1's, 0's and £ Software Sale
 

I can understand why programmers sell their 1's and 0's. To live a life of luxury ofcause. But, does anyone ever think of what software really is? Most experienced people semi-understand what software is, but most do not understand that all software runs on 1's and 0's that the cpu interprets.
How many of the average population know that a computer thinks in 1s and 0s? Does the consumer pay attention to what the bits, bytes, kilobytes and so on, really mean? I think the answer is no.
If only end users understood binery. When you buy software, you are not buying a physical object, you are buying a calculation.
Imagine if someone had data of the sounds your dog must hear not to piss in the house and then sold it to you, binding you to a legal contract. What if you were to find the same results in binery later on. You would find that way of thinking already bought by the company charging you money. You could not claim it because that way of thinking was copyright to that company.
Instead of lying about how much companies can save you, why can't they just be honest and tell you they are after your money but will take less from you than the leading company.

Really very interesting thoughts... Such a perfect description of software. Booting up, running an OS reading - sending e-mail. Every move and the whole lot just a huge string calculation -and a single one at that with single CPU :)

more like a big number, don't forget those 1's and 0's can be turned into a big number

but i do find it sad that people like M$ can get off with selling software for about the same price as the hardware.... since you have to have the software to use the hardware one would think softwares like a OS would be free to very cheap..

games tho should cost money, those are like videos, just an extra entertainment that id be happy to pay

Actually your processor does not run on 1's and 0's, it runs on high and low voltages. 1 is the high voltage on state and 0 is the low voltage off state.

You do not buy calculations. Your processor is a lot more complex than you think. A processor does not just add and subtract. You seem to forget what controls the cache etc...

Software takes time to make and most people will never have the skill or even the intelligence to create complex applications. Spend 10 years learning how to program or buy a product for 100$? Which makes sense?

The ones and zeros represent a switch. A vacuum tube had only two positions, opened or closed. Modern processors have switches with many positions. That's why the original IBM PC was an 8-bit computer instead of a 2-bit computer (like the ENIAC.) I visualize it like the rotor and points in an old car distributor, a carbureted V8 in this case. LOL ;) Anyway, I sell a lot more hexadecimal (base 16) numbers than binary (base 2) numbers nowadays. :D

Actually they still only have 2 positions. A 32-bit processor refers to the size of the registers on the processor and not how many states the transistors have.

multiple states refers to quantum computers in where there are many states (i forget the predicted maximum)

ahhhh, soo many registers

but i always thought i referred to its buss size as well, hmm, maybe they have to be the same size?

Actually, a register is just where the state information is stored. Much like the rotor and points example I gave above, each point is a single switch with two positions, but they're used together to represent one of eight possible positions. A 32 state device would require 32 switches. In fact, some processors have different sized registers for different purposes. It's my understanding that a "32-bit processor" refers to the number of bits used for arithmentic and floating point calculations, not the number of bits used for things like memory addressing... but I could be wrong.

Floating point registers are the same size as the regular registers only they follow IEEE 754. The registers that are not the same size are the double registers which are commonly two registers which you may access as one. Meaning when you fill register $f20 you are also filling $f21. These registers also use the IEEE 754 with a different bias of course.

The 32-bits refer to the size of the common registers where you will place the results of the arithmetic operation. This also is the register which will handle memory addressing. Since 32-bit processors have access to some double 32bit registers i assume they are capable of doing 64-bit calculations. (I would assume it is impossible to calculate the value of a dual-32 bit IEEE 754 number without this.)

32bits = 2^32 which means we have space for 4294967296 distinct addresses. Divide this number by 1024 three times and you get the maximum amount of ram you can use 4gigs on 32-bit processors.

64bits allows for a lot more than 4gigs of ram which is the reason you can find a demand for this type of processor in the server market where 4 gigs just is not enough.

Being in Computer Engineering when we talk about states whe refer to how many positions the transistors may take. At the moment this is two, either on or off.

The big push for quantum computing would be the fact that we could then use atoms as transistors which would allow a lot of states. Sixteen if i am correct.