From: William (williamweb@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Nov 17 2002 - 07:51:50 MST
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 09:25:07 -0800
> From: spike66 <spike66@attbi.com>
> Subject: Re: fruits of Bill Gates labor worth $50 billion.
>
> Hubert Mania wrote:
>
> > Ever since I started using computers I wanted to have one that I can
start
> > and switch off like a CD player. Pleaze all you geeks, do something
about
> > it!
>
> I dont see why not. I have a Palm Pilot, it has an operating
> system, seldom crashes and doesn't need to be booted up, or
> if so it does it so quickly one doesn't even notice. Perhaps
> the breakthru we need is solid state memory? spike
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The main reason that PC hardware is crash-prone is that there are still 2
moving parts in it: the power supply (I don't see this changing anytime
soon) and -
the storage supply aka the hard disk drive (HDD). There is a trend toward
solid state storage (SSS) that will use a variation of Electronically
Erasable
Programmable Read Only Memory (EEPROM) aka Flash memory as is common
on Palm, Pocket PC and Zarius hand helds.
The main reason that older OSes have been crash-prone is that to increase
the
number of programs that they can run simultaneously aka multitasking they
used
shared system files e.g. DLLs and that if 2 running applications requested
the same
one DLL there would be a "deadly embrace" and the system would be "busy".
The famous 'Blue Screen of Death" is the result. To give each application
its own
personal copy of the entire OS so that this cannot occur, means requiring a
great
deal of memory. Memory, until recent years, has been tremendously expensive
thus this "protected mode" in which each app gets its own OS copy was only
implemented for mission critical business machines e.g. UNIX, NetWare, NT.
Recent consumer OSes such as Windows XP do use "protected memory" since
the cost of GB of SDRAM is not prohibitive for consumers. I know that
several
companies are working on a so-called HDD that is purely solid state and
based on
Flash-like RAM but I do not know how many months/years until it arrives.
The other cause of system failures is poorly written code that cause memory
leaks
or malicious code that tries to do memory buffer overflows. The response
has
been to try to prohibit both through pre-emptive multitasking in which the
OS has
the ability to override the program's instructions. Palladium by Microsoft,
IBM,
Intel and AMD, etc in Trusted Computing at www.trustedcomputing.org is
supposedly a response to these problems esp. the malicious code.... I think
it is
more of a digital rights management (DRM) platform infrastructure that is
disguised as a security initiative. Hopefully a market for non-Palladium PCs
persists and a non-Palladium choice is still available after 2005 when these
Palladium PCs are supposed to make it to market. I, for one, will save
money
and "stock up" on several PCs if I think that a non-Palladium PC choice will
disappear.
If any other technically inclined readers have additional insights into
these
issues, please post them. I just have an Associate's Degree in Networking -
though
I am now working on a Master's Degree in Computer Science. (I already have
a
non-tech Bachelor's Degree.) I know I have lots left to learn. - Bill.
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