What Does 64-Bit Vista Get Me? April 16, 2009

More bits gets you access to more memory. The processor inside your PC communicates with your system memory (RAM) with numeric addressing. Thus the maximum amount of memory a 32-bit processor can address is 232 bytes, or 4 gigabytes. Newer 64-bit processors—not to mention the 64-bit operating systems that run on them—can address 264 bytes of memory, or
17,179,869,184 gigabytes (16 exabytes) of RAM.(17 million gigabytes may sound like a lot of space now, but it won’t be long before you’ll be taking baby pictures with an 8-gigapixel digital camera.)

Windows NT, released in 1993, was Microsoft’s first fully 32-bit operating system. But it took eight years before the platform, which had since evolved into Windows 2000 and then XP, became mainstream. (For those keeping track, Windows 9x doesn’t count because it was a hybrid OS that ran 32-bit applications on a 16-bit DOS foundation, which was one of the reasons it was so unstable.) 64-bit Windows became a reality in XP, but Vista is Microsoft’s first serious attempt to make 64-bit computing mainstream.

But the question is, how mainstream is it?

While 64-bit Vista can run most 32-bit applications without a problem, it’s not compatible with 32-bit hardware drivers or 32-bit utilities like Windows Explorer extensions (e.g., context menu add-ons). This means that you need a native 64-bit driver for every device on your PC. And since 64-bit Vista won’t load unsigned drivers, finding support for all your hardware may be a bit of a challenge, at least presently. Since most Vista installations
are still 32-bit, most manufacturers aren’t bothering to compile, test, and support 64-bit drivers and software.

Quotes on Women April 16, 2009

Life on the planet is born of woman. God made man stronger but not necessarily more intelligent. He gave women intuition and femininity. And, used properly, that combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I’ve ever met. Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult. A woman has the age she deserves. Well behaved women rarely make history. Some leaders are born women. When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different.

Here’s all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid. No book has yet been written in praise of a woman who let her husband and children starve or suffer while she invented even the most useful things, or wrote books, or expressed herself in art, or evolved philosophic systems. There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver. Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity.

Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.

Men need rule books. Women want men to intuit what they want. And only about 2% of men can do that, and most of them are not heterosexual. Men have been found to deny woman intellect; they have credited her with instinct, with intuition, with a capacity to correlate cause and effect much as a dog connects its collar with a walk. Intuition is truly a feminine quality, but women should not mistake rash conclusions for this gift. A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe; she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can’t fold a paper in a crowded train. What passes for woman’s intuition is often nothing more than man’s transparency. So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don’t somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?

Why are women … so much more interesting to men than men are to women? ….. In the faces of men and women I see God.