Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Mon, 24 Dec 2001 07:37:48 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Mon, 24 Dec 2001 07:37:38 -0500 Received: from t2.redhat.com ([199.183.24.243]:19186 "EHLO passion.cambridge.redhat.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Mon, 24 Dec 2001 07:37:23 -0500 X-Mailer: exmh version 2.4 06/23/2000 with nmh-1.0.4 From: David Woodhouse X-Accept-Language: en_GB In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20011223080930.00c5aed0@10.1.1.42> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20011223080930.00c5aed0@10.1.1.42> <4.3.2.7.2.20011222075342.00c11e00@10.1.1.42> <4.3.2.7.2.20011222075342.00c11e00@10.1.1.42>

To: Stephen Satchell Cc: Phil Howard , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Changing KB, MB, and GB to KiB, MiB, and GiB in Configure.help. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2001 12:37:17 +0000 Message-ID: <26276.1009197437@redhat.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org list@fluent2.pyramid.net said: > >If you are more interested in the choices of the marketplace than in > >technical correctness, one has to wonder what you're doing on this mailing > >list. > Nice ad hominem attack, David. Attack the messenger. Good boy. That's not what I understood 'ad hominem' to mean. My understanding was that ad hominem involved an attack on the person making the argument, followed by an obviously false assertion that such attack renders the person's arguments invalid, even though the details of the attack made are completely unrelated to the matter being discussed. Thus observing that you sent your mail using a Windows MUA, then declaring that your argument is invalid because you're a Windows user and therefore obviously mentally deficient, would be an ad hominem attack. My response, though it could possibly be called an 'attack' if you were feeling particularly thin-skinned, was definitely based upon the discussion at hand - I expressed surprise at the criterion of marketplace acceptability which you used to justify your position. > I also mentioned that we have a very, very large base of "legacy > users" who do not understand what MiB would be (outside of the > context of the movie _Men in Black_) and who would become very, very > confused. In short, making the change would CONFUSE THE > NON-TECHNICAL USERS more than they already are. But this term _is_ used outside that context. And the context it's used in, in just about all cases, makes it blindingly obvious to all but the densest reader what the intended meaning is. Maybe _those_ people will remain slightly confused about where we mean 10^3 and where we mean 2^10, but at least people with a clue no longer have to be confused about such things. As an example - what possible meaning could you contrive for 'KiB' in the following: This lets you select the page size of the kernel. For best IA-64 performance, a page size of 8KiB or 16KiB is recommended. For best IA-32 compatibility, a page size of 4KiB should be selected (the vast majority of IA-32 binaries work perfectly fine with a larger page size). For Itanium systems, do NOT chose a page size larger than 16KiB. Surely it's difficult to imagine anyone reading that and coming to any other conclusion than the correct one? I accept that is often appropriate to 'dumb down' documentation and explanations somewhat to cater for the lowest common denominator members of the audience. It is much more rarely appropriate to dumb it down so far that it becomes factually inaccurate. The tuition of physics at high school, in Further Education and then Higher Education is perhaps an example of when such oversimplifications are necessary and appropriate. Some people will never need to know that Newton's Laws break down, and even if that weren't the case, they wouldn't have a whelk's chance in a supernova of understanding Relativity anyway. So why trouble them with it? But in the situation at hand, there is no justification for catering to the ignorant in our documentation to the extent that it becomes inaccurate. The difficulty in understanding the correct text is just not sufficient to justify the inaccuracies. -- dwmw2 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/