PC Analogy

A computer analogy might be a PC in a locked room, with only cables in and out.

The connector looks like its 10Gigabits Ethernet, but I'm suspicious that the IT manager has told me some untruths. I need proof that the PC will do the job. The task I have in hand is to analyse some binary (or ASCII) data which I have reason to believe is a completely new language.

I told the IT man that I wanted it to do continuous language translation and sure enough when I tested it with English, Chinese or Welsh it works brilliantly, instantly recognising words. However tests with my new data have led to incredibly poor results so far, I have to reduce the input data rate to a mere trickle, with very slow improvement so far. I suspect that the IT manager thought that he could get away with an old cheap slow PC, by pre-installing all the language dictionaries he could find, not realising that I am trying to understand a completely New language. When I explain this to him, he goes white, and then asks me to be patient, desperately reassuring me that performance will slowly improve as time goes by! I no longer trust the IT manager and refuse to listen to him blathering on about how fast it can translate Welsh to Chinese.

(No disrespect to IT managers is meant to be implied. Most are impeccable I am sure, and this one was under extreme budgetary pressure and impossible "Personal Objectives")