29 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
29 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
logical
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adj. [from the technical term logical device , wherein a physical device is
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referred to by an arbitrary logical name] Having the role of. If a person
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(say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who had long held a certain post left and were
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replaced, the replacement would for a while be known as the logical Les
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Earnest. (This does not imply any judgment on the replacement.) Compare
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virtual. At Stanford, logical compass directions denote a coordinate system
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relative to El Camino Real, in which logical north is always toward San
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Francisco and logical south is always toward San Jose--in spite of the fact
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that El Camino Real runs physical north/south near San Francisco, physical
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east/west near San Jose, and along a curve everywhere in between. (The best
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rule of thumb here is that, by definition, El Camino Real always runs
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logical north-south.) In giving directions, one might say: To get to Rincon
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Tarasco restaurant, get onto El Camino Bignum going logical north. Using the
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word logical helps to prevent the recipient from worrying about that the
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fact that the sun is setting almost directly in front of him. The concept is
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reinforced by North American highways which are almost, but not quite,
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consistently labeled with logical rather than physical directions. A similar
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situation exists at MIT: Route 128 (famous for the electronics industry that
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grew up along it) wraps roughly 3 quarters around Boston at a radius of 10
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miles, terminating near the coastline at each end. It would be most precise
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to describe the two directions along this highway as clockwise and
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counterclockwise , but the road signs all say north and south ,
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respectively. A hacker might describe these directions as logical north and
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logical south , to indicate that they are conventional directions not
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corresponding to the usual denotation for those words.
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