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From: gdelong@cvbnet.UUCP (Gary Delong)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: /dev/null: The final frontier
Message-ID: <116@cvbnet.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-May-87 16:16:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: cvbnet.116
Posted: Thu May 28 16:16:14 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 31-May-87 20:49:15 EDT
References: <7488@brl-adm.ARPA> <1705@umd5.umd.edu>
Organization: Computervision, Bedford MA
Lines: 68
Summary: the real scoop

In article <1705@umd5.umd.edu>, zben@umd5.umd.edu (Ben Cranston) writes:
> In article <7488@brl-adm.ARPA> art@acc.arpa writes:
> 
> > Where do you think that all those bits you write to the null device came 
> > from?  They are extracted from the ETHER and that is precisely where they 
> > end up when written to the null device or written over in a machine register.
> > Some of the newer Binary Unified Gauge System (BUGS) theories predict that
> > a bit with no external perturbations may spontaneously change its state.
> 
> Unfortunately experiments with 6.023 x 10^23 molecules of water in a
> baggie in my basement conclusively prove that the decay of one-bits to
> zero-bits proceeds so slowly that bit conversion is not a feasable way
> to recycle bits.
> 
> Those of us who are environmentally active often wonder just what happens
> to those one-bits.  One "urban myth" is that they are shipped to Israel,
> where not only do the bits go from right to left, but one-bits and zero-
> bits are interchanged (i.e. a zero sign bit means negative, etc).   
> 
> My colleagues and I suspect that IBM has been collecting them for the 
> past 20 years, and dumped them one dark night on a certain garbage barge,
> which has been wandering the coast like a Flying Dutchman ever since...
> 
Ok, I guess it's time a hardware type let all you software jocks in on the
facts.

There is no such thing as a bit-bucket.  You should all read some the excellent
articles in comp.hw.design on the issue.

One of the first laws of computer hardware design is the law of conservation
of bits.  Your system when you bought came with some number of bits included,
that is also true of mass storage devices such as disk and tape.

If you are running a 4MByte system with 80MByte disk drive you have 84MB of
bits (plus some spare bits which are "purchased" or returned by the OS from
time to time as required to/from the control STORE ).

These presupplied bits are normally supplied in 50/50 distribution between 1s
and 0s (some applications require other ratios and are either compensated for
by the hardware manufacturer or by the software manufacturer on the disk or
tape the software comes on).

The real job of the CPU is to move these bits around to represnt the data you
want, some are stored in the keyboard to be sent to the system when you press
a key, the CPU resupplies devices such as this on a time slice basis.  This
is why many times you will find strange problems with your system when your
disk is almost full as the remaining disk area may be left all 1's or 0's
depending upon your usage.

No, networking does not move bits from system to system, those misterious 
particles called bauds tell your CPU how to rearange the bits within your
system.

I hope this settles this once and for all.

PS: The only bit mines left in the world are in South Africa, so you better
    hope something happens so to resolve the problems there before our 
    national bit reserves are depleted.

PPS:  No one seems to really understand what happens to the bauds once they
      have done their job, or even where they come from.


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