I agree with most of what you say, but 2^20 is one MB, and 2^24 is 16MB. So you are right with 32 MB being 25 bits, but off a bit otherwise.
The Commodore 128 used a funky bank switch system to allow access to 128 KB RAM.
On the Apple II, someone created very large RAM cards that addressed several MB of RAM using bank switching. Back then the limitation was heat and power. The cards were originally advertised to have up to 16 MB, but the reallities mentioned above limited them to about 4 MB without serious modifications such as fans and upgraded power supplies.
Sign of the times : I paid $120 or so for an extra 16KB for my Apple II+. 64K of RAM 80K total memory (including 16K of ROM) ! woo hoo !
No it isn't a harsher penalty. Think about it : either you are immediately found guilty, or you have a small chance to at least prove you were innocent. I'll take the small chance every time. It may be difficult, but it is far less harsh than being immediately found guilty, which is what normally happens in these cases.
No, actually, we are going to Pluto. Pluto is about 6 billion kilometers (or is that 6 trillion meters ?) away. The moon is about 384,400 kilometers away. You do the math.
Oh, and if I recall correctly, we should get there before Pluto's atmosphere completely freezes. If someone else goes 40 - 50 years later, it will be far less usefull from a scientific standpoint.
Either way, good luck to Europe, China, Japan, and anyone else with a space program. I'm interested in all of them, as any one of them, including the US, seems to move at a glacial pace. Now if only someone would start a permanent colony somewhere. That would be a new accomplishment worthy of history books.
Not really. Intel intends to speed up the P4 by increasing the length of the pipeline. This offsets quite a bit of the performance benefit of the higher clockspeed. The 4Gz P4 will however be better for building toasters and blast furnaces.
Now that Centrino is out, how will Intel keep up the facade that clock speed matters for than MFLOPS or other (imperfect, but far better that clock speed alone) benchmarks ?
So Microsoft withdraws and the EU then fails to ever enforce a Microsoft copyright ever again. This is simply not an option for Microsoft as they need the EU market far more than the EU needs them. Also, Microsoft has physical / capital assets in the EU.
I don't think the businesses would be as hurt as you imagine.
The patches would still be available elsewhere, and as we all know, if you distribute it to someone over in the US, it is just an email away from the EU.
As a "shareholder" (actually mutual fund owner) I have a different opinion. I own very few shares, and have very little access to information. Indeed, my fund changes stocks so often, I know of no way to even keep track of exactly which stocks I own. The quarterly reports are frequently "cooked" by the investment manager so it looks like they chose the correct stocks, but in reality they only own what is on the quarterly report for a few days at the end of the quarter.
Since I have so little access to information, and have no real say in what goes on, it is odd that you would hold people like me responsible instead of the corporate officers who have the information to act, and who choose to act in what may be a criminal fashion. I believe the people that have the knowledge of the crime, that intend to commit the crime, and that actually commit the crime should be held responsible. Punishing instead the investors, who often don't know they even hold a particular stock, seems somewhat arbitrary and simply can't have any preventative power to stop future occurrences of such crimes. I believe the laws exist to prevent crime, not simply to punish once a crime has been committed.
We have no trouble saying that with power comes responsibility, but we don't seem to take this into account when dealing with the abuses of power. Punish the person who did it, not some ignorant investor who will simply look at his financial report and think he made a bad investment decision. The people in position to do these things will know that they will be held responsible. This will help prevent the crimes from being committed in the first place.
Finally, I would like to address your "for the benefit of..." argument. I totally disagree with this. Too many crimes are committed "for the benefit of someone else." For example (and yes it is an extreme example), an abortion clinic bomber may do it for the benefit of unborn children. But it is absolutely absurd to hold the unborn children responsible for the crime even though it was done for their benefit. The mob boss is a completely different situation. He is far more akin to the corporate officer than he is the stock holder. He is at the top making the decisions. Both the mob boss and the lackey commiting the actual murder should be brought to justice, even if they did it for the benefit of someone else.
I completely disagree. The reason we see this kind of behaviour is that the company is punished and the individuals that make these decisions are not directly punished.
