my laptop turned up this morning. that’s a pretty good turn-around of around 18
hours from order to delivery. it all worked straight out of the box so now i
just have the standard 6 hours of software installation to do!
on a completely different subject. joel
has a very good description of tcp/ip (just substitute actors for data, and
roads for cables):
Imagine that we had a way of sending actors from Broadway to Hollywood that
involved putting them in cars and driving them across the country. Some of
these cars crashed, killing the poor actors. Sometimes the actors got drunk on
the way and shaved their heads or got nasal tattoos, thus becoming too ugly to
work in Hollywood, and frequently the actors arrived in a different order than
they had set out, because they all took different routes. Now imagine a new
service called Hollywood Express, which delivered actors to Hollywood,
guaranteeing that they would (a) arrive (b) in order (c) in perfect condition.
The magic part is that Hollywood Express doesn’t have any method of delivering
the actors, other than the unreliable method of putting them in cars and
driving them across the country. Hollywood Express works by checking that each
actor arrives in perfect condition, and, if he doesn’t, calling up the home
office and requesting that the actor’s identical twin be sent instead. If the
actors arrive in the wrong order Hollywood Express rearranges them. If a large
UFO on its way to Area 51 crashes on the highway in Nevada, rendering it
impassable, all the actors that went that way are rerouted via Arizona and
Hollywood Express doesn’t even tell the movie directors in California what
happened. To them, it just looks like the actors are arriving a little bit more
slowly than usual, and they never even hear about the UFO crash.
