BASeCamp Programming Blog

In yet another installment of my “Phrase Examination” series, which is only by complete coincidence entirely contiguous, I will analyze the phrase “Cute as a button”. Previously I analyzed the phrases “Happy as a clam” as well as “A penny saved is a penny earned” . “As Cute as a button”. you hear it far too often. But what does it mean? I would imagine the original usage was directed at the type of button shown to the left. It could also be interpreted more modernly as something like The definition of the word “Cute” is

Cute: the quality of being appealing in a delicate or graceful way (of a girl or young woman)

Now, I’m evidently no expert, but from what I can tell, I really don’t see these buttons being appealing, in any way, let alone delicate or graceful. I mean, they’re a couple circles with holes in them. “Oh look at the cute designs” is not what I associate with buttons. when I think about buttons, I either think about the old wrinkly hands of the last ancient seamstress who actually thinks these button designs aren’t completely retarded, or about how god damn frustrating the bloody things are. When I have a pair of pants, I don’t want to have to fight a mortal battle between my pants and myself in order to go to the bathroom- Why must so many pants have both a zipper AND a button? was the zipper too obvious? did they do trial runs to see how many men could get it out in time and decide they had enough room to throw a button into the design? WHAT GOD DAMN SICKO’S ARE THESE PEOPLE? sadistic bastards is what they are I tell you! So anyway, I’m sure we’ve all seen buttons- of the sewing type, of course. I’ll get onto the next ones eventually, calm yourself. At the very least, there aren’t any shoes that are fastened with buttons. you have laced shoes for the mentally fit, and you have velcro for everybody else. And then you have shirts, I mean, I can certainly identify with why they might choose buttons over a zipper, since a zipper requires a rather sturdy thick fabric, it’s not really that good for light shirts. but why don’t they put a thin strip of velcro fuzz on the inner portion of both sides, and then have ties with the hooky part on the bottom? but NO, of course not, they have to have buttons, so that despite the fact that you just woke up, your left arm is asleep because you slept on it, and until you have your coffee you have the cognitive capacity of a bloody shrew, you still have to perform the epic button struggle, whereby you need to fasten all 8 or so of the buttons and they all need to be fastened to the right hole on the other side. It’s no problem to the alert individual, but considering the use case scenario here, whereby the buttons are only used when you are removing or putting on said garment, you’re almost always half-asleep. (Except in certain cases when things get frisky, I suppose). Anyways, so the button is something that was clearly designed to torture people. Therefore, no sane person must have invented it. I have come up with two theories as to the origin of that type of button, it was either created by a mad scientist villian in some misguided plot to control the worlds television manufacturers, or it was send by aggressive aliens:

Alien Soldier:It is done, my lord. Alien General: Excellent! our plan has begun! We simply wait until they are all distracted by fastening and unfastening their clothing in order to put it on or take it off their pitiful weak bodies, then we strike! Alien Soldier: Yes, excellent. Alien General: mwa haha Alien soldier: Mw ha… hey wait a second Alien General: What? What is it? Alien Soldier: Why are we speaking the human language? Alien General: Oh Horrors! you’re right! I can’t even remember my original language. I guess being immersed in their culture and posing as a intelligent but large-headed plumber on Earth for 50 years takes it’s toll. Alien Soldier: But sir! if we can only speak the human language, then destroying their planet would mean destroying all their dictionaries! How the hell are we going to have scrabble night if we cannot challenge each other entries. Alien General: Curses! You’re right, Scrabble night really brings the troops together. Well, I guess we just won’t destroy earth then. Eventually the Humans will realize how stupid these “buttons” are on their own.

