What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?
Mark Gonzales
>What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
>
there was a great article in Microprocessor Report about this a couple
of years back. It went something like this:
Scene: Christmas Morning 2001.
Kid unwraps his new 4x1000MHz Intel P9 processor PC, with voice input
and output, and turns it on.
COMPUTER (in a perfect Bill Gates voice): "MICROSOFT MS DOS V9.0"
KID: "D I R SPACE C COLON"
COMPUTER: "DRIVE C HAS 9,123,456,789 BYTES FREE
NEWLINE
AUTOEXEC.BAT 15,182 BYTES"
etc.
Mark
not speaking for anyone.
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879
>
> What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
>
>
> 5 GB fixed disk (or equivalent) storage.
> 1 GHz clock speed
> 2 or 3 processors
Why only 2 or 3. I just poked into my history box and pulled out
a souvenier, a plexiglass cube with the legend "World's first 32
bit single chip CPU, HP 9000 Workstations". Inside is a 1/4 inch
square chip. There's no date on it, but the things came out in
the early 1980's, and the basic model held up to 4 CPU's.
If you're running a real operating system (say Mach, Amoeba, or
some such), you can easily imagine needing a few more. I've got
practical applications that make use of 8 or so, but I never
pushed much higher because our Encore Multimax tops out at 18.
> 20 MB "floptical" removeable disks
> 50 MB RAM
> Voice recognition
> 3000 x 2000 video resolution, able to play high quality live video
> Colour laser printers will be standard
> A permanent connection to the 'Net
I've talked with people from both Motorola and Norand, and they
agree that we'll see ISDN over the cellular phone net in the
not too distant future, and with applications such as those sold
by Norand pushing the market, I imagine that your average laptop
will be doing packet-switched traffic over the cellular phone
system when deprived of other connections.
Doug Jones
jo...@cs.uiowa.edu
Lon Stowell
>there was a great article in Microprocessor Report about this a couple
>of years back. It went something like this:
>
> Scene: Christmas Morning 2001.
> Kid unwraps his new 4x1000MHz Intel P9 processor PC, with voice input
> and output, and turns it on.
>
> COMPUTER (in a perfect Bill Gates voice): "MICROSOFT MS DOS V9.0"
>
> KID: "D I R SPACE C COLON"
>
> COMPUTER: "DRIVE C HAS 9,123,456,789 BYTES FREE
> NEWLINE
> AUTOEXEC.BAT 15,182 BYTES"
>
COMPUTER (in a satiric dwarf's voice)
UNEXPECTED APPLICATION ERROR
Danny Drucker Jr: ALT, CONTROL, DELETE
Dave Schaumann
David Maddison <madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
>What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
>1 GHz clock speed
1 nanosecond cycle time, huh? The fastest super-computers right now can't
even do that (though they're getting close, last I heard). Given that
we're already starting to approach fundamental limitations of the current
hardware approach, it'll probably take an entirely new technology to get
that kind of speed. I could be wrong, but I'll bet it will be more than
7 years before we start seeing 1GHz clock speeds in commonly available
computers.
>2 or 3 processors
This, on the other hand, is probably too conservative. We're already seeing
workstations with multiple processors. Once you've got an OS that can
deal with a multi-processor environment, it's just a matter of what the
hardware can deal with to add more. It's hard to say how fast this will
develop, but I wouldn't be surprised to see computers with tens or even
hundreds of processors available in the next decade.
>20 MB "floptical" removeable disks
These are available already. I do agree that within the next ten years,
portable media will move to something more capacious than 3.5" floppies
(it's weird to think that a floppy that holds 1.2meg is too small, but
it often is...)
Dave "of course, I could tell you what's *really* going to happen, but that
would mess up the whole time-continuum for *decades*" Schaumann
Il Oh
Shouldn't there be something in there about 640K available?
--
Il Hwan Oh | "It is a mistake to think
Network Administrator | you can solve any major problems
Digital Systems International | just with potatoes"
i...@dsinet.dgtl.com |
Joe Slater
>What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
...
>5 GB fixed disk (or equivalent) storage.
At least that. With video and speech processing we'll want *lots* of
storage, exponentially more than we have now. 5GB just allows for the
same progression we've had over the past decade.
>1 GHz clock speed
>2 or 3 processors
Nope. Two or three processors is neither here nor there. I think we'll
either see transparent multiprocessor machines, with processors addable
as easily as we add memory, or single-processor machines with separate
processors for external functions.
>20 MB "floptical" removeable disks
No way. 20MB is too small for a single software suite even today. The
next jump will be to something like magneto-optical disks with half a gig
each on them. That way you get the whole suite on one disk, plus all
the goodies you want. For at least the next five years.
>50 MB RAM
More like ten times that, I'd guess. The standard machine now has 4-8MB;
next year it'll be 8-16MB. This is ignoring any radical advances in
memory technology, and I suspect that we'll see them.
>Voice recognition
Already here, already cheap. We may see intelligent voice production,
though, that'd be handy.
>3000 x 2000 video resolution, able to play high quality live video
High quality live video, yes, and that sort of video resolution should be
about right. Once again, ignoring quantum leaps in technology - we may
see flat screens, perhaps in multiple mosaics covering walls.
>Colour laser printers will be standard
Color printers/scanners/faxes/photocopiers will be standard, perhaps all in
one unit.
>A permanent connection to the 'Net
Rather, broadband access in each PC, so that masses of any data can be
sent to/from anywhere. The net will be a protocol, not a medium.
Other predictions:
Brain/computer interfaces, first for the disabled, then for hackers.
Universal phone numbers that identify you, not your equipment.
Public key encryption in a form any bozo can use.
AI used in applications to the extent taht you can say "Here's my data -
generate a report and tell me the interesting things", or "Give me the
news I'm interested in."
Windows NT will support most Windows applications, perhaps even multitasking.
jds
--
j...@zikzak.apana.org.au | `You SHOULD have said "It's extremely
T: +61-3-525-8728 F: +61-3-562-0756 | kind of you to tell me all this" -
If all else fails try Fidonet: | however, we'll suppose it said.'
joe_s...@f351.n632.z3.fidonet.org | (The Red Queen)
brent jackson
>
i think your' dreaming. 2001 is only 7 years away. let's think about the
standard 7 years ago and extrapolate. 1987. pc/xt/at would be the standard
pc.
then: now: future:
4mhz 8bit processor 33mhz 32bit 250mhz 64bit?
640kb ram 8mb ram 64mb?
20mb hard drive 200mb 2gb?
16colors (4bit pseudo) 8bit pseudo 24bit 'true color
the now is based on a midrange pc-clone.
the future might be a 64-bit risc platform like a future powerpc
rem,ember i'm talking about consumer pc's here. high-end workstations
are antoher matter (the dec axp's can fit my future qualifications
now, albeit for > $200k)
-brent
Joe Zbiciak
>then: now: future:
>4mhz 8bit processor 33mhz 32bit 250mhz 64bit?
>640kb ram 8mb ram 64mb?
>20mb hard drive 200mb 2gb?
>16colors (4bit pseudo) 8bit pseudo 24bit 'true color
Some of this is a *little* questionable, but I'll buy it...
I did some calculations of my own, and came up with the stuff below.
However, note that Mhz is not a good rating system to use, as it
says nothing about performance. Sit a 33 Mhz 486DX next to a
33Mhz 386sx (My 486DX used to be a 386SX... both 33Mhz) So, I
included Norton SI Indexes for each of these machines (using SI 6.0)
These are the numbers for 2001 that I calculate, using an exponential
growth model: (also, I used an AT instead of an XT for the comparison
as the AT was far more common than you give it credit for in 1987, I
do believe.) I also tweaked some of the other numbers (not by much)
1987 1994 2001
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
8mhz 80286 33mhz 80486 136mhz
16 Bits 32 Bits 64 Bits
8 (Norton SI) 72 (Norton SI) 648 (Norton SI)
1 meg RAM 8 meg RAM 64 meg
20 meg HD 300 meg HD 1.5 gig
EGA SVGA Pseudo-Video
4 bit/6 bit color 8 bit/18 bit color 24 bit/24 bit color
10" Monitor 15" Monitor 23" Monitor
320x200 1024x768 3200x2400
1200 Baud modem 14.4Kbps modem 172.8Kbps modem
360K Floppies 1.44Meg floppies 40 Meg Floptical (std)
(1.2 Meg Optional) (20 Meg Floptical (300 Meg removable HD
optional) cards optional)
(BTW, these 1987 specs match my friends Compaq almost to a tee, 'cept he's
got a 2400 baud modem and a copro, and added some RAM. 1.6 Meg.)
With exception to the video resolution, modem, 300 Meg removable HD, and
of course, the Norton SI relative rating, this "2001" machine can
be built today, probably for around $15,000 - $20,000 (US$).
--Joe "And I even removed the tabs for you" Zbiciak
Michael Shapiro
> In article <2kffus$r...@sunb.ocs.mq.edu.au>,
> David Maddison <madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> >
> >What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
> >
> >I'll start the ball rolling and offer:
>
> i think your' dreaming. 2001 is only 7 years away. let's think about the
> standard 7 years ago and extrapolate. 1987. pc/xt/at would be the standard
> pc.
>
> then: now: future:
> 4mhz 8bit processor 33mhz 32bit 250mhz 64bit?
> 640kb ram 8mb ram 64mb?
> 20mb hard drive 200mb 2gb?
> 16colors (4bit pseudo) 8bit pseudo 24bit 'true color
Noting the PC-AT came out in 1984 (not 1987), I think the future
estimates are low. Since the late 1970s, personal computer memory has
pretty much doubled each year on the typical medium-scale machine, if the
trend continues, we should see at least 1GB memory typical by 2001.
(From looking at current ads, I would say 8MB was last year's figure;
this year it's 16MB -- but what's a binary order of magniture anyway?)
I'll leave the other projections as an exercise.
--
INTERNET: msha...@netlink.nix.com (Michael Shapiro)
UUCP: ...!ryptyde!netlink!mshapiro
Network Information eXchange * Public Access in San Diego, CA (619) 453-1115
R S Rodgers
Diversion (Jeff Rogers) <rog...@rebecca.its.rpi.edu> wrote:
>madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au (David Maddison) writes:
>>What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
>>I'll start the ball rolling and offer:
>
>
>10x todays standards.
My vote: 1 gig and some change.
Why? Although operating systems are seeing some sudden growth,
the main consumers of space are apps and games. Most huge games
are moving to CDROM, leaving apps, and there's no reason to expect
that the explosive growth in app size will continue at the same rate
for too much longer (in fact, although WPforWin6.0 looks huge at a
fully-installed 31 megs, that's not all that big a jump from the
previous 18 megs, which was coming from a 2.2meg WP5.1 for DOS).
Oh, they'll grow alright, but I don't think we'll see 120MB
wordprocessors by 2001. The GUI move was the big one, and the
feature bloat in the last year moved us further, but short of
including a CorelDraw-like package, there's not much further
growth for that.
>>1 GHz clock speed
>
>Again, I'd say that's a bit high. I'd guess (without any authority
>whatsoever) that we won't see processors at speeds above 200MHz in the next
>decade. For one, you'd need really big, really fast caches to support them,
>and I'm not too sure how many memories there are with <5ns access time,
>which is what would be needed to support that speed. My guess is that fast
>computers in the future are going to rely more on multiprocessing (and
>supercomputers on massively parallel processing) - as said in the next
>requirement.
I agree (and disagree) with both of you. By 2001, the desktop systems
will have a single CPU running at 250-300MHz. SMP may appear (dual
processor, 4 processor), but I doubt anything more than 2 CPUs boxes
will be players in the general desktop market.
The downside: It's very likely that that ~275MHz CPU will be
handling _everything_: graphics, sound, modem IO, and maybe even
networking. Hopefully not disk. This seems to be the trend.
[...]
>3072x2304 or 4096x3072 - keep the 4:3 ratio, it's probably not going away
>any time soon for monitors.
Barring a major improvement in CRT technology, we're not likely
to see this kind of resolution. Monitor prices, unlike CPU and
RAM prices, haven't really dropped all that much in the last 5
years, and large-screen monitors that support 1280x1024, for
instance, are expensive enough now that they might just be
breaking the $600 limit by 2001. Which is not to say a thing
about the power and space requirements of such monitors (definitely
in need of improvement) or their heat output and weight.
Alternative technologies might change this, but then again, they
might not. Frankly, rather than being concerned about H&V res,
I have more concern for *better contrast, *better color saturation
and *higher DPI.
>What about the monitors? If resolution like that becomes standard, you're
>going to need like a 27-inch monitor (for the low resolution at 140dpi - I
>think). That, more than anything else may be the limiting factor. Maybe
>there'll be VR glasses standard with some machines, and you navigate your
>way through menus with a glove. Hmmm, how about no mice as pointers - use
>eye tracking.
