This was heady advice from the Sage to the Junior Tadpole who was new to the field of IT and that minor metaphor is deliberately mixed since, in IT, the Junior Tadpole doesn't even start out in the water and needs to find it quickly or become an ex-tadpole.
Note: there wasn't any education in IT at the time. Become a tadpole ... or not (larfs).
Everything revolves around the Pipeline and that's the sequence of the machine instructions the computer will execute next. Every so often it hits a branch instruction so that screws its pipeline because now it has to get a new one from somewhere else. Pop, someone else's turn. Or maybe it happens the other way around and something else pops out your pipeline even when it didn't ask.
Everything keeps interrupting everything else and that's the beauty of it ... that there's the tiniest faint chance this would ever work. The computer can't ever stop computing since even when it does nothing it's zooming. For micros, it never stops going through it's primary dispatch loop in asking if there's anything to do and if not then it just asks again but it never ever stops.
That's why techies will ask if your clock has stopped. If that's the case, the computer isn't asking anymore and it's not coming back.
Watson: you just explain this to see if you can (larfs)
Yep, I do. My ol' Dad was really good at it in taking esoteric things and making them palatable to an open audience plus chicks really dug it.
Note: the sibs may not remember but much of it but the audience for "Doorway to Knowledge" was mostly female since it broadcast at eleven in the morning. He was the TV Stud of the Day with that bushy beard and Butch the Boxer Dog curled up under the desk. The audience expected Butch as much as they did his appearance. Looking back to stuff like that is Disneyland in that could not possibly have really happened.
He really got off on science for the citizen and the reason chicks dug it is he was never patronizing about it. Lack of knowledge about this doesn't mean you're stupid; it only means no-one ever told you so let's go.
The segment about interrupts above is only for the purpose of showing some absolutely useless knowledge but there is a point insofar as humans usually loathe being interrupted but computers thrive on it and couldn't work any other way within that type of architecture / operating system.
In fact, there's an aspect of Artificial Intelligence which modelers miss altogether. They're seeking to model 'droid brains on human neural networks but there's a larger neurological morphology in terms of multifunction networks. One third of the time, the human networks switch function altogether in terms of clean-up and other incredibly sophisticated things. We know sleep is vital but the research shows more and more it's incredibly vital.
Robos know zip about that kind of context shift and the greater contribution to overall purpose through that phase shift doesn't appear to be known at all. We know we're screwed if we don't get the sleep time and healthy things happen but the larger integration of that in terms of actual brain function and lucid thought process doesn't seem clear at all.
We sleep and we dream but surely there's a little more to the process than having something weird to discuss at coffee time. That integration of real and apparently surreal thought is something absent in neural networks which seem universally designed toward a prosaic presentation of intelligence rather than the more kozmik aspect which actually may be required for real inspiration.
Keith Richards said he awoke with "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" already in his head so explain that integration, young tadpole.
Watson: maybe it's best if we don't let the 'droids, dream?
You may be right, mate. Brian Aldiss asked a long time ago, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
Watson: do they?
Dunno. I'm not a 'droid.
Maestro, rim shot, please.
Note: there wasn't any education in IT at the time. Become a tadpole ... or not (larfs).
Everything revolves around the Pipeline and that's the sequence of the machine instructions the computer will execute next. Every so often it hits a branch instruction so that screws its pipeline because now it has to get a new one from somewhere else. Pop, someone else's turn. Or maybe it happens the other way around and something else pops out your pipeline even when it didn't ask.
Everything keeps interrupting everything else and that's the beauty of it ... that there's the tiniest faint chance this would ever work. The computer can't ever stop computing since even when it does nothing it's zooming. For micros, it never stops going through it's primary dispatch loop in asking if there's anything to do and if not then it just asks again but it never ever stops.
That's why techies will ask if your clock has stopped. If that's the case, the computer isn't asking anymore and it's not coming back.
Watson: you just explain this to see if you can (larfs)
Yep, I do. My ol' Dad was really good at it in taking esoteric things and making them palatable to an open audience plus chicks really dug it.
Note: the sibs may not remember but much of it but the audience for "Doorway to Knowledge" was mostly female since it broadcast at eleven in the morning. He was the TV Stud of the Day with that bushy beard and Butch the Boxer Dog curled up under the desk. The audience expected Butch as much as they did his appearance. Looking back to stuff like that is Disneyland in that could not possibly have really happened.
He really got off on science for the citizen and the reason chicks dug it is he was never patronizing about it. Lack of knowledge about this doesn't mean you're stupid; it only means no-one ever told you so let's go.
The segment about interrupts above is only for the purpose of showing some absolutely useless knowledge but there is a point insofar as humans usually loathe being interrupted but computers thrive on it and couldn't work any other way within that type of architecture / operating system.
In fact, there's an aspect of Artificial Intelligence which modelers miss altogether. They're seeking to model 'droid brains on human neural networks but there's a larger neurological morphology in terms of multifunction networks. One third of the time, the human networks switch function altogether in terms of clean-up and other incredibly sophisticated things. We know sleep is vital but the research shows more and more it's incredibly vital.
Robos know zip about that kind of context shift and the greater contribution to overall purpose through that phase shift doesn't appear to be known at all. We know we're screwed if we don't get the sleep time and healthy things happen but the larger integration of that in terms of actual brain function and lucid thought process doesn't seem clear at all.
We sleep and we dream but surely there's a little more to the process than having something weird to discuss at coffee time. That integration of real and apparently surreal thought is something absent in neural networks which seem universally designed toward a prosaic presentation of intelligence rather than the more kozmik aspect which actually may be required for real inspiration.
Keith Richards said he awoke with "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" already in his head so explain that integration, young tadpole.
Watson: maybe it's best if we don't let the 'droids, dream?
You may be right, mate. Brian Aldiss asked a long time ago, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
Watson: do they?
Dunno. I'm not a 'droid.
Maestro, rim shot, please.
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