As you can see, it was pure coincidence that we as a race were spared the untimely death they had planned for us. Although come to think of it is there any such thing as a “timely” death? I mean, nobody says at a funeral, “we are gathered here to celebrate Grandpa’s timely and entirely expected death”. I mean, sure, a death can be expected when somebody is really really old and sick, but to say it was “timely” is like saying “oh golly, the funeral fits PERFECTLY in with my schedule, what a timely occurence!” you know, as if it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience for them to die. But I digress. Back to buttons: Great. Now, these don’t look too bad, at first glance. But notice the background, This shot has clearly been taken while the buttons sat on a 60?s era tablecloth, back when striped linen weren’t used exclusively by old people. Therefore, we can assume this shot was taken by an old person. Nothing wrong with old people, of course. Aside from being old, I suppose. And they like to talk about days gone by, and they always skew it so it sounds worse or better then it was, depending on context. if somebody complains about something they will go on for an hour about how much worse things were in their day and how we should just shut up, but if you say how great something is they will go on an equally enthusiastic rant about how much better some similar piece of technology was in their day or speak volumes about some manual method. Say how great E-mail is and they’ll do both, they’ll complain about the impersonal nature of E-mails and then turn around and tell us how much longer snail mail takes, it’s like a one-two punch of backwards elderly logic. Anyways, as I was saying, the first button would be alright, except the colour is the same as only one single thing in the known universe. Only one other object, aside from buttons, are this colour. Granny sweaters. you know those off-white sweaters that they made when they were 6 from the dirty wool of their favourite sheep, which explains both why it doesn’t fit them very well (they were 6 when they made it) as well as why it’s off-white (the wool wasn’t cleaned). This has several connotations, the first of which is of course that it’s only usable by people who own these “Granny sweaters”, which, I’m sorry to say is a sample set that consists predominantly of old people- Granny’s in particular. Of course not all Granny’s have Granny Sweaters, just as not all kids love Rock and Roll. Some granny’s wear people clothes, just as some kids love Rocky Road. but my point is clear: by the time your old enough to use this button, you should be learned enough to not really give a damn about colour coordination or any of that senseless bullshit. Now the second one actually tells an interesting story. You’ll note the fact that it has four holes rather then one, this was actually a result of a lizard getting into the button making machine, he gummed up the works and some of the buttons ended up going through twice, creating mutant freak four holed buttons. Much to the surprise of the Granny’s on duty. They discovered it was far easier to create thread shanks this way, so they kept it. And the rest is not part of history, so I’ll tell it to you. So, the lizard was pretty much idolized by stitching grannies everywhere. It wasn’t particularly special, It was a former member of the Lizards Painted to Blend In With Unconventional Backgrounds(LPBWUB), but almost every lizard or reptilian from that era was a member, so they didn’t really count that against them. Besides, given the fact that most of the material they used back then was horridly ugly as a result of being freakishly unconventional that sort of thing would count as more of a positive qualification, just in case… I guess if they wanted to spy on other grannies that were near the fabric. Damned if I know. So then what happened was the Lizard was kidnapped by the local QMAPCBAETBFE(Quadriplegic Midgets Against the Painting of Cold Blooded Animals Except on Tuesdays between five and eleven). They held them for a ransom of a small fortune, 2 British Pounds. Now back in those days the Pound Sterling was worth at least a US grand each, so this wasn’t small change. Thankfully, the grannies were able to enlist the aid of the MDPADMWDPLW (Somewhat Mentally Disabled Penguins Against Disabled Midgets Who Dislike the Painting of Lizards on Wednesday) as well as get the funds for the ransom from their allies, the UFOPVABNTOANBMITGTVPLMOUWTOC(United Front of Old People of Various Ages But Not Too Old As to Not Be Mostly Independent and To Go To Various Public Locations And Make Others Uncomfortable With Their Off-color Comments). As a Condition of that alliance however it was important that their Sister organization, the SWATIEBE(Solitary Wasps Against The Invasion of Earth By ExtraTerrestrials), and their completely unexpected Allies, the FCAUSRICB(Fat Caterpillars Against the Use of Synthetic Rubber In the Creation of Basketballs) At this time the intentions of the STMDWDUDAIMA(Small Time Mafia Don’s Who Don’t Use Deodorant Against the Involvement of Midgets in Anything), as they tossed a number of beetles at the Penguins, who, being Somewhat mentally disabled, yelled “ALIEN ATTACK”, which of course set off the Solitary Wasps, Who started sticking their Ovipositors in the various caterpillars. The UFOPVABNTOANBMITGTVPLMOUWTOC members made some passing off color remarks that made the Midgets nervous and they started to grab the penguins and hurl them like darts at the Solitary Wasps. During this Epic battle, The grannies slipped into the Complex and got their Lizard back. Thankfully, because of the invention of the four-holed button, we actually averted an Alien attack, because they were like, just about to hit that “invade button” then they saw this one dude wearing a button with four holes and he was like “woah dude” and his partner was like “woah dude” and the guy across the room was all “SRSLY?”, and then the Prime Chancellor Alien dude in charge of the invasion of Earth and possibly Mars if there is time to catch the last bit of Coronation Street Before sunset caught wind of this and was all “OMG they have four holed buttons! ABORT ABORT! FOR THE FUCKING LOVE OF GOD ABORT!”