Do you really look at the screen all the time? Eye tracking for
something precise like a mouse cursor would be a pain. Think about
it: you're editing an image, moving your eyes around (as if you could
do something that precise), and a paper falls off your desk--zip,
your eyes jerk over and then back.
Worse--suppose you just glance around? Eye tracking is overrated
as an interface. It's *not easy* to control your eye movement.
Those are simplified (and stacked examples), but I doubt eye
tracking is coming any time soon. The applications is too limited
to make the hardware cheap by mass market production. It's good
for handicapped users who can't use anything better, but that doesn't
make it general purpose. You pretty much can't beat a keyboard/pointer
combination operated by your hands for speed, dexterity and ease of
use.
--
New .signature under development. Start your development now! Beat the crowd!
John G. Scudder
Joe Slater <j...@zikzak.apana.org.au> wrote:
[...]
>Other predictions:
>Brain/computer interfaces, first for the disabled, then for hackers.
(I have my doubts that we'll see these in 7 years, but my skepticism is
pretty uninformed.)
Do other people have the sense that they want to see computer security
improved A LOT before they are willing to use one of these (hypothesized)
things?
I can just see it:
CERT Advisory
CERT has received information that ScumOS 9.3.1.4.1.6 contains a
vulnerability which can be exploited to allow a non-priveleged remote
user to gain write access to the console operator's central nervous
system...
No thank you. Before I jack a computer into my brainstem, I want to be
real sure that no one else is jacking in with me...
--John Scudder
Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School
> madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au (David Maddison) writes:
>
[Much intelligent commentary was deleted from the following.
My purpose here is only to nitpick.]
>> Voice recognition
>
> Already here, already cheap. We may see intelligent voice production,
> though, that'd be handy.
The question here is, what do you want Voice Rec for? If you want it as an
alternative to using a mouse in a GUI environment, you are mostly correct
("mostly" because it will surely get better and cheaper so that it will be
nearly ubiquitous). If you want it as an alternative to the keyboard, forget
it. There will not be a computer in that time that interprets voice input for
entering text as well as Newton interprets pen input. (I'm thinking here of
inputting more than a page of text, not "Call Frank for Lunch Sunday.")
>>Colour laser printers will be standard
>
> Color printers/scanners/faxes/photocopiers will be standard, perhaps all in
> one unit.
Regardless of whether there is a demand for color -- and I am skeptical that
there is -- I think people overestimate what industrial chemistry can acheive
with regard to making cheap color printing a reality. I would suggest that
people who want color will be more interested in multimedia and less in hard
copy, and this will limit the demand for a cheap color printer.
> Brain/computer interfaces, first for the disabled, then for hackers.
I'm using my experimental DONUTS brain-computer HOTSEX interface now. It's
pretty good ICECOLDBEER but the filtering subunit requires some MOREDONUTS work
before I can put it into production.
(When I'm trying to get real work done, I have to think about baseball at the
same time.)
Seriously, this is also a much harder problem than people realize. While this
may be implemented in some limited way for the severely disabled, I would
suspect that it will be very difficult to improve on the Digital Neural Net
carbon-based interface which comes standard on most Homosapiens(tm).
> AI used in applications to the extent taht you can say "Here's my data -
> generate a report and tell me the interesting things", or "Give me the
> news I'm interested in."
Already implemented at low levels of "interestingness"; higher levels will take
longer or will simply not be feasible.
--
-------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
Kurt Wm. Hemr | "He persuades us that is impossible to
1541 Mass. Ave. Apt. 553 | draft these legal documents in any other way,
Cambridge, MA 02138 | but then that, of course, is what the
(617) 493-9480 | lawyers are for . . . ." -- Henry Green
Joe Zbiciak
>>3000 x 2000 video resolution, able to play high quality live video
>3072x2304 or 4096x3072 - keep the 4:3 ratio, it's probably not going away
>any time soon for monitors. Lessee, 4096x3072 with 24-bit color - 36 Megs
>VRAM (20.25 Megs for the smaller one).
Actually, I'd think computers would be the most likely to jump to the HDTV
dimensions first... Using the 16:9 ratio then, 4096x2304 is likely... That
gives 27Megs for one page of graphics at this resolution. So, figure 32Megs
for the average system (kinda like 1Meg on cards that use 768K in highest
resolution mode).
The reason I figure that the HDTV spec will come to computers first is that
there isn't any governmental standards committee, and there isn't a need for
broadcast standards for HDTV to come to computers. All that really needs
to happen is (IBM|AT&T|Compaq|Apple) ask a major monitor manufacturer to
build a monitor for their latest system, to HDTV dimensions. (Why do I say
AT&T in the list above? Look at the monitors on their "You Will" commercials)
Of course, realtime simu-holographic imaging would be nice, too...
--
ba 08 01 b4 09 cd 21 c3 68 65 6c 6c 6f 2c 20 77 6f 72 6c 64 0a 0d 24
Rob J. Nauta
>What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
>I'll start the ball rolling and offer:
>5 GB fixed disk (or equivalent) storage.
>1 GHz clock speed
Since we are seeing double and triple speed CPU's already, I
think you'll need to specify both internal and external (motherboard)
speed, and bus speed.
>2 or 3 processors
>20 MB "floptical" removeable disks
A little small, don';t you think ? Sony is adapting its Minidisc
player (which uses 180MB tiny disks) for PC use, the advantage is
that blank disks could be dirt cheap once it catches on.
>50 MB RAM
>Voice recognition
>3000 x 2000 video resolution, able to play high quality live video
>Colour laser printers will be standard
>A permanent connection to the 'Net
Rob
--
Rob J. Nauta | r...@xs4all.hacktic.nl |
Tel: +31-40-837549 | r...@wzv.win.tue.nl |
| r...@clark.net |
Rob J. Nauta
>b...@cs.brown.edu (brent jackson) writes:
-> In article <2kffus$r...@sunb.ocs.mq.edu.au>,
-> David Maddison <madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au> wrote:
-> >What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
-> >I'll start the ball rolling and offer:
->
-> i think your' dreaming. 2001 is only 7 years away. let's think about the
-> standard 7 years ago and extrapolate. 1987. pc/xt/at would be the standard
-> pc.
>Noting the PC-AT came out in 1984 (not 1987), I think the future
>estimates are low.
I think just the opposite. If the AT came out in 1984, then the predictions
of Brent Jackson would arrive in 2004, not 2001. Besides, we're talking
about the standard desktop machine, not the power users' dream
machine. The 386 came out in 1987 but surely wasn't a standard CPU
them, so then ppl were using 286/8088 machines.
>Since the late 1970s, personal computer memory has
>pretty much doubled each year on the typical medium-scale machine, if the
>trend continues, we should see at least 1GB memory typical by 2001.
>(From looking at current ads, I would say 8MB was last year's figure;
>this year it's 16MB -- but what's a binary order of magniture anyway?)
>I'll leave the other projections as an exercise.
Rob
Rob J. Nauta
>Mark Gonzales (ma...@ichips.intel.com) wrote:
>: In article <2kffus$r...@sunb.ocs.mq.edu.au> madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au (David Maddison) writes:
>: >What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
>: >
>: there was a great article in Microprocessor Report about this a couple
>: of years back. It went something like this:
>: Scene: Christmas Morning 2001.
>: Kid unwraps his new 4x1000MHz Intel P9 processor PC, with voice input
>: and output, and turns it on.
As you all know, Intel manages to keep to a very good release schedule,
their processors are all 34 months apart. So if we had the 386 in
'87, the 486 in '90, the P5 in '93, we should have the P6 in '96,
P7 in '99 or 2000. No P9 I guess.
Anyway I expect a decent Risc chip like the PowerPC to take
over soon, with everyone that wants it running some kind of
user-friendly shielded UNIX variant.
>Shouldn't there be something in there about 640K available?
Rob
Tim Smith
>>20 MB "floptical" removeable disks
>
>No way. 20MB is too small for a single software suite even today. The
>next jump will be to something like magneto-optical disks with half a gig
>each on them. That way you get the whole suite on one disk, plus all
>the goodies you want. For at least the next five years.
>>A permanent connection to the 'Net
>
>Rather, broadband access in each PC, so that masses of any data can be
>sent to/from anywhere. The net will be a protocol, not a medium.
If you've got high speed networking, you don't need removable media for
software distribution, nor for backup. So I agree to your "no way"
for the 20 MB removable disk, although I go the other way--it won't
be something bigger. Instead, it won't be there at all.
>Other predictions:
>Brain/computer interfaces, first for the disabled, then for hackers.
With amazing restraint, I'm passing up this straight line.
>Public key encryption in a form any bozo can use.
Speaking of public key crypography, has anyone else noticed that the vast
majority of the things posted that have PGP signatures don't need
them?
--Tim Smith
Kip Crosby
In article <2l6ech$f...@cat.cis.Brown.EDU>, brent jackson (b...@cs.brown.edu) writes:
>then: now: future:
>4mhz 8bit processor 33mhz 32bit 250mhz 64bit?
>640kb ram 8mb ram 64mb?
>20mb hard drive 200mb 2gb?
>16colors (4bit pseudo) 8bit pseudo 24bit 'true color
>
>the now is based on a midrange pc-clone.
"Midrange" PC-clone in the SF Bay Area, now that the Pentiums are
out, is:
66MHz 486DX2
16MB RAM
340MB IDE disk
16-bit color (64K)
I think the prediction for seven years
from now is about right, except that 64M RAM would be laughable for
a midrange system 'cause there'll be 256M SIMMs. Also, by then we
might have flash memory DASD and no moving parts except the fan.
Bonus point: How big will the screen be, and what kind? (some
kind of flat, f'sure) -- kc
Dave Brown
R S Rodgers <rsro...@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>In article <2l6o8u$m...@usenet.rpi.edu>,
>Diversion (Jeff Rogers) <rog...@rebecca.its.rpi.edu> wrote:
>>madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au (David Maddison) writes:
>>>1 GHz clock speed
>>
>>Again, I'd say that's a bit high. I'd guess (without any authority
>>whatsoever) that we won't see processors at speeds above 200MHz in the next
>>decade. For one, you'd need really big, really fast caches to support them,
>>and I'm not too sure how many memories there are with <5ns access time,
>>which is what would be needed to support that speed. My guess is that fast
>>computers in the future are going to rely more on multiprocessing (and
>>supercomputers on massively parallel processing) - as said in the next
>>requirement.
>
>
> I agree (and disagree) with both of you. By 2001, the desktop systems
> will have a single CPU running at 250-300MHz. SMP may appear (dual
> processor, 4 processor), but I doubt anything more than 2 CPUs boxes
> will be players in the general desktop market.
Oddly enough, the Amiga on my desk has two CPU's (more if you're being
*really* generous)-one to handle general operations, and the other
(four times faster, on mine) dedicated to keeping the screen looking
pretty. I'm seeing this kind of a thing more and more nowadays--just
look at an X terminal. It's a CPU dedicated to handling all the screen
type of stuff, so the computer doesn't have to do it.
--
Dave Brown -- dagb...@uwaterloo.ca -- (905) 660-1723
"Your mother told you that you're not supposed to talk to strangers,
Look in the mirror, tell me, do you think your life's in danger?"
--Ozzy Osbourne
R S Rodgers
Dave Brown <dagb...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>> I agree (and disagree) with both of you. By 2001, the desktop systems
>> will have a single CPU running at 250-300MHz. SMP may appear (dual
>> processor, 4 processor), but I doubt anything more than 2 CPUs boxes
>> will be players in the general desktop market.
>
>Oddly enough, the Amiga on my desk has two CPU's (more if you're being
>*really* generous)-one to handle general operations, and the other
>(four times faster, on mine) dedicated to keeping the screen looking
>pretty.
Oddly enough, the PC sitting beside this desk has four CPUs
in it. One controls the keyboard (your Amiga has one of those,
too, incidentally), one controls the system, one is on the sound
card (GUS) and one is on a card dedicated to making the screen look
pretty and do it fast (Viper). The printer beside it has a quick
RISC cpu sitting in it. Big deal.
>I'm seeing this kind of a thing more and more nowadays--just
>look at an X terminal. It's a CPU dedicated to handling all the screen
>type of stuff, so the computer doesn't have to do it.
None of this is SMP, though, and none of it leads to an overall
improvement in system performance. A dual or quad CPU system
running NT sees a pretty hefty performance increase in general,
but the Amiga sees no benefit from, say, the blitter or copper if
all you're doing is calcing a fractal.
