Best Quote on Computer Architecture?
Vineeth Mekkat
Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
Regards,
Vineeth
Edward Feustel
"Vineeth Mekkat" <vine...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1190721386....@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
to the way we all regard computer architecture.
What you see/feel/appreciate is only part of the whole story!
Ed
Klaus Fehrle
> Hello,
>
> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>
Many can be found in signatures of some posters of this group.
Regards
Klaus
Evandro Menezes
:-D
Del Cecchi
I don't know the attribution. It may be original.
--
Del Cecchi
"This post is my own and doesn’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions,
strategies or opinions.”
Eugene Miya
Del Cecchi <cecchi...@us.ibm.com> wrote:
>Vineeth Mekkat wrote:
>> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>"you can bullshit management, but you can't bullshit an electron"
>
>I don't know the attribution. It may be original.
That's Feynman's "you can't fool nature."
In:
%A William A. Wulf
%A Roy Levin
%A Samuel P. Harbison
%T HYDRA/C.mmp: An Experimental Computer System
%I McGraw-Hill
%D 1981
%K bsatya, book, text,
%K frecommended91, enm, ag,
CMU, C.mmp, HYDRA OS, multiprocessor architecture and operating systems,
%O ISBN 0-07-072120-3
%X A detailed description of the philosophy, design, and implementation
of Hydra, similar in a sense to Organick's monograph on Multics.
Highly recommended to anyone desiring an understanding of
multiprocessor operating systems in general and Hydra in particular.
Text reproduced with the permission of Prentice-Hall \(co 1980.
%X * Describes the architecture of C.mmp, and details the goals, design,
and performance of HYDRA, its capability based OS.
Bill Wulf notes that it's possible to make 2 mistakes when building a
multiprocessor.
The first is to use someone else's processor. Then you have to live
with the shortcomings of that design (in their case PDP-11s and LSI-11s).
The second is to design one's own processor, but that's "guaranteed"
to take a couple years longer and have adverse effects on morale.
And the great part of the quote is a footnote.
The footnote notes that CMU by that point made mistake 1 was done twice.
And maybe their next processor might be to due the latter (which
arguably might be the Warp which was less general purpose and more focused).
It's a great quote about trade offs and it separates the do's and don't's
with a real life experienced quote.
I used to have the quote at handy access.
--
Eugene...@eku.edu
number of anything" (if only I could remember where I saw it)
Gene Styer
Jim Haynes
back-to-back; you don't put your money in ILLIAC IV."
H. R. J. Grosch, 1967
"I've finally learned what 'upward compatible' means. It means we get
to keep all our old mistakes."
Dennie van Tassel
"...if it should ever turn out that the basic logics of a machine designed
for the numerical solution of differential equations coincide with the logics
of a machine intended to make bills for a department store, I would regard
this as the most amazing coincidence that I have ever encountered."
Howard Aiken, 1956
"To iterate is human; to recurse, divine."
L. Peter Deutsch
"Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal if you don't have
any thumbs."
paraphrased from Tom Lehrer
"Counting in binary is just like counting in decimal if you are all thumbs."
Glaser & Way, '72 FJCC
"One good thing about reduced instruction set computers is that the
definition of the underlying concept keeps changing. Consequently the
concept will always be state of the art."
Yale Patt, 1991
"Once we had fabricated the chip, we found that we had invented
a `Jump Approximate' instruction."
Bill Dally, M.I.T. 1988
(contributed by J. T. Kohl)
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God."
New Testament, John 1:1
"In the beginning was the word all right, but it didn't contain a fixed
number of bits."
R. S. Barton
"Kludge: an ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a
distressing whole."
Jackson Granholm, 1962
"Any large system is going to be operating most of the time in failure
mode."
John Gall, Systemantics
--
jhhaynes at earthlink dot net
Del Cecchi
plagerize plagerise plagerise. But please to always call it research"
lobachevsky by tom lehrer.
Actually the whole song is great, and applicable
John Ahlstrom
“There is only one mistake that can be made in a. computer design that
is difficult to recover from - not. providing enough address bits for
memory "
--
The best form of nuclear energy
is indeed gravity contained fusion
with the reactor >150e09m away.
Jonathan Thornburg
> Bell or Strecker:
>
> ?There is only one mistake that can be made in a. computer design that
> memory "
Another one in the same vein:
"a large and aggressive marketing organization, armed with software
to correct architectural inconsistencies and omissions, can save
almost any [computer] design." -- C. Gordon Bell & J. Craig Mudge
(it's somewhere in
C. Gordon Bell, J. Craig Mudge, & John E. McNamara
"Computer Engineering: A DEC View of Hardware Systems Design"
Digital Press, 0-932376-00-2
)
--
-- Jonathan Thornburg (remove -animal to reply) <J.Tho...@soton.ac-zebra.uk>
School of Mathematics, U of Southampton, England
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
-- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam
Terje Mathisen
> Hello,
>
> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
David Stafford used to say:
"Almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in compression."
One of my favorites is this one which I haven't been able to find an
attribution for:
"Some things must be seen to be believed. Most[many/some) things must be
believed to be seen."
Terje
--
- <Terje.M...@hda.hydro.com>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Paul A. Clayton
"The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer
system are those that aren't there."
Gordon Bell
Paul A. Clayton
reachable as 'paaronclayton'
at "embarqmail.com"
blm...@myrealbox.com
> In article <5lspc5F...@mid.individual.net>,
> Del Cecchi <cecchi...@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> >Vineeth Mekkat wrote:
> >> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>
> >"you can bullshit management, but you can't bullshit an electron"
> >
> >I don't know the attribution. It may be original.
>
> That's Feynman's "you can't fool nature."
>
Or more verbosely (but still Feynman):
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over
public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
As I understand it (meaning I haven't tracked down the original
source), this is from his contribution to the investigation of
the Challenger disaster.
It's a great line in any event.
[ snip ]
--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.
Bernd Paysan
> One of my favorites is this one which I haven't been able to find an
> attribution for:
>
> "Some things must be seen to be believed. Most[many/some) things must be
> believed to be seen."
Since this is from Anton's sig, it might be genuine in combination, because
you either find a quote like "Some things have to be seen to be believed"
(older than dust) or "Some things have to be believed to be seen" (Ralph
Hodson). This does not acknowledge that the set of non-existing things
which can only be seen when believed is far larger than the set of existing
things, which can be seen without believing, but as well often are ignored,
because they don't fit the mindset.
My quote is easy to attribute: from Zork in "The Fifth Element".
--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/
Eugene Miya
Bernd Paysan <bernd....@gmx.de> wrote:
>My quote is easy to attribute: from Zork in "The Fifth Element".
This one?
>"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
Walt Disney said that himself in a media stunt where I think he's
turning a big nut using a big wrench on a Disneyland monorail tower in
Anaheim. It's on film from the 1950s and commonly reshown. I doubt that
he was first. Of course if you want the computer version, you can cite Alan
Kay's if you want the best way to predict the future, you have to invent
it yourself (paraphrased for this context).
>(older than dust)
"Older than dirt" was Charlie Sorsby's sig when he was at Los Alamos.
I think he's retired now.
My first run of "Rock of Ages" retired hackers tee shirts were the
quoted signature lines from people on the net. Geoff Goodfellows'
was "From the tty..." there was "Aging Hippy Astronomer" I did 2
variants where the last and most popular was "Resident Cynic" which was
my signature at that time, and now I just printed up what I hope will be
the last run period (I keep telling myself that). Different color,
different type of tee shirt (pockets) and front.
--
Eugene Miya
>> >I don't know the attribution. It may be original.
>>
>> That's Feynman's "you can't fool nature."
In article <5lverqF...@mid.individual.net>,
blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>Or more verbosely (but still Feynman):
>
>"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over
>public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
>
>As I understand it (meaning I haven't tracked down the original
>source), this is from his contribution to the investigation of
>the Challenger disaster.
>
>It's a great line in any event.
The original source was Feynman.
When the Challenger accident happened, I was asked to download something
like 600+ net.space/Space-digest notes on a Versatec v80 printer (my
friends who ran that 750 guest account looked at me mad but I noted it
was JSC who asked (they had no idea what a computer network was) and we
still remain friends in the PC era). It was a mess. Then the investigation
happened and then the stink about Dick not signing came up.
Helen Tuck, Feynman's secretary mailed me the official press release,
and I had it scanned. It went out on net.space, if I am remembering right.
Who knows how far that propagated (maybe Dale or Ted) (rhetorically)?
I have the text somewhere (i've got access to a multipetabyte store, but
I can't remember where I placed a Bill Wulf quote). But a Google search
places a JSC web site with Feynman's quote.
His report notes 3 problem areas (out of 800+, people forget that).
The Main engines, the solid rockets, and software. We've now had 2
shuttle accidents. I worked briefly on Constellation and I was asked
what I'd have people read (biblio). A very small number of us noted
the Feynman report (I doubt more than 2-3), and I make specific note of
the software section.
JSC finally dropped the HAL/S/AP-101 requirement. But I tend to doubt I
had much to do with that.
--
Eugene Miya
>system are those that aren't there."
>Gordon Bell
Oh yes, this is also good.
This is merely one of a number in More Programming Pearls by Jon Louis
Bentley in the chapter Bumper Sticker Computer Science. MPP should be
on everyone's self. Is that a quote?
"When in doubt, use brute force...." I think Ken Thompson was quoted as
saying that in Bentley.
--
Eugene Miya
Jim Haynes <jha...@alumni.uark.edu> wrote:
Do you miss your column? 8^)
>"If you have real-world problems - you get a couple of 1108s
>back-to-back; you don't put your money in ILLIAC IV."