The solution is to find the person or people who made these decisions and prosecute them in a criminal court for the crimes (i.e. extortion, fraud) they have commited.
As long as we only levy punishment at the company as a whole, those individuals at the top who make these decisions are going to get off scott free and continue to engage in these behaviors. Put one of these bastards behind bars for as long as he actually deserves, and the next one will think twice before engaging in this kind of behavior. People (not companies, not guns, not computers, not books, and certainly not ideas) commit crimes and people should be punished.
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On the Apple II, someone created very large RAM cards that addressed several MB of RAM using bank switching. Back then the limitation was heat and power. The cards were originally advertised to have up to 16 MB, but the reallities mentioned above limited them to about 4 MB without serious modifications such as fans and upgraded power supplies.
Sign of the times : I paid $120 or so for an extra 16KB for my Apple II+. 64K of RAM 80K total memory (including 16K of ROM) ! woo hoo !
Dean G.
Dean G.
Dean G.
No, actually, we are going to Pluto. Pluto is about 6 billion kilometers (or is that 6 trillion meters ?) away. The moon is about 384,400 kilometers away. You do the math.
Oh, and if I recall correctly, we should get there before Pluto's atmosphere completely freezes. If someone else goes 40 - 50 years later, it will be far less usefull from a scientific standpoint.
Either way, good luck to Europe, China, Japan, and anyone else with a space program. I'm interested in all of them, as any one of them, including the US, seems to move at a glacial pace. Now if only someone would start a permanent colony somewhere. That would be a new accomplishment worthy of history books.
Dean G.
Not really. Intel intends to speed up the P4 by increasing the length of the pipeline. This offsets quite a bit of the performance benefit of the higher clockspeed. The 4Gz P4 will however be better for building toasters and blast furnaces.
Now that Centrino is out, how will Intel keep up the facade that clock speed matters for than MFLOPS or other (imperfect, but far better that clock speed alone) benchmarks ?
Dean G.
I don't think the businesses would be as hurt as you imagine. The patches would still be available elsewhere, and as we all know, if you distribute it to someone over in the US, it is just an email away from the EU.
Dino
Since I have so little access to information, and have no real say in what goes on, it is odd that you would hold people like me responsible instead of the corporate officers who have the information to act, and who choose to act in what may be a criminal fashion. I believe the people that have the knowledge of the crime, that intend to commit the crime, and that actually commit the crime should be held responsible. Punishing instead the investors, who often don't know they even hold a particular stock, seems somewhat arbitrary and simply can't have any preventative power to stop future occurrences of such crimes. I believe the laws exist to prevent crime, not simply to punish once a crime has been committed.
We have no trouble saying that with power comes responsibility, but we don't seem to take this into account when dealing with the abuses of power. Punish the person who did it, not some ignorant investor who will simply look at his financial report and think he made a bad investment decision. The people in position to do these things will know that they will be held responsible. This will help prevent the crimes from being committed in the first place.
Finally, I would like to address your "for the benefit of..." argument. I totally disagree with this. Too many crimes are committed "for the benefit of someone else." For example (and yes it is an extreme example), an abortion clinic bomber may do it for the benefit of unborn children. But it is absolutely absurd to hold the unborn children responsible for the crime even though it was done for their benefit. The mob boss is a completely different situation. He is far more akin to the corporate officer than he is the stock holder. He is at the top making the decisions. Both the mob boss and the lackey commiting the actual murder should be brought to justice, even if they did it for the benefit of someone else.
I completely disagree. The reason we see this kind of behaviour is that the company is punished and the individuals that make these decisions are not directly punished.
The solution is to find the person or people who made these decisions and prosecute them in a criminal court for the crimes (i.e. extortion, fraud) they have commited.
As long as we only levy punishment at the company as a whole, those individuals at the top who make these decisions are going to get off scott free and continue to engage in these behaviors. Put one of these bastards behind bars for as long as he actually deserves, and the next one will think twice before engaging in this kind of behavior. People (not companies, not guns, not computers, not books, and certainly not ideas) commit crimes and people should be punished.