On Sun, 16 Mar 2003, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On Sat, 15 Mar 2003, Audioslave - 7M3 - Live wrote: > > >>>I knew that the 2.5 kernel was a development kernel. I did not realize that Redhat > >>>release numbering did not follow that convention. > >> > >> > >> Knowing is half the battle (or something like that). > > > >I got the concept that Red Hat followed the odd/even scheme from some > >comments that others made awhile back. The article that I was reading, > >in the timeframe for the 6.x releases that someone referenced. Since > >that time, I thought that the odd numbers were less stable than the even > >ordered releases. But in practice, I always tried to run the latest > >releases and paid little attention to the actual versioning number. > > > >I suppose that expalins why the reviewer was finding that 6.1 worked > >better than either 6.0 or 6.2. > > Every Red Hat Linux release is a "stable" OS release. That > meanss every x.0, x.1, x.2, x.3, etc. Different people will have > wildly differing opinions on just how "stable" each of those > releases are, and those opinions will be affected also by how > well a new OS release works with their particular hardware, and > the particular software they use. Opinions are also subject > greatly to the psychological placebo effect which I refer to as > "the dot zero effect". > > This effect is a psychological phenomenon whereby the mere > existance of ".0" in the version number of anything automatically > triggers a defense mechanism in a person to assume that the given > "dot zero" software is buggy beforehand without actually using > it. This sets up a pre-basis bias against the software, and any > big or small flaw found in the software after attempting to use > it will be over-magnified by "the dot zero effect" and blown out > of proportion due to the pre-bias. This condition is a natural > placebo-ish effect that a large number of people suffer from. > Unfortunately, this condition also has a living-in-denial aspect > to it, which renders the afflicted persons uncapable of true > rational and unbiased thought concerning the problems > experienced. In other words, it is generally not possible to > disable the "dot zero effect" in the minds of the afflicted > persons. > > The only way to avoid the dot zero effect in any software, is to > completely avoid ever releasing any software as a dot zero piece > of software. In other words, you don't actually change the > software at all, you just don't "stamp" it as x.0. > > This phenomenon is widely seen in both open source software as > well as commercial software. Many commercial software companies > have steered away from the dot zero phenomenon completely by > avoiding labeling their software with version numbers. Microsoft > is one prime example. Microsoft stopped version numbering most > of their software back in 1995, when they released "Windows 95". > Under the hood, it was "Windows 4.0", but that technical detail > is only known by the few tech-heads that cared enough to know. > > The masses of consumers just did not see the "dot zero" anymore. > The year-versioning of software caught on by many different > companies since then, and also with some open source projects > too, such as UW imap-2002 et al. For whatever reasons Microsoft > has since moved away from year versioning also to more arbitrary > versioning of products such as "Windows ME" and "Windows XP". > Under the wraps, in traditional terms, these pieces of software > are "dot zero" software, however they're not marketed as such, > and so the psychological bad juju of the "dot zero" phenomenon > generally does not occur. > > Of course, this is merely my own personal opinion. Those whom > are afflicted by "the dot zero" phenomenon, and in particular > those in the deep denial phase of this illness, may disagree > abhorently. They're of course free to do so, and we hope they > get well soon. > > Take care, > TTYL > > > What kind of mushrooms were they? ;) -- /dTd
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. - Larry Wall http://www.birdhouse.org/etc/evilmail.html <-- have a look here :) gpg key: http://dandanielle.home.mindspring.com/files/dtd-pub-key.asc -- Phoebe-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list