> H. R. J. Grosch, 1967
Wow?! Herb said that back in 1967 before Barnes and those guys
published their paper and next week is the Fairchild 50th ann. at CHM
which I'm skipping out of but live only a few blocks away from where ti
used to be.....
>"I've finally learned what 'upward compatible' means. It means we get
>to keep all our old mistakes."
> Dennie van Tassel
I've never like gravity it the phrase. Forward or backward make more
chronological sense. Must be an IBMer.
--
Eugene Miya
The problem with programming in programming languages:
(a) The lack of support for the execution of incomplete programs.
(b) The poor facilities for handling large quantities of data with
anything but arrays.
(c) The inability to retain the constructive path of a program.
(d) Poor I/O integration.
%A William A. Wulf
%A C. Gordon Bell
%T C.mmp - a multi-mini-computer
%J AFIPS Fall Joint Computer Conference
%D 1972
Our design principles
.np 1
Apply concurrency thoughtfully
.np
Design simple and regular data and control flows
.np
Use local communications for all data paths
.np
Organize the computational geometry to correspond to the communications
geometry of the target application
.np
Balance the I/O bandwidth with computational bandwidth
.np
Keep processors close to their data
.np
Don't partition across paths which connect tightly couple resources
.np
Ensure maximum utilization of operand once they're fetched
.np
Design with only a few types of simple cells
.np
Consider the technology in which the architecture will be implemented
.np
Make the machine extensible
"More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency
(without necessarily achieving it) than for any other reason --
including blind stupidity." -- Wm. A. Wulf
The last time I saw Dr. Wulf was when he came by CHM with Chinese
exchange students. Maybe he'll be at SC'2007.
--
Louis Krupp
> In article <46f9486e$1@darkstar>, Eugene Miya <eug...@cse.ucsc.edu> wrote:
>> In article <5lspc5F...@mid.individual.net>,
>> Del Cecchi <cecchi...@us.ibm.com> wrote:
>>> Vineeth Mekkat wrote:
>>>> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>>> "you can bullshit management, but you can't bullshit an electron"
>>>
>>> I don't know the attribution. It may be original.
>> That's Feynman's "you can't fool nature."
>>
>
> Or more verbosely (but still Feynman):
>
> "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over
> public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
>
> As I understand it (meaning I haven't tracked down the original
> source), this is from his contribution to the investigation of
> the Challenger disaster.
>
> It's a great line in any event.
>
> [ snip ]
>
Sounds a bit like the line from the Chiffon Margarine commercial:
"It's not *nice* to fool Mother Nature!"
Louis
Anton Ertl
>One of my favorites is this one which I haven't been able to find an
>attribution for:
>
>"Some things must be seen to be believed. Most[many/some) things must be
>believed to be seen."
It's from me. It's not particularly about computer architecture, but
comes from reading some things about philosophy of science, in
particular a book by Paul Feyerabend, but also Life of Galileo by
Berthold Brecht, and learning that the existence of meteorites was
denied by established science in the 18th century, because there was
no theory to explain them (I may have read that in Feyerabend's book,
or elsewhere).
- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
Rick Jones
Reminds me of something my father would always say, tweaked to apply
to computers:
"You can't do a damn thing on this system without having to do three
other things first."
rick jones
--
Process shall set you free from the need for rational thought.
The computing industry isn't as much a game of "Follow The Leader" as
it is one of "Ring Around the Rosy" or perhaps "Duck Duck Goose."
- Rick Jones
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway... :)
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...
Petter Gustad
> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
8'h2B | ~8'h2B
Petter
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
Guy Macon
Evandro Menezes wrote:
>
>"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?"
-Dr. Who
--
Guy Macon
<"http://www.guymacon.com/>
Guy Macon
2004 Off-shoring is just another management fad and we're going
to see it blow over. (Eric Raymond)
2003 Unix is dead. (Gus Robertson of Redhat)
2002 Linux will become the dominant server operating system in
the United States by 2005. (Stacey Quandt)
1998 Folks, the Mac platform is through - totally. (John Dvorak)
1998 There isn't an Internet company in the world that's going to
fail because of mistakes -- Internet companies make thousands of
mistakes every week. (Candice Carpenter of iVillage)
1995 I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova
and in 1996 catastrophically collapse. (Robert Metcalfe)
1994 I see little commercial potential for the Internet for at
least ten years. (Bill Gates)
1993 I view the landslide of C use in education as something of a
calamity. (Nicklaus Wirth)
1991 Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free)
operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional
like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. (Linus Torvalds)
1991 I predict that the last mainframe will be unplugged on March
15, 1996. (Stewart Alsop)
1990 By 1995, desktop operating system shipments will be 50 per
cent OS/2, 20 per cent Unix, 15 per cent Macintosh and 10 per
cent PC-DOS. (Meta Group)
1989 Real concurrency -- in which one program actually continues
to function while you call up and use another -- is more amazing
but of small use to the average person. How many programs do you
have that take more than a few seconds to perform any task? (New
York Times)
1988 If users wanted a graphical interface, wouldn't the
Macintosh dominate the market? (Bruce Tonkin)
1988 Computer viruses are an urban myth. (Peter Norton)
1988 I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important
operating system, and possibly program, of all times. (Bill
Gates)
1986 By the turn of this century, we will live in a paperless
society. (Roger Smith of General Motors)
1986 UNIX is dead, but no one bothered to claim the body. (John
Dvorak)
1984 The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a
mouse. There is no evidence that people want to use these things.
(John Dvorak)
1983 No one knows what to do with seven windows at one time. (PC
Week Magazine)
1983 Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete
Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix),
and give it away free to everyone who can use it. (Richard
Stallman)
1982 Time-sharing just doesn't work. (Ken Thompson)
1982 I don't know what the language of the year 2000 will look
like, but I know it will be called Fortran. (C A R Hoare)
1977 There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in
his home. (Ken Olson of Digital Equipment)
1972 The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more
expected. (UNIX Programming Manual)
1970 In from three to eight years we will have a machine with the
general intelligence of an average human being. (Marvin Minsky)
1970 Most computers will probably still occupy a large room,
however, because of the space needed for the ancillary software -
the tapes and cards to be fed in, the operating staff, and the
huge piles of paper for printing out the results. (Prof Desmond
King-Hele)
1968 What the hell is [a microprocessor] good for? (Robert Lloyd
of IBM's Advanced Computing Systems Division)
1965 [By 1985], machines will be capable of doing any work Man
can do. (Herbert Simon)
1964 Barring unforeseen obstacles, an on-line interactive
computer service, provided commercially by an information
utility, may be as commonplace by 2000 AD as telephone service is
today.(Martin Greenberger)
1962 Transmission of documents via telephone wires is possible in
principle, but the apparatus required is so expensive that it
will never become a practical proposition. (Dennis Gabor)
1960 Few things seem to lie so far beyond the ordinary human ken
than computers. To most people the notion that computers can be
understood and operated by anyone other than a scientific genius
seems wildly improbable. (The Times)
1959 Before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within
hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or
Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket
mail. (Arthur Summerfield, US Postmaster General)
1957 I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and
talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data
processing is a fad that won't last out the year. (Editor of
business books for Prentice Hall)
1954 Why would you want more than one machine language? (John von
Neumann)
1949 Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000
vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have
only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons. (Popular
Mechanics)
1949 It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it
is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one
should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound
pretty silly in 5 years. (John von Neumann)
1945 The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of
great reliability and something is bound to come of it. (Vannevar
Bush)
1943 I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
(?Thomas Watson of IBM)
1937 There is no practical obstacle whatsoever now to the
creation of an efficient index to all human knowledge, ideas and
achievements, to the creation, that is, of a complete planetary
memory for all mankind. (H G Wells)
1936 I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications
at the rate of 40,000, or even 4,000, per hour. Such a
revolutionary change as the octonary scale should not be imposed
upon mankind in general for the sake of a few individuals. (F H
Wales)
1851 By means of electricity, the world of matter has become a
great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point
of time. The round globe is a vast brain, instinct with
intelligence! (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
1842 The Analytical Engine is not merely adapted for tabulating
the results of one particular function and of no other, but for
developing and tabulating any function whatever. (Ada Lovelace)
1838 [It would not be long] ere the whole surface of this country
would be channelled for those nerves which are to diffuse, with
the speed of thought, a knowledge of all that is occurring
throughout the land, making, in fact, one neighborhood of the
whole country. (Samuel Morse)
79 I am amazed, O Wall, that you have not collapsed and fallen,
since you must bear the tedious stupidities of so many scrawlers.
(graffiti in Pompeii)
-360 The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in
the learners' souls. You will give your disciples not truth but
the semblance of truth: they will be heroes of many things, and
will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and
will generally know nothing. ("Phaedrus" by Plato)
Eugene Miya
>>> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>In article <1190819814....@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
>Paul A. Clayton <paaron...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>"The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer
>>system are those that aren't there."
>>Gordon Bell
In article <46fa96da$1@darkstar>, I noted:
>This is merely one of a number in More Programming Pearls by Jon Louis
>Bentley in the chapter Bumper Sticker Computer Science. MPP should be
>on everyone's self. Is that a quote?
Speak of the devil.....
A few months back I got an email announcement for a new O'Reilly book:
Beautiful Code;
it sounded interesting, but my time is limited. Then I got a request to
review a copy, so I emailed Tim's rep., and I got sent the review copy
which I got yesterday. It's very impressive. This is superior to
Programmers at Work from a decade earlier.
1) Bentley mentions Bell again in his chapter.
2) There's chapters on bio, numerical, systems, parallel, distributed.
It's current.
3) Greg Wilson used to post a lot of good stuff in comp.arch.
4) Lest I sound too glowing, it's not the perfect book.
The book is technical, but a little cutesy.
