alt Hacker News> If we measure the value of the dollar against megabytes of RAM
We should be measuring it by the amount of RAM in a typical household PC in 1987 and today.
Even though a "meg" of RAM costs less than 1 cent today, I can't do anything useful with it.
Even if we are generous and buy a whole $1 of RAM today, it only gets us 150 MB of RAM, which, while infinitely more useful than 1MB, is still completely useless for running a modern OS/Browser.
What does your math say about that?
Replies
adrianN • today at 5:28 AM
You can still run software from 1987 on a megabyte of ram, it just does different things from a modern browser.
Math says that's stupid. You can still do everything with a "meg" of RAM that you could do in 01987.
Economics says you're spending newly abundant resources freely in order to conserve those that are still scarce. Economics also predicts that people will adapt to RAM prices doubling by using it more efficiently.