. Most of the aliens at this time only understood tiny bits of english, somewhat like sweat shop workers. So they just gave their leader a puzzled look, like a dog does, that way they cock their head quizzically. Then the leader realized he was speaking English and told them in his own native language (which unfortunately does not use a alphabet that lends itself well to a form of scrabble), and the Aliens were like “OMGZ” and “OH NOES”. They managed to abort, but not before the entire ship’s crew died of exposure to four holed buttons. Another problem with buttons is their obvious link to terrorists. Some terrorist groups are led by a man who calls him self Osama Bin Button, Who it is presumed from his name Used to be a button but is no longer one. Osama Bin Button is most popular for his famous Chili sauce, but also for killing those who would be audacious enough to say they think his chili sauce isn’t spicy enough. HE USED habanero peppers for the sake of possum, the heat index ratio as measured by the mexican board of spicy foods was at least 5, which I assume means it’s spicy. Oh oh yes, and he kills infidels who believe in the holiness of the four holes sewing button. The conflicts that eventually caused his rise to popularity among two-holed button cultists is a long one. It started almost 2 millenium ago, when Jesus button descended from the heavens. He was shot down by a time travelling nazi during his descent, so the only thing that made it to the ground was his pet possum. This pet possum begat Steve, Steve Begat Abe, And Abe Begat Begat, who Begat Jerry. Now, Jerry was fond of ice cream, which was rather unfortunate since it was at least 1500 years before it would be conceived. Jerry decided to found his own town in the middle of a desert between two fighting countries. He named his Town Jerrysalem, because he likes that talking cat character in that Sabrina show That I have never seen intentionally. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention- they eventually captured the time travelling Nazi and took his time travelling device so they could go forwards in time and watch Television every sunday. Now the problem here was it caused quite a stir among residents when they learned the origin of the name, which they thought was a tribute to the Israeli extreme metal band called Salem. The Residents split into two sides, One side saying that the Cat character was in fact mostly played by a puppet, and the other side saying that it was a real cat who was given the gift of speech by a magical Nazi gypsy. (during this time in history there was quite a stir about nazis, being that a time travelling one had just off’d Button Jesus). Eventually, they started to kill and maim each other. Which was rather unfortunate since they were both right (excepting the detail about magical nazi gypsies), since they used a real cat for some scenes and they used a puppet thing for others. I of course only know this because of those times that it came on and I was too lazy to change the channel. If anything it added a good generic background sounds for my self-gratification. But that is quite enough about that. What ended up happening was that Jerry was forced out of the city, along with a resident known only as Uncle Ben. Jerry the possum and Uncle ben then travelled across the desert for 40 years, selling rice to local arabs, who were all too willing to trade latex paint for it. Now equipped with Latex paint, they created the sacred desert painting of Albasum, which depicts a whole lot of sand using very detailed artwork. Meanwhile, what used to be known as JerrySalem was renamed to Jerusalem, after Jerry’s fictitious aunt Jeru, who was rather famous for her Buttermilk pancakes (but the fame really came from her sister, Jemima’s, maple syrup). They kept the Salem ending as a constant reminder about something that they had by that time forgotten. During this time, a half-Nazi half Albino Elephant Scientist had discovered the ability of a device to be created with which one could fasten garments. He called this a button, for no particularly interesting reason. Many theorize that aliens may have influenced his naming scheme, but it could have also been his totally screwy genetic makeup. Whatever the case, the Aliens at this point intruded and caused the creation of a 4-holed button. This is where the disaster occured. The 2-holed button, being of course perfectly suited to the task, was widely accepted. Osama Bin button at this time was a budding Nazi learning the ways of the Force. Now at this time I should point out that this was long before world war II and Hitler and so forth and everybody was pretty cool with Nazi’s, who at the time were sort of like hippies. They weren’t all “we’re the aryan race and we is better then u” elitist assholes like they have become now. Osama Bin Buttons original experience with the four holed button was not positive- he watched as both his father and mother were killed by a dump truck containing 2-holed buttons. Now you might be thinking “but he was against 4-holed buttons!” Of course he was. You see this occured right after a debilitating concussion as a result of trying to overextend his knee during practice sessions in his sex ed class, so he was seeing double. as a result, the 2-holed buttons appeared to have 4 holes to him, and such was how he came to hate 4 holed buttons. Now you may be wondering, “well golly gee, that was thousands of years ago, he should be dead now” Not true, young grasshopper. You see Bin Button’s Contra is revived every time somebody finishes the NES game contra, at which point The Bear Colonists on Planet Bear in a nearby star system send a sub space message that forces his contra into a new body. Because he had trained for it all his life in Nazi consciousness transferal training, he was also able to modify the recipients DNA to look like his previous self.

