Emulator Layering Results In Perpetual Speed Machine.


Unemployed software engineer Rick Lawson, in a series of posts to forums on Ars Technica and other web sites, claims that he has achieved a perpetual speed machine by installing layer upon layer of operating system emulators.

Over a three week period during which he only took catnaps of 15 minutes at a time between clicking “OK” and “Next” buttons, Lawson continually installed emulators of OS X, OS 9, Linux, several different version of Windows, the Palm OS, the Newton OS, Be and even the Amiga one on top of the other on his TiVo. According to his currently unconfirmed results, the combination of operating systems eventually leads to ever-increasing performance improvements.

An excited and sleep-deprived Lawson said “It’s really slow at first, but once you get to about the 22nd iteration – just about where you start putting the Linux emulator on top of the Newton emulator on top of the Palm emulator again – things start reversing! The whole system starts speeding up! Ha-ha! Ha-ha!”

Lawson claims the speed increase from there is a linear progression as more layers of emulators are added.

“The implications are astounding!” Lawson exclaimed. “We can make computers run as fast as we want them to!”

Lawson digressed for five minutes while he watched the trail of his hand as he waved it back and forth in front of his face before continuing.

“When I got the OS X emulator loaded onto the Windows emulator for the 42nd time, Photoshop was doing a Gaussian blur on a 100 MB file in two seconds!

“Um… or it might have been GIMP on Linux. Or possibly Newton Works on the Newton. I can’t remember.”

Also, at some point, Lawson apparently gnawed his own foot off, believing it had been stuck in a trap.

“Turns out it was only tangled up in some power cords! Ha-ha! Aaaahh… boy, was that stupid! I probably needed a break right about then!”

Ars Technica’s John Siracusa, however, believes that Lawson’s results will quickly be proved to be nothing more than the product of a psychotic, sleep-deprived imagination.

Siracusa declined to comment on the record, other than circling his finger around his ear in the internationally-accepted symbol for “kookoo.”

43 thoughts on “Emulator Layering Results In Perpetual Speed Machine.”

  1. I told you guys that the trick to getting first is not trying. I was just looking up YDL for the G5 and decided I would see if anybody had posted anything new on CARS. Well, much to my surprise, Moltz had. Kinda crazy you know.

  2. I was just watching my Ab Initio job run and I switched over to the Mac to see what was up. Lo and behold! It was just posted….That poor guy, all those versions of Windows…enough to drive anyone mad…

  3. What the… That is friken amazing. I all of the sudden decide to check the CARS site THE SAME MINUTE as Moltz posted? That is crazy, too bad it took some time to post. Otherwise the first post would be the same minute too.

    Oh, and sorry about that Moltz, I really didn’t mean to.

  4. Ok Moltz, I don’t care if you tell the world about me being crazy and all. But next time don’t change my name to Rick Lawson, that just isn’t cool.

  5. Gotta say Psyko, looked at your web site, your sister is HOT! I’ll bet Masako would like….The Beast is just that, a Beast. Does that thing run? Has a cop ever stopped you for the muffler sticking out of the trunk? I could see them using it as an excuse for pulling you over…”Not street legal, ya see. Gotta take it off now, boy!” But I digress, your sister is HOT!

  6. she slept in the day when she could

    she worked in the night in the nude

    she’d always said

    she liked working in bed

    and anything naughty and lewd

    Verse 2 of Gloria Horn which I’ll continue until I’m pelted with rocks.

    Being from the Dark Side I loaded Macintosh Explorer on my Powerbook ‘cos I…well I think the Windows Explorer GUI is much better than Finder and I was feeling insecure and a little bit lost. I mean how the hell do you edit the registry on these things?

    Anyway true to form Macintosh Explorer kept hanging and dying and doing all sorts of…well windows things I suppose.

    Am I being pelted with rocks now?

  7. Mmmmmm, slo gin fizz

    Probably not the best thing to fixate on at half nine in the morning but hey, what else can you do on a friday.

  8. Explorer users are kindly asked to step to the right… Yes, a little bit further, just a little bit…

    Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh

    There you are.

  9. “perpetual speed machine” I knew Rick was bonkers from that point. What in the world couild he have meant?

    A machine that would continue to travel at the same speed forever? In space, in the absence of an external force, any matter or energy will travel forever at the same speed, (and direction,)

    A machine that would continue to accelerate forever? Totally useless. Inventing a machine that would exceed the speed of time would be cool. A FTL drive would open the universe to human exploration. But a perpetual speed machine by definition could never stop which means you never get where you are going. (That remind me of certain family vacations when I was younger.We would be somewhere far from home and my dad would decide to take us out to eat. All us six kids would be excited and hungry. Anyway, we would start driving down the road and we would pass a fast food place, Half the car would want to stop. and the other half would hate that franshise and want to go on. So we would. The problem was no could agree on a place and dad would keep driving and driving, and the short trip to eat would turn into a nightmare odyssey of endless bickering and driving.

    Aaah where was I? Oh yeh. What’s the point?

    No I think Rick was trying to invent a perpetual motion machine. A source of endless energy. A clean evironmentally friendly alternate to fossil fuels, nuclear, or hydroelectrical. The answer to America’s energy problems, forever.

    Too bad Rick is nuttier than a fruitcake.

  10. Perpetual Speed Machine: A vending machine that’s always stocked with meth.

    Kinda explains the rest of the article.

  11. You wouldn’t *believe* how fast ProDOS runs on a G4.

    Psyko: your sister’s Wrangler is hot!

  12. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I read this article I clearly heard the part of Rick Lawson being played by Dexter from Dexter’s lab.

    It was very weird.

  13. I just noticed that there appears to be an automobile of some sort in a few of those photos of your sister, Psyko.

    As an experienced photographer, I can tell you that if you take a little more time framing the shots, these small imperfections won’t crop up.

  14. Actually, it IS a very nice Wrangler Something my wife would have liked before we were married. Now with kids, well….

  15. I will now recite the entire contents of “Les Miserables” in Urdu, tranlation by this new sped-up emulatoratron.

    *

    Thank yew.

    Ariba Ariba yeehaw ondalay, ondalay, pronto, Ariba! zzzzzzip…

  16. Friday Feature: Crazy Apple Help Desk

    ‘twould be better to host the Help Desk on a day where it would bother to show up for work. If I only worked one day a week, I’d at least try to show up on that day.

    I suggest Wednesday.

  17. So – is your sister single, Psyko? I ask that in a purely theoretical sense. Not that I’m interested. I mean she’s cute! But I’m not trying to come on to her. That’s not to say she’s not hot and I wouldn’t like to meet her! That is to say that if I were interested in a woman, she’d be at the top of the list. Not that I am interested. I mean, I would be. *play it cool, man, play it cool…*

  18. Yes, indeed it is! It’s a little known fact that that the Nazis were working on multiple OS layering when the Russians stormed the Reichstag. Fortunately for us, they never mastered the art of installing simultaneously conflicting emulators! Today, in the ‘modern’ world, we have the option of applying so many bad fake-out patches that our computers can actually achieve speeds that exceed both the CPU’s ability to process AND the Net restrictions on bandwidth!

    It would all be good, except for the part where it all causes the Sun to go supernova in 2006…

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