Jeff DelPapa
Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School <he...@hulaw1.harvard.edu> wrote:
>In article <2l67f7$f...@zikzak.apana.org.au>,
>j...@zikzak.apana.org.au (Joe Slater) writes:
>> madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au (David Maddison) writes:
>>
>>>What specifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
>
>[Much intelligent commentary was deleted from the following.
> My purpose here is only to nitpick.]
>
>>> Voice recognition
>>
>> Already here, already cheap. We may see intelligent voice production,
>> though, that'd be handy.
>
>The question here is, what do you want Voice Rec for? If you want it as an
>alternative to using a mouse in a GUI environment, you are mostly correct
>("mostly" because it will surely get better and cheaper so that it will be
>nearly ubiquitous). If you want it as an alternative to the keyboard, forget
>it. There will not be a computer in that time that interprets voice input for
>entering text as well as Newton interprets pen input. (I'm thinking here of
>inputting more than a page of text, not "Call Frank for Lunch Sunday.")
>
I will have to differ. Voice recognition for program generation is
still frustratingly slow (tho not unknown), but for long free text
messages it can work reasonably well. The text you are reading was
dictated to the machine, I have severe RSI and haven't been allowed
keyboards in several years. The technology (large vocabulary
recognition) has a ways to go, it isn't avaialble for true portable
use yet (soon I hope), and it is still quite expensive. Currently all
the large vocabulary systems commercialy available are discrete
utterance, but I have seen demonstrations of large vocabulary
continious systems (the problem is that they can't do it in realtime
yet -- they are at about 4x realtime last I saw, it should only be a
processor generation or two away).
I did mention programming -- well all the systems were designed with
dictation in mind -- they emit correctly spelled english words
separated by spaces. The only programming language that looks like
that is COBOL, and its successor, SQL. Many languages wouldn't be too
bad, the operators, and a number of standard idoms will fit easily
into the private word list of any of the large systems (kurzweil gives
you 10,000, Dragon (and its cousin Articulate), put almost all 30,000
words at risk of replacement) -- even Lisp, my choice could have the
most common made available. The problem is identifiers -- as long as
programmers use MispeeledMixed_case.Vwl-Imprd.abbrvd.with-$pecial-chrs
strings as variable and function names (especially since the common
languages are case Sensitive rather than CaSe preServing), using voice
is difficult -- it really gets very slow to spell everything out, and
most systems don't have the completer technology to improve things
(imagine a system that knows the name of every function and symbol you
ever use, and as you start to type, it proposes a potential completion
of it -- not new, but the maker of the machine that had it is
currently about to go Chapter 7).
There are examples of vocal programmers, the X consortium has a number
(including rws the director). While we are making lots of typing
injured programmers now, the market isn't big enough yet to make the
integration between editor, language and voice system needed to make
this effective. (I keep hoping -- the dynamic vocabulary of the apple
system is a step in the right direction -- hook that technology to a
tags table, and I might be able to give up the customer compatible
costume I am stuck wearing)
<dp>
Tino D'Amico
(talking about voice recognition systems)
: ...The text you are reading was
: dictated to the machine, I have severe RSI and haven't been allowed
: keyboards in several years. The technology (large vocabulary
: recognition) has a ways to go, it isn't avaialble for true portable
^^^^^^^^^
(snip)
: I did mention programming -- well all the systems were designed with
: dictation in mind -- they emit correctly spelled english words
^^^^^^^
(snip)
Hmm. It's interesting that this article has at least two
misspelled words in it... 'English' is always capitalized, but I can see
how it could find its way into the dictionary in lowercase form...
But 'avaialble'???? No voice-recognition system would have such
a gross misspelling in its dictionary, and even if you were dictating it
letter-by-letter, transposition of characters is not something that
happens in speech, but something you find in typewritten text...
Unless the 'voice-recognition system' consists of a secretary...
Scott Forbes
|The question here is, what do you want Voice Rec for?
So I can walk into a crowded computer lab, shout "FORMAT HARD DRIVE!"
and watch them scramble.
What other possible uses for voice recognition are there?
--
STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP
If you finish before time is called, you may check your work on
this section only. Do not turn to any other section of the test.
Peter da Silva
I'd be surprised to find more than 2GB *standard*.
> 1 GHz clock speed
200 MHz, max, unless you come up with some killer way of blocking RFI.
> 2 or 3 processors
At least.
> 20 MB "floptical" removeable disks
150MB "Mini-CD" based drives.
> 50 MB RAM
More like 128MB, or more.
> Voice recognition
Doubt it. Nor handwriting recognition.
> 3000 x 2000 video resolution, able to play high quality live video
Probably not much more than 1024x1024, unless someone comes up with a way
to make *cheap* super high res flat displays.
I suspect it'll have a 1280x960 book-form-factor flat display.
> Colour laser printers will be standard
I suspect some technology we're not using now, rather than laser.
> A permanent connection to the 'Net
Probably.
--
Peter da Silva. <pe...@sugar.neosoft.com>.
`-_-' Ja' abracas-te o teu lobo, hoje?
'U`
Looks like UNIX, Feels like UNIX, works like MVS -- IBM advertisement.
J. D. McDonald
>In article <2kffus$r...@sunb.ocs.mq.edu.au>,
>David Maddison <madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au> wrote:
>> 5 GB fixed disk (or equivalent) storage.
>I'd be surprised to find more than 2GB *standard*.
>> 1 GHz clock speed
>200 MHz, max, unless you come up with some killer way of blocking RFI.
This is called "shielding" and simply requires care. I've successfully
shielded devices running at 200 MhZ and generating 2 gigawatts
internally (*) .It just requires care, a double layer, and good feedthrus on
the power lines. Note that one can use fibers for signals if necessary.
That's what I did.
>> 3000 x 2000 video resolution, able to play high quality live video
>Probably not much more than 1024x1024, unless someone comes up with a way
>to make *cheap* super high res flat displays.
1024x1280 is standard around here, right now, for new machines.
>Peter da Silva. <pe...@sugar.neosoft.com>.
Doug McDonald
(*) 30,000 amps at 60,000 volts from a .3 microfarad capacitor bank.
Dave Gymer
In article <2ldqe5$g...@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>, R S Rodgers wrote:
>>Oddly enough, the Amiga on my desk has two CPU's (more if you're being
>>*really* generous)-one to handle general operations, and the other
>>(four times faster, on mine) dedicated to keeping the screen looking
>>pretty.
> Oddly enough, the PC sitting beside this desk has four CPUs
> in it. One controls the keyboard (your Amiga has one of those,
> too, incidentally), one controls the system, one is on the sound
> card (GUS) and one is on a card dedicated to making the screen look
> pretty and do it fast (Viper). The printer beside it has a quick
> RISC cpu sitting in it. Big deal.
I have to disagree with both of you. There's only _one_ _central_
proc'ing unit in either machine; the others are just processors (not
_central_ proc's). Just because my laser printer has a 12MHz 68k in it
doesn't make it a CPU w.r.t. my Linux box (but it _is_ a CPU w.r.t. the
printer itself, of course; heck, does that mean I already have a
distributed system? ;-).
- -- Dave
Just Another Linux Hacker
GCS -d+ -p+ c++++ l++ u+ e+/* m* s n--- h f-- !g w+ t+ r- y?
- --
I'm a .signature with an identity crisis.
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Dave Brown
>In article <CM9Mu...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
>Dave Brown <dagb...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>Oddly enough, the Amiga on my desk has two CPU's (more if you're being
>>*really* generous)-one to handle general operations, and the other
>>(four times faster, on mine) dedicated to keeping the screen looking
>>pretty.
>
>
> Oddly enough, the PC sitting beside this desk has four CPUs
> in it. One controls the keyboard (your Amiga has one of those,
> too, incidentally), one controls the system, one is on the sound
> card (GUS) and one is on a card dedicated to making the screen look
> pretty and do it fast (Viper). The printer beside it has a quick
> RISC cpu sitting in it. Big deal.
You missed my point. What I was trying to say was that it's not
terribly unusual to have multiple CPU's in a computer, as people seem
to think. (BTW, my definition of 'CPU' is something that can run
autonomously, if it wants to. Hence, my Amiga's copper is a CPU--the
blitter isn't. YES, the keyboard controller's a CPU...I always forget
about them.)
>>I'm seeing this kind of a thing more and more nowadays--just
>>look at an X terminal. It's a CPU dedicated to handling all the screen
>>type of stuff, so the computer doesn't have to do it.
>
>
> None of this is SMP, though, and none of it leads to an overall
> improvement in system performance.
Untrue. (Spot the word 'overall') Overall, the Amiga--and PC's with
video accelerators, and Unix boxen with X-terminals--gets great
benefits from having some other chip worry about mundane tasks such as
I/O, sound, and video without having to bother the CPU every time it
wants anything done. Compare the overall performance of, say, a Mac
Plus and an Amiga 500 (both of 'em slow enough that you can really
*see* a difference in performance). Both have the sam CPU running at
about the same speed (7.mumble MHz for the Amiga, 8 MHz for the Mac)
and you'll see that the Amiga has much nicer overall performance. Of
course, if you're just doing CPU-intensive things, you won't notice
much of a difference. (Actually, you might on the Mac. Its screen
slurps up an awful lot of CPU cycles.)
> A dual or quad CPU system
> running NT sees a pretty hefty performance increase in general,
> but the Amiga sees no benefit from, say, the blitter or copper if
> all you're doing is calcing a fractal.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Not true, for a special case. There was a mandelbrot set explorer
which used the blitter to do its math. But it was horribly slow...the
poor blitter just wasn't meant to do math.
--
Dave Brown -- dagb...@uwaterloo.ca -- (905) 660-1723
"I know that this is vitriol, no solution, spleen venting,
But I feel better having screamed on you...."
--R. E. M.
Jeff DelPapa
>
>To be sure, my comment was a prediction, not a wish -- I'd love a good
>voice-recognizer for myself! The problem as I see it is not so much
>on the input side but on the manipulation side. When I write, I typically
>scratch out a sentence a half-dozen times before proceeding to the
>next, and do extensive revision-work thereafter. Part of that is no
>doubt due to my choice of career path (see header), but it's my feeling
>that extensive revision work is both the norm among general users and
>not amenable to voice control. It is on account of this limitation
>that I believe voice rec will not become especially popular as a
>keyboard substitute in the next decade.
>
>I am sure all would appreciate your commentary on the foregoing -- it
>is certainly more informed than my own.
>
Voice recognition is not the entry method of choice in most cases.
I am also a heavy reviser of text, and I use a combination of editing
commands, and some use of a pointer (a tablet when I can get one, a
trackball when I can't.) The discrete utterance nature of the current
systems is actually a help here, you can use short continuous speech
phrases as command macros. Thus I have most of emacs a short phrase
away. It isn't perfect, but much better than the pain was.
<dp>
Jeff DelPapa
Tino D'Amico <ti...@ArtSci.WuStL.EDU> wrote:
>Jeff DelPapa (d...@world.std.com) wrote:
>
>(talking about voice recognition systems)
>: ...The text you are reading was
>: dictated to the machine, I have severe RSI and haven't been allowed
>: keyboards in several years. The technology (large vocabulary
>: recognition) has a ways to go, it isn't avaialble for true portable
> ^^^^^^^^^
Thanks for pointing this one out, I had managed to insert a misspelled
version onto my private word list. When the current system makes a
mistake, you correct it by putting it into spell mode (phrase
beginspellmode, imagine an auctioneer's bark) spelling out the word
you intend (using the military alpha bravo charlie pronunciation) --
it puts the nine most likely words that start with that spelling in a
menu, for you to choose from. If you happen to keep going, and it
doesn't find a match, it adds the "new" word to the dictionary. I
have been lax about cleaning out the inadvertent additions lately.
>(snip)
>: I did mention programming -- well all the systems were designed with
>: dictation in mind -- they emit correctly spelled english words
> ^^^^^^^
Yup, it has it in the dictionary with and without capitalization. It
uses some word prediction, and word frequency to guess which one you
want, but it isn't perfect. Since I don't like it capitalized, I have
corrected it often enough to bias the selection towards the lowercase
version. The word prediction and adaptive word frequency juggling are
needed to give a reasonable recognition rate given the density of
homonyms in the English (let it capitalize it that time) language. It
usually picks correctly between their and there, tho I rarely get
"too" when I want it. I have talked a lot about correction, but I
don't spend all my time doing it, the system is correct about 95% of
the time now. Out of the box, after the initial training, the
accuracy was 90%, and after a few weeks of correcting its errors, I
am at my current 95-97% level. (You don't train anywhere near every
word, you start by reading a prepared text to the machine (the first
six paragraphs of "Through the Looking Glass" if you are curious), it
calculates a base model of your voice, which it refines as you use the
thing.)
