I used to help out my parents' friends with their computers in high school, i have this very nice metaphor to show for it.
The Messy Room Analogy Why RAM is important, or What the Major Components in a Computer Do
Ok you have a messy room, clothes everywhere, all over the floor. The floor is your hard drive, it stores your clothes, the data. They are randomly distributed and can be randomly accessed. You need to bring your clothes to the washing machine downstairs, for processing - your washing machine is the CPU. To get your clothes there you must put them in a basket, the basket is your RAM. You will get your clothes done faster (process data faster) by a) having faster washing machines, but if you can't get your clothes there as fast as you can wash them (ok, breaking from reality a little now) then there's no point so you should b) have more RAM because then you won't have to walk to your room so often (acess the hard drive) which takes up a lot more time because you have to walk around picking everything up, not just dumping it from the basket into the machine. So there comes a point where you don't need a much faster processor unless you also get more RAM.
Of course, with a bigger hard drive you can store more clothes, but it won't necessarily have any effect on the speed of your computer because that's dependent on how often you need to wash your clothes (how much processing you need to do) and how fast you can get your clothes to the machines (basket size, amount of RAM)
By defragmenting you effectively take all your clothes and rearrange them to be sorted by color or whatever, maybe instead you fold them, I don't know. In the end it makes it so you've ordered the clothes so that they can be found faster, and will be typically picked up in the order found and not require running all over the room. Your floor gets messy because you toss your clothes wherever you happen to be standing when you take them off - eventually this reordering is required, typically on a monthly basis or when you feel that it's become overwhelmingly difficult to find things when you need them. Some filesystems used on other operating systems (methods for keeping the clothes in your room, on the floor, in shelfs, under your bed) have a nice method of also putting clothes back where it found it, and keeping externally maintained tabular lists of their locations, so that this regular reorganization of the clothes is unnecessary. Checking the lists against your drawers or whatever on a regular basis does become important though.
go ahead, have fun with this, it can go forever, believe me, i've taken this way to far
So, I'm sure by now you can tell what kind of room I kept (and keep) and who I was dealing with when providing this metaphor - none other than: your target audience, Ma.
"If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or a first-class ticket," Smith said. "In the shipping business, I can get two-day air or six-day ground."
the problem with this quote is (let me rephrase that) - ahem, why this quote is misleading is because he's saying "*I* can buy a ticket upgrade" or "*I* can order the package here faster" where *I* is the guy at the desk asking for the site. However, the crux of this proposal is precisely the other way around - the SHIPPER or the AIRLINE is paying to get you(or your package) there faster not you.
I suppose this claim is targeted not at the people who use the internet (to acquire information) but instead is spoken from the point of view of the people who USE the internet (to acquire eyeballs and monies), Oh, when I put it that way i suppose it makes a ton of sense.
It still would mean the end of the brief period of truly free/cheap speech we've enjoyed and would add credibility to a woman at the public access TV station I frequent who I at first labelled a crackpot when she said that "One day a website will cost you $12,000 a month" - yeah, when you have to pay this way it will.
"it's becoming less simple to turn down requests from the US." (emphasis added)
As Lois Lane put it (when superman caught her as she fell from a building): "But who's holding you up?"
by this I mean, who regulates the regulators? "Checks & Balances" were built into our system long ago (albeit eroding), but the one government world - it's a foggy constitution they have, no? - does it have such a mechanism?
One idea is to build a large mirror, many miles in diameter, and place it orbit above Mars. This would then be used to focus the Sun's rays onto a polar icecap,
i think the earth has one of these already. it may not be as powerful of a mirror - but it does other cool stuff, like swinging the oceans around the planet causing tides. *sometimes* it even blocks out the sun - that looks really cool. what do they call it... luna, luner... uh... uh the moon! yeah that's it.
forget the moon, that's like trying to see the hand in front of your face in broad daylight, er sunlight, as it were. it's the Sitchin 12th planet they're searching for, it should be within sight, or back, in a couple hundo years too
Slashdot Mirror
intel has now very obviously joined the "anti-m$" team (they get stronger every day)
goliath is gonna fall.