5) While I want to make a endorsement/recommendation for
personal and institutional (library) purchases/acqusitions, I'm sort of
doing that outside my journal and outside knowing several of the authors
and Tim O'Reilly from Usenix in the 80s and a stalled ORA project.
I made what I think is a relevant cross post, but the thread started and
I'll have it return to comp.arch.
%A Andy Oram
%A Greg Wilson, eds.
%T Beautiful Code
%I O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
%C Sebastopol, CA 95472
%D 2007
%K book, text,
%X 1: Brian Kernighan, A Regular Expression Matcher
2: Karl Fogel, Subversion's Delta Editor: Interface As Ontology
3: Jon Bentley, The Most Beautiful Code I Never Wrote
4: Tim Bray, Finding Things
5: Elliotte Rusty Harold,
Correct, Beautiful, Fast (in That Order): Lessons from Designing XML Verifiers
6: Michael Feathers, Framework for Integrated Test: Beauty Through Fragility
7: Alberto Savoia, Beautiful Tests
8: Charles Petzold, On-the-Fly Code Generation for Image Processing
9: Douglas Crockford, Top Down Operator Precedence
10: Henry S. Warren, Jr., The Quest for an Accelerated Population Count
11: Ashish Gulhati, Secure Communication: The Technology Of Freedom
12: Lincoln Stein, Growing Beautiful Code in BioPerl
13: Jim Kent, The Design of the Gene Sorter
14: Jack Dongarra and Piotr Luszczek,
How Elegant Code Evolves with Hardware The Case of Gaussian Elimination
15: Adam Kolawa, The Long-Term Benefits of Beautiful Design
16: Greg Kroah-Hartman,
The Linux Kernel Driver Model: The Benefits of Working Together
17: Diomidis Spinellis, Another Level of Indirection
18: Andrew Kuchling,
Python's Dictionary Implementation: Being All Things to All People
19: Travis E. Oliphant, Multidimensional Iterators in NumPy
20: Ronald Mak,
A Highly Reliable Enterprise System for NASA's Mars Rover Mission
21: Rogerio Atem de Carvalho and Rafael Monnerat,
ERP5: Designing for Maximum Adaptability
22: Bryan Cantrill, A Spoonful of Sewage
23: Jeffrey Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat, Distributed Programming with MapReduce
24: Simon Peyton Jones, Beautiful Concurrency
25: R. Kent Dybvig, Syntactic Abstraction: The syntax-case Expander
26: William R. Otte and Douglas C. Schmidt,
Labor-Saving Architecture: An Object-Oriented Framework for Networked Software
27: Andrew Patzer, Integrating Business Partners the RESTful Way
28: Andreas Zeller, Beautiful Debugging
29: Yukihiro Matsumoto, Treating Code As an Essay
30: Arun Mehta, When a Button Is All That Connects You to the World
31: T. V. Raman, Emacspeak: The Complete Audio Desktop
32: Laura Wingerd and Christopher Seiwald, Code in Motion
33: Brian Hayes, Writing Programs for "The Book"
--
Richard
eug...@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) spake the secret code
<46fadd68$1@darkstar> thusly:
>A few months back I got an email announcement for a new O'Reilly book:
> Beautiful Code;
>it sounded interesting, but my time is limited. Then I got a request to
>review a copy, so I emailed Tim's rep., and I got sent the review copy
>which I got yesterday. It's very impressive. This is superior to
>Programmers at Work from a decade earlier.
Man, talk about a low standard! "Programmers at Work" was pretty weak
IMO. At least I learned *why* PFS:File was abysmally slow, even
compared to contemporary peer software on the Apple ][, when I saw the
guy's string manipulation routines.
It surely does show that its better to be lucky than good.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
Guy Macon
Vineeth Mekkat wrote:
>Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had
to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized
that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent
finding mistakes in my own programs. (Maurice Wilkes: 1948)
Programming languages teach you not to want what they cannot
provide. (Paul Graham)
There's a better way to do it. Find it. (Thomas Edison)
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to
make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies. (Charles Hoare)
They have computers, and they may have other weapons of mass
destruction. (Janet Reno)
It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer
would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic
professional ethics would instead require him to write a
DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a
parameter. (Nathaniel S Borenstein)
Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected
without, I thought, proper consideration. (Stan Kelly-Bootle)
One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination
of their C programs. (Robert Firth)
Quality isn't something you lay on top of subjects and objects like
tinsel on a Christmas tree. (Robert Pirsig)
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the
computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per
gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside. (Robert X.
Cringely, Computerworld)
There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as
easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no
longer know how to use my telephone. (Bjarne Stroustrup)
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they
really hate is lousy programmers. (Larry Niven)
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
choose from. (Andrew Tannenbaum)
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think
only of how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the
solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. (R Buckminster Fuller)
I have stopped reading Stephen King novels. Now I just read C code
instead. (Richard O'Keefe)
It's OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn't need to
figure out code. You should be able to read it. (Steve McConnell)
Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures of dinosaurs
should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very secure
ecological niche. (Beau Sheil)
More people have ascended bodily into heaven than have shipped great
software on time. (Jim McCarthy)
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy
if both are frozen. (Edward V Berard)
One of the great enemies of design is when systems or objects become
more complex than a person - or even a team of people - can keep in
their heads. This is why software is generally beneath contempt. (Bran
Ferren)
Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery
of simplicity. (E Christopher Zeeman)
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that worked. (John Gall)
Imitating paper on a computer screen is like tearing the wings off a
747 and using it as a bus on the highway. (Ted Nelson)
You can have any combination of features the Air Ministry desires, so
long as you do not also require that the resulting airplane fly.
(Willy Messerschmidt)
C++ has its place in the history of programming languages. Just as
Caligula has his place in the history of the Roman Empire.
(Robert Firth)
Invariably, if something is so complex that it requires the addition
of multiple preferences or customization choices, it is probably too
complex to use. (Don Norman)
The multiple stupidities of even the latest designs, such as
Microsoft's Windows 2000 or Apple's OS X, show either an unjustifiable
ignorance of or a near-criminal avoidance of what we do know [about
existing engineering methods for designing human-computer interfaces].
(Jef Raskin)
If architects worked on the same principle [as software engineering],
most buildings would end up looking like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
(David Crocker)
There is no such thing as a boring project. There are only boring
executions. (Irene Etzkorn)
No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after
is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company. (Alan Turing)
C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder,
but when you do, it blows away your whole leg. (Bjarne Stroustrup)
We want to make a machine that will be proud of us. (Danny Hillis)
If our designs are failing due to the constant rain of changing
requirements, it is our designs that are at fault. We must somehow
find a way to make our designs resilient to such changes and protect
them from rotting. (Robert C Martin)
If you cannot grok the overall structure of a program while taking a
shower, you are not ready to code it. (Richard Pattis)
Designers must do two seemingly contradictory things at the same time:
They must design for perfection, and they must design as though errors
are inevitable. And they must do the second without compromising the
first. (Bob Colwell)
Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling
to get out. (Bjarne Stroustrup)
A specification, design, procedure, or test plan that will not fit on
one page of 8.5-by-11 inch paper cannot be understood. (Mark Ardis)
Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with
nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month. (Wernher von Braun)
C is quirky, flawed and an enormous success. (Dennis Ritchie)
It has been discovered that C++ provides a remarkable facility for
concealing the trival details of a program -- such as where its bugs
are. (David Keppel)
Plan to throw one away. You will do that, anyway. Your only choice is
whether to try to sell the throwaway to customers. (Frederick Brooks)
If you plan to throw one away, you will throw away two. (Craig
Zerouni)
Once the Invisible Hand has taken all the historical inequities and
smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani
brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's
only four things we do better than anyone else: music, movies,
microcode (software), and high-speed pizza delivery. (Neal Stephenson)
For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading
edge, could be so useless, and then it occurred to me that a computer
is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things,
while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do
incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match. (Bill
Bryson)
Just remember: you're not a "dummy," no matter what those computer
books claim. The real dummies are the people who, though technically
expert, couldn't design hardware and software that's usable by normal
consumers if their lives depended upon it. (Walter Mossberg)
What a satire, by the way, is that machine [Babbage's Engine], on the
mere mathematician! A Frankenstein-monster, a thing without brains and
without heart, too stupid to make a blunder; that turns out results
like a corn-sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though it
grind a thousand bushels of them! (Oliver Wendell Holmes)
Physics is the universe's operating system. (Steven R Garman)
The city's central computer told you? R2D2, you know better than to
trust a strange computer! ("C3PO")
I view the landslide of C use in education as something of a
calamity. (Nicklaus Wirth)
I've noticed lately that the paranoid fear of computers becoming
intelligent and taking over the world has almost entirely disappeared
from the common culture. Near as I can tell, this coincides with the
release of MS-DOS. (Larry DeLuca)
If an apparently serious problem manifests itself, no solution is
acceptable unless it is involved, expensive and time-consuming.
Completion of any task within the allocated time and budget does not
bring credit upon the performing personnel -- it merely proves that
the task was easier than expected. Failure to complete any task within
the allocated time and budget proves the task was more difficult than
expected and requires promotion for those in charge. Sufficient
monies to do the job correctly the first time are usually not
available; however, ample funds are much more easily obtained for
repeated major redesigns. (IEEE Spectrum)
Del Cecchi
"Eugene Miya" <eug...@cse.ucsc.edu> wrote in message
news:46fa9640$1@darkstar...
>>> >"you can bullshit management, but you can't bullshit an electron"
>>> >I don't know the attribution. It may be original.
>>>
>>> That's Feynman's "you can't fool nature."
>
> In article <5lverqF...@mid.individual.net>,
> blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>Or more verbosely (but still Feynman):
>>
>>"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over
>>public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
>>
>>As I understand it (meaning I haven't tracked down the original
>>source), this is from his contribution to the investigation of
>>the Challenger disaster.
