On 30.06.2008 11:13, squaredancer wrote:

--- Original Message ---

> On 30.06.2008 14:07, CET - what odd quirk of fate caused Ron Hunter to
> generate the following:? :
>> squaredancer wrote:
>>
>>> On 30.06.2008 03:20, CET - what odd quirk of fate caused Ken Whiton to
>>> generate the following:? :
>>>
>>>> *-* On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, at 22:11:30 +0200,
>>>> *-* In Article 2pudnWpryojvcfrVnZ2dnUVZ_h_inZ2d@mozilla.org,
>>>> *-* squaredancer wrote
>>>> *-* About Re: Firefox 3 still hogs memory
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On 29.06.2008 05:38, CET - what odd quirk of fate caused Ken Whiton to
>>>>> generate the following:? :
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> *-* Daniel wrote
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>> [ ... ]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>> Back in the days of 640kbytes of RAM, I could see why you might
>>>>>>> allocate heaps of HD as a swapfile, but when you've got 100's of
>>>>>>> MB or even GBytes of RAM, why should you then need to allocate any
>>>>>>> of your HD??
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>> Two reasons: multitasking and software bloat. Back in the
>>>>>> days of 640 KB neither the CPUs nor the OSs were capable of much
>>>>>> (if any) multitasking, so there was little or no need for swapping.
>>>>>> Furthermore, back in the days before HDs were available in PCs
>>>>>> programs had to be able to fit on a 360 KB (or even a 180 KB)
>>>>>> floppy, so programmers had to write tight, efficient code. Compare
>>>>>> that with the size and complexity of (most of) today's programs,
>>>>>> which, by virtue of that size and complexity require much more RAM
>>>>>> to operate in.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Ho, Ken - you also remember the 8" days of single and double-sided
>>>>> floppies?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> No.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> those were the days when a floppy really *WAS* a floppy
>>>>> (and don't get your sticky fingers on the read-slot)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Actually, I don't even have any experience with the 180 KB
>>>> floppies. The first PCs we had where I worked had 360 KB 5 1/4"
>>>> floppies, and my first home PC had dual 720 KB 3 1/2" floppies (and no
>>>> HD).
>>>>
>>>> Ken Whiton
>>>>
>>>> FIDO: 1:132/152
>>>> InterNet: kenwhiton@surfglobal.net.INVAL (remove the obvious to reply)
>>>>
>>>>
>>> the company I worked for got their first "PC" from Tektronix - a 4052
>>> main (with a massive 32KB RAM), 4662 grapic plotter and two 4097 8"
>>> floppy drives. The "printer" was an eletrical typewriter with an amazing
>>> 32 characters/min... wow!
>>> That was back in 1979-1980 or so, and the system was replaced by
>>> IBM-machines (also soon replaced with Comodore PET 128 systems)
>>>
>>> reg
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> A printer with 32cpM? My niece types at 140 wpm, and that would be
>> 700cpM. Should have hired HER. Grin.
>>
>
> cor - does she have dual quad-cpu's installed??
>
> reg
>

No, she has a brain, something is lacking in printers. :-)

32cpM - 8 four letter words/minute .. wow, speed demon. I've never seen
a printer that slow and I worked with some of the slowest in the late
60's connected to mainframes. Even back then we had 132 character
printers so fast that the paper would stand straight up almost two feet
before fan-folding over.

--
Jay Garcia Netscape Champion
UFAQ - http://www.UFAQ.org