Re: Which drive gets read in case of inconsistency? [was: ext3 journal on software raid etc]

[ptb@lab.it.uc3m.es (Peter T. Breuer)]

Maarten <maarten@ultratux.net> wrote:
> On Tuesday 04 January 2005 13:44, Peter T. Breuer wrote:
> > Michael Tokarev <mjt@tls.msk.ru> wrote:
> 
> Hm, Peter, you did it again.  At the very end of an admittedly interesting 
> discussion you come out with the baseless assumptions and conclusions.
> Just when I was prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt...

:-(.

> > Anyway, strictly speaking, the answer to your question is "yes". It
> > does not decrease the probability, and therefore it increases it. The
> > question is by how much, and that is unanswerable.
> 
> You continue to amaze me. If it does not decrease, it automatically 
> increases ?? 

Yes.

> What happened to the "stays equal" possibility ?

It's included in the "automatically increases". But anyway, it's
neglible.  Any particular precise outcome (such as "stays precisely the
same") is neglibly likely in a cntinuous universe.  Probability
distributions are only stated to "almost everywhere" equivalence, since
they are fundamentally just measures on the universe, so we can't even
talk about "=", properly speaking.

> Do you exclusively use ">" and "<" instead of "=" in your math too ?  

No. I use >= and <=, since I said "increases" and "decreases".

> Maybe the increase is zero.

Exactly.

> Oh wait, it could even be negative, right ? Just 

No, I said "increases". I would have said "strictly increases" or
"properly increases"  if I had meant "<" and not "<=". But I didn't
bother to distinguish since the distinction is unimportant, and
unmeasurable (in the frmal sense), and besides I wuldn't ever
distinguish between < and <= in such situations.

> as with probability. So it possibly has an increase of, say, -0.5 ?
> (see how easy it is to confuse people ?)

No. I am very exact! Automatically, I may add.

But anyway, it doesn't matter, since the possibility of the
probabilities being unaffected is zero in any situation where there is a
real causal mechanism acting to influence them, with a continuous range
of outcomes (hey, computers are random, right?).  So you may deduce
(correctly) that in all likelihood the probability that we were speaking
of is _strictly_ increased by the mechanism we were discussing.

If you care.

Whatever it was. Or is.

Really! I do expect a certain minimum of numericity! :(.


Peter