Stob - Rules OK

‘Moore’s law… suggests that the number of transistors that can be fitted on a chip doubles roughly every 18 months. Moore’s meta-law… says that every improvement in the technology of chip-making is followed by a spate of press articles (most of which begin by describing Moore’s law)… and that the number of such articles also increases at an alarming rate’ – The Economist 27/9/1997.

The Mosaic Constant: Wherever you are in the Universe, and whatever velocity you are travelling, the current version number of both Netscape Explorer and Internet Explorer web browsers is always the same, to within 0.02.

Tosh’s First Consequence: If P_l is the price of a laptop PC of a given spec, and P_D is equal to the price of the equivalent desktop PC then

P_l = (P_D)^1.1036

holds true for any laptop, until it is stolen or dropped.

Kernighan’s Conundrum: Any mention of Delphi in a Cix C++ conference will set off yet another repeat of the C vs Pascal religious discussion, lasting in excess of 250 postings, with the paper ‘Why Pascal is not my favourite programming language’ mentioned within the first 50. The discussion is traditionally closed when the argument about the advantages of C++ templates and Delphi properties has been rehearsed three times.

The y2K Quotient: The number of wretched, overhyped Year 2000 stories Computer Weekly can get away within a year without appearing ridiculous. NB: this number is generally established to be somewhere between 0 and 1, but CW calculates it as ‘99’ owing to an error in its implementation of the standard algorithm. Where is a y2K consultant when you need one?

Parkinson’s Law of Data: ‘Data expands to fill the space available for storage’; buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. Although in these days of 9 GB hard disks being shipped with really rather common or garden PCs, it is getting harder and harder to keep this much-loved old proverb true. But you can contribute. We find that ‘backing up’ the contents of a few magazines’ cover CD-ROMs helps. There’s nothing like a crippled version of Dungeon Keeper for filling up those idle megs.

Smedley’s Measure of Machine Sexiness: Generally acknowledged as the most accurate metric of geek attractiveness of a given machine, it is best expressed thus

SMMS = (number of LEDs on front) * (number of flashing LEDs on front)

Thus one of the sexiest machines around is the Editor’s BeBox, which as I recall boasts two functionally pointless rows of green LEDs on its front which flash, suggestively, when you turn it on. [This is completely untrue as the LEDs do show the activity of both PowerPC CPUs – Ed.]

Finnegan’s Deltas of Pentium Pricing: These are the small but annoying differences (or ‘deltas’) between the price for a given spec of machine on Dell’s website, the price given in Dell’s advertisement in next month’s PC Pro, the price given to you verbally by Dell’s salesperson, the price he faxes through four hours later and the price quoted in the mailshot you receive the day after your new machine arrives.

Basic’s Law of Basic Basic: States that whatever they do with it – hide the line numbers, clean up the variable declarations, ‘visualise’ it, add objects and a native code compiler – Basic is Basic is Basic is Basic is Basic. And it’s rubbish. This law is an alias for ‘C++ Programmer’s Hubris’. But it’s still true, haha.

Test exercises

1. If A buys a laptop worth £1600 and a PC worth £800, while B has a PC worth £2000, a laptop worth £4400. and a mobile phone worth £480, then a) what word does A use to describe B when he believes B is out of earshot and b) what are the letters on the personalised numberplates of B’s BMW?

2. Starting from Tosh’s First Consequence, derive and prove Aitchpee’s Last Surprise, namely that if P_HP is the price of a laser printer of a given spec, and P_T is equal to the price of a replacement toner cartridge then

P_T =P_{HP -} £5.25

3. Compare and contrast the way that Kernighan’s Conundrum operates in a CompuServe forum populated solely by garrulous Americans (‘Randy: Hi!!!! <bg>’) and a Pascal Usenet group that has been colonised by a small group of Argentinean C++ programmers who learned their English from Herbert Schildt’s The Complete C++ Reference, Second Edition. Try not to introduce multiple inheritance or dangerous use of the with statement into your answer.

4. Which is the sexier machine: a rack mounted hub with 32 connections, or the radiator of the talking car from Knight Rider? Include diagrams.

5. Show how the Mosaic constant is derived from Trevor’s Axiom of Office Suite package version numbers. Explain this sequence as though to a group of aliens from the planet Dedros IV, where marketing has not yet been invented: Word 1, Word 2, Word 6, Word 95, Word 97.

6. Using proper graph paper, plot a Finnegan curve for the purchase of two P166 laptops with an extra 16 MB of RAM. Now repeat the exercise for a 300 MHz server with second network card. Shade in the area between the graphs in purple.

7. Write a short program in some dialect of Basic. Be sure to make many loud complaints about how difficult it is, and to blame any bugs or setbacks that you endure on the design of the language. When you have completed the program, boast how much easier it would have been to write it in C, and pretend that you are contemplating doing just that.