Much more limiting is the discrete utterance (words separated by short
pauses) requirement. It severely limits the speed you can achieve,
the best I can manage is about 35 words per minute. I have tried to
go faster, but find myself tripping over my tongue putting the full
stops in. It is also hell to be in the same room with, it is much
harder to ignore than a telephone conversation for example, as every
word is the "start" trigger to your ear. I started in a cube in the
middle of a cluster, and the salesman next to me could take about 15
minutes or 6 [scratchthat]'s before a "DELETE EVERYTHING" would come
drifting over the wall. (No it was harmless, the system uses a very
directional microphone headset, it didn't hear him, let alone
recognize his speech as anything dangerous) I wound up with a cube in
the corner (with window) about a week later, and since the move into
new digs, I have an office to myself, even though most everyone else
has to share.
>(snip)
>
> Hmm. It's interesting that this article has at least two
>misspelled words in it... 'English' is always capitalized, but I can see
>how it could find its way into the dictionary in lowercase form...
As mentioned above, it is too easy to add words to the private dictionary.
>
> Unless the 'voice-recognition system' consists of a secretary...
>
Well, I call the system Godzilla, and I don't think a secretary would
tolerate that form of address long. Godzilla consists of an oversized
laptop (which inspired the name) with an ISA card loaded with DSP
hardware. This combined with software from Dragon Systems, gives the
thing a 30,000 word speaker dependent vocabulary. If you can use a
regular keyboard, you will prefer typing in most cases, but since more
than 10 minutes of typing will cause me to be able to trace the
position of every tendon in my forearm for the next few weeks, the
speech system is a wonderful thing.
Usual disclaimer: I don't work for dragon (though I did try for a job
there once), and I bought the system with my own money. I am however,
grateful that they exist.
<dp>
Ron Mayer
<2ldqe5$g...@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu> rsro...@wam.umd.edu (R S Rodgers):
>
> Oddly enough, the PC sitting beside this desk has four CPUs
> in it. One controls the keyboard (your Amiga has one of those,
> too, incidentally), one controls the system, one is on the sound
> card (GUS) and one is on a card dedicated to making the screen look
> pretty and do it fast (Viper). The printer beside it has a quick
> RISC cpu sitting in it. Big deal.
This reminds me of back when electric(?) machines were first becoming popular.
Some people hypothesized that every house would have a huge motor in their
garage, and a number of belts and gears would drive all sorts of appliences
in their home.
However as it turns out, we ended up having many different electric motors,
in drills, washing machines, etc; rather than the one big one.
I suspect similar will happen in computers (much as you describe). It
wouldn't suprise me much to see performance gains coming from many more
similar "special purpose" cpus; similarly to the way the NeXT included
a DSP.
> None of this is SMP, though, and none of it leads to an overall
> improvement in system performance. A dual or quad CPU system
> running NT sees a pretty hefty performance increase in general,
> but the Amiga sees no benefit from, say, the blitter or copper if
> all you're doing is calcing a fractal.
Unless of course you had a special purpose fractal calculating chip...
Ron
Ron Mayer
<8...@chac.win.net> c...@chac.win.net (Kip Crosby) writes:
>In article <2l6ech$f...@cat.cis.Brown.EDU>, brent jackson (b...@cs.brown.edu) writes:
>>then: now: future:
>>4mhz 8bit processor 33mhz 32bit 250mhz 64bit?
>>640kb ram 8mb ram 64mb?
>>20mb hard drive 200mb 2gb?
>>16colors (4bit pseudo) 8bit pseudo 24bit 'true color
>>
>>the now is based on a midrange pc-clone.
Sounds about right to me.
> Bonus point: How big will the screen be, and what kind? (some
> kind of flat, f'sure) -- kc
Hmm, you think so? As far as I can remember, my apple's monitor
was about 1 foot deep, and fit nicely on my desk. Looking at the
(admittedly really cool) monitor on my Sun at work it looks nearly
2 feet deep, and occupies much of the desk. Using the same projections
above, we can only conclude that the monitors of 2001 will be
nearly 4 feet deep and won't fit on a desk.
Ron
:-)
Wolfgang Benninghoven
I think we all lose sight, in our future scenarios, of the physical
limitations of the current processor technologies. We are bound to
conventional data transfer rates by the physical limitations of electon
transfer within a specific media. These rates are determined by the
actual size of the electron as it shuttled through the various pathways in
the processor. These rates max out at about 250 to 300 mgHz then the
the electrons start bumping into each other, turning conventional data
transfer into garbage. The systems as we know them today won't exist (
except for printers) everything will be on line, your 486 or Pentium will
be able to process information then just as my 2400 baud modem does
today only slower. We are looking at half charged electrons, 1/4 charged,
to 64th charged electrons (only sepculation) and photon packets of light
to transfer data. This is a new world, don't nod or you will miss it.
W0B
Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School
> Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School <he...@hulaw1.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>What specifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
>>
>>
>>>> Voice recognition
>>>
>>> Already here, already cheap. We may see intelligent voice production,
>>> though, that'd be handy.
>>
>>The question here is, what do you want Voice Rec for? If you want it as an
>>alternative to using a mouse in a GUI environment, you are mostly correct
>>("mostly" because it will surely get better and cheaper so that it will be
>>nearly ubiquitous). If you want it as an alternative to the keyboard, forget
>>it. There will not be a computer in that time that interprets voice input for
>>entering text as well as Newton interprets pen input. (I'm thinking here of
>>inputting more than a page of text, not "Call Frank for Lunch Sunday.")
>>
> I will have to differ. Voice recognition for program generation is
> still frustratingly slow (tho not unknown), but for long free text
> messages it can work reasonably well. The text you are reading was
> dictated to the machine, I have severe RSI and haven't been allowed
> keyboards in several years. The technology (large vocabulary
> recognition) has a ways to go, it isn't avaialble for true portable
> use yet (soon I hope), and it is still quite expensive. Currently all
> the large vocabulary systems commercialy available are discrete
> utterance, but I have seen demonstrations of large vocabulary
> continious systems (the problem is that they can't do it in realtime
> yet -- they are at about 4x realtime last I saw, it should only be a
> processor generation or two away).
To be sure, my comment was a prediction, not a wish -- I'd love a good
voice-recognizer for myself! The problem as I see it is not so much
on the input side but on the manipulation side. When I write, I typically
scratch out a sentence a half-dozen times before proceeding to the
next, and do extensive revision-work thereafter. Part of that is no
doubt due to my choice of career path (see header), but it's my feeling
that extensive revision work is both the norm among general users and
not amenable to voice control. It is on account of this limitation
that I believe voice rec will not become especially popular as a
keyboard substitute in the next decade.
I am sure all would appreciate your commentary on the foregoing -- it
is certainly more informed than my own.
-------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
Robert Allan Sutton
In article <mumble> mcdo...@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (J. D. McDonald) writes:
>In article <2lfe7b$j...@sugar.NeoSoft.COM> pe...@sugar.NeoSoft.COM (Peter da Silva) writes:
>
>>In article <2kffus$r...@sunb.ocs.mq.edu.au>,
>>David Maddison <madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au> wrote:
>>> 5 GB fixed disk (or equivalent) storage.
>
>>I'd be surprised to find more than 2GB *standard*.
This is an interesting topic. Historically, disk densitied have doubled every
three years. RAM memories historically have quadrupled every three years.
Now in 2001 (7 years from now) we can expect disks roughly 5 times the current
sizes. If you take the "standard" disk size to be ~350MB, then 2GB is probably
about right. Now, RAM sizes should increase by about a factor of 25. So, if
8M is standard now, in seven years we should see sizes of about 200MB. (Say
256MB just to make things nice) If these growth rates persist though,
eventually RAM sizes will outpace disks both in terms of overall size and cost
per byte. When this happens, we can all throw away our disks and just store
everything in some sort of solid state storage. I am looking forward to this
but I don't expect it to happed by the year 2001, though :-)
>>> 1 GHz clock speed
>>200 MHz, max, unless you come up with some killer way of blocking RFI.
>This is called "shielding" and simply requires care. I've successfully
>shielded devices running at 200 MhZ and generating 2 gigawatts
>internally (*) .It just requires care, a double layer, and good feedthrus on
>the power lines. Note that one can use fibers for signals if necessary.
>That's what I did.
RFI issues aside, I think there is kind of a fundamental limit to how fast
one can build stuff. At 1 GHz, that's a 1 *nano* second cycle time. Even
200 MHz is only 5ns. It's hard to build a transistor that will switch that
fast. Even if you could, remember that a nanosecond is only 30cm long (ala
Grace Hopper - picture a piece of blue wire). Even though line width's
on chip can be sub micron, line *lengths* can quickly get out of hand.
And forget about running signals at this speed all over a motherboard.
>>> 3000 x 2000 video resolution, able to play high quality live video
>
>>Probably not much more than 1024x1024, unless someone comes up with a way
>to make *cheap* super high res flat displays.
>
>1024x1280 is standard around here, right now, for new machines.
In 1980, I was using a machine with a resolution of 280x192. In 1990, I was
running at 640x480. Now I run at 1024x768 (and lust after 1280x1024). While
not quite linear, let's say this represents an increase of about 10%/yr. In
seven years, then, I should have about twice what I have now (2048x1536).
My guess is that in seven years, someone will come up with better display
technology and make this possible. As far as video goes, remember that what
passes for video today (NTSC) is really low resolution wise, but pretty
good in number of colors (even if they're Never The Same.) I'm still
trying to figure out what the HDTV proposal of the month is, but none of
them approach 2048x1536. The point? Well, I expect that video won't be that
big a problem in seven years.
So, to recap: my predictions for 2001:
150MHz 64bit processors - probably more than 1,
256MB main memory
2GB disk
2048x1536 24bit video (capable of incorporating HDTV video real time)
Perhaps we should seal all the predictions in the Usenet equivalent of a
time capsule, open it in 2001, and see who wins!
--
Allan Sutton
sut...@rice.edu
Feldman / Mark Jeffrey (ISE)
>
>
>What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
>
>I'll start the ball rolling and offer:
>
I'd say this is a bit of overkill. Storage has increased about 10 fold on
fixed disks over the past 10 years or so. Assuming the rate of increase
stays the same my guess is only 2 GB.
>1 GHz clock speed
Sounds good to me.
>2 or 3 processors
Nah! Isn't there already a machine somewhere that uses 16 pentiums? I'd
say at least 16 for the "CPU" and chuck in a few more for controllers,
keyboard etc...
>20 MB "floptical" removeable disks
>50 MB RAM
10 years ago everyone went "ooohhhh" at 640K. Now 8Meg seems to be
standard so I'd say at least 100MB.
>Voice recognition
>3000 x 2000 video resolution, able to play high quality live video
Ok lets project again. 10 years ago we had the good 'ol CGA, 320x200x4,
now we got 1024x768x256. In another 10 years that would make it around
3200x2400x16M. I'm assuming they decide to stick with the 4/3 aspect
ratio and that once they hit 24 bit color the eye will have a hard time
distinguishing "neighbour" shades so they'll concentrate more on increasing
the resolution. I know a lot of cards already support 24 bit color but I
vaguely remember reading it's illegal to use them in many countries (FCC
types get a bit touchy about it).
>Colour laser printers will be standard
Yep! Higher res too! Anyone care to project the standard resolution and
number of shades? And what will happen to PostScript?
>A permanent connection to the 'Net
God I hope not!
>David Maddison
>Cybernomad.
Mark
Joe Zbiciak
>I'd say this is a bit of overkill. Storage has increased about 10 fold on
>fixed disks over the past 10 years or so. Assuming the rate of increase
>stays the same my guess is only 2 GB.
I'd think that 340 Megs is more likely for a mid-to-upper range system.
Since what I have is generally considered as such, and I currently am at
460 (with plans to go to 1+ Gigabyte after this fall), I think 5 Gigs is
not all that unlikely. (Going from 20 -> 340 is a 17 fold increase, and
17**2 is 289. 289*20=5780)
Bear in mind, that by only using two sample points, we suffer from very
if'y answers. If we truly want to extrapolate future machines from past
machines, we need to look at a number of data points from 'then' to 'now.'
>>1 GHz clock speed
>Sounds good to me.
>>2 or 3 processors
I think the notion of "Clock speed" and "Processor" are going to be
fuzzed away quite a bit... asynchonous logic CPU cores running on a
massively parallel basis. Not all that much different from the human
mind. :-)
Helen Zommer
> writes:
>then: now: future:
>4mhz 8bit processor 33mhz 32bit 250mhz 64bit?
>640kb ram 8mb ram 64mb?
>20mb hard drive 200mb 2gb?
>16colors (4bit pseudo) 8bit pseudo 24bit 'true color
>
This ("future") looks like specification for the Silicon Graphics Indy
(except for 100mhz instead of 250; also slightly upgraded above the standard
configuration, but lot of people make this upgrade) which is already very
close to the "personal" workstation...
