

The Mountains of Pi - nadim
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1992/03/02/1992_03_02_036_TNY_CARDS_000362534?currentPage=all

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paulhart
Ah, the YMP-C90 (pic at
<http://www.geocities.jp/takaomitsuji2000/ymp-c90.jpg>)...

When I went to secondary (high) school in the UK, we had to do a work
placement week when we were 16. My first choice of company was MicroProse, as
they had a big UK office. I wasn't quick enough off the mark with them though,
and got the standard "too high demand" letter.

Then I was in our career room, and found some random business listings book
that had a small call-out for Cray Research. I put a letter together, thinking
"there's no way someone as cool as Cray would have spaces," and sent it off. A
while later I received a response from a manager, who said (paraphrasing)
"nobody's _ever_ asked about this before, we'd love to do it, but we'll have
to figure out what you can do." I was rather pleased :)

The UK office was mostly support, so I spent a day and a half with the
hardware guys who gave me a tour of ECMWF (<http://www.ecmwf.int/>) - they
were an ongoing Cray customer, and always had the fastest hardware available
from them - happened to be the C90 at the time, or "the dustbin". Then it was
off to the software support team, who got my 16-year-old self drunk at the
local pub (I doubt they knew my age) while hosting a Spanish sysop who was
troubleshooting some benchmark results for his employer. The software guys let
me loose on a couple of internal Cray machines ('forest' and 'wind') so I
could write some quick C programs to see how they compared to the Sparc 5 on
my desk. Finally, I sat on the helpdesk team for a day or two, where I fielded
live questions from customers ("sorry, we don't support bounds checking in
Fortran in your version of UNICOS, it's a known issue and will remain such").

An amazing week. And yes, I still have the T-shirt ;)

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fish
Incredibly good read.

    
    
      He pointed to a gauge that had a dial on it. “Here we have a meat thermometer.” 
    
      The brothers had thrust the thermometer between two circuit boards in order to 
      look for hot spots inside m zero. The thermometer’s dial was marked “Beef Rare—
      Ham—Beef Med— Pork.”
    
      “You want to keep the machine below ‘Pork,’ ” Gregory remarked.

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bootload
_"... The tragedy—the disgrace, so to speak—is that the American scientific
and educational establishment is not benefitting from the Chudnovskys’
assistance. Thirteen years have gone by since the Chudnovskys arrived here,
and where are all the graduate students who would have worked with the
brothers? ..."_

Funny enough this was the same sort of response Werner Von Braun received
moving to the US with his rocket team ~
<http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/bio.html>

Thanks for posting this 'nadim' it is hands-down the best hackernews article
I've read to date.

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ovi256
“They are prototypical Russians. They combine a rather grandiose vision of
themselves with an ability to live on scraps rather than compromise their
principles. These are people the world is not able to cope with, and they are
not making it any easier for the world."

Love this. I'm sure if we could be more like them, the world would be a better
place.

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helveticaman
_“Look, we are getting nutty,” David said.

“We are not the only ones,” Gregory said. “We are getting an average of one
letter a month from someone or other who is trying to prove Fermat’s Last
Theorem._

This was written in 92. Fermat's Last Theorem was proven in 95.

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brandnewlow
And that, friends, is a grade-A piece of writing.

~~~
Tichy
I hope you are joking? I thought it was horrible - it took forever to get to
the point. In fact so long that I couldn't bear reading it beyond the first
paragraph.

~~~
ssanders82
Agreed. It was _interesting_ , and I read the whole thing for some reason, but
I don't think the writing was that good.

"Gregory’s bedroom is filled with paper; it contains at least a ton of paper."

~~~
pchristensen
Don't read the New Yorker much, do you guys?

That "ton of paper" is great writing - people use a "ton" to mean an
unspecified large amount, but then there's already the unspecified "filled",
so you have to rethink what they just read as an actual, 2000lb ton. Then,
once they've corrected themselves, they have to visualize what 2,000lb of
paper looks like, and most people probably imagine it looking bigger than it
actually does. I found the writing to be a joy.

~~~
ssanders82
I didn't have a problem with the phrase "ton of paper". I just picked that
example because I thought the two clauses of the sentence didn't fit together
well and the double use of the word "paper" was jarring.

Maybe, "Gregory's cluttered bedroom contains at least a ton of paper." Or,
"Gregory’s bedroom is filled with paper; it contains a literal ton of
printouts, articles, and magazine clippings."

IANAW though. And I don't know what a literal ton is.

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maximilian
A great quote: “In ten years, a Cray will fit in your pocket,” David said.

The article is a bit weak on specifics, but I wouldn't be surprised if they
are totally spot on. The article was written in 1992 after all.

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davi
2005 follow-up at
[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/04/11/050411fa_fact?cu...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/04/11/050411fa_fact?currentPage=all)