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Ever since The release, and subsequent consumption of 64-bit operating systems by the general public, there has been quite some confusion over exactly what you can, and cannot run on it, as well as what happens when you do certain things. I touched on the topic of x64 some time ago with my post about Upgrading to x64: is it really as problem filled as many claim? which was more or less directed at some of the FUD being spread that x64 is limited in some fashion.

First, it’s important to understand exactly what the “bits” being discussed are. This is something that many people ignore, and they instead rely on over-simplified analogies that help perpetuate the rumours and disinformation on the subject. In order to fully understand what it entails, one needs to examine the history of Processors, or, more precisely, the history of x86 processors.

When people think about processor speed, the term that comes up quite quickly is Clock frequency. Todays processors often break 3Ghz, which roughly equates to 3 billion operations per second. Many people end the analysys right there. However, it’s important to understand exactly what constitutes an “operation”. One of the most common “operations” is moving or copying data. This is done using the “MOV” assembly instruction. The amount of data that is moved depends entirely on the width of the processor Data bus. the first “x86″ compatible processor (or the first we can probably get away with calling the x86 compatible) would probably be the 8086 processor from Intel. This processor had a 16-bit Bus width, and could move data 16 bits for every clock cycle. This processor was released in 8Mhz and 10Mhz variants, therefore it could move 16 bits of data from one 16-bit register to another 16-bit register either 8 or 10 million times a second. (Of course, because memory is so much slower the register accesses, this would never be the actual thoroughput). The idea is, if it was an 8 bit processor, it’s effectiveness would be nearly halved- for every clock cycle it would be able to transfer only 8 bits of data, rather then 16. The 8088, which IBM chose as the processor for what would become the first cobblestone in a very long walkway of Personal computers using a similar architecture, the IBM PC. This wasn’t chosen because it outperformed the 8086 in any way. The deciding factor here was more economics- the cost tradeoff to use the 8086 instead, despite it’s greater speeds and bus width.

Once the Personal Computer Took off, Intel quickly established it’s position as the dominant “role model” for all other manufacturers for quite some time; following the release of the 8086 and 8086, Intel also released the 80186 (which to my understanding never met us common folk, and instead was reserved for industrial machinery), the 80286, which was used in IBM’s “AT” (Advanced Technology) Computer, the 80386, the 80486, and the Pentium. The Pentium was a hallmark because it apparently took Intel this long to realize that you couldn’t trademark a number (AMD, Cyrix, VIA, and a few other “clone” CPU manufacturers were using the same labelling, such as AMD 80486, and Intel wasn’t pleased) So they came up with the name “Pentium” which until recently was used on all their processors (the “i” series being I believe the first set of processors not to bear the name pentium, aside from a few exceptions).

The 80386 had a 32 bit bus width. What this means is that it could potentially transfer 32 bits of data per cycle. it came in speeds of 20,25,33, and 40 Mhz.

What makes this rather interesting is that although the 80386 was a fully 32-bit processor, as were all it’s successors, no true consumer-oriented 32-bit operating system was released until windows 95 (I’m not counting OS/2 because, although it was great it didn’t really get great market penetration).

With the introduction of windows 95, many of the API Functions that programmers had been using to interface with windows needed to be changed. This was as a result of the fact that handles, or, to be more precise, pointers, needed to be 32-bit to support both the architecture itself as well as changes in the OS designed to help support those changes, where now 32-bits, rather then 16-bits. this changed the size and declarations for a large number of functions, which meant that any application that needed to run on windows 95 would be required to be compiled specifically for it.

