The misconception this question enforces is stronger than that. 1 and 3 attempt compare the the measurement of physical properties while number 4 is a behavioural observation that can only be measured through correlation. Numbers 1 and 3 can be proven to be fact through measurement while number can only be a hypothesis(that can only be proven with a causation or disproven with a observation that states otherwise). From the TFA the purpose of the question is asses the student's ability to discern opinion/interpretation from a scientific observation. While number is undoubtedly a scientific observation, asserting number 4 is true after observation is still an opinion/interpretation, making it a poor choice to assert that student has a clear understanding of the difference between opinion and fact.
Peter Guttman's paper wasn't debunked, it was a victim of bitrot. Many of Guttman's sources and references were changed or updated as Guttman wrote the paper over a period of 2 years.
Often the changes were a direct result of what Guttman wrote, other times other significant events outdated what he said(like the death of HD-DVD, which fundamentaly changed many of Guttman's arguments since HD-DVD was supposed to only be supported by Microsoft, until Blu-Ray became the the format left).
Lastly many of those articles which "claimed" to debunk his paper used differing versions of the paper to create contradictions that did not exist. Or even spewed out more rhetoric in one sentence than they claimed Guttman had in his entire document,ie http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm/3784 (Seriously, his first argument against Guttman is the length of his paper, like that has anything to do with it's credibility? OMMFFFGGG ITS OVER 26,000!!!!).
Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.5 "Leopard" had strong performance leads over Canonical's Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" in the OpenGL performance with the integrated Intel graphics, disk benchmarking, and SQLite database in particular. Ubuntu on the other hand was leading in the compilation and BYTE Unix Benchmark. In the audio/video encoding and PHP XML tests the margins were smaller and no definitive leader had emerged. With the Java environment, Sunflow and Bork were faster in Mac OS X, but the Intrepid Ibex in SciMark 2 attacked the Leopard. These results though were all from an Apple Mac Mini.
Also worth mentioning are the collection of posts from the last thread that convincingly argued various problems with the Phoronix Benchmarks.
Example 1Example 2Example 3
Speed tests are good, let's make sure we're doing them right
Every one of those examples are fail at reasoning weaknesses in the Phoronix Test Suite and this is why:
If you look closely you'll notice that (a) the benchmarks were run on a Thinkpad T60 laptop, and (b) there were significant differences on some benchmarks like RAM bandwidth that should have little or no OS components.
If you look closely you'll notice that (a) the laptop the benchmarks are run on effects in no way, the validity of the benchmark as long as they are run consistently on the same laptop and (b) some benchmarks like RAM bandwidth have theoretical limits that are not effected at all by the Operating System but in actual practice, is entirely limited by the operating system you are using.
Some of the benchmarks were hardware testing, and those showed variation. They should not, unless the compiler changed the algorithms used to compile the code between distros.
All of the benchmarks were testing the hardware and should have showed variation. The compilers used on all the benchmarking applications are all the same. But the compilers used to build the Operating Systems are all completely different versions. Therefore the compiler on each distro will compile the same "algorithm" slightly different way. That is assuming there were no changes between implementation of packages between distros (of which there were actually hundreds of thousands of changes in the code itself, build options, and runtime configurations)
The test suite itself: The Phoronix test suite runs on PHP. That in itself is a problem-- the slowdowns measured could most likely be *because* of differences in the distributed PHP runtimes.
The Phoronix-Test-Suite Only uses its PHP back-end to aggregate benchmarking information. If a compilation with GCC took 5 seconds, its going to take 5 seconds no matter what version of the PHP runtime is used to to start the sub-shell that GCC runs in. It's take the same amount of time if you invoked GCC from bash, from perl, python, java, tcl, C, or C++. It doesn't matter because GCC is its own process just like every other benchmark.
What exactly are they testing? The whole distro?
Yes.
The kernel?
Yes again, since that is a part of the distro
If they're testing the released kernel, then they should run static binaries that *test* the above, comparing kernel differences.
No, what wouldn't prove anything as most of the binaries with ea
Thats how we got into this mess in the first place.
Rather than accepting ISO decision to make ODF the international standard. Micrsoft decided everyone already uses office, so we'll use that instead. Microsoft doesn't really give a damn if OOXML passes or not. They just want to be able to say they are standards compliant(easy to do when you define what that standard is).
ODF is still a standard as well though, although I don't know what good will come of there being two standards.
A 3G/3.5G/WiMax Controller Will undoubtedly come, as any manufacturer could make the controller. The competition will also keep the prices for such devices reasonable.
