TODO

Mothers and Computers


Mother  taught the IF ... THEN ... ELSE structure: "If it's
snowing,  then put your boots on before you go to school;otherwise just
wear your shoes."

Mother explained the difference between batch and transaction
processing: "We'll wash the white clothes when we get enough of
them to make a load, but we'll wash these socks out right now by hand
because you'll need them this afternoon."

Mother taught me about linked lists. Once, for a birthday party,
she laid out a treasure hunt of ten hidden clues, with each clue
telling where to find the next one, and the last one leading to the
treasure.
She then gave us the first clue. Mother understood about parity errors.
When she counted socks after doing the laundry, she expected to find an   
even number and
groaned when only one sock of a pair emerged from the washing machine.
Later she applied the principles of redundancy engineering to
this problem by buying our socks three identical pairs at a time. This
greatly increased the odds of being able to come up with at least one
matching pair.

Mother had all of us children write our Christmas thank you notes
to Grandmother, one after another, on a single large sheet of paper
which was then mailed in a single envelope with a single stamp.
This was obviously an instance of blocking records in order to save
money by reducing the number of physical I/O operations.

Mother used flags to help her manage the housework.
Whenever she turned on the stove, she put a potholder on top of
her purse to remind herself to turn it off again before leaving the
house.

Mother knew about devices which raise an interrupt signal to be
serviced when they have completed any operation. She had a
whistling teakettle.
Mother understood about LIFO ordering. In my lunch bag she put the
dessert on the bottom, the sandwich in the middle, and the napkin
on top so that things would come out in the right order at lunchtime.

There is an old story that God knew He couldn't be physically present
everywhere at once, to show His love for His people, and so He
created mothers. That is the difference between centralized and
distributed processing. As any kid who's ever misbehaved at a neighbor's
house finds out, all the mothers in the neighborhood talk to each
other.  That's a local area network of distributed processors that can't
be beat.

Mom, you're the best computer teacher I ever had.


life's like that - mouli
This made some interesting reading. So sending it across. Bye.

> >      --   This story is interesting. Perhaps we should stop & ponder for
> a
> > few minutes. What are we really looking for in life?
> > 
> >      One morning I wasted nearly an hour watching a tiny ant carry a
> > huge feather across my back terrace.  Several times it was confronted by
> > obstacles in its path and after a momentary pause it would make the
> > necessary detour.
> >      At one point the ant had to negotiate a crack in the concrete about
> > 10mm wide.  After brief contemplation the ant laid the feather over the
> > crack, walked across it and picked up the feather on the other side then
> > continued on its way.
> > 
> >      I was fascinated by the ingenuity of this ant, one of God's
> > smallest creatures.  It served to reinforce the miracle of creation.
> Here
> > was a minute insect, lacking in size yet  equipped with a brain to
> reason,
> > explore, discover and overcome.  But this ant, like the two-legged
> > co-residents of this planet, also shares  human failings.
> > 
> >      After some time the ant finally reached its destination - a flower
> > bed at the end of the terrace and a small hole that was the entrance to
> > its
> > underground home.  And it was here that the ant finally met its match.
> > How
> > 
> >      could that large feather possibly fit down that small hole?  Of
> > course it couldn't.  So the ant, after all this trouble and exercising
> > great ingenuity, overcoming problems all along the way, just abandoned
> the
> > feather and went home.
> > 
> >      The ant had not thought the problem through before it began its
> > epic journey and in the end the feather was nothing more than a burden.
> > Isn't life like that!  We worry about our  family, we worry about money
> or
> > the lack of it, we worry about work, about where we live, about all
> sorts
> > of things.  These are all burdens - the  things we pick up along life's
> > path and lug them around  the obstacles and over the crevasses that life
> > will bring, only to find that at the destination they are useless and we
> > can't take them with us.
> >