Kurt B. Kaiser wrote:
> knitti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> On 11/15/05, J Moore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Come on, Shane - did you ever take a friggin' course in English? Are you
>>> telling me that the passage above makes the following one-liner clear:
>>>
>>> 'adjusting local clock by XXs'
>
> Sorry, Henning, but I didn't understand the error message, either,
> until I read the man pages. It's certainly not a big deal, but it's
> easy enough to polish the priceless msg next time you're in there.
>
>
> 'adjusting local clock rate to compensate XXs offset"
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
Oh, come on.
Your Magic Message there is subject to the EXACT SAME misinterpretation.
Both key on missing the use of "adjusting" rather than "adjusted". As
has already been pointed out, "adjusting" implies on-going, "adjusted"
implies done. People will take "compensate" to mean "compensated" and
wonder why their clock is STILL off. That short message is technically
correct, and while it can be misinterpreted, just about every short
summary is also subject to the EXACT SAME misinterpretation.
The ONLY reason you think this line is better is because you didn't
understand the message and you think it isn't your fault. So you find
out what is going on, you change some words, it becomes "obvious" to
you. What you fail to see is that if you understand what is going on,
it is OBVIOUS all along. If you don't understand what is going on, it
will take several paragraphs for every log entry.
Log entries should be clear and short:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
Nov 15 16:16:16 fluffy ntpd[18366]: adjusting local clock by -0.137358s
fits nicely in an 80 col screen (and my 72 char message width). Now,
let's look at yours:
Nov 15 16:16:16 fluffy ntpd[18366]: adjusting local clock rate to
compensate -0.137358s offset
Whoopsie, you wrapped. Your wording sucks, too. You convey no more
info, just as confusing, and you made the message WORSE on at least two
separate ways. BZZZZT. You lose.
If there is something worse than the general level of illiteracy in the
computer industry, it has to be the people PRETENDING to be
sophisticated in human communications who are actually quite inept at
it. "Discussions" like this one go so far to demonstrate this...
Nick.
(doing my darnedest to prove my own point)
