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Date:      Sun, 05 Jan 2003 14:30:58 -0800
From:      "Brett Glass" <brettglass@ml1.net>
To:        swear@attbi.com
Cc:        "Brett Glass" <brett@lariat.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Bystander shot by a spam filter
Message-ID:  <20030105223058.A84561A191@www.fastmail.fm>

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Gary W. Swearingen <swear@attbi.com> writes:

>> 20% of a 3 GHz machine is a lot of cycles.

>Roughy 20% of them.  You'd have to sell a whole lot of compilers to
>balance the cost of a replacement compiler with the savings of 20% fewer
>computers that run the compilers, being especially hard since there are
>many fewer compilers than computers.  Taking this to the free software

Take your time to study the excellent essay that Bernard Shifman(1)
Consulting published on the subject. 20% is a lot of time. It's the
difference between getting the job done or not at all.

>world, 20% would hardly enough to merit tying up a team of
>gcc-replacement programmers, keeping them away from more useful (in
>general) projects they could effect in 100% sort of ways.  There's
>evidence in the fact that nobody's found it worthwhile in the last
>decade, even when the percentage was much larger than 20%.

Moore's Law is about to end, and as time passes, people will realize the
performance matters. As of now, most people are just happy with mediocre
programs, just because they're free. You could take a dump on a plastic
bag and people like RMS would approve it as long as it carried a GPL
sticker.

(1) http://www.petemoss.com/spamflames/ShifmanIsAMoronSpammer.html

--Brett Glass
-- 
  Brett Glass
  brettglass@ml1.net

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