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Helen Zommer | he...@shum.cc.huji.ac.il | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
GCS d@ p c++++ l u+(++) e++(*) m+(@) s/- n- h f(?) !g w+ t r(+) x+(-*)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adam B. Wells
The book _Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach_ (Hennessy &
Patterson, 1990) gives a few rules of thumb for estimating future computer
capabilities that might help out our estimate.
I'll take the above system (16MB RAM, 340MB disk, 66MHz 486) as the "today"
model.
First, the DRAM-Growth Rule: Density increases by about 60% per year,
quadrupling in 3 years. So, the machine with 16MB RAM today, would have
been as "advanced" as a machine with 4MB RAM in 1991.
Second, the Disk-Growth Rule: Density increases by about 25% per year,
doubling in 3 years. So, the machine with a 340MB disk today would have
been as "advanced" as a machine with a 170MB disk in 1991. (Also, access
time has improved by one-third in ten years.)
Since these rules are based on 3-year steps, I'll look at the machine of
2003 (9 years from now) to make the math easier. According to these rules,
the "average" machine of 2003 would have 1024MB RAM, and a 2.7GB disk.
Interestingly enough, the Address-Consumption Rule also says that the
memory neede by the average program grows by about a factor of 1.5 to 2
each year. So, the program that requires 1MB of RAM today, might require
512MB of RAM in 2003.
But as for processor speed, we also know that transistor count on a chip
increases 25% per year, doubling in 3 years, and that device speed
increases nearly as fast. This gives us an estimated speed of 528 MHz.
In designing our system of the future, we want to make sure that it has
enough I/O bandwidth as well. The Ahmdahl/Case Rule says that a balanced
computer system needs about 1 megabyte of main memory capacity and 1
megabit per second of I/O bandwidth per MIPS of CPU performance. Since we
have 1024MB RAM, we can assume 1 GIPS (1000 MIPS) of performance, and
1024Mb/s of I/O bandwidth.
To see what kind of video capabilities this machine will have, let's play
with this bandwidth number. If we want 24-bit color and 24 fps (TV speed),
what size screen can we have? By my calculations, this comes out to about
1150x1540 (assuming the 4:3 aspect ratio). Not bad.
Of course, I've made a lot of assumptions here, and changing those initial
parameters (16MB RAM, 340MB disk, 66MHz processor) will probably change the
final answers a lot. And we're still assuming one processor. But wasn't
that fun?
Summary: the machine of 2003
1GB RAM
2.7 GB disk
528 MHz processor with 1 GIPS performance (is this
contradictory?)
24-bit video at 24 fps at 1150x1540
But will it be IBM-compatible?
--
Adam B. Wells
Harvey Mudd College
awe...@jarthur.cs.hmc.edu
"Legend has it that Serpents used to be bigger, but how could that be?"
Jeff Lee
>
> The text you are reading was
> dictated to the machine, I have severe RSI and haven't been allowed
> keyboards in several years.
That impressed me, until I found the following in succeeding lines:
> recognition) has a ways to go, it isn't avaialble for true portable
^^^^^^^^^
> the large vocabulary systems commercialy available are discrete
^^^^^^^^^^^
> continious systems (the problem is that they can't do it in realtime
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Do current voice-recognition systems insert random misspellings into
the text? (Amusingly, `available' is misspelled once, then spelled
correctly the next time it's used... Interesting software!)
===== Jeff Lee / jl...@smylex.uucp / jlee%smyle...@tscs.tscs.com =====
===== SCA: Lord Godfrey de Shipbrook, Trimaris Barque Herald =====
===== Per pale azure and argent, a clarion counterchanged or and gules =====
"Why would a haddock kill itself? Why am I even asking that question?"
Mike McCrohan
b >>What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
b >>
b >then: now: future:
b >4mhz 8bit processor 33mhz 32bit 250mhz 64bit?
b >640kb ram 8mb ram 64mb?
b >20mb hard drive 200mb 2gb?
b >16colors (4bit pseudo) 8bit pseudo 24bit 'true color
b >
b >the now is based on a midrange pc-clone.
Well, the high end has a habit of becoming midrange very quickly these
days. You can buy an Alpha PC running at about 150mhz today as a high
end machine for about, (I think) $3-5k. The 275mhz processor has been
announced - although not for the PC. Yet.
I would expect to see the current alpha pc become affordable (is this
not the real definition of midrange?) in a year, and the more esotoric
speeds 12-18 months after that. This is well before your 2001 deadline.
Same arguments for power PCs and similar....
---
ş KingQWK 1.05 ş
--
foo
Daniel Barlow
> something precise like a mouse cursor would be a pain...
What would be neat would be selecting the input focus by eye tracking.
When I want to type in a window I may not necessarily have brought it
to the front, clicked in the title bar or even have moved the mouse
into it, but it's almost certainly the one I'm looking at.
--
Daniel...@sjc.ox.ac.uk dba...@teaching.physics.ox.ac.uk
"He'd never wanted much, except perhaps to be left alone and not woken up
until midday" -- Moving Pictures, Terry Pratchett
Mark Gonzales
>TWIMC:
???
>I think we all lose sight, in our future scenarios, of the physical
>limitations of the current processor technologies. We are bound to
>conventional data transfer rates by the physical limitations of electon
>transfer within a specific media. These rates are determined by the
>actual size of the electron as it shuttled through the various pathways in
>the processor. These rates max out at about 250 to 300 mgHz then the
>the electrons start bumping into each other, turning conventional data
>transfer into garbage.
This is simple to fix, simply add multiple parallel bit buckets to each
line in the processor's cache. The bit buckets dispose of the excess
electrons, leaving only enough to fit on each wire. You do have to
invert the processor once a day to empty the buckets though.
Mark
definately not speaking for Intel.
Stephen Robert Norris
wben...@franklin.uhl.uiowa.edu (Wolfgang Benninghoven) writes:
>TWIMC:
[Snip]
>actual size of the electron as it shuttled through the various pathways in
>the processor. These rates max out at about 250 to 300 mgHz then the
^^^^
What is a milligram hertz?
[Snip]
>W0B
Stephen
Charlie Gibbs
(Wolfgang Benninghoven) writes:
>I think we all lose sight, in our future scenarios, of the physical
>limitations of the current processor technologies. We are bound to
>conventional data transfer rates by the physical limitations of electon
>transfer within a specific media. These rates are determined by the
>actual size of the electron as it shuttled through the various pathways in
>the processor. These rates max out at about 250 to 300 mgHz then the
>the electrons start bumping into each other, turning conventional data
>transfer into garbage. The systems as we know them today won't exist (
>except for printers) everything will be on line, your 486 or Pentium will
>be able to process information then just as my 2400 baud modem does
>today only slower. We are looking at half charged electrons, 1/4 charged,
>to 64th charged electrons (only sepculation) and photon packets of light
>to transfer data. This is a new world, don't nod or you will miss it.
Yes, but will it be MS-DOS compatable? [sic]
Charli...@mindlink.bc.ca
I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
Diversion (Jeff Rogers)
>Summary: the machine of 2003
> 1GB RAM
Not unless memory gets alot cheaper than it currently is (by the same amount
of increase that this represents.) If an average mid-high end machine costs
$3000 (US) now, and prices wouldn't be expected to raise appreciably, and a
good estimate is to allow half your budget for memory, that gives $1500 for
memory. Current memory prices are around $30/MB (I wish!); if that figure
drops to $10/MB that still gives only 150MB of memory. In 10 years, as now,
the system you get will be largely be dictated by your budget.
> 2.7 GB disk
> 528 MHz processor with 1 GIPS performance (is this
>contradictory?)
No, it's not. Perhaps a bit optimistic, but not contradictory. All that's
necessary is to average more than 1 instruction pre cycle. (As an example, I
think an RS/6000 running at 25 MHz gets 27 MIPS.)
> 24-bit video at 24 fps at 1150x1540
>But will it be IBM-compatible?
IBM PC/ISA/x86 compatible? Probably (hopefully!) not. Something that IBM
cooks up in the next 7 years, I'd put better than even money on.
Diversion
--
"I can see 'em | "Want me to create a diversion?"
I can see 'em | Diversion
Someone wake me when it's over" | rog...@rpi.edu
Freek Wiedijk
Dye sublimation, no doubt.
Freek
--
Third theory of Phenomenal Dynamics: The difference between
a symbol and an object is quantitative, not qualitative.
Mark Schurman
> I think we all lose sight, in our future scenarios, of the physical
> limitations of the current processor technologies. We are bound to
> today only slower. We are looking at half charged electrons, 1/4 charged,
> to 64th charged electrons (only sepculation) and photon packets of light
> to transfer data. This is a new world, don't nod or you will miss it.
"photon packets of light" == optical computers? The last newsbyte I heard
about them was that a group had one working successfully...what's their
current status, and would it be likely that they'll have surpassed "current"
technology by ~2001?
> W0B
Mark "cat 'Smoke Theory of Electronics' | sed 's/smoke/light/'" Schurman
Kip Crosby
In article <2lch98$k...@news.u.washington.edu>, Tim Smith (t...@u.washington.edu) writes:
>Joe Slater <j...@zikzak.apana.org.au> wrote:
>>Other predictions:
>>Brain/computer interfaces, first for the disabled, then for hackers.
>
>With amazing restraint, I'm passing up this straight line.
Me too, although as a disabled hacker, I can only suppose I'd be
one of the first to get it -- fine with me.
-- Kip "How much bandwidth does roaring laughter take?" Crosby
Kathi#: 1.27
Keith Braithwaite
In article <40...@mindlink.bc.ca>, Charli...@mindlink.bc.ca (Charlie
Gibbs) writes:
|>In article <2lguui$d...@nexus.uiowa.edu> wben...@franklin.uhl.uiowa.edu
|>(Wolfgang Benninghoven) writes:
|>
|>>I think we all lose sight, in our future scenarios, of the physical
|>>limitations of the current processor technologies. We are bound to
|>>conventional data transfer rates by the physical limitations of electon
|>>transfer within a specific media. These rates are determined by the
|>>actual size of the electron as it shuttled through the various pathways
|>in
|>>the processor. These rates max out at about 250 to 300 mgHz then the
milligramme Hertz?
|>>except for printers) everything will be on line, your 486 or Pentium
|>will
|>>be able to process information then just as my 2400 baud modem does
|>>today only slower.
We are looking at half charged electrons, 1/4
charged,
|>>to 64th charged electrons (only sepculation)
and photon packets of light
|>>to transfer data. This is a new world, don't nod or you will miss it.
learned
about in my quantum mechanics classes.
There _are_ fundamental limits on processor speed, but thay have more to do
with
transistor size, power dissipation and maximum wire lengths than any *size*
an
electron might be said to have (BTW, are you under the impression that
signals
are passed around chips by *solitary* electrons? i.e. 1bit=1e).
Every few years some bright spark suggest that the ``fundamental limits'' of
computing speed are just round the corner. They have always been wrong.
There is
about another order of magnitude in silicon, more in other lest mature
technology, and optical interconnects (*not* processors) will also give a
boost.
This is not simply a flame, if you are going to worry about the actual physics
of increased computer power (which you should) try to get it right.
--
====================================================================
Keith Braithwaite -- cs...@vaxb.hw.ac.uk|| ph...@cyrano.phy.hw.ac.uk
====================================================================
Over-Hairy, Over-Weight, Over-dressed.
====================================================================
Mr Q. Hong
:In article <2kffus$r...@sunb.ocs.mq.edu.au>,
:David Maddison <madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au> wrote:
[...]
:> 5 GB fixed disk (or equivalent) storage.
:> 1 GHz clock speed
:200 MHz, max, unless you come up with some killer way of blocking RFI.
Optical, maybe?
Though given the current state of optical computing, there won't even be
1 kHz optical processors by 2001.
And if they use SEEDs, they'll run hotter than a pentium.
-- Robert Mellish, F.O.G. --
Email: r.me...@ic.ac.uk Net: rm...@sg1.cc.ic.ac.uk
-- and also the mrs joyful prize for rafia work. --
Lars Garden
: Summary: the machine of 2003
: 1GB RAM
: 2.7 GB disk
: 528 MHz processor with 1 GIPS performance (is this
: contradictory?)
Sounds a bit fishy.. What about 8 processors running at 200MHz
instead?
: 24-bit video at 24 fps at 1150x1540
: But will it be IBM-compatible?
God forbid!
