From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <13426df10710161116n5192f35amc964ee6b9da4ebba@mail.gmail.com> Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 11:16:01 -0700 From: "ron minnich" To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] I appear to have stumped the brains at chacha.com In-Reply-To: <14ec7b180710161105m4111eb2gb25d0efaaeda0056@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <13426df10710161025g11cb759apab7d4642f5ee205a@mail.gmail.com> <14ec7b180710161105m4111eb2gb25d0efaaeda0056@mail.gmail.com> Topicbox-Message-UUID: d1ed68f2-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 You got further than chacha: Status: Connecting ... Status: Looking for a guide ... Looking: ... Status: Jacqueline has connected to help you with your search on how many microprocessors are there in the world. Please wait while your guide searches for your results. Jacqueline: Welcome to ChaCha! You: thanks Jacqueline: Hello! Thank you for coming to ChaCha Jacqueline: One moment please You: fyi there is an ad in top right of this web page but in firefox it is cut off, shows bumper sticker "My town's news is better than yours", but you can't see the name of the newspaper :-) You: you might want to let the ad guys know :-) Jacqueline: sorry? Jacqueline: Are you trying to find an exact figure? You: something close. Is it more like 10 billion or 1 billion or Jacqueline: I am not finding an exact number You: I am no longer sure. Jacqueline: I am going to transfer you Jacqueline: One moment please You: I think an exact number is totally impossible. Transfer: You are being transferred to another guide who can help you search even better! Status: Looking for a guide ... Status: Cecil has connected to help you with your search on how many microprocessors are there in the world. Please wait while your guide searches for your results. Cecil: Hello! Cecil: I'm searching for your results. You: thanks You: This is actually a hard one. You: To get the right number we'd have to count watches, cars, microwaves, DVD players, ipods, it just goes on forever. Cecil: Thanks for being patient! You: I know I can't figure it out :-) Cecil: Rest assured we will find your results! Cecil: I will need to transfer you. You: ok Cecil: Thank you for using ChaCha! Status: Your ChaCha guide was Cecil ID: 82277 Status: That past tense on the status line? they dropped me. So much for guided search. Google might not need to give up just yet. Anyways, I am gonna guess 1B 32-bit processors in current use, which is pretty conservative: iPods alone are 110M units. It still makes for nice graph, starting at 1955 (or so) with 1. ron