Re: Bug#684128: down the memory hole
On Thu, 4 Apr 2013 15:51:38 +0200
Samuel Thibault <sthibault@debian.org> wrote:
>> I disagree: that mail starts with a chat between "Humpty Dumpty" and
>> "Alice", which both have nothing to do with the bug at hand. There
>> was nothing in the subject or the first paragraphs of the text that
>> indicated how that story was related to the choice of binary or
>> decimal disk storage units.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,
"it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
The issue at hand is whether somebody, i.e. the hard disk manufacturers,
and their Debian apologists, can reasonably use words like "kilobyte"
and "megabyte", which have had a well established-meaning for half a
century, understood by every single person on the planet with a reason
to care, and unilaterally redefine them to mean something different.
The hard disk manufacturers have been forced, by repeated lawsuits, to
admit in their advertising that they are doing so. The Debian installer
does not bother to inform people that it shares this position, and lets
them assume that the meaning that every technically-informed person
would assume, if not told otherwise, is what is intended. One only finds
out otherwise when the installation is complete, and it's too late to do
anything about it other than wipe the disks and start all over again.
Which is to say, that Humpty-Dumpty's remarks are EXACTLY on point,
especially the part about "neither more nor less."
> I do remember this mail, and I remember thinking "uh, spamassassin
> missed killing that spam" without reading it all. Only the very end of
> the mail doesn't look like spam, there's very little probability that
> a maintainer would have gone that far.
The common understanding of "spam" is that it is the same thing as
Unsolicited Commercial Email, that is, it has an AGENDA, it's SELLING
something, legitimate or (probably) otherwise.
Which part of the message in question did you take to be an
advertisement? Did you REALLY imagine that it was shilling for a bank
which was unconcerned about seven percent discrepancies in cash
transactions?
Do you think there is any way that the relevance of posts to a bug
report can be determined, without reference to the context in which they
appear, *all the preceeding discussion*?
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