Admiral Grace Hopper Explains the Nanosecond (1983) [video]
youtube.comGreat stuff. I'm reminded of the classic "we can't send an email over 500 miles!" which is somewhat related, and equally entertaining: http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles
"So they know what they're throwing away when they're throwing away microseconds"
She was a genius. Was a great character.
I enjoyed listening to her, but I don't know if I understand her point here. There was something intuitive about why certain processes require a large number of nano seconds due to physics. But I have a tough time thinking of any process besides financial trading that can't spare a microsecond.
Anything that you need to do a lot of, in a second, suffers for wasted microseconds.
If your input processing and font rendering pathways waste microseconds (and they do) it makes a delay in characters you type showing up on the screen, and a corresponding, measurable reduction in your editing throughput.
When our machines were a thousand times slower, characters showed up on the screen in substantially less time than they do today. The difference is mainly a result of cumulative wasted microseconds, in so many places that nobody can afford to gather them up.
Safety critical hard-realtime systems come to mind as an example.
It is funny (to me anyway) that the nanosecond wires she used to give out take rather more than a nanosecond to traverse.
The speed of signal propagation is largely determined by the density of the wire's insulation, because the signal is an electromagnetic wave carried at the skin of the conductor, with its electric field oscillating in the insulation, so propagation is limited by properties of that. The distance covered in a nanosecond is typically between seven and eight inches. In wires with foam insulation (typically co-ax) signals go a little faster. In optical fiber, a nanosecond is under seven inches, because the speed is determined by the same property of the glass, which is denser.
Based on this I made downloadable and printable nanoseconds: https://blog.jgc.org/2012/10/a-downloadable-nanosecond.html
She brought some nanoseconds to Letterman: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x35dsz7
Posted pretty regularly here, it's a great talk. She was a true treasure to the CS world and to the Navy.
Yeah, I wasn't sure how often this pops up, it came up in conversation and I'm not familiar enough with HN to see when the last time it was posted, so I figured i'd just post it and let it go unnoticed if it's been posted too often recently.
What year was this filmed in?
1993 it would appear:
She died in 1992, so I highly doubt it was recorded in '93.
She's the ghost in the machine.
(Given the quality of the video, I'd be inclined to think 1983 rather than 1993)