Kip Crosby
In article <markg.763167408@ichips>, Mark Gonzales (ma...@ichips.intel.com) writes:
>In article <2lguui$d...@nexus.uiowa.edu> wben...@franklin.uhl.uiowa.edu (Wolfgang Benninghoven) writes:
>>actual size of the electron as it shuttled through the various pathways in
>>the processor. These rates max out at about 250 to 300 mgHz then the
>>the electrons start bumping into each other, turning conventional data
>>transfer into garbage.
>
>This is simple to fix, simply add multiple parallel bit buckets to each
>line in the processor's cache. The bit buckets dispose of the excess
>electrons, leaving only enough to fit on each wire. You do have to
>invert the processor once a day to empty the buckets though.
Not in a pipelined processor. Each bucket would be a
push-down-store and, when full, would trigger the instruction FBB
(Flip Bit Bucket) sending the surplus electrons down the pipeline
to an Intel 898235 SEC (Surplus Electron Cache) which will in turn
distribute them to whatever parts of the system are most
electron-deficient, i. e., coldest. Ultimately, like most things,
this would show up as extra heat in the system, but not a tiresome
amount since in a large CISC processor your bit buckets could be
pretty big relative to the amount of garbage. Electrons are
_pret-ty_ small -- at least the standard, monovalent ones.
>definately not speaking for Intel.
Me either!! -- kc
Daniel Ellard
but I do know this: by the year 2010, there will be dozens of newsgroups
dedicated to discussing how much more elegant they were than the current
crop of bloated, memory hungry power hogs.
-Dan
--
Daniel J. Ellard - ell...@husc.harvard.edu
Juergen Nickelsen
Allan Sutton) writes:
> In 1980, I was using a machine with a resolution of 280x192. In 1990, I was
> running at 640x480. Now I run at 1024x768 (and lust after 1280x1024). While
> not quite linear, let's say this represents an increase of about 10%/yr. In
> seven years, then, I should have about twice what I have now (2048x1536).
> My guess is that in seven years, someone will come up with better display
> technology and make this possible.
Some time ago I heard that Xerox already has prototypes of 300 dpi
monochrome displays of the size of an DIN A4 sheet (210 mm x 297 mm).
This would be about 2400 x 3400 pixels. Certainly nice to have.
--
Juergen Nickelsen
Bart Peters
> 150MHz 64bit processors - probably more than 1,
> 256MB main memory
> 2GB disk
> 2048x1536 24bit video (capable of incorporating HDTV video real time)
Actually, I think the following question is much more interesting than the
hardware specifications:
'What kind of programs/applications will we be using on our computer in the
year 2001?'
Because 5GB HD's, 1GB memory and 4096x4096 resolutions is really very nice,
but what the the hell would you need it for? Although it would be neat, it's
not necessary for todays applications. So, IF the computers in 2001 will have
specifactions like these, what NEW applications would be possible?
Bart Peters
Russell Miller
But what about the law of diminishing returns? As each generation of intel
chip has come out, it has always been faster than its predecessor, but
each time the amount has gotten smaller and smaller.
Cameron Grant
ma...@sono.uucp "Ron Mayer" writes:
>Hmm, you think so? As far as I can remember, my apple's monitor
>was about 1 foot deep, and fit nicely on my desk. Looking at the
>(admittedly really cool) monitor on my Sun at work it looks nearly
>2 feet deep, and occupies much of the desk. Using the same projections
>above, we can only conclude that the monitors of 2001 will be
>nearly 4 feet deep and won't fit on a desk.
More to the point...what will the standard specs be for a desk in 2001?
:)
--
------------------.----------------------------.----------------------------.
: Cameron Grant : You can't trust freedom : gan...@vilnya.demon.co.uk :
: Gandalf the Grey : when it's not in your hand : 10003...@compuserve.com :
`--.---------------^----------------------------^-------------------------.--'
| GCS/M d-- -p+ c++++ l u(-) e* m* s--/--- n- h(--) f(+) g+ w+ t+ r y* |
`----------------------------------------------------------------------'
Joe Slater
>In article <2l67f7$f...@zikzak.apana.org.au>,
>Joe Slater <j...@zikzak.apana.org.au> wrote:
>[...]
>>Other predictions:
>>Brain/computer interfaces, first for the disabled, then for hackers.
>(I have my doubts that we'll see these in 7 years, but my skepticism is
>pretty uninformed.)
Oh, no, they already exist in the developmental stage. Hook up sensitive
recording devices to someone, and through the use of biofeedback teach
them to produce discreet signals. If you can get as many as five
different signals out of someone, you've got the input for a mouse (+x,
-x, +y, -y, click). I think Hawking may have an earlier and simpler one -
the cursor moves until he thinks it ought to stop, and it does.
Maybe I'm wrong in this. Maybe the first real use will be in game helmets
that do things when you get scared ("Argh!" Bang! "Argh!" Bang! "Argh!"
Bang! ...) In any event, seven years sounds about right to me.
Mental *input*, from the computer to you, is probably harder. We may put
up with audio/visual displays a while longer since we have a dearth of
generic I/O ports. Still, if you can train someone to *hear* Morse code,
you can probably train them to *feel* it. You might even be able to get it
fast and subtle enough for the input mechanism to be subliminal.
>Do other people have the sense that they want to see computer security
>improved A LOT before they are willing to use one of these (hypothesized)
>things?
There are probably people working on these things who are reading this
nesgroup, right now.
jds
--
j...@zikzak.apana.org.au | `You SHOULD have said "It's extremely
T: +61-3-525-8728 F: +61-3-562-0756 | kind of you to tell me all this" -
If all else fails try Fidonet: | however, we'll suppose it said.'
joe_s...@f351.n632.z3.fidonet.org | (The Red Queen)
DoN. Nichols
>In article <2kffus$r...@sunb.ocs.mq.edu.au> madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au (David Maddison) writes:
>>
>>
>>What sepcifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
>>
>>I'll start the ball rolling and offer:
>>
>>5 GB fixed disk (or equivalent) storage.
>
>I'd say this is a bit of overkill. Storage has increased about 10 fold on
>fixed disks over the past 10 years or so. Assuming the rate of increase
>stays the same my guess is only 2 GB.
Well ... I have sitting beside me (and into which I am currently
typing) a desktop machine. It has a 1.0GB internal, and a 2.4GB external
drive at present.
>>1 GHz clock speed
>
>Sounds good to me.
Well beyond what I have now. (What would happen to the maximum bus
length at these speeds?)
[ ... ]
>>50 MB RAM
>
>10 years ago everyone went "ooohhhh" at 640K. Now 8Meg seems to be
>standard so I'd say at least 100MB.
This desktop machine I have is currently equipped with 40MB of RAM,
and could go up to 64MB without modification. The other machine, to the
left of me, could go to 104MB.
>>Voice recognition
Well, it has voice recording/playback capablilities built onto the
CPU/mother board.
Of course, this is a used workstation, so it is old, but it becomes
more affordable as a home machine than a new 486 or pentium machine, and
works more the way *I* want a machine to work.
--
Email: <dnic...@d-and-d.com> | ...!uunet!ceilidh!dnichols
<dnic...@ceilidh.beartrack.com>
Donald Nichols (DoN.) | Voice (Days): (703) 704-2280 (Eves): (703) 938-4564
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---
Joe Slater
>In article <2l67f7$f...@zikzak.apana.org.au>,
>j...@zikzak.apana.org.au (Joe Slater) writes:
>> madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au (David Maddison) writes:
DM>>>What specifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
DM>>> Voice recognition
jds>> Already here, already cheap. We may see intelligent voice production,
jds>> though, that'd be handy.
The question here is, what do you want Voice Rec for? If you want it as an
>alternative to using a mouse in a GUI environment, you are mostly correct
>("mostly" because it will surely get better and cheaper so that it will be
>nearly ubiquitous). If you want it as an alternative to the keyboard, forget
>it. There will not be a computer in that time that interprets voice input for
>entering text as well as Newton interprets pen input. (I'm thinking here of
>inputting more than a page of text, not "Call Frank for Lunch Sunday.")
What, in SEVEN YEARS we won't progress from existing one-word-at-a-time
systems to something that understands connected text? Seven years is a
long time; seven years ago we were using XTs with CGA screens and liking
it.
Jeff DelPapa
Joe Slater <j...@zikzak.apana.org.au> wrote:
>he...@hulaw1.harvard.edu (Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School) writes:
>
>>In article <2l67f7$f...@zikzak.apana.org.au>,
>>j...@zikzak.apana.org.au (Joe Slater) writes:
>>> madd...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au (David Maddison) writes:
>DM>>>What specifications do you think the "standard" year 2001 PC will have?
>
>DM>>> Voice recognition
>
>jds>> Already here, already cheap. We may see intelligent voice production,
>jds>> though, that'd be handy.
>
>
>systems to something that understands connected text? Seven years is a
>long time; seven years ago we were using XTs with CGA screens and liking
>it.
>
I have seen a few connected speech prototypes, if you are willing to
train every word, you can get a 10,000 word system today. The less
training intensive and larger vocabulary systems aren't quite up to
realtime yet, (the one I saw was working at 1/4 of human speed on a
486/66 pc -- say a sentence, then in 3 or 4 times longer than it took
to say it, it would decode it) one or two more processor generations,
and it should be available.
To get accuracy with continuous speech, you often wind up needing to
correct a word based on what was said later, and the applications will
have to cooperate in this. (the IBM dictation system uses this
technique, without the cooperation of the application. It doesn't
emit a word until you say two more, so it can confirm its decision. I
found it annoying)
Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School
> he...@hulaw1.harvard.edu (Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School) writes:
>>The question here is, what do you want Voice Rec for? If you want it as an
>>alternative to using a mouse in a GUI environment, you are mostly correct
>>("mostly" because it will surely get better and cheaper so that it will be
>>nearly ubiquitous). If you want it as an alternative to the keyboard, forget
>>it. There will not be a computer in that time that interprets voice input for
>>entering text as well as Newton interprets pen input. (I'm thinking here of
>>inputting more than a page of text, not "Call Frank for Lunch Sunday.")
>
> What, in SEVEN YEARS we won't progress from existing one-word-at-a-time
> systems to something that understands connected text? Seven years is a
> long time; seven years ago we were using XTs with CGA screens and liking
> it.
It's a much harder problem than that. It is roughly the difference between
writing a spellcheck routine for normal text and writing a spellcheck for
text without spaces between words which also chooses the correct homophone
(e.g., to, too, or two). The former is not trivial but not enormously hard.
The latter is a good bit trickier.
Comments from the floor?
-------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
Kurt Wm. Hemr | "He persuades us that is impossible to
1541 Mass. Ave. Apt. 553 | draft these legal documents in any other way,
Cambridge, MA 02138 | but then that, of course, is what the
(617) 493-9480 | lawyers are for . . . ." -- Henry Green
Jim Frost
>I suspect some technology we're not using now, rather than laser.
I don't think so because of the technology use lag.
Typically it takes 5 years before a new technology gets used in
anything commercial. The first use is usually in something esoteric,
followed by high-end applications a few years later (about ten years
out), followed by low-end (consumer) applications a few years later
(about 15 years out).
I can provide numerous examples but let's take RISC since it's close
at hand. IBM had a practical RISC processor in the lab in 1978. The
first commercial use of a RISC processor was in a channel controller
in 1982, also by IBM. The first attempt at widespread use of a RISC
processor was with the RT -- again by IBM -- in 1984. Several RISC
processors were in use in high-end workstations in 1987-1988 (eg
SPARC) but none was very successful until the SPARCstation came out in
1989. Numerous successful RISC processors were available by 1991,
still in moderately high-end systems. This year we'll be seeing the
first mainstream consumer products based on RISC processors, in
particular the PowerPC (several PCs) and MIPS R4000 (Nintendo).
In terms of hardware the only thing that seems likely to be
commonplace is lots of parallelism.
The big changes won't be in hardware anyway, they'll be in software.
But you probably knew that.
jim frost
ji...@centerline.com
Mike Rogers
>long time; seven years ago we were using XTs with CGA screens and liking
>it.
Seven years ago others were using Amigas with HAM and really liking it.
Strange how things change.
--
Mike Rogers,#3,44Westland##EveryoneHasTheRightToFreedomOfOpinionAndExpressionT
Row,Dublin2,Ireland Perl ##hisRightIncludesFreedomToHoldOpinionsWithoutInterfe
##############################renceAndToSeekReceiveAndImpartInformationAndIdea
sThroughAnyMediaAndRegardlessOfFrontiers#10 UN Declaration Of HumanRights Kibo
Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School
Bart....@p23.f307.n283.z2.fidonet.org (Bart Peters) writes:
> [...]
>
> Actually, I think the following question is much more interesting than the
> hardware specifications:
>
> 'What kind of programs/applications will we be using on our computer in the
> year 2001?'
