30 Dec
2017
30 Dec
'17
2:55 p.m.
On Sat, 30 Dec 2017, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
I was perusing my old computer magazine collection the
other day and
came across an article entitled: ?Fast-Growing new hobby, Real
Computers you assemble yourself?, Dec. 1976. It was about MITS,
Sphere, IMSAI and SWT. 4K memory was $500. Yikes! Even more here in
Canada. Now this is true Classic Computing. Have a Happy New Year
everyone. May the computing gods shine down on us all in 2018.
Happy computing. Murray :)
OK, a little arithmetic exercise for you.
(a 16C is nice for this, but hardly necessary)
"Moore's Law", which was a prediction, not a "LAW", has often been
mis-stated as predicting a doubling of speed/capacity every 18 months.
1) Figure out how many 18 month invtervals since then, and what 4k
"should' have morphed into by now.
2) What did Gordon Moore actually say in 1965?
3) How much is $500 of 1976 money worth now?
4) Consider how long it took to use a text editor to make a grocery
shopping list in 1976. How long does it take today?
Does having the grocery list consist of pictures instead of words, with
audio commentary, and maybe Smell-O-Vision (coming soon), improve the
quality of life? How much does it help to be able to contact your
refrigeratior and query its knowledge of its contents?
(Keep in mind, that although hardware expanded exponentially, according to
Moore's Law, Software follows a corollary of Boyle's Law, and expands to
fill the available space and use all of the available resources - how much
can "modern" software do in 4K?, and how much is needed to boot the
computer and run a "modern" text editor?)
5) What percentage of computer users still build from kits, or from
scratch?
6) What has replaced magazines for keeping in touch with the current
state of computers?