::Ping::External:0x88eac30 @host="http://www.google.com", @port=7, @timeout=5, @exception=nil, @warning=nil, @duration=nil&gt; 
  1.9.2-p290 :004 &gt; pinger.ping
   =&gt; false 
  1.9.2-p290 :005 &gt; 
  </code></pre>