If we did the DEC thing and made long be 64 bits, things that use a lot of
   longs would be sluggish on 32 bit machines, but we could offer a
   completely conforming implementation.  (Modulo gcc not producing a warning
   for the occasional constraint, and possibly modulo lazy malloc, if we have
   it.)

huh ?  dec did that because that's what the alpha wants.  netbsd/alpha
has 64 bit longs, for exactly the same reason.  (i'm sure chris will
correct me if i'm wrong  :)

i'd rather have that speed than worry about conforming to some
broken standard.