*BSD News Article 92354


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From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc
Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community"
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 14:07:18 -0800
Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM
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Russell L. Carter wrote:
> In Larry's phrasing, about $12K in disks and mebbe $8K in system
> (actually, Gold Plated System, must be a 24x7 1hr hardware component
> replacement service contract buried in there somewhere), for say 4-6 way
> striping if you happened to be running FreeBSD.
> 
> Seems like this technique of using faster hardware to
> "demonstrate" better software performance has been wielded
> before... at Usenix, maybe?  ;-)

Ooh, let's not raise that one again! :-)

Still, since Larry has now proven to us all that one can blatently get
away with this kind of sleight-of-hand marketing, hell even be awarded a
*show prize* for it (which only confirmed to me that not only is the
USENIX review board blind to egregious statistics abuse in a paper, it
will award it a prize if the presenter gets a better than 6.7 score on
the laugh meter :-) I intend to show next year how a Pentium Pro 200
running FreeBSD *significantly outperforms* a Linux machine running on a
486 DX2 with half the memory and IDE drives (the FreeBSD machine will,
of course, have 64MB of memory and Atlas-II SCSI drives).  When people
ask how I can possibly expect to get away with it, I'll simply say that
it's a well known and respected technique (didn't you read Larry McVoy's
USENIX paper?  Well gee!) and perfectly correct since all I'm saying is
that it had better numbers and that's clearly true, right?  It's all
right here in black and white.  Equal comparisons are for people with no
imagination, I say, and I'm with Larry all the way.  If it sells it, say
it! ;-)
-- 
- Jordan Hubbard
  FreeBSD core team / Walnut Creek CDROM.