>>
>>It's a great line in any event.
>
> The original source was Feynman.
not the original source of my quote.... Sorry, I was saying that before
challenger disaster.
I don't know where it came from but feynman didn't call or email me. :-)
H. E. Taylor
<paaron...@earthlink.net> Paul A. Clayton wrote:
> On Sep 25, 7:56 am, Vineeth Mekkat <vineet...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Vineeth
>
> "The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer
> system are those that aren't there."
>
> Gordon Bell
>
A variation on this I have heard is:
"Cheap, fast, reliable: choose two"
<salut>
-het
--
"Anyone who consider arithmetic means of producing random number is,
of course, in a state of sin" - John Von Neumann
Computer Links: http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/clinks.html
H.E. Taylor http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/
Bill Todd
> Terje Mathisen <terje.m...@hda.hydro.com> writes:
>> One of my favorites is this one which I haven't been able to find an
>> attribution for:
>>
>> "Some things must be seen to be believed. Most[many/some) things must be
>> believed to be seen."
>
> It's from me. It's not particularly about computer architecture, but
> comes from reading some things about philosophy of science, in
> particular a book by Paul Feyerabend, but also Life of Galileo by
> Berthold Brecht, and learning that the existence of meteorites was
> denied by established science in the 18th century, because there was
> no theory to explain them (I may have read that in Feyerabend's book,
> or elsewhere).
It's always been my favorite sig - thanks. And the meaning is clear,
whereas saying *some* things must be believed to be seen introduces the
question of whether you're talking about issues of mentally-induced
myopia - as you are - or of faith (which some - though not I - might
characterize as a kind of mentally-induced hyperopia).
- bill
Bernd Paysan
> 1983 No one knows what to do with seven windows at one time. (PC
> Week Magazine)
Nice quote, IMHO still true. Most Windows users work with one maximized
window at a time. Oh, yes, they have other "open" windows in the
background, but only one of them is visible - and they use the task bar
as "tabbed window manager". Even on the six virtual screens I've on my 24"
display, few screens have more than five windows - typically less (this one
has now four, including the compose window, one window completely
obscured). The one with more than five windows on it is a mess, the only
reason why it has so many windows on it is that Cadence's Verilog simulator
needs at least three open windows to work at all.
--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
Bernd Paysan
> A variation on this I have heard is:
> "Cheap, fast, reliable: choose two"
I think you can have cheap, fast, and reliable software, but it must be old
for that (e.g. (La)TeX today can be considered as cheap, fast, and
reliable. When it was introduced, it was only cheap and reliable).
Rob Warnock
| "The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer
| system are those that aren't there."
|
| Gordon Bell
Well, the way I heard it, he said, "The best part of a design is the
part that isn't there." But in any case, Bell's version [whichever
version that is] is but one of a long series of similar sentiments
which, AFAICT, seem to trace back to this one:
"Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a
plus rien a ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien a retrancher."
(Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.) [1]
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
[in Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. III: "L'Avion", p. 60]
Other variations I've heard:
"Simplify and add lightness"
-- Formula-I racecar designer's creed
[per John C Alderman, who drove them for a brief period]
"Simplicity, then add lightness"
-- William B. Stout, Ford Motor Company
(Formerly Stout Metal Airplane Company)
"The most beautiful things in the world are those
from which all excess weight has been removed.
-- Henry Ford
-Rob
[1] From <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry>
-----
Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
Chris Thomasson
news:1190721386....@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> Hello,
>
> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
I kind of like the following:
<sig>
--
Joe Seigh
When you get lemons, you make lemonade.
When you get hardware, you make software.
</sig>
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.programming.threads/msg/2484dd45dbd64392
;^)
Alex McDonald
> Paul A. Clayton <paaronclay...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> +---------------
> | "The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer
> | system are those that aren't there."
> |
> | Gordon Bell
> +---------------
>
> Well, the way I heard it, he said, "The best part of a design is the
> part that isn't there." But in any case, Bell's version [whichever
> version that is] is but one of a long series of similar sentiments
> which, AFAICT, seem to trace back to this one:
>
> "Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a
> plus rien a ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien a retrancher."
> (Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add,
> but when there is nothing left to take away.) [1]
> -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
> [in Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. III: "L'Avion", p. 60]
>
> Other variations I've heard:
>
> "Simplify and add lightness"
> -- Formula-I racecar designer's creed
> [per John C Alderman, who drove them for a brief period]
Said by Colin Chapman, founder of Lotus Engineering. A philosophy he
held to was not to over-engineer. A possibly apocryphal Chapman story;
when asked how he designed his ultra light monocoque racing chassis,
he stated that he subtracted parts until it collapsed, whereupon he
would add back the last piece he'd removed and declare it complete.
>
> "Simplicity, then add lightness"
> -- William B. Stout, Ford Motor Company
> (Formerly Stout Metal Airplane Company)
>
> "The most beautiful things in the world are those
> from which all excess weight has been removed.
> -- Henry Ford
>
> -Rob
>
> [1] From <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry>
>
> -----
> Rob Warnock <r...@rpw3.org>
Alex McDonald
> +---------------
> | "The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer
> | system are those that aren't there."
> |
> | Gordon Bell
> +---------------
>
> Well, the way I heard it, he said, "The best part of a design is the
> part that isn't there." But in any case, Bell's version [whichever
> version that is] is but one of a long series of similar sentiments
> which, AFAICT, seem to trace back to this one:
>
> "Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a
> plus rien a ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien a retrancher."
> (Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add,
> but when there is nothing left to take away.) [1]
> -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
> [in Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. III: "L'Avion", p. 60]
>
> Other variations I've heard:
>
> "Simplify and add lightness"
> -- Formula-I racecar designer's creed
> [per John C Alderman, who drove them for a brief period]
Said by Colin Chapman, founder of Lotus Engineering. A philosophy he
held to was not to over-engineer. A possibly apocryphal Chapman story;
when asked how he designed his ultra light monocoque racing chassis,
he stated that he subtracted parts until it collapsed, whereupon he
would add back the last piece he'd removed and declare it complete.
>
> "Simplicity, then add lightness"
> -- William B. Stout, Ford Motor Company
> (Formerly Stout Metal Airplane Company)
>
> "The most beautiful things in the world are those
> from which all excess weight has been removed.
> -- Henry Ford
>
> -Rob
>
> [1] From <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry>
>
> -----
> Rob Warnock <r...@rpw3.org>
Eliot Miranda
> Vineeth Mekkat wrote:
>
>> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>
Guy,
thanks; these are a fabulous concentration. Amongst my favourites
is Stan Kelly-Bootle's. You should give up the consulting, and
"monetize" this list in the form of an auto-signature tool that picks
one at random. Subscription revenues would be assured by giving access
to your extending the pool of quotes over time. You then franchise the
software to different domain experts providing quote sets to different
markets.
just my 0.5¢
--
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in Calvin &
the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. Hobbes.
--
Eliot ,,,^..^,,, Smalltalk - scene not herd
Eugene Miya
Bernd Paysan <bernd....@gmx.de> wrote:
>H. E. Taylor wrote:
>> A variation on this I have heard is:
>> "Cheap, fast, reliable: choose two"
>
>I think you can have cheap, fast, and reliable software, but it must be old
>for that (e.g. (La)TeX today can be considered as cheap, fast, and
>reliable. When it was introduced, it was only cheap and reliable).
Reliable?
You never read The Errors of TeX? [SP&E]
--
Guy Macon
Bernd Paysan wrote:
>
>Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:
>
>> 1983 No one knows what to do with seven windows at
>>> one time. (PC Week Magazine)
>
>Nice quote, IMHO still true. Most Windows users work with one maximized
>window at a time. Oh, yes, they have other "open" windows in the
>background, but only one of them is visible - and they use the task bar
>as "tabbed window manager". Even on the six virtual screens I've on my 24"
>display, few screens have more than five windows - typically less (this one
>has now four, including the compose window, one window completely
>obscured). The one with more than five windows on it is a mess, the only
>reason why it has so many windows on it is that Cadence's Verilog simulator
>needs at least three open windows to work at all.
The software may insist on having three windows open, but do you
really need to look at all three at once, or could one or two
be minimized and not hinder you?
I have been paying attention since I first saw that quote, and I
really haven't needed more than four windows open -- except for
occasions when extra windows are open but only providing one bit
of information such as downloading/done or still-compiling/stopped-
with-error. Those could be replaced with an icon on the taskbar
with no loss of functionality.
By contrast, at the moment to the right of my PC I have a
stack of boxes that are providing the following information:
Three AC digital voltage meters (phases A/B/C)
Four digital AC current meters (A/B/C/N)
One 4-channel scope showing 3 voltage waveforms
One 4-channel scope showing 4 current waveforms
One power analyzer set to show total power for all three phases
One phase rotation indicator (1 bit of info: CW or CCW)
One distortion meter that can be connected to any phase
One audio-frequency spectrum analyzer that can be connected to any phase.
That's 13 different things that I am looking at, but of
course not all at once. If they were windows that I
could minimize, I can't see any reason why I would need
to have more that four or maybe five of them open -- the
rest could be minimized until needed.
There are times when I have used a 16 channel logic analyzer and
wished I had more channels, but that's not really looking at 16
things -- comparing waveforms to see timing relationships is a lot
more like looking at one thing.
I sometimes watch 8 or more variables when debugging a program,
but again most of them are providing one bit of information
and could be replaced with an icon on the taskbar with no loss
of functionality.
Eugene Miya
In article <fden25$cb0$1...@news.xmission.com>, Richard <> wrote:
>Man, talk about a low standard! "Programmers at Work" was pretty weak
>IMO.
It was weak, but my friend Mike is in it.
It's a Microsoft book.
