[ExI] millionaires and billionaires

[Tomasz Rola]

On Wed, 28 Sep 2011, Stefano Vaj wrote:

> Yes, but "rich", especially from a sociological/psychological POV, is
> a purely relative concept.

Yes, I am wealthy compared to myself twenty years ago... as measured in 
raw computing power available under my fingers :-) .

In 1991, factoring RSA-100 number took few days on a MasPar supercomputer. 
Few years ago the same feat took about 14 hrs on Athlon XP and 6 on 
somewhat more costly Opteron. Nowadays, multicore chips are commodity and 
they say Athlon64 takes on such number in about 4 hours.

In 1992, factoring a RSA-110 number took a month on (possibly another) 
MasPar. Some time later, Athlon XP did the same in 58 hours.

However, methods used now and then are different ==> Wealth comes not only 
from physical increase but also from knowledge of how to apply this in 
a better way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_numbers#RSA-100

http://www.ontko.com/pub/rayo/primes/hr_rsa.txt

http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/ggnfs/message/1149

http://www.math.ttu.edu/~cmonico/software/ggnfs/factorizations.html

> At most, wealth is going to become increasingly more symbolic in
> nature, as it has already done for centuries now.

Right. In a way, money are a symbol, so we are already far from counting 
cows and slaves. No need to wait for a future :-).

AFAIK no matter what the nature of wealth is going to be, one thing will 
not change - it will be measured by hard to obtain goods. Just as it was 
in the past and is today.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **