Explore by clicking here

Message 1 of 1 for search	help
Computersnake captured!  Author:   Steve Cramer <cramersec@earthlink.net> Date:   1999/02/20 Forum:   rec.boats.paddle	sponsored by:

more headers author posting history

As paddlers, we are all grateful to Milt Aitkin, aka Paddleman, for his
relentless (does that mean he gave it up for Lent again?) search for and
eventual caputure of  the first paddlesnake seen by human eyes. However,
since we are all reading this ng on computers, we are at least
marginally interested in computing. Have you ever wondered why your
computer crashes sometimes, even when everything seems to be going fine?

Computersnakes, that's why. These little-known cousins of the
paddlesnake lurk deep in the silicon bowels of your computer, waiting to
munch on streams of electrons at precisely the wrong time. Computer
scientists had speculated about their existence, but none had been
captured on film until and intrepid group of researchers at FSU cornered
one and snapped the photo you can see at
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/fulladder.html

There was initial speculation that the creature would turn out to be a
pit viper, but this was not the case. This particular computersnake's
habitat is the HP math coprocessor, so obviously it's  -- wait for it
-- an adder.

Steve (I'm waiting for the video)