>At least I learned *why* PFS:File was abysmally slow, even
>compared to contemporary peer software on the Apple ][, when I saw the
>guy's string manipulation routines.
Ah!
>It surely does show that its better to be lucky than good.
It's a Microsoft book.
Hey we're the industry which has Accidental Empires as a book.
--
shangah...@gmail.com
"We are doing things that dont have a name"
My least favorite quote by a design manager to an architect:
"Please make those bugs go away. <pause>. <sips coffee>. Can we
classify the bugs as enhancements to make the project indicators look
better"
> Hello,
>
> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>
> Regards,
> Vineeth
H. E. Taylor
Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
about a foot apart and saying, "A nanosecond is about this long."
[at a computer conference in Vancouver early eighties]
<salut>
-het
--
"progress in software has not followed Moore's law." -John Holland
Random Neat Stuff: http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/RNSArchive.html
H.E. Taylor http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/
Eugene Miya
H. E. Taylor <h...@despam.autobahn.mb.ca> wrote:
>In article <1190721386....@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
><vine...@gmail.com> Vineeth Mekkat wrote:
>> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>
> Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
> about a foot apart and saying, "A nanosecond is about this long."
> [at a computer conference in Vancouver early eighties]
><salut>
Oh yeah, and that I never saw her and them,
she handed out salt cubes/crystals and noted they were 1 picosecond on a side.
--
Eugene Miya
Bernd Paysan <bernd....@gmx.de> wrote:
>Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:
>> 1983 No one knows what to do with seven windows at one time. (PC
>> Week Magazine)
>Nice quote, IMHO still true. Most Windows users work with one maximized
>window at a time. Oh, yes, they have other "open" windows in the
>background, but only one of them is visible - and they use the task bar
>as "tabbed window manager". Even on the six virtual screens I've on my 24"
>display, few screens have more than five windows - typically less (this one
>has now four, including the compose window, one window completely
>obscured). The one with more than five windows on it is a mess, the only
>reason why it has so many windows on it is that Cadence's Verilog simulator
>needs at least three open windows to work at all.
Respective of the fact that I really like and everyone should read
George Miller's Mythical #7 paper, I'd get away from pure computer systems.
Cars, automobiles, don't do it. But a plane, even under VFR, let me
think: horizon, airspeed, climb rate, altitude, turn indicator, fuel (ha),
GPS and/or radios, one does approach 7 and more instruments and windows.
Flight sim games don't count. Nothing like scary IFR flying to keep one awake.
That says nothing of places like reactor control rooms, refinery, etc.
even a real serious fab line, say a small research one, self-contained.
--
Eugene Miya
>>>public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
>>
In article <5m098kF...@mid.individual.net>,
Del Cecchi <delcecchi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>not the original source of my quote.... Sorry, I was saying that before
>challenger disaster.
>I don't know where it came from but feynman didn't call or email me. :-)
If you want Helen Tuck's phone number of that time, I still have it.
But she's retired.
Very similar stories are told of the development of the film for the
Lockheed U-2 and the Corona satellites. A lawyer involved with the
project was sitting behind 2 engineers (probably Kodak, oh this it's a.f.c.)
discussing the problem of film tearing. The lawyer asked questions about
the strength of materials, and the engineers mentioned that steel foil
had all the right physical attributes. So the lawyer suggested that
they use foil. Which would have been OK except for the optical requirements.
Fortunately, the lawyer shut up.
--
Rob Warnock
+---------------
| H. E. Taylor <h...@despam.autobahn.mb.ca> wrote:
| > Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
|
| Rear Adm and Dr.
|
| > about a foot apart and saying, "A nanosecond is about this long."
| > [at a computer conference in Vancouver early eighties]
|
| salt cubes/crystals and noted they were 1 picosecond on a side.
Another quote from her that fits this thread somewhat:
http://www.hopper.navy.mil/USS%20HOPPER%20HOMEPAGE/Our%20Namesake.html
...
Although Hopper had a career decorated with many rewards,
she had to prove herself repeatedly. She once said,
"If you do something once, people will call it an accident.
If you do it twice, they call it a coincidence. But do it
a third time and you've just proven a natural law!"
And:
http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/hopper_grace.htm
...
She'll be remembered for her now famous sayings, one of which is
"It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
...
She's also credited with coining the term bug when she traced
an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay. The bug
was carefully removed and taped to a daily log book. Since then,
whenever a computer has a problem, it's referred to as a bug.
Both of the above URLs contain a picture of the page in her
lab notebook in which she taped this first "computer bug".
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org>
Rob Warnock
...
| > ... Even on the six virtual screens I've on my 24" display,
| >few screens have more than five windows - typically less (this one
| >has now four, including the compose window, one window completely
| >obscured). The one with more than five windows on it is a mess, the only
| >reason why it has so many windows on it is that Cadence's Verilog simulator
| >needs at least three open windows to work at all.
|
| Respective of the fact that I really like and everyone should read
+---------------
For those who *still* haven't read this classic, here's your chance:
http://www.musanim.com/miller1956/
George A. Miller, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two:
Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information",
The Psychological Review, 1956, vol. 63, pp. 81-97,
reproduced [on the web] with the author's permission...
+---------------
| I'd get away from pure computer systems.
| Cars, automobiles, don't do it. But a plane, even under VFR, let me
| think: horizon, airspeed, climb rate, altitude, turn indicator, fuel (ha),
| GPS and/or radios, one does approach 7 and more instruments and windows.
| Flight sim games don't count. Nothing like scary IFR flying to keep
| one awake.
+---------------
Indeed. There was this one night I was trying to punch through the
summertime SF Bay stratus down to KHWD and wanted to do the LOC/DME
into 28L but didn't have DME, so had to fly the VOR-A approach. "Fun"...
erik magnuson
>
> "Simplicity, then add lightness"
> -- William B. Stout, Ford Motor Company
> (Formerly Stout Metal Airplane Company)
I've seen Stout quoted as saying, "Simplicate, then add lightness".
And a perhaps apocryphal quote from Cray just before leaving CDC, "you
don't know your wood either!" to a visiting VP.
- Erik
erik magnuson
> And:
>
> http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/hopper_grace.htm
> ...
> She'll be remembered for her now famous sayings, one of which is
> "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
> ...
> She's also credited with coining the term bug when she traced
> an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay. The bug
> was carefully removed and taped to a daily log book. Since then,
> whenever a computer has a problem, it's referred to as a bug.
>
> Both of the above URLs contain a picture of the page in her
> lab notebook in which she taped this first "computer bug".
>
I've seen the term 'bug' used in a reprint of some GE publications from
the 1920's (C.E.R.A. Bulletin 116 "Electrification by GE"). OTOH, Adm
Hopper may have still found the first _Computer_ bug.
- Erik
Guy Macon
erik magnuson wrote:
>
>Rob Warnock wrote:
>> She's also credited with coining the term bug when she traced
>> an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay. The bug
>> was carefully removed and taped to a daily log book. Since then,
>> whenever a computer has a problem, it's referred to as a bug.
>>
>> Both of the above URLs contain a picture of the page in her
>> lab notebook in which she taped this first "computer bug".
>
>I've seen the term 'bug' used in a reprint of some GE publications from
>the 1920's (C.E.R.A. Bulletin 116 "Electrification by GE"). OTOH, Adm
>Hopper may have still found the first _Computer_ bug.
From 1947:
"1545 Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay.
First actual case of bug being found.
-Grace Hopper, _Harvard Mark II logbook_
From 1896:
"The term 'bug' is used, to a limited extent, to
designate any fault or trouble in the connections
or working of electric apparatus."
-Nehemiah Hawkins, _New Catechism of Electricity_
From 1889:
"Mr. Thomas Edison has been up on the two previous
nights discovering 'a bug' in his phonograph.
-Pall Mall Gazette
The language Grace Hopper used makes it clear that the term "bug"
was in common use, and that she was commenting on the fact that
this particular "bug" was an actual bug.
--
Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com>
Erik Trulsson
> "Terje Mathisen" <terje.m...@hda.hydro.com> wrote in message
> news:0vpus4-...@osl016lin.hda.hydro.com...
>> H. E. Taylor wrote:
>>> In article <1190721386....@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
>>> <vine...@gmail.com> Vineeth Mekkat wrote:
>>>> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
>>> about a foot apart and saying, "A nanosecond is about this long."
>>>
>>> [at a computer conference in Vancouver early eighties]
>>
>> same thing?
>>
>> (As I've noted before, a metric style A4 sheet of paper is _much_ better
>> than a foot as an approximate nanosecond:
>>
>> 29.97 cm vs 30.48 cm
>>
>> c is of course 299 792 458 m / s, i.e. a ns is 29.979 cm.
>>
>> This is sufficient proof of the superiority of the metric system. :-)
>
> After taking into account the refractive index of air at 20C ~1.000271374
> the distance is reduced to
> 29.9711 cm.
I just want to note that the size of an A4 sheet of paper is 210mm x 297mm.
Still slightly better than a foot for measuring a nanosecond, but not all
that precise.
--
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr...@student.uu.se
Joe Pfeiffer
> H. E. Taylor wrote:
> > In article <1190721386....@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
> > <vine...@gmail.com> Vineeth Mekkat wrote:
> >> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
> >>
> > Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
> > about a foot apart and saying, "A nanosecond is about this long."
> >
> > [at a computer conference in Vancouver early eighties]
>
> Didn't she use to hand out foot-long pieces of string to illustrate
> the same thing?
Wire-wrap wire. I never saw her in person, but a friend of mine gave
me some nanoseconds a while back.
> (As I've noted before, a metric style A4 sheet of paper is _much_
> better than a foot as an approximate nanosecond:
>
> 29.97 cm vs 30.48 cm
>
> c is of course 299 792 458 m / s, i.e. a ns is 29.979 cm.