>
> Because 5GB HD's, 1GB memory and 4096x4096 resolutions is really very nice,
> but what the the hell would you need it for? Although it would be neat, it's
> not necessary for todays applications. So, IF the computers in 2001 will have
> specifactions like these, what NEW applications would be possible?
Actually, I've always thought that the market for very high powered computer
games a la DOOM drove the PC hardware market. The demand for photoshop-like
work and business multimedia seems always to be "catching" up to the existing
hardware.
No value judgments here; just an observation.
--
Kurt Wm. Hemr / 1541 Mass. Ave. Apt. 553 / Cambridge, MA 02138
** Better living through shorter .sig files -- ask me about it! **
Kip Crosby
In article <1994Mar15.1...@hulaw1.harvard.edu>, Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School (he...@hulaw1.harvard.edu) writes:
>In article <76370546...@dialis.hacktic.nl>,
>> but what the the hell would you need it for? Although it would be neat, it's
>> not necessary for todays applications. So, IF the computers in 2001 will have
>> specifactions like these, what NEW applications would be possible?
>
>Actually, I've always thought that the market for very high powered computer
>games a la DOOM drove the PC hardware market. The demand for photoshop-like
>work and business multimedia seems always to be "catching" up to the existing
>hardware.
In this context, Nintendo is reputed to have commissioned a chip
"considerably more powerful than an R4400" from MIPS. And....what
exactly the h*ll _is_ the "64-bit chip" in an Atari Jaguar, anyway?
I always tell people to look at the latest games (and the hardware
they run on) for the earliest clues. -- kc
Kip Crosby
In article <40...@mindlink.bc.ca>, Charlie Gibbs (Charli...@mindlink.bc.ca) writes:
>Here on a.f.c people will talk about all the things they used to be
>able to do with only a 25-MHz 386, 4 megabytes of RAM, and 40 megs
>of disk space.
Yeah, gee....You could run DOS Word, Quattro Pro, dBASE III PLUS,
and Procomm on that and really have it all! -- kc
Jeremy Reimer
>In article <76370546...@dialis.hacktic.nl>,
>Bart....@p23.f307.n283.z2.fidonet.org (Bart Peters) writes:
[deleted]
>Actually, I've always thought that the market for very high powered computer
>games a la DOOM drove the PC hardware market. The demand for photoshop-like
>work and business multimedia seems always to be "catching" up to the existing
>hardware.
>No value judgments here; just an observation.
Data point-- one of the more interesting conversations I've had with my
local hardware guy was about a time (a couple of years ago) when a customer
came into his shop and purchased over $2000 worth of extra iron for the
sole (admitted) purpose of running Wing Commander better.
Not that I would easily scoff at this. Even now I find Wing far more
interesting than the latest spreadsheet or wp, even if the latter are
now supposedly doing my thinking for me...
Games push the hardware, squeezing every last bit of juice out of existing
models and creating instant demand for faster machines. This provides a
nice flat base for "productivity" software companies to come along and
write horribly inefficient code to waste all this extra power for no good
reason.
--
Jeremy "OS/2ibo" Reimer
Promoting Better Netting Through Mediocrity since 1989.
"This is the snobbery of the people on the Mayflower looking down
their noses at the people who came over ON THE SECOND BOAT!"
- Mitch Kapor, on Usenet elitism
C.P. Brown
|> pe...@sugar.NeoSoft.COM (Peter da Silva) writes:
|> >I suspect some technology we're not using now, rather than laser.
|>
|> I don't think so because of the technology use lag.
|>
|> Typically it takes 5 years before a new technology gets used in
|> anything commercial. The first use is usually in something esoteric,
|> followed by high-end applications a few years later (about ten years
|> out), followed by low-end (consumer) applications a few years later
|> (about 15 years out).
|>
|> I can provide numerous examples but let's take RISC since it's close
|> at hand. IBM had a practical RISC processor in the lab in 1978. The
|> first commercial use of a RISC processor was in a channel controller
|> in 1982, also by IBM. The first attempt at widespread use of a RISC
|> processor was with the RT -- again by IBM -- in 1984. Several RISC
|> processors were in use in high-end workstations in 1987-1988 (eg
Actually, there was a fairly inexpensive personal computer available in 1987 that
used a RISC CPU.
--
// Chris Brown. finger cpb...@hermes.cam.ac.uk for my PGP public key.
\\ //
\X/ Amiga A1200, 6MB RAM, 85MB HD, 25MHz 68882, 262144 colours on screen.
Dave Schaumann
Bart Peters <Bart....@p23.f307.n283.z2.fidonet.org> wrote:
|Actually, I think the following question is much more interesting than the
|hardware specifications:
|
|'What kind of programs/applications will we be using on our computer in the
|year 2001?'
|
|Because 5GB HD's, 1GB memory and 4096x4096 resolutions is really very nice,
|but what the the hell would you need it for?
Trust me, we'll think of something. Audio and video are two things that
come to mind. A single 4096x4096 pixel 24-bit image takes 72 megs to store.
Say you wanted to make a 30-second animation, at 10fps, that would be 300
frames, which needs 21.6 gigabytes to store. You'll need a 4:1 compression
ratio just to fit that on your hard drive.
|Although it would be neat, it's
|not necessary for todays applications. So, IF the computers in 2001 will have
|specifactions like these, what NEW applications would be possible?
Predicting where computers will go is a tricky business. 15 years ago, who
would have predicted how X and other windowing environments have become the
expected computer interface? Who would have predicted main memories in the
megabyte range, and pushing into the gigabyte range?
And if you can't predict the hardware, how can you hope to imagine the
software running on it?
--
Everyone's pedantic about something.
Antonio Vasconcelos
: The reason I figure that the HDTV spec will come to computers first is that
: there isn't any governmental standards committee, and there isn't a need for
: broadcast standards for HDTV to come to computers. All that really needs
: to happen is (IBM|AT&T|Compaq|Apple) ask a major monitor manufacturer to
: build a monitor for their latest system, to HDTV dimensions. (Why do I say
: AT&T in the list above? Look at the monitors on their "You Will" commercials)
: Of course, realtime simu-holographic imaging would be nice, too...
And what about an evolution of the VR glasses ? It whould be chip, it
whould be small, and it whould be private...
At the same time, they may include and eye-tracking sensor. Clicking
can be made by a sensor to any voluntary muscle.
I hope that CRTs, and LCDs go away soon, for everything but
"Moving Pictures".
Maybe someday beeing an computer hacker whould only mean discipline,
kinda like the samurais/ninja/commandos/ASO.
We are far from the brain<->computer interface, but only time will
tell if that's impossible or not...
--
regards,
Antonio Vasconcelos
@ The Lisbon $tock Exchange (BVL) require 'std/disclaimer.ph'
<<< Pascal Programmers do it with Toolboxes! >>>
Stephen Kelley
Steve
Lars Garden
: Almost big enough and almost fast enough to run the software of 2001.
Nah. Almost big enough and fast enough to run the games of 2001.
It is games, and not general applications that push the hardware to
it's limits.
Lars Gaarden. Student at Trondheim College of Engineering.
Amiga - Master of Multitasking.
Darin Johnson
> would have predicted how X and other windowing environments have become the
> expected computer interface?
Hmm, maybe go back 20 years. 15 I think there were definately people
thinking about it, able to project from what there was at the time.
There were some windowing systems back then, and a lot of people had
heard of them. And with the common cursor addressable terminals,
there were undoubtedly a few of two shells at a time type windowed
programs (easily doable on the UNIXes at the time).
--
Darin Johnson
djoh...@ucsd.edu
"Floyd here now!"
R S Rodgers
I wonder how many products will have the word "2000" in them by 1999.
"New, Apple System 2000!"
"New, DOS 2000!" (God forbid, but if the market for "what we know already"
software could keep WP afloat for all this time, then
anything is possible.)
--
Be sure to vote *YES* on rec.music.menudo!
Peter da Silva
Bart Peters <Bart....@p23.f307.n283.z2.fidonet.org> wrote:
> but what the the hell would you need it for?
Casual use of book-quality displays.
--
Peter da Silva. <pe...@sugar.neosoft.com>.
`-_-' Ja' abracas-te o teu lobo, hoje?
'U`
Looks like UNIX, Feels like UNIX, works like MVS -- IBM advertisement.
Matt Simmons
: I wonder how many products will have the word "2000" in them by 1999.
: "New, DOS 2000!" (God forbid, but if the market for "what we know already"
zar...@cs1.bradley.edu Matt Simmons Bradley University, Peoria, IL
02/18/94: Dan Jansen finally wins the Gold Medal in the 1000m speedskating
in Lillehammer, Norway, his fourth Olympics with a time of 1:12.43
Bokonon
R S Rodgers <rsro...@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>
>I wonder how many products will have the word "2000" in them by 1999.
>"New, Apple System 2000!"
>"New, DOS 2000!" (God forbid, but if the market for "what we know already"
> software could keep WP afloat for all this time, then
> anything is possible.)
How about WordStar 2000?
--
Michael C. DeAngelo It is better to lurk and be thought a moron /
mcd...@hertz.njit.edu Than to post and remove all doubt. KIBO# 66
Ernst 'pooh' Mulder
R S Rodgers (rsro...@wam.umd.edu) wrote:
>: I wonder how many products will have the word "2000" in them by 1999.
>: "New, Apple System 2000!"
>: "New, DOS 2000!" (God forbid, but if the market for "what we know
pooh
----
/* internet: po...@stack.urc.tue.nl * i'd rather be with you than fly *
* po...@es.ele.tue.nl * _ ____ tru space *
* phone: +31 40-572314 * /( ) _ \ *
* s-mail: Hoogstraat 214 * / // /\` \, ||--||--||- *
* 5615 PX Eindhoven * \| |/ \| ||--||--||- *
* The Netherlands * ~^~^~^~~^~~~^~~^^~^^^^^^^^^^^^ */
Jim Little
Matt Simmons <zar...@cs1.bradley.edu> wrote:
>R S Rodgers (rsro...@wam.umd.edu) wrote:
>: I wonder how many products will have the word "2000" in them by 1999.
>: "New, Apple System 2000!"
>: "New, DOS 2000!" (God forbid, but if the market for "what we know already"
>Does that mean you have to throw them away on Jan 1, 2001?
Speaking of which... Everybody remembers typing in dates on a computer,
right? Most of the time, you type 03-23-94... or an unreasonable facsimile
thereof, right?
Anybody wanna guess how many programs will suddenly stop working on
January 1st, 2000? (Even ANSI doesn't seem to have figured it out. Their
EDI standard avoids all mention of centuries... -- Only six years, folks!)
-Jim "But what will the [banking] checks be like?" Little
TENEYCK
: Speaking of which... Everybody remembers typing in dates on a computer,
: right? Most of the time, you type 03-23-94... or an unreasonable facsimile
: thereof, right?
: Anybody wanna guess how many programs will suddenly stop working on
: January 1st, 2000? (Even ANSI doesn't seem to have figured it out. Their
: EDI standard avoids all mention of centuries... -- Only six years, folks!)
I read once that they had something of a problem with that in 1960.
In order to save valuable memory, some programs would save the date as
one byte instead of two. I don't remember what the result. Of course
the real problem might well be at 3:15:08 A.M. Jauary 18, 2038, when
UNIX's internal clock rolls over. Anyone want to speculate as to whether
or not UNIX (or some variation thereof) will still be around then?
Victor Eijkhout
Speaking of which... Everybody remembers typing in dates on a computer,
right? Most of the time, you type 03-23-94... or an unreasonable facsimile
thereof, right?
Well, having been raised on the dd/mm/yy system I have a hard time
adapting to mm/dd/yy, so occasionally in a completely confused
mode I use yy/dd/mm.
Most of the time it is clear what I've written
anyway: 93/27/03 is unambiguous. But can you imagine what the
next century will bring: what on earth is 02/03/04?
Could we adopt as quickly as possible the international standard
YY / MM / DD
please?
This is neither the European way, nor the American, so no one has
to feel slighted, and it's logical (most significant number first).
--
Victor Eijkhout .................................... ``Hath not a dude eyes?
Department of Computer Science ...................... If you prick us, do we
University of Tennessee .......................not get bummed? If we eat bad
Knoxville TN 37996 ...................... guacamole, do we not blow chunks?''
+1 615 974 8298 .............................. [Keanu Reeves, on The Critic]
Joe Zbiciak
> I read once that they had something of a problem with that in 1960.
>In order to save valuable memory, some programs would save the date as
>one byte instead of two. I don't remember what the result. Of course
>the real problem might well be at 3:15:08 A.M. Jauary 18, 2038, when
>UNIX's internal clock rolls over. Anyone want to speculate as to whether
>or not UNIX (or some variation thereof) will still be around then?
Well, it's been around this long... what's another 44 years? It'll
probably be quite a bit enhanced over what it is today, but I wager
it'll be around in some form.
