Comments on NOST 100-1.2

[John E. Davis]

On 10 Jul 1998 13:06:38 -0400, Lucio Chiappetti <lucio at ifctr.mi.cnr.it>
wrote:
>  How common ? AFAIK we have DEC Alphas (will they survive Compaq ?) and
>  Sun UltraSparc (but the OS does NOT use 64-bit features, or at least so

  I heard that the `long' integer will be 64 bits in the next release
  of Solaris.  Is this true?

>  And I doubt they are of practical use in common conditions (I see that
>  peoples in banks and similar tend to have large databases, but I ever
>  doubt to need a > 2GB file  ... or to have > 2GB physical memory ... and
>  since I do not have that, why should I need 64-bit addresses ? In fact

  Less than 20 years ago, Bill Gates thought that no one would ever
  need 640K of memory.  Today, it is not that uncommon to see 100
  Megabyte data files.  How many people made statements twenty years
  ago about never needing 100 Megabyte files?

  If we have learned anything from the computer revolution, then it is
  that we cannot predict the future.  I have no idea whether or not I
  will be using a keyboard or a microphone in 10 years to communicate
  with my computer.

  The FITS file format is nearly 20 years old.  About a year ago a new
  FITS time specification was necessary to handle the year 2000
  problem. The fact is that several modern operating systems support
  64 bit integers and there are more on the horizon.  Let's not make
  the same mistake and ignore 64 bit data types as well as unsigned
  types.

--John