>
> This is sufficient proof of the superiority of the metric system. :-)
I haven't measured exactly how long the wire actually is...
Tim McCaffrey
terje.m...@hda.hydro.com says...
>
>Rob Warnock wrote:
>> Paul A. Clayton <paaron...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> +---------------
>> | "The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer
>> | system are those that aren't there."
>> |
>> | Gordon Bell
>> +---------------
>>
>> Well, the way I heard it, he said, "The best part of a design is the
>> part that isn't there." But in any case, Bell's version [whichever
>> version that is] is but one of a long series of similar sentiments
>> which, AFAICT, seem to trace back to this one:
>>
>> "Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a
>> plus rien a ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien a retrancher."
>> (Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add,
>> but when there is nothing left to take away.) [1]
>> -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
>> [in Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. III: "L'Avion", p. 60]
>
>the inner loop of the TCPIP checksum & copy, handling 32-bit dwords
>instead of just 16-bit words as the original algorithm specifies:
>
>next:
> adc eax,edx ;; 1
> mov [edi+esi],edx ;; 2
> mov edx,[esi] ;; 3
> lea esi,[esi+4] ;; 4
> dec ecx ;; 5
> jnz next ;; 6
>
>(1) The first instruction accumulates the two previous 16-bit words,
>while wrapping around any previous carry bit. An outgoing carry will be
>left in the carry flag.
>
>(2) The second writes those 32 bits to the target buffer, using a
>combination of the source pointer (ESI) and the offset between source
>and destination.
>
>(3) Loads the next dword
>
>(4) Updates the combined buffer pointer, without modifying any flags
>
>(5) Decrement the loop counter, setting the zero flag when done, but
>without modifying the carry flag
>
>(6) Branches back unles the carry flag was set in (5)
I think you meant the zero flag.
>
>On a dual-issue, in-order cpu like the original Pentium, this code will
>pair perfectly, all address updates will happen at least one cycle
>before they are needed, avoiding any AGI stalls, and the special-casing
>of carry vs zero flag handling in INC/DEC allows all carry wraparound to
>happen transparently.
>
>I.e. this is code that in some ways is absolutely perfect: There is
>absolutely nothing to subtract, and all the parts mesh together.
>
I'm curious, how well does this work on a Core 2? Doesn't the partial flags
update cause a stall? (I think the use of DEC/INC is undesirable for that
reason).
- Tim
John L
>the 1920's (C.E.R.A. Bulletin 116 "Electrification by GE"). OTOH, Adm
>Hopper may have still found the first _Computer_ bug.
I've seen the notebook, which is now in the Smithsonian. If they ever
finish the building renovations, you can presumably see it too.
Next to the moth she wrote "First actual case of bug being found"
since she like everyone else was long familiar with the term.
R's,
John
Eugene Miya
Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org> wrote:
>| > Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
>| Rear Adm and Dr.
>|
> http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/hopper_grace.htm
> ...
> She'll be remembered for her now famous sayings, one of which is
> "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
I have an old boss who also used to say that.
She used to say that I was good at that. I hope I've not disapointed
Marcie.
>Both of the above URLs contain a picture of the page in her
>lab notebook in which she taped this first "computer bug".
Oh yes, I've seen that photo in print.
She also has an Aegis destroyer in her name.
I'm setting TAOCP vol. 4 back a day tomorrow.
I just got a note. I'll raise the issue of the next ca-fest next year.
If he comes along the location will be Palo Alto.
--
Eugene Miya
>...
>| George Miller's Mythical #7 paper, ...
In article <DOydnZCTBLouHWHb...@speakeasy.net>,
Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org> wrote:
> http://www.musanim.com/miller1956/
> George A. Miller, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two:
> Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information",
> The Psychological Review, 1956, vol. 63, pp. 81-97,
> reproduced [on the web] with the author's permission...
>
>+---------------
>| I'd get away from pure computer systems.
>| Cars, automobiles, don't do it. But a plane, even under VFR, let me
>+---------------
>
>Indeed. There was this one night I was trying to punch through the
>summertime SF Bay stratus down to KHWD and wanted to do the LOC/DME
>into 28L but didn't have DME, so had to fly the VOR-A approach. "Fun"...
We didn't.
We bailed (symbolically).
Mike and I flew into Livermore, a friend loaned a car,
and I drove between PAO and LVR 3 times. Mike got a plane lift the next day.
--
Mickey
- Many faces, circa 1988
Methinks they were wrong....
Mickey
Eugene Miya
Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org> wrote:
>| > Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
>| > about a foot apart and saying, "A nanosecond is about this long."
>|
>| the same thing?
String?
String?
>+---------------
>
>Actually, it was wire. She liked to whack off 11.8" of old-style
>25-pair telephone cable [now known as "Cat-3", but nobody used
>that term back them], strip off the outer gray plastic jacket,
>and wave the bundle of (now loose) "nanoseconds" around, somewhat
>like the ends of those "modern" decorative fiber-optic table lamps.
Her whack?
I think as an admiral, or even a Capt., I'd think that she'd assign some
one, a yeoman?, to do the whacking. 8^)
>After her talks she would usually leave the "nanoseconds" up near
>the podium so the first 50 people to come up could take one home. ;-}
>
>Let's see: 11.8" @ 2.54 cm [exactly] = 29.972 cm, surprise, surprise! ;-}
>p.s. In wire electricity propagates at *much* less than C-in-a-vacuum
>[as little as 0.5 C in 60 ohm microstrip or stripline], but let's not
>let such mundane details spoil the joke...
I would almost bet the likelihood that someone raised that with her.
The question or speculation would be what her response would be
like give you, and just you, say, half a foot of wire.
Then she'd go back to handing out feet (vacuum).
--
Eugene Miya
erik magnuson <mek...@easyspeak.net> wrote:
>Rob Warnock wrote:
>> "Simplicity, then add lightness"
>> -- William B. Stout, Ford Motor Company
>> (Formerly Stout Metal Airplane Company)
>
>I've seen Stout quoted as saying, "Simplicate, then add lightness".
Well from my friend Lee's sig.:
"Take the obvious...and simplify it!"
Lee Felsenstein
>And a perhaps apocryphal quote from Cray just before leaving CDC, "you
>don't know your wood either!" to a visiting VP.
That was supposed to be a CDC internal VP.
One needs more context for that one.
--
Jim Haynes
Terje Mathisen <terje.m...@hda.hydro.com> wrote:
>
>This is sufficient proof of the superiority of the metric system. :-)
>
--
jhhaynes at earthlink dot net
Ravishankar S
news:1190721386....@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> Hello,
>
> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>
> Vineeth
look up the great books on Computer Architecture by Patterson and Hennesey.
You will find all the classic quotes with regard to the topics..
Terje Mathisen
> In article <5cpus4-...@osl016lin.hda.hydro.com>,
> terje.m...@hda.hydro.com says...
>> without modifying the carry flag
>>
>> (6) Branches back unles the carry flag was set in (5)
>
> I think you meant the zero flag.
Oops! Yes, indeed. My wrong (but the code is good, right? :-)
>
>> On a dual-issue, in-order cpu like the original Pentium, this code will
>> pair perfectly, all address updates will happen at least one cycle
>> before they are needed, avoiding any AGI stalls, and the special-casing
>> of carry vs zero flag handling in INC/DEC allows all carry wraparound to
>> happen transparently.
>>
>> I.e. this is code that in some ways is absolutely perfect: There is
>> absolutely nothing to subtract, and all the parts mesh together.
>>
>
> I'm curious, how well does this work on a Core 2? Doesn't the partial flags
> update cause a stall? (I think the use of DEC/INC is undesirable for that
> reason).
INC/DEC is still relatively good, but Intel have indeed started warning
us that the irregularity of the flags update means that it is harder to
make it fast. I would not be surprised if a Core 2 needs an extra cycle
for this reason.
Terje
--
- <Terje.M...@hda.hydro.com>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Terje Mathisen
> In article <0vpus4-...@osl016lin.hda.hydro.com>,
> Terje Mathisen <terje.m...@hda.hydro.com> wrote:
>> This is sufficient proof of the superiority of the metric system. :-)
>>
> Nah, if it were superior it would be in base 2, not in base 10
Well, metric paper is indeed an area base 2 system.
Each size is half the size of the previous.
John Dallman
rp...@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) wrote:
> [Of Grace Hopper]
> She'll be remembered for her now famous sayings, one of which is
> "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
I use this in the sense of pre-emptive appologies, but I get real
careful about people who try to get me to do things on that basis. I
first got cautious about this when it was a question of data that was
subject to US arms export control laws.
--
John Dallman, j...@cix.co.uk, HTML mail is treated as probable spam.
robert...@yahoo.com
wrote:
> > Nah, if it were superior it would be in base 2, not in base 10
>
> Well, metric paper is indeed an area base 2 system.
>
> Each size is half the size of the previous.
Actually so are the standard paper sizes in North America. ANSI A (ye
olde 8.5x11), is half of an ANSI B which is half of an ANSI C... all
of which (nominally) start as 34x44 ANSI Es.
If you think about it, this is really an artifact of paper production,
not standards. Each paper size is going to have to be integer
multiplies of the next smaller size in each dimension, or production
gets rather more wasteful. Of course more complicated tilings are
possible, but would introduce inventory problems. IOW, a "C" size
might cut up into two Bs and three As, but then you have to be able to
balance your sales like that.
Alex Colvin
> A variation on this I have heard is:
> "Cheap, fast, reliable: choose two"
an old favorite:
you want it bad?
we can do it bad.
--
mac the naïf
Del Cecchi
> H. E. Taylor wrote:
>
>> In article <1190721386....@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
>> <vine...@gmail.com> Vineeth Mekkat wrote:
>>
>>> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>>>
>>
>> Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
>> about a foot apart and saying, "A nanosecond is about this long."