yep, almost to smithy. Super Mario RPG for the SNES, classic.
greed and envy.
pbr anyone? i for one support our new drunken overlords
The Messy Room Analogy
Why RAM is important, or What the Major Components in a Computer Do
Ok you have a messy room, clothes everywhere, all over the floor. The floor is your hard drive, it stores your clothes, the data. They are randomly distributed and can be randomly accessed. You need to bring your clothes to the washing machine downstairs, for processing - your washing machine is the CPU. To get your clothes there you must put them in a basket, the basket is your RAM. You will get your clothes done faster (process data faster) by a) having faster washing machines, but if you can't get your clothes there as fast as you can wash them (ok, breaking from reality a little now) then there's no point so you should b) have more RAM because then you won't have to walk to your room so often (acess the hard drive) which takes up a lot more time because you have to walk around picking everything up, not just dumping it from the basket into the machine. So there comes a point where you don't need a much faster processor unless you also get more RAM.
Of course, with a bigger hard drive you can store more clothes, but it won't necessarily have any effect on the speed of your computer because that's dependent on how often you need to wash your clothes (how much processing you need to do) and how fast you can get your clothes to the machines (basket size, amount of RAM)
By defragmenting you effectively take all your clothes and rearrange them to be sorted by color or whatever, maybe instead you fold them, I don't know. In the end it makes it so you've ordered the clothes so that they can be found faster, and will be typically picked up in the order found and not require running all over the room. Your floor gets messy because you toss your clothes wherever you happen to be standing when you take them off - eventually this reordering is required, typically on a monthly basis or when you feel that it's become overwhelmingly difficult to find things when you need them. Some filesystems used on other operating systems (methods for keeping the clothes in your room, on the floor, in shelfs, under your bed) have a nice method of also putting clothes back where it found it, and keeping externally maintained tabular lists of their locations, so that this regular reorganization of the clothes is unnecessary. Checking the lists against your drawers or whatever on a regular basis does become important though. go ahead, have fun with this, it can go forever, believe me, i've taken this way to far
So, I'm sure by now you can tell what kind of room I kept (and keep) and who I was dealing with when providing this metaphor - none other than: your target audience, Ma.
"If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or a first-class ticket," Smith said. "In the shipping business, I can get two-day air or six-day ground."
the problem with this quote is (let me rephrase that) - ahem, why this quote is misleading is because he's saying "*I* can buy a ticket upgrade" or "*I* can order the package here faster" where *I* is the guy at the desk asking for the site. However, the crux of this proposal is precisely the other way around - the SHIPPER or the AIRLINE is paying to get you(or your package) there faster not you.
I suppose this claim is targeted not at the people who use the internet (to acquire information) but instead is spoken from the point of view of the people who USE the internet (to acquire eyeballs and monies), Oh, when I put it that way i suppose it makes a ton of sense.
It still would mean the end of the brief period of truly free/cheap speech we've enjoyed and would add credibility to a woman at the public access TV station I frequent who I at first labelled a crackpot when she said that "One day a website will cost you $12,000 a month" - yeah, when you have to pay this way it will.
wow - that is a good quote.
"it's becoming less simple to turn down requests from the US." (emphasis added)
As Lois Lane put it (when superman caught her as she fell from a building): "But who's holding you up?"
by this I mean, who regulates the regulators? "Checks & Balances" were built into our system long ago (albeit eroding), but the one government world - it's a foggy constitution they have, no? - does it have such a mechanism?
One idea is to build a large mirror, many miles in diameter, and place it orbit above Mars. This would then be used to focus the Sun's rays onto a polar icecap,
... uh the moon! yeah that's it.
i think the earth has one of these already. it may not be as powerful of a mirror - but it does other cool stuff, like swinging the oceans around the planet causing tides. *sometimes* it even blocks out the sun - that looks really cool. what do they call it... luna, luner... uh
forget the moon, that's like trying to see the hand in front of your face in broad daylight, er sunlight, as it were. it's the Sitchin 12th planet they're searching for, it should be within sight, or back, in a couple hundo years too