C.P. Brown
|> In article <2mrgfm$2...@upsun17.up.edu> ji...@up.edu (Jim Little) writes:
|>
|> Speaking of which... Everybody remembers typing in dates on a computer,
|> right? Most of the time, you type 03-23-94... or an unreasonable facsimile
|> thereof, right?
|>
|> Well, having been raised on the dd/mm/yy system I have a hard time
|> adapting to mm/dd/yy, so occasionally in a completely confused
|> mode I use yy/dd/mm.
You know, I could never work out why the Americans use middle-endian dates. Any
ideas?
Joe Zbiciak
>You know, I could never work out why the Americans use middle-endian dates. Any
>ideas?
Probably because it's a shortened form of the long-hand "Monthname Day, Year"
(such as "March 24, 1994"), where the year is optional. The year is kind
of an afterthought, and usually left off.
Note that in both "short form" and "long form," the year is often left off,
as it is often least important to the date for business transactions and
whatnot?
Speaking of weird dates, consider the form "Thursday, March 24, 1994"...
With 4 being most significant and 1 being least, this corresponds to
2 3 1 4... Not even PDP-11's bytesex was that odd...
(BTW, note that Apple's ProDOS, and the American military (to pick two
totally unrelated items) use the YY/MM/DD order.)
--Joe "Oh, and the same goes for Apple /// SOS, but who cares?" Zbiciak
Adam B. Wells
I read a book (can't remember the title ... but I think it was Clarke or
Asimov)
which takes place a few years in the future, around 1998. One of the main
characters has a booming business updating the software of banks, credit
companies, large corporations, etc. so that it won't crash at the turn of
the century.
Another SF book I read mentioned the "crash of 2000", when the world's
computers crashed/malfunctioned due to date problems ...
--
Adam B. Wells
Harvey Mudd College
awe...@jarthur.cs.hmc.edu
"Legend has it that Serpents used to be bigger, but how could that be?"
Victor Eijkhout
>You know, I could never work out why the Americans use middle-endian dates. Any
>ideas?
Probably because it's a shortened form of the long-hand "Monthname Day, Year"
(such as "March 24, 1994"),
This is begging the question. In British English (at least for as far
as I know) this is pronounced "the 24th of March, 1994" or even
"the 24th March, 1994". Why is the American form different?
Charlie Gibbs
(TENEYCK) writes:
>Jim Little (ji...@up.edu) wrote:
>
>: Speaking of which... Everybody remembers typing in dates on a computer,
>: right? Most of the time, you type 03-23-94... or an unreasonable
facsimile
>: thereof, right?
>
>: Anybody wanna guess how many programs will suddenly stop working on
>: January 1st, 2000? (Even ANSI doesn't seem to have figured it out.
Their
>: EDI standard avoids all mention of centuries... -- Only six years,
folks!)
>
> I read once that they had something of a problem with that in 1960.
>In order to save valuable memory, some programs would save the date as
>one byte instead of two. I don't remember what the result.
One of my first assignments in my first real programming job (in 1970)
was to change all our programs to insert a 7 instead of a 6 in front
of the one-digit year that was saved everywhere. (Gotta make the most
of those 80 columns on the card, y'know. :-)
> Of course
>the real problem might well be at 3:15:08 A.M. Jauary 18, 2038, when
>UNIX's internal clock rolls over. Anyone want to speculate as to whether
>or not UNIX (or some variation thereof) will still be around then?
Hopefully by then it'll be running exclusively on 64-bit processors -
or at least ones that support 64-bit integers. That ought to last us
another few billion years. Then we can have people predicting the
imminent heat death of the universe, complete with time estimates.
Charli...@mindlink.bc.ca
I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
C.P. Brown
|>
|> >You know, I could never work out why the Americans use middle-endian dates. Any
|> >ideas?
|>
|> Probably because it's a shortened form of the long-hand "Monthname Day, Year"
|> (such as "March 24, 1994"),
|>
|> This is begging the question. In British English (at least for as far
|> as I know) this is pronounced "the 24th of March, 1994" or even
|> "the 24th March, 1994". Why is the American form different?
Never heard it without the 'of'. The following are all equally likely though:
the 25th of March, 1994
Firday the 25th of March 1994
or occasionally:
Friday March the 25th, 1994 (which would be more like the American way of saying
it, but note the 'the' )
Tino D'Amico
: You know, I could never work out why the Americans use middle-endian dates. Any
: ideas?
Ignoring the logic of 'middle-endian'...
The U.S. Government (or at least good parts of it, especially out
Pentagon way...) write their dates '25 March 1994' and the like... But I
don't know if the practice holds when using numbers exclusively.
A lot of the differences in practice between the USA and the rest
of the world -- especially as regards spelling -- were deliberately
perpetrated by one Noah Webster (as in the dictionary), both to
'simplify' English spelling (hah!) and to provide something to
differentiate the 'American language' from the English language (English
language as in the language used in England, that is.)
I would not rule out the possibility that American dates have no
raison d'etre other than to be different.
Tino
TENEYCK
: >In article <2msd7q...@owl.csrv.uidaho.edu> tene...@cs.uidaho.edu
: >(TENEYCK) writes:
: >> Of course
: >>the real problem might well be at 3:15:08 A.M. Jauary 18, 2038, when
: >>UNIX's internal clock rolls over. Anyone want to speculate as to whether
: >>or not UNIX (or some variation thereof) will still be around then?
: I don't know - but if I am still around by that time, there will
: certainly be a 386 stacked somewhere in my collection of old iron, and a
: tape containing linux 1.0. And you ccan be sure I will start the thin up
: on the evening of January 17th, 2038....
Why not just set the time ahead a few years?
Bernd Meyer
>Bernd Meyer (umi...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au) wrote:
>: I don't know - but if I am still around by that time, there will
>: certainly be a 386 stacked somewhere in my collection of old iron, and a
>: tape containing linux 1.0. And you ccan be sure I will start the thin up
>: on the evening of January 17th, 2038....
> Why not just set the time ahead a few years?
Because that would be cheating!
Bernie
Peter D. Hampe
>In article <EIJKHOUT.94...@cupid.cs.utk.edu>, eijk...@cupid.cs.utk.edu (Victor Eijkhout) writes:
>|> In article <2mte6t$s...@cegt201.bradley.edu> im1...@cegt201.bradley.edu (Joe Zbiciak) writes:
>|>
>|> >You know, I could never work out why the Americans use middle-endian dates. Any
>|> >ideas?
>|>
>|> Probably because it's a shortened form of the long-hand "Monthname Day, Year" >|> (such as "March 24, 1994"),
>|>
>|> This is begging the question. In British English (at least for as far
>|> as I know) this is pronounced "the 24th of March, 1994" or even
>|> "the 24th March, 1994". Why is the American form different?
>Never heard it without the 'of'. The following are all equally likely though:
>the 25th of March, 1994
>Firday the 25th of March 1994
>or occasionally:
>Friday March the 25th, 1994 (which would be more like the American way of saying >it, but note the 'the' )
Don't ask me - I get so confused that I've changed my birthday so
that when I give it over the phone I don't have to determine big-endian
/ little-endian protocols. Of cousre, this makes me the same age as
the BRD, but we all have our secret humours.
--
py...@halcyon.com Pyotr Filipivich, sometimes Owl.
postal address is 4739 University Way NE #1321, Seattle WA 98105.
A singer can break a glass with just the right note, but
the simpler way is to drop it on the floor.
Steve Summit
> ji...@up.edu (Jim Little) writes:
>> Anybody wanna guess how many programs will suddenly stop working on
>> January 1st, 2000?
>
>...
> P.P.S.: Who's taking reservations for that NEPAL-trip?
Just make sure it's for at least two months. I expect the
initial devastation from January 1, 2000 to be just about cleaned
up when February 29, 2000 hits...
Steve Summit
s...@eskimo.com
Greg Alt
Nope, it's not 3:15, and it's not January 17th or 18th.
It is one second after:
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 GMT 2038
I did the following... (under Linux)
biafra:~# date 011903122038
Tue Jan 19 03:12:00 GMT 2038
biafra:~# date
Tue Jan 19 03:14:06 GMT 2038
biafra:~# !!
date
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 GMT 2038
biafra:~# !!
date
Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 GMT 1901
At around 3:14, my modem program (seyon) started to eat memory like crazy,
until all 16Megs of RAM and most of my swap partition got filled. Maybe
this "bug" should be looked into, though I guess there is no rush...
That was kind of freaky... As the clock ticked towards final Armageddon,
my harddrive light lit up and went crazy. Other than that and my xclock
locking up (and using 90% of the CPU), I haven't noticed any serious problems.
Greg
Tom Watson
nic...@prz.tu-berlin.de (Juergen Nickelsen) wrote:
> [about wraparound of the Unix clock counter and the few billion years
> more that 64-bit counters will give us]
...deleted...
>
> Oh I guess that was too ambiguous -- of course I meant at the end of
> the epoch of 64-bit counters as opposed to 32 bits. Unix NT then,
> probably. :-)
>
We all know that the change is trivial, and is in progress as we speak.
Look at the definition for 'time_t'. Note that it is 'unsigned long' (or
at least it should be soon), or (at least) 32 bits of stuff. That makes
the doom day around the year 2106 (more or less). Personally I don't think
ANYONE alive on the net today will have ANYTHING to worry about.
p.s. This is a similar comment I had a year or so ago about leap year
being every 4 years, and not having to personally worry about the
exceptions.
------
Tom Watson Not much simpler!!
t...@cypher.apple.com
Daniel M Silevitch
That's no big deal; Feb 28, 2100 to Mar 1, 2100 will be interesting, though.
Gives us 100 years to recover, sounds about right. :-)
-dms
--
"Americans are broad-minded people. They'll accept the fact that a person
can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman,
but if a man doesn't drive, there is something wrong with him."
-Art Buchwald
Antonio Vasconcelos
: Victor Eijkhout (eijk...@cupid.cs.utk.edu) wrote:
: : This is begging the question. In British English (at least for as far
: : as I know) this is pronounced "the 24th of March, 1994" or even
: : "the 24th March, 1994". Why is the American form different?
: Because the British can't even be counted on to keep a bunch of their own
: peksy colonists in line, so why should we trust them to do anything else
: right?
Not just that. most of the time one can gess the correct 'endian' from
the context.
The major problem is when reading some very nice SF book and then
find out that someone/something is I-dont-know-how-many yards/feet
apart of something/someone... Sometimes I can't say if that's far
or near, at least they could use milles, that I know that's 1.8 Km
(never mind about inches 8-)))
--
regards,
Antonio Vasconcelos
@ The Lisbon $tock Exchange (BVL) require 'std/disclaimer.ph'
<<< A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. >>>
Buddha Buck
Antonio Vasconcelos <va...@bvl.pt> wrote:
>zar...@cs1.bradley.edu (Matt Simmons) writes:
>: Victor Eijkhout (eijk...@cupid.cs.utk.edu) wrote:
>: : This is begging the question. In British English (at least for as far
>: : as I know) this is pronounced "the 24th of March, 1994" or even
>: : "the 24th March, 1994". Why is the American form different?
>
>: Because the British can't even be counted on to keep a bunch of their own
>: peksy colonists in line, so why should we trust them to do anything else
>: right?
>
>Not just that. most of the time one can gess the correct 'endian' from
>the context.
>
>The major problem is when reading some very nice SF book and then
>find out that someone/something is I-dont-know-how-many yards/feet
>apart of something/someone... Sometimes I can't say if that's far
>or near, at least they could use milles, that I know that's 1.8 Km
>(never mind about inches 8-)))
For feet/yards, just think of a foot as 3 decimeters (close within
1.5%), and a yard as a meter (close within 8.5%), or 9 decimeters, if
you want a better approximation.
Inches are EASY, approximately 5 cm for every 2 inches, but if you
want exact, 1 in = 2.54cm (exact).
Paul Slootman
>I did the following... (under Linux)
>biafra:~# date 011903122038
>Tue Jan 19 03:12:00 GMT 2038
>biafra:~# date
[...]
>Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 GMT 2038
>biafra:~# !!
>date
>Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 GMT 1901
Anyone else find it ominous that after the clock rolls over,
the date is Friday the 13th?
Coincidence? Or deliberate (and perhaps malicious) planning?
Paul Slootman
--
"xyy"xP:s/./+/g^M:s/++/ /g^M0i+^[:s/+//g^M0i:s/^[A//^["xddO^[40i ^[@xJ
Albert Heijn Winkelautomatisering, Zaandam, The Netherlands
work: pa...@ahwau.ahold.nl +31 75 593975 fax +31 75 351240
home: pa...@wurtel.hobby.nl +31 74 669770 / +31 5490 51514