Tony Furnivall writes:

> Several people have commented on the "tremendous" need for a 24 byte model
>  number. How about floating a proposal to limit model numbers to 12
>  characters. This does, after all, allow for 36^12 (4.738 * 10**18) model
>  numbers, which allows each of the inhabitants of the earth since life
>  appeared to have 2 personal model numbers and then some over!

A completely off-topic, off-the-wall correction: if by "inhabitants", you mean
humans and their immediate predecessors, the total number of people that have
walked the Earth over the last four million years is only estimated to be
about 100 billion, 10**11, (of which 6 billion of them are alive at the
moment, which in a nutshell is the whole nature of the population crisis.
Factoid: at the time of Christ, the world's population is estimated to only
have been about 100 million people, less than half the current US population,
see):

           http://demog.berkeley.edu/~gene/193/lectures/sizpop.gif

Regardless of how much a problem the world's current population is for the
carrying capacity of the planet, that's only one ten-millionth of the 5 *
10**18, so using Tony's math, every inhabitant could have 100 million
personalized model numbers.

Wirt Atmar