16 lines
854 B
Plaintext
16 lines
854 B
Plaintext
smoke and mirrors
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n. Marketing deceptions. The term is mainstream in this general sense. Among
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hackers it's strongly associated with bogus demos and crocked benchmark s
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(see also MIPS , machoflops ). They claim their new box cranks 50 MIPS for
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under $5000, but didn't specify the instruction mix sounds like smoke and
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mirrors to me. The phrase, popularized by newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin
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c.1975, has been said to derive from carnie slang for magic acts and freak
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show displays that depend on trompe l'oeil effects, but also calls to mind
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the fierce Aztec god Tezcatlipoca (lit. Smoking Mirror ) for whom the hearts
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of huge numbers of human sacrificial victims were regularly cut out. Upon
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hearing about a rigged demo or yet another round of fantasy-based marketing
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promises, hackers often feel analogously disheartened. See also stealth
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manager.
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