Burned by Eschewing Best Practices
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@Dashrender said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
Right or wrong, it's how people feel when they walk away from one of your conversations about it.
Well of course, most people work on implication instead of what is actually said. That's why marketing works so well, people assume that something is going to be said and even if the marketing doesn't say it, they just assume it to be true. There is no way to fix that.
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@scottalanmiller said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
I said you come across as saying FreeNAS is a bad product, and in the never use category when there are other options such as CentOS or RHEL.
I said it is in a never use category. Find where I said it was a bad product.
It is very easy to correlate never use = bad product
Even if never use =! bad product
Because if you would never use it, it must be bad in comparison to the alternatives.
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Here are some thought experiments:
RAID 5 should never be used on a new array of Winchester drives today, given current market available drives and those available since ~2009. Does this imply that RAID 5 itself is bad?
RAID 5 is the only single parity RAID approach that should be used today, surpassing RAID 4 which likewise replaced RAID 3. Does this mean that RAID 3 and 4 are bad, or were bad? Or does it mean that something has surpassed them? What does bad mean in this context?
CentOS 4 is old and deprecated. You should never deploy it. Does this mean that CentOS 4 is bad?
The point here is that in some ways, all of these things can be determined to be good. RAID 5 remains the best RAID for broad use on SSD arrays today and was the top pick for Winchester arrays twenty years ago. Does losing popularity or efficacy in one arena make something that was good, and did not change, bad?
RAID 3 and 4 were the best options, for many things, in their time. Does the invention of something more robust change them from good to bad, even though they themselves did not change?
CentOS 4 was new long ago. Does the fact that it has been replaced and has aged make it bad? Is bad and old the same thing?
Likewise, or similar, FreeNAS itself is a good product, but one that is in a category that makes no sense and should never be used. Does the fact that FreeBSD is better make FreeNAS bad? Is bad an absolute issue or a relative one? Does something turn from good to bad through no action of its own?
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@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
It is very easy to correlate never use = bad product
But it should not happen. That's an implication that does not exist in the statement. You should never use the "almost as good, second best product". But that doesn't make it bad, just not the best.
- Best is always determined by a variety of factors and is relative to the situation.
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@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
Because if you would never use it, it must be bad in comparison to the alternatives.
It must be worse compared to, not bad compared to. And it is, FreeNAS is worse compared to FreeBSD, but better compared to nearly everything else. But it only takes being worse than one to be "Never use."
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Here is a great example. There is an Olympic runner (he's immortal, bear with me) and he runs in every summer Olympics for a century. Over that time, he never, ever wins the gold. But he wins the silver every, single time. He was never the best, ever. Not once, but we would not call him bad for being the runner up consistently, right? If you wanted the fastest runner, he's never the best bet, he's always fast but never on top.
FreeNAS and RAID 5 (under the Winchester new array conditions) are like that. Sometimes they are second best for a scenario but never first. Because of good decision making, we rule out a known secondary player because we don't want to accidentally consider something we know isn't the right answer to make picking the right answer easier and to not waste time on something we know can't be right. But that doesn't mean that it is at the bottom of the heap or bad, only that it is not number one.
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@scottalanmiller said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
Because if you would never use it, it must be bad in comparison to the alternatives.
It must be worse compared to, not bad compared to. And it is, FreeNAS is worse compared to FreeBSD, but better compared to nearly everything else. But it only takes being worse than one to be "Never use."
Do you see how one could read this statement as FreeNAS is worse than FreeBSD but better than RHEL.
?
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@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@scottalanmiller said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
Because if you would never use it, it must be bad in comparison to the alternatives.
It must be worse compared to, not bad compared to. And it is, FreeNAS is worse compared to FreeBSD, but better compared to nearly everything else. But it only takes being worse than one to be "Never use."
Do you see how one could read this statement as FreeNAS is worse than FreeBSD but better than RHEL.
?
Nope, and you can't. It simply doesn't say that. You have, again, come up with an implication not existing in the English and stated it as fact. Just because something is "better compared to nearly everything else" in no way guarantees that RHEL is in the "nearly" category.
This is a common problem I see people take, things like "RAID 5 will fail 51% of the time" turns into "it will die every time." But most and always are totally different things.
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Do you see how the words say nothing about RHEL whatsoever and in no way say that it is better than everything else? nor do they say always. Only often and most.
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@scottalanmiller said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@scottalanmiller said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
Because if you would never use it, it must be bad in comparison to the alternatives.
It must be worse compared to, not bad compared to. And it is, FreeNAS is worse compared to FreeBSD, but better compared to nearly everything else. But it only takes being worse than one to be "Never use."
Do you see how one could read this statement as FreeNAS is worse than FreeBSD but better than RHEL.
?
