Word: algorithmic
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...editor, Christian Persson, and one of its writers, Ingo Storm, engaged the services of a software engineer, and together they went through the program line by line to try to plumb its inner workings. Their findings: the one patch of SoftRAM 95 code remotely resembling a compression algorithm never gets used by the program. Moreover, the two subprograms actually called on to manage memory usage appear to be copies of programs that Microsoft hands out free. Both modules increase a computer's capacity using "virtual memory," a memory-expansion technique considerably more time consuming than true memory compression...
...center is the Clipper Chip, a semiconductor device that the NSA developed and wants installed in every telephone, computer modem and fax machine. The chip combines a powerful encryption algorithm with a "back door" -- the cryptographic equivalent of the master key that opens schoolchildren's padlocks when they forget their combinations. A "secure" phone equipped with the chip could, with proper authorization, be cracked by the government. Law-enforcement agencies say they need this capability to keep tabs on drug runners, terrorists and spies. Critics denounce the Clipper -- and a bill before Congress that would require phone companies to make...
...mile population of the state. Next, draw a grid across its map with squares containing an average of 500,000 people in each one. Now comes the unavoidably subjective part. Squares must be added, subtracted and tinkered with until the populations in each district are correct. If the same algorithm is used for every district everywhere (i.e. start at western portion of the state, always expand districts east, then north, then south, etc.), the system becomes largely impartial over the entire nation...
Both NT and Windows feature multi-tasking of this second sort. But NT does a better job as its task assignment algorithm is better. What all this means to the user is that while in NT you can format a disk and download files from your husc account at the same time, this is impossible with Windows...
Unlike the basic unit of conventional computer programming -- the algorithm, which details a precise series of steps that will yield a precise result -- those rules (referred to in computerese as heuristics) state a relationship that is likely, but not guaranteed, to yield an outcome. Heuristics allow computers to deal with situations that cannot be reduced to mathematical formulas and may involve many exceptions. It is the kind of reasoning that governs countless everyday decisions, ranging from the mundane, such as choosing the appropriate clothes for a job interview, to the apocalyptic, such as deciding whether a Soviet missile launch...