13 lines
667 B
Plaintext
13 lines
667 B
Plaintext
milliLampson
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/mil'@lamp`sn/ , n. A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run
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about 200 milliLampsons. The eponymous Butler Lampson (a CS theorist and
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systems implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A few
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people speak faster. This unit is sometimes used to compare the (sometimes
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widely disparate) rates at which people can generate ideas and actually emit
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them in speech. For example, noted computer architect C. Gordon Bell
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(designer of the PDP-11 ) is said, with some awe, to think at about 1200 mL
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but only talk at about 300; he is frequently reduced to fragments of
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sentences as his mouth tries to keep up with his speeding brain.
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