Thankfully, Microsoft realized that such an endeavor or forcing users into 32-bit without letting them wade a bit was a marketing mistake. So, they also built in a small emulator, called “Windows on Windows”. this allowed any 16-bit application to interface with 16-bit dlls in a mocked up 16-bit environment. It also allowed DOS programs to run, one of the many goals of windows 95 was to run a vast number of popular DOS games of the time.

At the time, the change wasn’t hugely publicized. There was no real choice- if you ran windows 3.1, you were 16-bit. if you ran windows 95, 32-bit. There weren’t 32-bit editions or 16-bit editions. In fact, come to think of it, they didn’t have editions at all.

So now, we have Windows Vista and Windows 7, both released with “32-bit” and “64-bit” versions, as well as Linux distributions with the same selection, and people are in an uproar giving out completely baseless information “if you have 4GB or more of RAM, only then should you use a 64-bit OS” and other completely ludicrous claims.

Equally, there are claims that the 64-bit “requires” more memory. It doesn’t. the fact that handles are 64-bits, instead of 32, is completely irrelevant. Will it consume more RAM? hell yeah, it will take a whole 32KB more RAM if you happen to have several hundred thousand handles open. Since you’d run out of memory long before you have that many handles open, it’s premature to blame the size of the handle.

a 64-bit Processor can move 64-bits of data in a single clock cycle. since most 64-bit processors often run at 2ghz or higher and are often even dual or quad core, that can mean a lot more potential for speedup. It won’t quite double the speed, but if you run your 64-bit machine using a 64-bit OS and mostly 64-bit applications, you are going to see the difference, just as running a 32-bit operating system on a 32-bit system will be different.

There is an additional case where running 32-bit programs is practically suicide- the Intel Itanium Processor. This was one of the first 64-bit processors developed. Unlike almost all of Intel’s efforts, the Itanium was not x86 compatible- it could run x86 code, but it did so very slowly in comparison to running equivalent 64-bit code. They were different instruction sets.

AMD was the “saviour” of sorts that got 64-bit back on track, by making it possibly to run 32-bit code natively with a 64-bit processor. Of course, just because it’s possible to run 32-bit code doesn’t make it a good idea.

The main problem with installing a 32-bit Operating system on one of todays 64-bit processors is that it locks you in. No matter what you do within that 32-bit operating system, as far as the OS is concerned, you are on a 32-bit processor. If you try to run a 64-bit application, you just get an “invalid executable image” error. This is why I don’t understand why people are sticking by their otherwise obsoleted 32-bit operating systems. Everything everybody says is “bad” about 64-bit- the fact that it “requires” more memory (they base this on MS recommendations, which are never accurate anyway) as well as all sorts of clearly fabricated horror stories about what happened last summer when they tried a 64-bit OS, is utter nonsense. I’m running a 64-bit Operating System on two of my machines, and I hardly even notice it. The only difference is that I can run 64-bit programs and have access to 64-bit features.

The additional features of 64-bit are particularly important when it comes to “Virtual machine” type environment. Specifically, I speak of the .NET CLR. with a 64-bit processor and a 64-bit operating system, running a .NET application will cause the Just In Time Compiler to create 64-bit code with 64-bit optimizations, whereas running the same code with a 64-bit processor on a 32-bit operating system yields no benefit at all. Since a large number of other programming idioms are now spreading to the concept of compiling on the spot rather then when the program is to be distributed, the concept of machine-specific optimization is incredibly relevant. While a 32-bit and 64-bit Windows OS can but run 32-bit windows programs, only a 64-bit OS can run a 64-bit program and thereby see the performance benefits therein. The problem is that people supposedly measuring the performance differences between 32-bit and 64-bit are in fact running benchmark programs and testing tools that are 32-bit in what they say is “an interest in fairness”, which is utter nonsense. In order to see the true benefits of 64-bit everything needs to be 64-bit. The OS itself needs to be 64-bit, and the programs used need to be 64-bit. If either of these is not and you base some sort of performance statistic on the performance of that combination then you are simply lying to yourself. All your doing by running a 32-bit benchmark program on 64-bit is testing the 64-bit processors ability to run x86, you aren’t taxing the limits of it’s capabilities.

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