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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!nsw1.news.telstra.net!wa.news.telstra.net!news.telstra.net!psgrain!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!news.wco.com!HSNX.wco.com!supernews.com!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!cs.utexas.edu!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!enews.sgi.com!fido.asd.sgi.com!neteng!lm From: lm@neteng.engr.sgi.com (Larry McVoy) 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" Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc Date: 3 Apr 1997 01:08:39 GMT Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 33 Message-ID: <5huvun$hlq@fido.asd.sgi.com> References: <331BB7DD.28EC@net5.net> <5hui15$8ru@fido.asd.sgi.com> <5hul1c$o4s$1@bofh.noc.best.net> <5hun4a$eav@fido.asd.sgi.com> <5hus36$3ev$1@bofh.noc.best.net> Reply-To: lm@slovax.engr.sgi.com NNTP-Posting-Host: neteng.engr.sgi.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38399 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6579 comp.sys.sgi.misc:29664 Ron Echeverri (rone@bofh.noc.best.net) wrote: : That depends on whether you are benchmarking the operating system or : the hardware, which are, indeed, two entirely different things. You : can either benchmark two different operating systems on the same type : of hardware, or you can benchmark two different machines running the : same program. I beg to differ. LADDIS, TPC, Webstone, lmbench, etc., are all benchmarking combinations of hardware and operating systems. In many cases, it is impossible to seperate the two, there is only one OS for some platforms. People all over the world find it useful to know what the results for the same benchmarks on various current platforms. That is all lmbench claims to provide. That is what I wanted to do and I consider that effort largely successful. If _you_ wish to use lmbench to compare operating systems on the same platform, be my guest. But since that was not my goal, and I have never claimed that it was my goal, stop claiming that I did a bad job of realizing _your_ goal. It's your frigging goal, not mine. Anyone can look at some work, claim it doesn't do what they want it to do and therefor the work is "bogus" or "unscientific". By that definition, _all_ published works are "bogus" and "unscientific". You have to evaluate the work on the basis of what it said it would do. lmbench says that on platform X the performance of benchmark Y is Z. That _is_ science, is it not? It might not be what you wanted, but that doesn't make it any less valid, it just makes it something different than you wanted. Get over it. -- --- Larry McVoy lm@sgi.com http://reality.sgi.com/lm (415) 933-1804