The reason this will compete with a 3G iPhone is because you the ability to upgrade piece by piece. The iPhone you dropped $600 on last year is, and will be the same iPhone 2 years from now.
Slashdot Mirror
The misconception this question enforces is stronger than that. 1 and 3 attempt compare the the measurement of physical properties while number 4 is a behavioural observation that can only be measured through correlation. Numbers 1 and 3 can be proven to be fact through measurement while number can only be a hypothesis(that can only be proven with a causation or disproven with a observation that states otherwise). From the TFA the purpose of the question is asses the student's ability to discern opinion/interpretation from a scientific observation. While number is undoubtedly a scientific observation, asserting number 4 is true after observation is still an opinion/interpretation, making it a poor choice to assert that student has a clear understanding of the difference between opinion and fact.
Peter Guttman's paper wasn't debunked, it was a victim of bitrot. Many of Guttman's sources and references were changed or updated as Guttman wrote the paper over a period of 2 years. Often the changes were a direct result of what Guttman wrote, other times other significant events outdated what he said(like the death of HD-DVD, which fundamentaly changed many of Guttman's arguments since HD-DVD was supposed to only be supported by Microsoft, until Blu-Ray became the the format left). Lastly many of those articles which "claimed" to debunk his paper used differing versions of the paper to create contradictions that did not exist. Or even spewed out more rhetoric in one sentence than they claimed Guttman had in his entire document,ie http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm/3784 (Seriously, his first argument against Guttman is the length of his paper, like that has anything to do with it's credibility? OMMFFFGGG ITS OVER 26,000!!!!).
Also worth mentioning are the collection of posts from the last thread that convincingly argued various problems with the Phoronix Benchmarks. Example 1 Example 2 Example 3
Speed tests are good, let's make sure we're doing them right
Every one of those examples are fail at reasoning weaknesses in the Phoronix Test Suite and this is why:
Example 1
If you look closely you'll notice that (a) the benchmarks were run on a Thinkpad T60 laptop, and (b) there were significant differences on some benchmarks like RAM bandwidth that should have little or no OS components.
If you look closely you'll notice that (a) the laptop the benchmarks are run on effects in no way, the validity of the benchmark as long as they are run consistently on the same laptop and (b) some benchmarks like RAM bandwidth have theoretical limits that are not effected at all by the Operating System but in actual practice, is entirely limited by the operating system you are using.
Example 2
Some of the benchmarks were hardware testing, and those showed variation. They should not, unless the compiler changed the algorithms used to compile the code between distros.
All of the benchmarks were testing the hardware and should have showed variation. The compilers used on all the benchmarking applications are all the same. But the compilers used to build the Operating Systems are all completely different versions. Therefore the compiler on each distro will compile the same "algorithm" slightly different way. That is assuming there were no changes between implementation of packages between distros (of which there were actually hundreds of thousands of changes in the code itself, build options, and runtime configurations)
Example 3
The test suite itself: The Phoronix test suite runs on PHP. That in itself is a problem-- the slowdowns measured could most likely be *because* of differences in the distributed PHP runtimes.
The Phoronix-Test-Suite Only uses its PHP back-end to aggregate benchmarking information. If a compilation with GCC took 5 seconds, its going to take 5 seconds no matter what version of the PHP runtime is used to to start the sub-shell that GCC runs in. It's take the same amount of time if you invoked GCC from bash, from perl, python, java, tcl, C, or C++. It doesn't matter because GCC is its own process just like every other benchmark.
What exactly are they testing? The whole distro?
Yes.
The kernel?
Yes again, since that is a part of the distro
If they're testing the released kernel, then they should run static binaries that *test* the above, comparing kernel differences.
No, what wouldn't prove anything as most of the binaries with ea
What does this have to do with YRO? That is, unless he stole the suff over SSH...
Thats how we got into this mess in the first place. Rather than accepting ISO decision to make ODF the international standard. Micrsoft decided everyone already uses office, so we'll use that instead. Microsoft doesn't really give a damn if OOXML passes or not. They just want to be able to say they are standards compliant(easy to do when you define what that standard is). ODF is still a standard as well though, although I don't know what good will come of there being two standards.
Many Vitrual CD-ROM drives don't operate in the kernel, but instead operate inside the user-space.
A 3G/3.5G/WiMax Controller Will undoubtedly come, as any manufacturer could make the controller. The competition will also keep the prices for such devices reasonable. The reason this will compete with a 3G iPhone is because you the ability to upgrade piece by piece. The iPhone you dropped $600 on last year is, and will be the same iPhone 2 years from now.