On Wed, 26 Jan 2005, Joshua Hutchinson wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Hart" <hart@pglaf.org>

...

Of course, you are welcome to apply any techniques to your own history of Project Gutenberg, and run them up our flagpole for testing.

The biggest problem I have with your posts lately, Michael, is that you "run something up the flagpole" and then when a bunch of people start trying to shoot it down, you say, "Well, you never complained before, so I'm going to ignore you now."

...

If there were truly an aversion to using Moore's Law for these purposes, this aversion would likely have been brought up quite often from the 1991 to the present.

So either the PG group at large can have an opinion on your "flagpole testing" or we do everything as status-quo. Can't have it both ways.

Josh

In this case, the suggested dates were tested and found obviously wanting. Reasons were given, which were ignored and/or misquoted. After the refutation became so obvious it could not be ingored, the message was changed from changed from "let's do this idea" to "let's have no idea." As with the failed suggested models of starting 1971 and 1993 as the best baselines for Moore's Law, the ideal of removing any such yardstick at all is merely a continuing ploy to get us to remove any objective measurement standard. First it was to change a standard in use since 1991 to 1971, then it was to change it to 1993, now it is to destroy such standards altogether. If you want to live without any such standards, that is up to you, totally up to you; but you aren't going to force it on me, or get me to help you force it on others. Whether we meet such a standard, exceed it, or even fall short of such a standard, it is always best to have such a standard, so we know something about where are, where we came from, thus where we are going. Michael