[ExI] Weird new way to do physics

[Tomasz Rola]

On Mon, 7 Nov 2011, Stefano Vaj wrote:

> On 6 November 2011 23:45, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 6 Nov 2011, Stefano Vaj wrote:
> > > What's wrong with dear, old Assembly for performance-sensitive tasks?
> >
> > Nothing is wrong with that. Except few things.
> >
> > One is, there is no point to do trivial things faster.
> 
> 
> Yes, it was to some extent a tongue-in-cheek remark and an emoticon remains
> for once in my pen.
> 
> In principle what you say corresponds to my own ideas with regard to energy
> saving, or taylorism in work organisation: nothing wrong in efficiency, but
> the dividends are asymptotical at best, and what really matters at the end
> of the day is more the available power than squeezing the last drop of
> juice out of it.

Yes, you summed this up very well.

> OTOH, whenever we are faced with endless repetitions of relatively simple
> tasks, small increases in efficiencies may indeed make a difference and pay
> for themselves.

In such case, this is not trivial and of course it's good to squeeze juice 
etc. 

> And, yes, a cultural loss in our ability to deal with low
> level aspects of such tasks may be considered as a decadent trait. At least
> until machines themselves will be able to outperform us in such dealing.

I think there will always be people capable of thinking low level and 
doing such stuff either professionally or as a hobby. But they will be 
less visible "to the public", even if "the public" uses products of their 
work on a daily basis (lifts, street lights, car engines, microwave ovens, 
AV recorders, cell phones and base stations, water/gas/electricity 
infrastructure, network routers, bar code readers and so on, ad 
infinitum).

However, their jobs is so visually unattractive that it rarely gets any 
mention in the media. I wonder for example when was the last time the hex 
dump was shown in a film in a meaningful way (let's assume Matrix doesn't 
count). I mean a way that was connected to the plot and not just a mere 
decoration :-). There was a time when hexdumps were cool and making them 
was hip but the time has gone and babes no longer consider this to be 
equivalent of sexy (too bad, isn't it, cause making hex dump is so easy).

Even if they show hex dump from time to time, do they ever mention that 
hex can be edited? This sounds like kind of taboo :-) so maybe actors do 
such things in some hardcore Swedish films that never get out of their 
original country.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **