Claudio Valderrama C. wrote:

>Then it's time to announce the next version of Firebird is only for the
>richest countries, where purchasing a computer (and the biggest available
>one) every six months is normal and not a luxury.
>
>- I just purchased 14 GB of DDR2-800 for my 4-CPU computer.
>- Are you running Oracle or Terabyte?
>- No, I'm just running FB embedded.
>
>
>

I've tried to argue that software isn't about absolutes but tradeoffs.
You can tradeoff memory for cpu, cpu for disk bandwidth, and disk
bandwidth for memory. The tradeoffs are different in different
generations of computers. We can make the tradeoffs work for a 10 year
old 486 with 8 MB memory that cost $3500, or we can make the tradeoffs
for a new 3.2GHz Athlon with 512 MB memory that costs $350. If you want
to argue that we should set the design center to be 10 year old machines
that cost 10 times what a modern machines cost, go right ahead. I don't
think you will have a lot of people who agree with you.

Most people agree that it's time to buy a new machine when a new one
costs less than the month maintenence cost of the old one.

Personally, I have little interest in producing software that runs on a
PDP-11/20 or an IBM 360/30. A 360/75 had really cool lights, but was
rather short on memory.

I'm not asking you to buy a new computer every six months. Once a
decade is sufficient.