From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 2 04:22:05 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B58416A4DD for ; Wed, 2 Aug 2006 04:22:05 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from atom.powers@gmail.com) Received: from py-out-1112.google.com (py-out-1112.google.com [64.233.166.183]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A17943D46 for ; Wed, 2 Aug 2006 04:22:04 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from atom.powers@gmail.com) Received: by py-out-1112.google.com with SMTP id b36so1213089pyb for ; Tue, 01 Aug 2006 21:22:04 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=JzIE5iptfGz+RGpy8TrVIspPAxeAJLTPvM39BGvsi4kORNp9v8TqYgwbWFAwUMyxsAAUeD4YNMpAbaYmNCp9Q8OEv54atxhPYe925wHEuosTWKzjlEeaUiqWOzDhGuHTvoEUC0tkgNEHXdPHgH1vWVF4DuUG4lvTSfShAPt8YxQ= Received: by 10.35.63.2 with SMTP id q2mr699952pyk; Tue, 01 Aug 2006 21:22:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.35.110.6 with HTTP; Tue, 1 Aug 2006 21:22:03 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 21:22:03 -0700 From: "Atom Powers" To: "User Freebsd" In-Reply-To: <20060801230301.Q27679@ganymede.hub.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <20060728164526.E27679@ganymede.hub.org> <871ws1v261.fsf@photon.homelinux.org> <20060731220830.B27679@ganymede.hub.org> <20060801120058.O27679@ganymede.hub.org> <17615.30414.314802.792740@jerusalem.litteratus.org> <20060801223754.U27679@ganymede.hub.org> <20060801230301.Q27679@ganymede.hub.org> Cc: Robert Huff , Xiao-Yong Jin , Nikolas Britton , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Gotta start somewhere ... how many of us are really out there? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 04:22:05 -0000 On 8/1/06, User Freebsd wrote: > On Tue, 1 Aug 2006, Nikolas Britton wrote: > > > Ok.. lets start from the top, again. Why do we need uniqueness? > > We want to count each host reporting *once* ... without uniqueness per > host, how are you going to know whether to update a hosts record, instead > of add it as a new host? > Maybe I lost the point here, but are you trying to track every FreeBSD host or are you just trying to show that there is a large user-base? If you are just trying to show a large user base then you don't have to keep any kind of uid. Your numbers are going to be off by at least 20% to 30% just from people opting not to opt in; the error margin from duplicate hosts is going to be smaller than that, especially if you use freely available public data, like IP address, to track duplicates. On the other hand, if you want to keep tabs on every host out there, how often it has connected, it's uid, etc. Well, that smells too strongly of big brother for my tastes. Even if it is anonymous. It's still going to take you at least a release to get it into the base install. But if you can find a way to use the portsnap data and get useful information out of the cvsup data you can probably get numbers now with an error margin as low as 8% to 15%. Achem's Razor anybody? ( The simplest solution is the best solution. ) -- -- Perfection is just a word I use occasionally with mustard. --Atom Powers--