Nope, and you can't. It simply doesn't say that. You have, again, come up with an implication not existing in the English and stated it as fact. Just because something is "better compared to nearly everything else" in no way guarantees that RHEL is in the "nearly" category.
This is a common problem I see people take, things like "RAID 5 will fail 51% of the time" turns into "it will die every time." But most and always are totally different things.
But you provide the ambiguity of the statement. You leave it for us to determine what "everything else" is.
This is purely your issue with how you explain a matter. Don't leave any room for interpretation and there wouldn't be issues such as this.
You left the meaning open ended, not I.
Do you believe I'm wrong in being allowed to interpret your statement?
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@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
But you provide the ambiguity of the statement. You leave it for us to determine what "everything else" is.
No, it's open for you to ask. Not the same thing.
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@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
This is purely your issue with how you explain a matter. Don't leave any room for interpretation and there wouldn't be issues such as this.
That's not how that works. At all. Period.
My car runs well, most of the time.
You can't just say "it doesn't run today" and make that fact. My statement is true regardless of if my car works today or does not. And your statement needs to be true on its own. Nothing in my statement gives you the ground to make up your own facts.
This is insanely basic English language stuff.
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@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
Do you believe I'm wrong in being allowed to interpret your statement?
In every possible way. To the point that I have no ability to understand how you could be so wrong. Literally. This is a degree of wrong I actually can't figure out how it could happen.
I want you think about any statement, like this, ever made in the history of the world. You are claiming that unless every possibility, that could ever exist, is explicitly stated that YOU as the unique world defining listener can then inject any statement you want that is not explicitly denied by someone else and claim it to not only be fact, but to be claimed by the speaker?
Example:
Your mother said "I am your mother."
You say "You are also my father and my uncle by the fact that you didn't state that you were not."
WTF
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@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
But you provide the ambiguity of the statement.
It is not actually ambiguous either. You have a misunderstanding of what ambiguity is. It was a very clear statement with a single meaning. It only seems ambiguous to you because you have predetermined that there is another meaning that you yourself created and if I say something that doesn't support what you want me to say, you assume that I am using double speak or word trickery. I am not. My statement is clear, concise and accurate. It doesn't leave any ambiguity or room for interpretation. You can claim that it is wrong, but you can't claim that it is not clear.
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@scottalanmiller said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
But you provide the ambiguity of the statement. You leave it for us to determine what "everything else" is.
No, it's open for you to ask. Not the same thing.
I'd disagree, its open for me to willfully determine what everything else is when you leave a statement open.
If you want people to ask what entails everything else, you need to state that, some how. And not believe that people will just ask for more information.
I respect you because I ask the question, you should also respect that, and understand how the rest of the world is likely looking at what is written down.
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In this situation being bad or great - does it really matter when it's always second place? Fine it's never the winner - can we just move on now?
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I think @DustinB3403 and @scottalanmiller 's willpower is impressive
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Let's have a quick English lesson:
Statement that is confusing @DustinB3403 : "... FreeNAS is worse compared to FreeBSD, but better compared to nearly everything else."
What this statement says is:
- FreeBSD is always better than FreeNAS.
- FreeNAS is always worse than FreeBSD.
- FreeNAS is better (in the context of storage which is the context of the statement) than most products.
- FreeBSD is better than most storage products by logical extension of being better than FreeNAS.
What this statement doesn't say is endless:
- The price of milk.
- The age of the universe.
- If God is a man or a woman.
- If FreeBSD is the best product ever, or always.
- Which products are not as good as FreeBSD or FreeNAS.
- When different products are better or worse.
- That FreeBSD or FreeNAS is bad.
- That cars should always be painted blue
and on and on...
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@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
I respect you because I ask the question, you should also respect that, and understand how the rest of the world is likely looking at what is written down.
If you are claiming that the world is illiterate, then that's their problem. This is absolutely clear, simple English and claiming that it says something that it does not is willful lying.
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@scottalanmiller said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@DustinB3403 said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
But you provide the ambiguity of the statement.
It is not actually ambiguous either. You have a misunderstanding of what ambiguity is. It was a very clear statement with a single meaning. It only seems ambiguous to you because you have predetermined that there is another meaning that you yourself created and if I say something that doesn't support what you want me to say, you assume that I am using double speak or word trickery. I am not. My statement is clear, concise and accurate. It doesn't leave any ambiguity or room for interpretation. You can claim that it is wrong, but you can't claim that it is not clear.
Clear it may be, FreeNAS is never as good a choice as FreeBSD. But by ending the statement with "better compared to nearly everything else" is completely open ended.
It very easily sounds like "FreeBSD is better than (literally everything else)
How is that unclear? Re-read your statement. Ask anyone if they disagree with my understanding of this statement.
