On Fri, 31 Jul 2015, Russell Reiter wrote: | From: Russell Reiter <rreiter91@gmail.com> | On 7/31/15, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh@mimosa.com> wrote: | > | From: Russell Reiter <rreiter91@gmail.com> | I got a copy of the manual when I picked up the bios. I think that there are several manual-like-objects of varying subject, detail, and specificity that you could have downloaded. Each might have some useful nuggets. | > Your computer has one processor chip, a die, but two cores (I'd call them | > two processors, but I'm old fashioned). The "die" is one of the pieces | > after the silicon wafer is "diced" (cut into bits). The plural of "die" | > is "dice" but most hardware folks seem to use "dies". | | I suppose this is so as not to confuse it with casino dice. Another | place where it's better to take your winnings and run. Same word, same meaning: something that is cut up. | > Yeah, there is animation in some desktops. That's surely not done with | > conventional sprites. Of course somebody might recycle the term to mean | > something different. | | I first heard the term as "Windows Desktop Sprite." I first heard | about sprites in old fairytales. | | Here's a googled definition. | 2. a computer graphic that may be moved on-screen and otherwise | manipulated as a single entity. Not a particularly good definition. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_%28computer_graphics%29> isn't great, but it is better. | I'm still looking for a table of sic sigma recommendations, often the | service manuals are available somewhere deep in the bowels of the | internet. I think you mean "six sigma". Uneducated prejudice: Six sigma started out as a somewhat arbitrary quality metric. Sigma is the standard deviation of a distribution. Six sigma is meant to be six standard deviations away from the mean. I think that the distribution is assumed to be Gaussian (Bell Curve), which is usually safe, but probably not so far from the centre. Now six sigma is a religious movement for improving manufacturing and various other business processes. I don't actually understand your usage.