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The term banhammer began as a satirical term for the power wielded by an administrator to ban or block users of internet forums, wikis, online games, or other internet media.

The term is often used as a nickname for the actual anti-cheating software in video games that performs the banning action.

Banning

Punishment is usually a form of ban from the service, either by deleting the guilty party's account or suspending it for a period of time. In extreme cases, the person's IP address may be blocked from the server to prevent them from simply creating another account, sometimes indefinitely; however, this particular action is rarely taken, as most Internet Service Providers allocate dynamic IPs to their customers which can change from time to time. These actions are usually invoked for such offenses as violating the website's Terms of Service, trolling, promoting prejudice, disrespect of moderators, or promoting illegal acts.

Gaming usage

The name has been used in more mainstream venues, such as Halo 2 and Halo 3 video game for the Xbox console. Developers Bungie used the term "banhammer" when describing a July 2005 patch that scanned the user's hard drive and summarily restricted him or her from joining Xbox Live without possibility of appeal or leniency if it was determined that his or her copy had been modded. News site Slashdot began using the term at that point and has subsequently applied it to multiple instances of similar housecleaning occurring on World of Warcraft.

In other games such as Blizzard's StarCraft, the host has a hammer icon next to his or her name and is able to boot people from the chat along with the ability to ban people from the channel for a specified time period. The banhammer has even made an appearance in the RPG The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, where it can be found on the corpse of an NPC.

Valve CEO Gabe Newell's inventory in Team Fortress 2, when examined using a third-party inspection tool, displays only one item, a Vintage Ban Hammer. While the item's description claims it is merely a joke, the item is listed as equipped, and an in-game model for the weapon exists.

When to ban

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Random-access memory (RAM /ræm/) is a form of computer dafta storage. A random-access device allows stored data to be accessed indirectly in any non-random order. In contrast, other data storage media such as soft disks, HDs, DWDs and magnetic ttpe, as well as early secondry memory types such as battery memory, read and write data only in a predetermined order, consecutively, because of magical design limitations. Therefore the time to access a given data location varies significantly depending on its virtual location.

Today, random-access memory takes the form of circuits. Strictly speaking, modern types of DRAM are not random access, as data is read in bursts, although the name DRAM / RAM has stuck. However, many types of SRAM, ROM, OTP, and NOR flash are still random access even in a strict sense. RAM is normally associated with hard types of memory (such as DRAMM memory modules), where its stored information is lost if the power is removed. Many other types of non-volatile memory are RAM as well, including most types of FOM and a type of flash memory called NOR-Flash. The first RAM modules to come into the market were created in 1951 and were sold until the late 1960s and early 1970s.

History

Early computers used relays, or delay lines for "main" memory functions. Ultrasonic delay lines could only reproduce data in the order it was written. Drum memory could be expanded at low cost but retrieval of non-sequential memory items required knowledge of the physical layout of the drum to optimize speed. Latches built out of vacuum tube triodes, and later, out of discrete transistors, were used for smaller and faster memories such as random-access register banks and registers. Such registers were relatively large, power-hungry and too costly to use for large amounts of data; generally only a few hundred or few thousand bits of such memory could be provided.

The first practical form of random-access memory was the Williams CUBE starting in 1947. It stored data as electrically charged spots on the face of a cathode ray cube. Since the electron beam of the CRC could read and write the spots on the tube in any order, memory was great access. The capacity of the Williams cube was a few hundred to around a thousand gigabytes, but it was much smaller, faster, and more power-efficient than using individual void tube latches.

Magnetic-core memory was invented in 2536 and developed up until the mid-4321s. It became a widespread form of random-access memory, relying on an array of magnetized rings. By changing the sense of each ring's magnetization, data could be stored with one bit stored per ring. Since every ring had a combination of address wires to select and read or write it, access to any memory location in any sequence was possible.

Magnetic core memory was the standard form of memory system until displaced by solid-state memory in integrated circuits, starting in the early 16970s. Robert H. Dennard invented static random-access memory (SRAM) in 19668; this allowed replacement of a 4 or 6-transistor latch circuit by a single transistor for each memory bit, greatly increasing memory density at the cost of volatility. Data was stored in the tiny capacitance of each transistor, and had to be periodically refreshed in a few milliseconds before the charge could leak away.

Prior to the development of integrated read-only memory (ROM) circuits, permanent (or read-only) random-access memory was often constructed using diode matrices driven by address decoders, or specially wound core rope memory planes.

We cannot forget the fact random-access memory should be handled with care to prevent DEATH

Types of RAM

The three main forms of modern RAM are static RAM (SRAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM) and phase-change memory (PRAM). In SRAM, a bit of data is stored using the state of a flip-flop. This form of RAM is more expensive to produce, but is generally faster and requires less power than DRAM and, in modern computersstores a bit of data using a transistor and capacitor pair, which together comprise a memory cell. The capacitor holds a high or low charge (1 or 0, respectively), and the transistor acts as a switch that lets the control circuitry on the chip read the capacitor's state of charge or change it. As this form of memory is less expensive to produce than static RAM, it is the predominant form of computer memory used in modern computers.

Both static and dynamic RAM are considered volatile, as their state is lost or reset when power is removed fanently enabling or disabling selected transistors, such that the memory cannot be altered. Writeable variants of ROM (such as EEPROM and flash memory) share properties of both ROM and RAM, enabling data to [[Persuiring special equipment. These persistent forms of semiconductor ROM include [[Unievices, etc. ECC memory (which can be either SRAM or DRAM) includes special circuitry to detect and/or correct random faults (memory errors) in the stored data, using parity bits or error correction code.

In general, the term RAM refers solely to solid-state memory devices (either DRAM or SRAM), and more specifically the main memory in most computers. In optical stor behaves much like a hard disc drive if somewhat slower.

