Re: tlug: TLUG S/N - an empirical analysis

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

To the editor:

The referee for my submission "TLUG S/N - an empirical analysis" has
made some thoughtful comments to which I must respond, as I fear
there are some errors in his analysis.

>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Joseph Haslam <tjhaslam@example.com> writes:

    Thomas> First, lacking any stated criteria (or as it were, "data
    Thomas> points"), your alleged empirical study seems based on
    Thomas> rather subjective and perhaps even unexamined or untenable
    Thomas> desiderata.

"Shannon information content" is a completely objective and
well-defined measure.  gzip compression ratios provide an empirical
upper bound on the Shannon content.

    Thomas> Second, to me at least, an outstanding example of a wasted
    Thomas> message--i.e., noise [which I would define as a message
    Thomas> that contains either (1) no useful technical information
    Thomas> to even a minority of TLUG Linux users; or 

Anybody who keeps their TLUG archives in raw form now knows they can
keep 5 times as many back issues, which, I submit, is "useful
technical information" to the referenced minority of TLUG Linux users.

    Thomas> (2) no useful social information about TLUG activities]

The information content of ML traffic is too social information about
our activities.

    Thomas> would be your message (largely to yourself) about the
    Thomas> results of your alleged empirical study.

But it's all-new words so the Shannon content, the measure used by my
research, is high.

    Thomas> Of course, my response to you also counts as noise--but
    Thomas> hopefully has some entertainment value.

Nyaaaaaah!

Yow!

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