Windows 7 - Windows 7 x64 vs Windows 7 x86 (Fight)

And i was the IBM CE that would come in and fix those old IBM 402's. Wow your older than dirt lol
Bob

Right on the head!
Simple, I was there at the time, and I was 'interested' -- gobbled up everything in sight in those days,
"checking it out" the best I could, at the time.
Fortunately, there was no internet to contend with.
(And the "Paperless office" hadn't arrived, yet.)

Also fortunately, I got to work with some of the government's 'hottest-stuff'.
Also, "checked these out" the best I could.

Starting with the hardware and machine-code, the Assembler was a natural.
Had difficulty understanding 'compiler', but finally made the connection.
So now I could 'picture' what was going on in the box while reading higher-level code, depending upon the computer architecture.
Also helps to 'debug' some peoples' code... (And, write your own, if and when you have to!)

So now the national controversy is over the "GOTO" instruction (FTN), by the computer science gurus.
No hardware company ever removed the "Jump" or "Branch" (or whatever) instructions from their designs.
Guess they cared less about stupid arguments and knew that changing the conditional or absolute 'flow-of-control' in the cpu is what made it a cpu.

Some people didn't know that, but looked for "software elegance" by eliminating "GOTO"s from their "new" language.
Most of this is all bull**** because every 'computer' has a fixed "Repetoire of Instructions" (sp), its 'rep-card'.
No matter what HLL you use, the box is only gonna execute the 'ones and zeros' on the rep-card.
So, most HLLs are, in my opinion, just so much smoke and bull that people hide behind when they use the words "Programming" (They say: "Much too technical to discuss here"... Yeah.).
Microsoft has done an excellent job of isolating people from real computer knowledge with Windows and their "API"s, hiding everything from sight, and only allowing you to see what they allow you to see.
I think no-one really programs anymore, they just concatenate APIs.

And now, with Windows, 93.7% of the world's population are computer-experts (as long as the mouse functions).
Else, "The system is down", which we've been trained to accept.
Sometimes I'll ask what they did before the system came thru the door, but they don't do that anymore. So my payment will get a 'late-charge' added if the system comes up much later. All of which is legal because the time-stamp is much after my physical greenbacks transaction.

Computer architecture is interesting because you get to 'see how' the box executes those instructions.
And if you really care, you can look at the 'enable-gates', pulse-widths, frequencies, timing, and all that stuff, and follow any '1' or '0' anywhere you want... Not many people care about this anymore.
Of course I use a GUI - how else can I play Solitaire?
Plus, I have to learn "Which box to double-click on", "which Radio-button to select", and "where to Right-click", in case I ever get a job in the new "real-world"...
For "real work", though, I use the "DOS-box" (I know, I know),
just like Microsoft does!
Funny that when it 'gets serious', you need the "Elevated Command Prompt". How does one associate "Elevated" on an Intel or AMD, using Vista? (This is a mute question, heh-heh)

Should have seen the 'scramble' after installing Vista RC on my spanking new GW Athlon64x2, when he wiped out the MBR and Boot-sectors and I couldn't get to Vista or back to XP Pro, which I knew nothing about...
No GUI there, back then.
Did see original work being done for the military - ARPAnet, when I went to school for the 'sheepskin'.
And was very -into- RBBS with my modem(s).
In simple terms, Ethernet is just a bigger, faster, and more-costly version.
Too bad the Super-Marios have to prove something to themselves and their like-minded associates.
Only in emergencies...
Used the foil from my (UGH!!! ""Don't you know that smoking is bad for your health?"") pack of cigarettes, proudly!!!
All properly repaired or replaced, when we could breathe again.

Can you fix my Sony ???

(I'll loan you the camera...)

Seriously, Antman, can you dupe beta to DVD? Or Beta to ANYthing else?

Chuck

Not to make any arguments,
but computers run on the 'binary' number system, Zero and One.

Hexadecimal is just a 'shorthand' way of expressing the long string of '1's and '0's...

Octal was used way before hex...
Also 'shorthand', using base 8d instead of 16d.

Computers do not do math with either As far as I know.

Looks like you made the same error that I did:

Went by the specs and chose the technically superior...

The rest of the country succumbed to TV advertising and pretty pictures...
(like other stuff.)

That was generations ago. The last existing tapes are VHS - I still have Sony's best SVHS deck ... and 30+ VHS tapes in SL VHS with a gazillion manually taped episodes of MST3K ... haven't played either tapes or deck in mucho years - I really should chuck them . The deck should go on eBay though.

Yeah, but not stronger ...

I love hex & bin, hate octal. DEC used to use octal a fair amount way back.

The Olivetti A 7 actually had two 14 digit BCD accumulators ... so it did decimal math in a binary way . I had one of those things sitting in my living room for months while working on my first contract after getting married. I'm divorced.

Actually I believe a big factor was that initially the VHS products were better oriented at time shifting. Convenience over quality will always win.

I'll be damned!
Couldn't find the Olivetti A 7, but got to other stuff.
I stand corrected (but -did- say "As far as I know"):

Binary-coded decimal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Addition with BCD

It is possible to perform addition in BCD by first adding in binary, and then converting to BCD afterwards. Conversion of the simple sum of two digits can be done by adding 6 (that is, 16 – 10) when the result has a value greater than 9. For example:
1001 + 1000 = 10001 = 0001 0001
9 + 8 = 17 = 1 1
In BCD, there cannot exist a value greater than 9 (1001) per nibble. To correct this, 6 (0110) is added to that sum to get the correct first two digits:
0001 0001 + 0000 0110 = 0001 0111
1 1 + 0 6 = 1 7
which gives two nibbles, 0001 and 0111, which correspond to the digits "1" and "7". This yields "17" in BCD, which is the correct result. This technique can be extended to adding multiple digits, by adding in groups from right to left, propagating the second digit as a carry, always comparing the 5-bit result of each digit-pair sum to 9.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
___( 99999999999999 + 1 ) looks interesting, 14 digits, for the algorithm:
add: 66666666666666

And:
Arithmetic logic unit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Numerical systems

An ALU must process numbers using the same format as the rest of the digital circuit. The format of modern processors is almost always the two's complement binary number representation. Early computers used a wide variety of number systems, including one's complement, sign-magnitude format, and even true decimal systems, with ten tubes per digit.
ALUs for each one of these numeric systems had different designs, and that influenced the current preference for two's complement, as this is the representation that makes it easier for the ALUs to calculate additions and subtractions.[citation needed]
The two's-complement number system allows for subtraction to be accomplished by adding the negative of a number in a very simple way which negates the need for specialised circuits to do subtraction.

My apologies for my ignorance,
never worked with "business" systems.
Chuck

Nothing to aplogize for - you said As far as I know, and As far as I know that was a totally correct statement . Truth is, it's probably true for 99.99% of today's working computers.

I think I finally caught on to Antman. He's not really Antman, he's ...

Mojo-Jojo!

Can't beat that as argument

Better is relative term, not a definitive. Better how?
In energy consumption: no
In efficient memory addressing: no

I cant't bring up the energy to put a list of all pro's and con's but in the end it's good for what you want it to do.

I guess i'd be hesitant as a manufacturer to put a quadcore x64 in a microwave, just as much as i'd be hesitant to put an 8086 in a CAD machine.