>>
>> [at a computer conference in Vancouver early eighties]
>
>
> same thing?
>
> than a foot as an approximate nanosecond:
>
> 29.97 cm vs 30.48 cm
>
> c is of course 299 792 458 m / s, i.e. a ns is 29.979 cm.
>
>
>
Only in a vacuum.
--
Del Cecchi
"This post is my own and doesn’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions,
strategies or opinions.”
Terje Mathisen
> On Sep 28, 4:02 pm, Terje Mathisen <terje.mathi...@hda.hydro.com>
> wrote:
>>> Nah, if it were superior it would be in base 2, not in base 10
>> Well, metric paper is indeed an area base 2 system.
>>
>> Each size is half the size of the previous.
>
>
> Actually so are the standard paper sizes in North America. ANSI A (ye
> olde 8.5x11), is half of an ANSI B which is half of an ANSI C... all
> of which (nominally) start as 34x44 ANSI Es.
But since the aspect ratio isn't sqrt(2), US size A paper cannot have
the same shape as size B:
11/8.5 = 1.29412
17/11 = 1.54545
Metric A0 paper is exactly one square meter, then each halving of that
sheet produces two sheets of the next smaller size, all of them having
the same aspect ratio (of sqrt(2) = 1.4142 of course).
> If you think about it, this is really an artifact of paper production,
> not standards. Each paper size is going to have to be integer
> multiplies of the next smaller size in each dimension, or production
> gets rather more wasteful. Of course more complicated tilings are
> possible, but would introduce inventory problems. IOW, a "C" size
> might cut up into two Bs and three As, but then you have to be able to
> balance your sales like that.
The metric paper system makes a lot more sense to me. :-)
Stephen Fuld
> In article <uvGdnVZjoKh4ImHb...@speakeasy.net>,
> Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org> wrote:
>> Terje Mathisen <terje.m...@hda.hydro.com> wrote:
>> +---------------
>> | H. E. Taylor wrote:
>> | > Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
>> | > about a foot apart and saying, "A nanosecond is about this long."
>> |
>> | Didn't she use to hand out foot-long pieces of string to illustrate
>> | the same thing?
>
> String?
> String?
>> +---------------
>>
>> Actually, it was wire. She liked to whack off 11.8" of old-style
>> 25-pair telephone cable [now known as "Cat-3", but nobody used
>> that term back them], strip off the outer gray plastic jacket,
>> and wave the bundle of (now loose) "nanoseconds" around, somewhat
>> like the ends of those "modern" decorative fiber-optic table lamps.
>
> Her whack?
> I think as an admiral, or even a Capt., I'd think that she'd assign some
> one, a yeoman?, to do the whacking. 8^)
Quite right. She indicated that it was always an assignment for the
newest, and presumably most junior, member of her staff. A few other
memories of hearing her speeches . . . She also had a "microsecond", a
coil of wire of about 1,000 feet that she waved around, and said she
wanted to bring a "millisecond" but couldn't carry it. She also claimed
that the nanoseconds were quite useful. For example, when trying to
explain to an Admiral why there was such a delay in satellite radio
transmission, she took her nanosecond and held it out, moving it up a
foot at a time while explaining that there were a lot of nanoseconds
between earth and the satellite. She had a LOT of stories.
>> After her talks she would usually leave the "nanoseconds" up near
>> the podium so the first 50 people to come up could take one home. ;-}
I have one. :-)
--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)
Terje Mathisen
Nice!
Those are almost in the same league as checks from Knuth.
I know that I was extremely impressed when I discovered that a
programmer friend (Sean T Barrett) had not just one but two of them:
http://nothings.org/computer/knuth.jpg
BTW, the checks has a small note at the bottom, for "1.211" and "3.183
(3.227)", I'm guessing those relate to bug numbers in book one and three?
Niels Jørgen Kruse
> Very similar stories are told of the development of the film for the
> Lockheed U-2 and the Corona satellites. A lawyer involved with the
> project was sitting behind 2 engineers (probably Kodak, oh this it's a.f.c.)
> discussing the problem of film tearing. The lawyer asked questions about
> the strength of materials, and the engineers mentioned that steel foil
> had all the right physical attributes. So the lawyer suggested that
> they use foil. Which would have been OK except for the optical requirements.
> Fortunately, the lawyer shut up.
Couldn't you glue film to foil and separate for development?
--
Mvh./Regards, Niels Jørgen Kruse, Vanløse, Denmark
rei...@hartenstein.de
What about "The industry essentially made a Hail Mary pass, and
they're hoping the rest of us will run with it," says Dave Patterson
about microprocessor manufacturers and the manycore programming
crisis. See
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/department/EECSbrochure/c6-s5.html
and, maybe you will find some interesting statement in:
http://www.fpl.uni-kl.de/staff/hartenstein/Hartenstein-Delft-2007-ftr-v10.pdf
Best regards,
R.
Eugene Miya wrote:
> In comp.arch:
> >>> Any favourite/striking quotes on Comp Arch?
>
> >In article <1190819814....@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
> >Paul A. Clayton <paaron...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >>"The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer
> >>system are those that aren't there."
> >>Gordon Bell
>
> In article <46fa96da$1@darkstar>, I noted:
> >This is merely one of a number in More Programming Pearls by Jon Louis
> >Bentley in the chapter Bumper Sticker Computer Science. MPP should be
> >on everyone's self. Is that a quote?
>
> Speak of the devil.....
>
> A few months back I got an email announcement for a new O'Reilly book:
> Beautiful Code;
> it sounded interesting, but my time is limited. Then I got a request to
> review a copy, so I emailed Tim's rep., and I got sent the review copy
> which I got yesterday. It's very impressive. This is superior to
> Programmers at Work from a decade earlier.
>
> 1) Bentley mentions Bell again in his chapter.
> 2) There's chapters on bio, numerical, systems, parallel, distributed.
> It's current.
> 3) Greg Wilson used to post a lot of good stuff in comp.arch.
> 4) Lest I sound too glowing, it's not the perfect book.
> The book is technical, but a little cutesy.
> 5) While I want to make a endorsement/recommendation for
> personal and institutional (library) purchases/acqusitions, I'm sort of
> doing that outside my journal and outside knowing several of the authors
> and Tim O'Reilly from Usenix in the 80s and a stalled ORA project.
>
> I made what I think is a relevant cross post, but the thread started and
> I'll have it return to comp.arch.
>
>
> %A Andy Oram
> %A Greg Wilson, eds.
> %T Beautiful Code
> %I O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
> %C Sebastopol, CA 95472
> %D 2007
> %K book, text,
> %X 1: Brian Kernighan, A Regular Expression Matcher
> 2: Karl Fogel, Subversion's Delta Editor: Interface As Ontology
> 3: Jon Bentley, The Most Beautiful Code I Never Wrote
> 4: Tim Bray, Finding Things
> 5: Elliotte Rusty Harold,
> Correct, Beautiful, Fast (in That Order): Lessons from Designing XML Verifiers
> 6: Michael Feathers, Framework for Integrated Test: Beauty Through Fragility
> 7: Alberto Savoia, Beautiful Tests
> 8: Charles Petzold, On-the-Fly Code Generation for Image Processing
> 9: Douglas Crockford, Top Down Operator Precedence
> 10: Henry S. Warren, Jr., The Quest for an Accelerated Population Count
> 11: Ashish Gulhati, Secure Communication: The Technology Of Freedom
> 12: Lincoln Stein, Growing Beautiful Code in BioPerl
> 13: Jim Kent, The Design of the Gene Sorter
> 14: Jack Dongarra and Piotr Luszczek,
> How Elegant Code Evolves with Hardware The Case of Gaussian Elimination
> 15: Adam Kolawa, The Long-Term Benefits of Beautiful Design
> 16: Greg Kroah-Hartman,
> The Linux Kernel Driver Model: The Benefits of Working Together
> 17: Diomidis Spinellis, Another Level of Indirection
> 18: Andrew Kuchling,
> Python's Dictionary Implementation: Being All Things to All People
> 19: Travis E. Oliphant, Multidimensional Iterators in NumPy
> 20: Ronald Mak,
> A Highly Reliable Enterprise System for NASA's Mars Rover Mission
> 21: Rogerio Atem de Carvalho and Rafael Monnerat,
> ERP5: Designing for Maximum Adaptability
> 22: Bryan Cantrill, A Spoonful of Sewage
> 23: Jeffrey Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat, Distributed Programming with MapReduce
> 24: Simon Peyton Jones, Beautiful Concurrency
> 25: R. Kent Dybvig, Syntactic Abstraction: The syntax-case Expander
> 26: William R. Otte and Douglas C. Schmidt,
> Labor-Saving Architecture: An Object-Oriented Framework for Networked Software
> 27: Andrew Patzer, Integrating Business Partners the RESTful Way
> 28: Andreas Zeller, Beautiful Debugging
> 29: Yukihiro Matsumoto, Treating Code As an Essay
> 30: Arun Mehta, When a Button Is All That Connects You to the World
> 31: T. V. Raman, Emacspeak: The Complete Audio Desktop
> 32: Laura Wingerd and Christopher Seiwald, Code in Motion
> 33: Brian Hayes, Writing Programs for "The Book"
>
> --
Niels Jørgen Kruse
> robert...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > On Sep 28, 4:02 pm, Terje Mathisen <terje.mathi...@hda.hydro.com>
> > wrote:
> >>> Nah, if it were superior it would be in base 2, not in base 10
> >> Well, metric paper is indeed an area base 2 system.
> >>
> >> Each size is half the size of the previous.
