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From: barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Now & for the future (was Re: AMIGAstation...)
Message-ID: <7565@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 13 Feb 91 19:53:31 GMT
References: <12013@helios.TAMU.EDU> <1991Feb12.053906.10441@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu> <849@caslon.cs.arizona.edu>
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University - HCF
Lines: 36

In article <849@caslon.cs.arizona.edu> dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave P. Schaumann) writes:
>no matter
>how fast your machine, how big your memory, sooner or later your application
>will outgrow it.

	It is good to bring up this point every now and then.  People's
thinking about computers is sometimes limited by the available hardware.

	Suppose I told you that I want a word processor in which every 
typed character is a 3-dimensional image, ray-traced in REAL TIME, complete
with beautiful shading, etc., so there is absolutely no eyestrain looking at
it.  And the background "engine" of the word processor is actually a real-time
LaTeX.
	"You're dreaming!" people would say.  Indeed, but someday the
computing power will be available.  "You don't need it!" other people would
shout.  Well, I don't "need" a monitor with resolution greater than 200x200
monochrome either, but I prefer something better. :-)
	Here's another example.  I want my graphics program to be able to
save its data to a file (say, 500 megabytes) INSTANTANEOUSLY.  I don't want
to wait AT ALL; just press the "save" button and it's saved to a 100%
error-free disk with NO WAITING.  Is a 100-gigabyte-per-second transfer
rate impossible?  Now, yes.  But eventually...?

	Ten years ago, people thought < 256K RAM was plenty.

>Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.

	I think I've heard that somewhere before, but I'm not sure. :-)

                                                        Dan

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