Night Watch, Day Watch, Twilight Watch, Last Watch. A great, dark fantasy/scifi series that is very Russian and as such very different from most novels mentioned here. Not that I don't like Heinlein, Clarke or Asimov, but there's more to scifi than that...
I was collecting information to decide about the biggest purchase I ever made: my first computer. I didn't know too much about the matter; I hade some ideas about 16 bit and 32 bit, and I knew that there was some mysterious thing called "co-processor", and I knew that 486 computers were newer, faster and more expensive than 386 ones. It was a rather tough decision, as I wasn't exactly rich, and I wanted a good computer really bad. So I went to a shop (Vobis in Karlsruhe, Germany) and asked the salesperson: "Could you please explain the exact difference between a 386 and a 486?" This guy answered: "That's quite easy. You know, the information is passed on and processed via electric signals?" - I nodded. He continued: "Of course, there can only be a very tiny portion of information on one wire - current or no current." (more like voltage or no voltage, I thought. But I said nothing.) "The difference between a 386 and a 486 is, that there are 386 wires going in a 386 and 486 wires in a 486, so the 486 can process 100 bits of information more at one time." It took a few seconds till I found out how to react. I asked him what that bit stuff (16 vs 32 bit) I heard about was, then, if modern processors already operated with 486 bits. While he was stuttering something about him having to read this in their sales brochure, I continued asking about coprocessors, the difference between 486-DX and 486-SX and finally (he was rather sweating and red-faced by then) told him that I'd never buy a computer in a shop where nobody knows anything about computers. I left.
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Night Watch, Day Watch, Twilight Watch, Last Watch.
A great, dark fantasy/scifi series that is very Russian and as such very different from most novels mentioned here.
Not that I don't like Heinlein, Clarke or Asimov, but there's more to scifi than that...
I was collecting information to decide about the biggest purchase I ever made: my first computer.
I didn't know too much about the matter; I hade some ideas about 16 bit and 32 bit, and I knew that there was some mysterious thing called "co-processor", and I knew that 486 computers were newer, faster and more expensive than 386 ones.
It was a rather tough decision, as I wasn't exactly rich, and I wanted a good computer really bad. So I went to a shop (Vobis in Karlsruhe, Germany) and asked the salesperson: "Could you please explain the exact difference between a 386 and a 486?"
This guy answered: "That's quite easy. You know, the information is passed on and processed via electric signals?" - I nodded. He continued: "Of course, there can only be a very tiny portion of information on one wire - current or no current." (more like voltage or no voltage, I thought. But I said nothing.) "The difference between a 386 and a 486 is, that there are 386 wires going in a 386 and 486 wires in a 486, so the 486 can process 100 bits of information more at one time."
It took a few seconds till I found out how to react. I asked him what that bit stuff (16 vs 32 bit) I heard about was, then, if modern processors already operated with 486 bits. While he was stuttering something about him having to read this in their sales brochure, I continued asking about coprocessors, the difference between 486-DX and 486-SX and finally (he was rather sweating and red-faced by then) told him that I'd never buy a computer in a shop where nobody knows anything about computers. I left.