Perhaps because some languages are not strongly typed for numerics and
have no notion of an unsigned number let alone an unsigned integer.
When these decisions were cast 2GB (even on a disk) was almost
incomprehensible.
As to Microsoft's more modern choices... what can I say. But no worse
than Intel's. When Intel was still working on the 386 my former boss at
IBM tried mightily to convince them to implement a true virtual machine
capability and we would have showed them how if necessary. No dice.
Chuck Norcutt
James King wrote:
> As far as signed or unsigned addresses go ALL adresses are unsign as far
> as the processor is concerned but because most compilers treat pointers
> to memory as numbers they must mnake the choice of signed or unsigned
> and most compilers stupidly decided pointers where signed thereby
> throwing away 50% of the available addressing space. GGGRRRRR. Same
> thing happened with file sizes two hense the 2gb limit on a file size
> when it could have been 4gb.
>
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