Re: On linux kernel packaging issue, assuming that user is never right
Mathieu Roy wrote: Why do you always assume being facing idiots? I guess the answer would be experience... No, I'm only guessing, not knowing... People knows all about placebo effect, but do you have any evidence that there is nothing more than placebo effect? If you can't provide evidence that a change produces a speedup of at least 10%, don't change anything, since the changes itself would probably be too expensive. Maybe we don't have to depend on 10% but on 5% for the kernel, though. Even this discussion is expensive and for little gain except somebody can prove that certain optimisations account for a certain speedup and the price of more packages, more maintenance, more size etc. should be paid. Regards, Joey -- Life is too short to run proprietary software. -- Bdale Garbee Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.
Re: On linux kernel packaging issue, assuming that user is never right
On Sat, Nov 08, 2003 at 06:59:39PM +0100, Mathieu Roy wrote: Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] a tapoté : On Sat, Nov 08, 2003 at 01:58:29PM +0100, Mateusz Papiernik wrote: Andrew Suffield wrote: We're all very interested in *real* evidence here, because there hasn't been any in the past. If you don't have any evidence, you can expect people to call bullshit on this. I can't send any *evidence* here, but I can post my own opinions and experiences with kernels. And I'd say thats not a bullshit. Yes, that's true that performance gain isn't very big and noticeable, but after recompiling 2.4.18-bf24 from woody with my own optimisations for athlon, I noticed little speed up in compiling my programs. This is probably what is known as the placebo effect. Human impressions of this form are always entirely disconnected with reality; the mind applies filters based on expectations, that throw them hopelessly adrift. If you build your kernel with options you expect to work faster, it will seem faster; if you take a pill, you feel better. Why do you always assume being facing idiots? Partial straw man compounded with slander. Learn some manners. People knows all about placebo effect, but do you have any evidence that there is nothing more than placebo effect? I have considerable evidence that there *is* one here, and it's Mateusz's statement, which I quoted I noticed little speed up in compiling my programs That's not I timed it and it was faster, and it's not I carefully benchmarked it - it's an impression. Whether or not there was an actual performance increase is irrelevant, because there will have been a placebo effect, and it renders the data point useless when alone, statistically. [You *could* build a valid experiment using seems faster, but not from one person and not in an uncontrolled environment] If you compile a kernel without lot of modules for hardware and stuff you do not have, there is nothing weird to suppose it may have some consequences at later point, by having a kernel size reduced by 25%. See, that's the sort of nonsense that I object to. It is highly likely that kernel size does not affect system performance in a measurable fashion, other than on low-memory systems. Why would it? [The rest of your mail managed to miss the point entirely, so I'll skip replying to it] -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: On linux kernel packaging issue, assuming that user is never right
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] a tapoté : On Sat, Nov 08, 2003 at 01:58:29PM +0100, Mateusz Papiernik wrote: Andrew Suffield wrote: We're all very interested in *real* evidence here, because there hasn't been any in the past. If you don't have any evidence, you can expect people to call bullshit on this. I can't send any *evidence* here, but I can post my own opinions and experiences with kernels. And I'd say thats not a bullshit. Yes, that's true that performance gain isn't very big and noticeable, but after recompiling 2.4.18-bf24 from woody with my own optimisations for athlon, I noticed little speed up in compiling my programs. This is probably what is known as the placebo effect. Human impressions of this form are always entirely disconnected with reality; the mind applies filters based on expectations, that throw them hopelessly adrift. If you build your kernel with options you expect to work faster, it will seem faster; if you take a pill, you feel better. Why do you always assume being facing idiots? People knows all about placebo effect, but do you have any evidence that there is nothing more than placebo effect? If you compile a kernel without lot of modules for hardware and stuff you do not have, there is nothing weird to suppose it may have some consequences at later point, by having a kernel size reduced by 25%. Your perceptions are vaguely reliable for the difference between 10 seconds and one second. They're not so good for the difference between one second and a half second, and they're utterly useless for the difference between fifteen minutes and ten (really). Ironically, this usually results in a small gain in productivity, but that isn't actually dependent on the technical change - just on the user believing that there was one. Large tech support teams occasionally do fake hardware upgrades (strip the box down and put it back together again) for users that complain about their personal system being slow, and it actually works. One more time, it means taking users for loosers. If someone complain about hardware being slow, reasons may be psychological (a collegue got a faster computer just in the next office), but you cannot assume from that example that this kind of users complains are always for psychological reasons. There may be also real hardware failure/misconfiguration. Doing fake hardware upgrade seems a very extreme attitude (yes, it makes of you a liar), justifiable only in extreme case (with user which is actually a real pain). Regards, -- Mathieu Roy +-+ | General Homepage: http://yeupou.coleumes.org/ | | Computing Homepage: http://alberich.coleumes.org/ | | Not a native english speaker: | | http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english | +-+
Re: On linux kernel packaging issue, assuming that user is never right
On Sat, 08 Nov 2003, Mathieu Roy wrote: People knows all about placebo effect, but do you have any evidence that there is nothing more than placebo effect? It's normal for the person claiming that there are two populations to provide appropriate data and statistics to back up the claim.[1] By default, we generally assume that two groups come from the same population without evidence to refute it. If you compile a kernel without lot of modules for hardware and stuff you do not have, there is nothing weird to suppose it may have some consequences at later point, by having a kernel size reduced by 25%. You can suppose it. But you shouldn't wander around claiming it to be so without actually running the tests and providing the data. One more time, it means taking users for loosers. [...] There may be also real hardware failure/misconfiguration. Without appropriate tests and measurements, there is no way to distinguish between real change and perceived change. Since we have the tools available to quantitatively measure the change, why not go down that route and actually measure it before making these claims?[2] Don Armstrong 1: Quite obviously, because H_o cannot be proved. We can only fail to reject it. 2: If you do, please do a better job than most benchmarks that I've seen. Hint: If you don't have replicates of your sampling, your data is useless and says nothing. -- Fate and Temperament are two words for one and the same concept. -- Novalis [Hermann Hesse _Demian_] http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu signature.asc Description: Digital signature
