From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1030390AbXBOTDH (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:03:07 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1030395AbXBOTDH (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:03:07 -0500 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.24]:57153 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1030390AbXBOTDF (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:03:05 -0500 Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2007 11:02:32 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Sergei Organov cc: Pekka Enberg , =?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=2EA=2E_Magall=C3=C3=C3=C3=C3=C2=B3n?= , Jan Engelhardt , Jeff Garzik , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Andrew Morton Subject: Re: somebody dropped a (warning) bomb In-Reply-To: <87k5yjjlrj.fsf@javad.com> Message-ID: References: <45CB3B28.60102@garzik.org> <87abznsdyo.fsf@javad.com> <874pprr5nn.fsf@javad.com> <87ps8end9b.fsf@javad.com> <84144f020702131026q2af1afd6vbcd2708d7b7b9907@mail.gmail.com> <87bqjxooog.fsf@javad.com> <84144f020702131143r767aa40blb97a39b40bee73b8@mail.gmail.com> <87fy99n6mf.fsf@javad.com> <87hctnlfqz.fsf@javad.com> <87k5yjjlrj.fsf@javad.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 15 Feb 2007, Sergei Organov wrote: > > I agree that if the warning has no true positives, it sucks. The problem > is that somehow I doubt it has none. And the reasons for the doubt are: Why do you harp on "no true positives"? That's a pointless thing. You can make *any* warning have "true positives". My personal favorite is the unconditional warning: warning: user is an idiot and I _guarantee_ you that it has a lot of true positives. It's the "no false negatives" angle you should look at. THAT is what matters. The reason we don't see a lot of warnings about idiot users is not that people don't do stupid things, but that *sometimes* they actually don't do something stupid. Yeah, I know, it's far-fetched, but still. In other words, you're barking up *exactly* the wrong tree. You're looking at it the wrong way around. Think of it this way: in science, a theory is proven to be bad by a single undeniable fact just showing that it's wrong. The same is largely true of a warning. If the warning sometimes happens for code that is perfectly fine, the warning is bad. Linus