> >
> >
> > Actually so are the standard paper sizes in North America. ANSI A (ye
> > olde 8.5x11), is half of an ANSI B which is half of an ANSI C... all
> > of which (nominally) start as 34x44 ANSI Es.
>
> But since the aspect ratio isn't sqrt(2), US size A paper cannot have
> the same shape as size B:
>
> 11/8.5 = 1.29412
> 17/11 = 1.54545
>
> Metric A0 paper is exactly one square meter, then each halving of that
> sheet produces two sheets of the next smaller size, all of them having
> the same aspect ratio (of sqrt(2) = 1.4142 of course).
Direction of grain flipflops between each halving though, so it is not a
straight shrink.
Guy Macon
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit
Niels Jørgen Kruse wrote:
>
>Terje Mathisen <terje.m...@hda.hydro.com> wrote:
>
>> robert...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>>> Terje Mathisen wrote:
>>
>>>>
>>>> Each size is half the size of the previous.
>>>
>>>
>>> Actually so are the standard paper sizes in North America. ANSI A (ye
>>> olde 8.5x11), is half of an ANSI B which is half of an ANSI C... all
>>> of which (nominally) start as 34x44 ANSI Es.
>>
>> But since the aspect ratio isn't sqrt(2), US size A paper cannot have
>> the same shape as size B:
>>
>> 11/8.5 = 1.29412
>> 17/11 = 1.54545
>>
>> Metric A0 paper is exactly one square meter, then each halving of that
>> sheet produces two sheets of the next smaller size, all of them having
>> the same aspect ratio (of sqrt(2) = 1.4142 of course).
>
>Direction of grain flipflops between each halving though, so it is not a
>straight shrink.
This is IMO the best webpage on paper sizing ever written:
[ http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Emgk25/iso-paper.html ]
--
Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/>
Torben Ægidius Mogensen
> (Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add,
> but when there is nothing left to take away.)
>
> "Simplify and add lightness"
>
> "Simplicity, then add lightness"
>
> "The most beautiful things in the world are those
> from which all excess weight has been removed.
"Simplicity is not an add-on feature"
I'm not exactly sure where this quote originates.
Torben
Jan Vorbrüggen
> George A. Miller, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two:
> Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information",
> The Psychological Review, 1956, vol. 63, pp. 81-97,
> reproduced [on the web] with the author's permission...
IIRC, it turns out the real number is in the range three to four, but that you
can use a hierarchical network to massively improve on this. Miller got seven
because most of the tests make it fairly easy to do two nodes of 3 to 4 each.
Jan
John L
>>> sheet produces two sheets of the next smaller size, all of them having
>>> the same aspect ratio (of sqrt(2) = 1.4142 of course).
>>
>>Direction of grain flipflops between each halving though, so it is not a
>>straight shrink.
Sure it is, so long as you put the raw paper in the cutting machine
the right way. Surely you don't think that they make A4 paper by
unwrapping a ream of A3 and cutting it in half.
>This is IMO the best webpage on paper sizing ever written:
>
>[ http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Emgk25/iso-paper.html ]
It's good. I see one minor error where he claims that the US Legal
size isn't widely used. In fact, lawyers in the US use it all the
time both internally and for court documents. But if one doesn't hang
around with lawyers, it's not surprising he wouldn't know that.
Eugene Miya
Stephen Fuld <S.F...@PleaseRemove.att.net> wrote:
>Eugene Miya wrote:
>> In article <uvGdnVZjoKh4ImHb...@speakeasy.net>,
>> Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org> wrote:
>>> Terje Mathisen <terje.m...@hda.hydro.com> wrote:
>>> +---------------
>>> | H. E. Taylor wrote:
>>> | > Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
>>> | > about a foot apart and saying, "A nanosecond is about this long."
>>> | Didn't she use to hand out foot-long pieces of string to illustrate
>>> | the same thing?
>> String?
>>> Actually, it was wire. She liked to whack off 11.8" of old-style
>>
>> I think as an admiral, or even a Capt., I'd think that she'd assign some
>> one, a yeoman?, to do the whacking. 8^)
>
>Quite right. She indicated that it was always an assignment for the
>newest, and presumably most junior, member of her staff. A few other
>memories of hearing her speeches . . . She also had a "microsecond", a
>coil of wire of about 1,000 feet that she waved around, and said she
>wanted to bring a "millisecond" but couldn't carry it. She also claimed
>that the nanoseconds were quite useful. For example, when trying to
>explain to an Admiral why there was such a delay in satellite radio
>transmission, she took her nanosecond and held it out, moving it up a
>foot at a time while explaining that there were a lot of nanoseconds
>between earth and the satellite. She had a LOT of stories.
Those are good.
The trivia question, which I can't immediately remember the answer to is:
Who educated Adm. Grace to what a nano-second was?
Eugene Miya
Terje Mathisen <terje.m...@hda.hydro.com> wrote:
>Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>> In article <uvGdnVZjoKh4ImHb...@speakeasy.net>,
>>> Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org> wrote:
>>>> +---------------
>>>> | H. E. Taylor wrote:
>>>> | > Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
>>>> | > about a foot apart and saying, "A nanosecond is about this long."
>
>Nice!
>
>Those are almost in the same league as checks from Knuth.
I think a little different. Not quite in the same league.
I have one of those checks, but I did't ask for it. The Museum wants it
for a software exhibit.
He's having some health problems, and he has to take it easy and not work
for the next couple of weeks. So TAOCP v4 is going to be delayed a few weeks.
I didn't raise dinner next year, I'll see him again. He has to rest a bit.
>I know that I was extremely impressed when I discovered that a
>programmer friend (Sean T Barrett) had not just one but two of them:
>
>http://nothings.org/computer/knuth.jpg
>
>BTW, the checks has a small note at the bottom, for "1.211" and "3.183
>(3.227)", I'm guessing those relate to bug numbers in book one and three?
Yes. (checking mine)
--
Eugene Miya
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Niels_J=F8rgen_Kruse?= <nos...@ab-katrinedal.dk> wrote:
>> Very similar stories are told of the development of the film for the
>> Lockheed U-2 and the Corona satellites. A lawyer involved with the
>> project was sitting behind 2 engineers (probably Kodak, oh this it's a.f.c.)
>> discussing the problem of film tearing. The lawyer asked questions about
>
Too heavy. These were huge rolls of film (so heavy that in the U-2 case
the shifting take up reel rebalanced the plane in flight), and
they had to be made as thin as possible. Too many problems with static
as well.
The U-2 balancing case was solved by using 2 rolls feeding in opposite
directions. But that was nt the static case.
--
Eugene Miya
robert...@yahoo.com <robert...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Actually so are the standard paper sizes in North America. ANSI A (ye
>olde 8.5x11), is half of an ANSI B which is half of an ANSI C...
>
>not standards. Each paper size is going to have to be integer
>multiplies of the next smaller size in each dimension, or production
>gets rather more wasteful. Of course more complicated tilings are
>possible, but would introduce inventory problems. IOW, a "C" size
You are looking also for the word bisection.
There's 2 kinds of standards: De Juris and De Facto. When an NY Times
editor called MS Word "Standard" I noted "merely de facto."
I used to sit on an ANSI committee. I learned a lot. The are all much
more arbitrary than people realize. You will note there aren't a lot of
standards for more recent items, especially those by MS. And firms, not
just MS, commonly ignore other standards like ASCII for instance.
--
Eugene Miya
Ravishankar S <ravish...@in.bosch.com> wrote:
>"Vineeth Mekkat" <vine...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:1190721386....@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>
>You will find all the classic quotes with regard to the topics..
Well I would suggest Sieworek, Bell, and Newell as it's a collection of
survey papers ("The Alto doesn't run faster at night."). Not that H&P
isn't great or classic (they're being induced as Museum Fellows in a
couple weeks).
--
Richard
eug...@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) spake the secret code
<470121f7$1@darkstar> thusly:
>Well I would suggest Sieworek, Bell, and Newell as it's a collection of
>survey papers ("The Alto doesn't run faster at night."). Not that H&P
>isn't great or classic (they're being induced as Museum Fellows in a
>couple weeks).
This one?
<http://tinyurl.com/yqm4yb>
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
Niels Jørgen Kruse
> >>> Metric A0 paper is exactly one square meter, then each halving of that
> >>> sheet produces two sheets of the next smaller size, all of them having
> >>> the same aspect ratio (of sqrt(2) = 1.4142 of course).
> >>
> >>Direction of grain flipflops between each halving though, so it is not a
> >>straight shrink.
>
> Sure it is, so long as you put the raw paper in the cutting machine
> the right way. Surely you don't think that they make A4 paper by
> unwrapping a ream of A3 and cutting it in half.
Of course, you can buy whatever orientation you want and if you are
lucky you will even get what you pay for when you make unusual choices.
However, the common commercial orientations for A3 and A4 are so that A3
cuts into 2 A4 sheets. For a quick test, you can see that an A3 sheet
makes a smooth fold when you fold it to A4, but A4 makes an ugly fold
when folded to A5.
Eugene Miya
>>survey papers ("The Alto doesn't run faster at night."). Not that H&P
>>isn't great or classic (they're being induced as Museum Fellows in a
>>couple weeks).
In article <fdr8ju$p5f$1...@news.xmission.com>, Richard <> wrote:
>This one?
><http://tinyurl.com/yqm4yb>
Yep.
Every library should have this book, irrespective of date/age.
Saves lots of time trying to find the articles.
However, it lacks the annoying diversity of formats one would otherwise
experience (important, the origianl Xerox Blue & White of the Alto is
neater than what McGraw Hill printed, and it's amazing for the fact that
the major of the computing industry at that time was still mostly using
punch cards). And if Barb in a.f.c. were reading this,
she lob a few insults toward Bell.
And Horning (a good guy) wrote the only Amazon review (giving it 5 stars).
--