"The plural of anecdote isn't data"
"The plural of anecdote isn't data"
Posted Feb 24, 2014 18:35 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)In reply to: "The plural of anecdote isn't data" by Wol
Parent article: Debian TC vote on init system coupling
On the other hand, not all types of »evidence« are the same. One person claiming they briefly saw something fuzzy in the distance that might have been a Sasquatch is different from one person bringing an actual live Sasquatch in a cage to a convention of field zoologists. It is a lot easier (as well as usually more appropriate, Occam's razor being what it is) to ignore the first than the second.
In the same vein, somebody claiming that they once had some sort of terrible problem with software package X but they don't quite remember the details is different from somebody demonstrating an easily reproducible sequence of steps that reliably makes the current version of software package X crash – especially if the person in question is on record as preferring software package Y which is a direct competitor to X. The latter is evidence but the former is FUD.
Posted Feb 24, 2014 18:44 UTC (Mon)
by mgb (guest, #3226)
[Link] (5 responses)
Tens of thousands of people with unreproducible pulseaudio problems signify an engineer who designs clever but fragile software for a non-existent perfect world.
Posted Feb 24, 2014 19:00 UTC (Mon)
by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
[Link] (2 responses)
Tens of thousands of people with unreproducible Pulseaudio problems eventually lead to those problems becoming reproducible, being traced to buggy ALSA drivers, and being fixed there (rather than in Pulseaudio) as is proper. Pulseaudio is now quite stable.
What would you prefer, Pulseaudio working around the driver bugs? I know what I'd want: a simpler Pulseaudio and less-buggy ALSA drivers, thank you very much.
Posted Feb 24, 2014 19:25 UTC (Mon)
by sfeam (subscriber, #2841)
[Link] (1 responses)
I can hear you thinking "And this is relevant how?". Well, it serves as an example of how difficult, or at least annoying, it is to have to work around faults in a subsystem that has become too tightly integrated. I have had no problems with systemd myself, but I sympathize with those who worry about the consequences of allowing it to subsume more and more system functions.
Posted Feb 25, 2014 2:10 UTC (Tue)
by ermo (subscriber, #86690)
[Link]
"(...) it serves as an example of how difficult, or at least annoying, it is to have to work around faults in a subsystem that has become too tightly integrated. I have had no problems with systemd myself, but I sympathize with those who worry about the consequences of allowing it to subsume more and more system functions." To a desktop user, working sound reproduction is considered a basic necessity, i.e. 'must-have'. To a server admin, sound reproduction might not be considered a basic necessity, but merely 'nice-to-have'. To a desktop user, a working init etc. system is a basic requirement. To a server admin, a working init etc. system is a basic requirement. In other words, a working init system is 'must-have' in both cases. You can probably see where this argument is going: Comparing the two on equal terms is perhaps slightly misleading if only for the fact that there is a bigger group of people who have a vested (commercial) interest in the init system just working. It thus seems reasonable to suggest that, if a problematic edge-case is discovered in systemd, there is likely to be much more pressure to get it fixed ASAP than if PA needs to be restarted every now and again on your box, which (lest we forget) is running a desktop OS which only has a market share of a couple of percent or so if we're being generous. Unless I'm mistaken, the majority of the Internet runs on Linux-based servers? That said, I haven't noticed any issues with PA on my machines in, like, forever; my personal impression is that it tends to "Just Work™" regardless of distribution these days.
Posted Feb 24, 2014 19:00 UTC (Mon)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link]
Posted Feb 24, 2014 19:02 UTC (Mon)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
The plural of anectdote isn't data, but "tens of thousands" random points of noise aren't terribly useful as data, especially when contrasted against a far greater larger sample set of folks who had a greatly improved experience.
Meanwhile. Speaking as an engineer who designs stuff for the real world, you need reproducible test cases in order to take action, less you break other crap in the process and possibly/probably not solve the original problem. Whatever it may have been.
Posted Feb 24, 2014 20:45 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Yup. But the advantage of a first-hand account is that you can go back and verify it. Okay, you might not be able to repeat it (the sciences of eg biology and astronomy often suffer from this where they can only observe, not experiment), but if you have a reliable witness or account then it is extremely dangerous to ignore it.
At an absolute minimum you need to take it seriously and explain it.
Cheers,
"The plural of anecdote isn't data"
"The plural of anecdote isn't data"
"The plural of anecdote isn't data"
"The plural of anecdote isn't data"
"The plural of anecdote isn't data"
"The plural of anecdote isn't data"
"The plural of anecdote isn't data"
Wol