maddog: Letter to InfoWorld: Linux 64-bit since 1995!

[Ken D'Ambrosio]

> Congrats to maddog for getting his letter to the editor printed in
> the most recent issue of Infoworld. A previous issue had a cover
> article trumpeting "The 64-bit Apps Are Here!" and maddog pointed out
> that the featured software company's operating system was probably
> the LAST major OS to finally make it to 64-bits. Linux did it on
> Alpha in 1995, and on SPARC and PowerPC soon after.

Well... not to toot MS's horn, but NT came out for a variety of
processors, and I'm 99.9% at least one of them was 64-bit.  So the
magazine could have been a lot safer with saying, "The Windows x86-64 Apps
Are Here!"  But that doesn't roll quite as trippingly off the tongue, does
it?  ;-)

So, regarding x86-64, yeah, MS is pretty late to the party.  And since
that's what runs the huge majority of desktops, that's really where it's
at.

-Ken (who's still miffed Apple didn't go with AMD for their x86-64 OS-X)