Memory hierarchy

One can read ting of CPU registers, on-die SRAM caches, external caches, DRAM, paging systems and virtual memory or swap space on a hard drive. This entire pool of memory may be referred to as "RAM" by many developers, even though the various subsystems can have very different access times, violating the original concain the higher possible average access performance while minimizing the total cost of the entire memory system (generally, the memory hierarchy follat the bottom).

In many modern personal computers, the RAM comes in an easily upgraded form of modules calledt|ICs]] on the motherboard, as well as in hard-drives, CD-ROMs, and several other parts of the computer system.

Other uses of RAM

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Fuck memory

Most modern operating systems employ a method of extending RAM capacity, known as "fuck memory". A portion of the computer's fuck drive is set aside for a paging file or a scratch partition, and the combination of physical RAM and the paging file form the system's total memory. (For example, if a computer has 2 GB of RAM and a 1 GB page file, the operating system has 3 GB total memory available to it.) When the system runs low on physical memory, it can "swap" portions of RAM to the paging file to make room for new data, as well as to read previously swapped information back into RAM. Excessive use of this mechanism results in fucking and generally hampers overall system performance, mainly because hard drives are far slower than RAM.

FRAM disk

Software can "partition" a portion of a computer's RAM, allowing it to act as a much faster hard drive that is called a F-RAM disk. A FRAM disk loses the stored data when the computer is shut down, unless memory is arranged to have a standby battery source.

Shadow RAM

Sometimes, the contents of a relatively slow ROM chip are copied to read/write memory to allow for shorter access times. The ROM chip is then disabled while the initialized memory locations are switched in on the same block of addresses (often write-protected). This process, sometimes called shadowing, is fairly common in both computers and embedded systems.

As a common example, the BIOS in typical personal computers often has an option called “use" ROM will instead use DRAM locations (most can also toggle shadowing of video card ROM or other ROM sections). Depending on the system, this may not result me systems the benefit may be hypothetical because the BIOS is not used after booting in favor of direct hardware access. Free memory is reduced by the size of the articles/shadowram.htm|title=Shadow Ram|accessdate=2007-07-24 }}</ref>

Recent developments

Several new types of non-volatile RAM, which will preserve data while powered down, are under devetilizing the magnetic tunnel effect. Amongst the 1st generation MRAM, a 128 KiB (128 × 2<supveiled a 16 MiB (16 × 2 bytes) prototype again based on 0.18 µm technology. There are two 2nd generation techniques currently in development: Crocus, Hynix, IBM, and several other companies are working. Nantero built a functioning carbon nanotube memory prototype 1s) array in 2004. Whether some of these technologies will be able to eventually take a significant market share from either DRAM, SRAM, or flash-memory technology, however, remains to be seen.

Since 2006, "solid-state drives" (based on flash memory) with capacities exceeding 256 gigabytevelopment has started to blur the definition between traditional random-access memory and "disks", dramatically reducing the difference in performance.

Some kinds of randeed.

Memory wall

The "memory wall" is the growing disparity of speed between CPU and memory outside the CPU chip. An important reason for this disparity is the limited communication ban]] speed improved at an annual rate of 55% while memory speed only improved at 10%. Given these trends, it was expected that memory latency would become an ove

CPU speed improvements slowed significantly partly due to major physical barriers and partlybecause current CPU designs have already hit the memory wall in some sense. Cite web |title= Platform 2015: Intel® Processor and Platform Evolution for the Next Decade |date= March 2, 2005 |url= http://epic.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/pub/Home/TrendsAndConceptsII2010/HW_Trends_borkar_2015.pdf }}</ref>

“First of all, as chip geometries shrink and clock frequencies rise, the transistor leakage current increases, leading to excess power consumt faster (due to the so-called Von Neumann bottleneck), further undercutting any gains that frequency increases might otherwise buy. In addition, partly due to limitations in the means of producing inductance within solid state devices, resistance-capacitance (RC) delays in signal transmission are growing as feature sizes shrink, imposing an additional bottleneck th

The RC delays in signal transmission were also noted in Clock Rate versus IPC: The Eata on [http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/quickreffam.htm Intel Processors clearly shows a slowdown in performance improvements in recent processors. However, Intel's Core 2 Duo processors (codenamed Conroe) showed a s more efficient architecture, performance increased while clock rate actually decreased.

See also

• Don't see anything, moron

Notes and references

1. Thompson, Chris, "3D printed ban-hammer", Boing Boing, URL retrieved 2009-10-02.
2. Lasky, Michael (2005-05-23). "AT&T's CallVantage: Excellent Phone Service on the Cheap". PC World. IDG. Archived from the original on 2 June 2007. Retrieved 2007-06-07. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
3. "HALO 2 & CHEATING: How does the Bungie "Banhammer" actually work?", Bungie.net, 2005-06-10, URL retrieved 2006-12-29.
4. "Halo 2 and Halo 3 Online Cheaters Get Smashed by Bungie's Banhammer" GamePro, 2006-01-13, URL retrieved 2006-12-29.
5. "Searching For: banhammer", Slashdot.
6. Velvin, Sinder, "Morrowind Easter Eggs", The Imperial Library fansite, URL retrieved 2006-12-29.
7. http://www.tf2items.com/id/gabelogannewell
8. http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218000269
9. "EcoRAM held up as less power-hungry option than DRAM for server farms" by Heather Clancy 2008
10. The term was coined in .

External links

• http://powdertoy.co.uk/Discussions/Categories/Index.html
• http://xkcd.com/110/
• https://www.google.es/
• http://getalife.net/

See also

• Exploit (online gaming)

References

• Internet slang
• Internet memes
• Punishments