Yea I totally agree. Within the next few years you won't beable to buy the latest hardware without the DRM "feature". This hardware won't run linux or any unsigned code. Very much like the XBox, but mod chips won't help if they put the DRM in at the chip level.
Stock up on HD's and blank media while you still can!
Sure you will still be able to get hardware wihtout DRM but it will cost 2 or 3 times as much.
DRM also has another selling point, if only signed code will execute that pretty much puts an end to all the virus/worms/adware problems the average users have. MS and the other big companys will push the technology as virus/worm/security protection.
Another thing I see coming is thin clients in big business or anywhere that custom software is needed. Custom software will run on DRM free but expensive mainframe computers. This is taking a step backwards but its the only real solution to Big business' problems with secruity and support. (Insted of lots of PC's where the users can do want they want and there is alots of hardware to fail, their will just be a few mainframe machines and lots of cheap generic thin clients, hardware failours could be handled by mantience/jantors, just swap out the thin client and go)
Everyone has custom ring tones these days. Sitting on the buss you can hear everything from techno to country being played through the tiny 1" or smaller speaker when someone's phone rings.
You know fsck this PC business, cell phones are where the money is at.
Strange, I've found XP to be faster than Linux/KDE on my PII400 laptop with 128Megs of ram. Under linux stuff like scrolling webpage in firefox is rough while under XP it scrolls smoothly. Loading times around around same.
As much as I'm not a MS fan windows XP outproforms linux on the desktop for most task. I've hated win9x and ME but MS really got their act together with 2000, XP and 2003. Except of course on the secuity side. On most machines XP is much faster than 98. There are alot of variables in the HW, some is better supported than others. Playing video under linux with a PII 400 is almost impossible while XP will do it.
Now for servers I'll never trust a microsoft product.
Re:Engineering within limits brings great results
on
Where's My 10 Ghz PC?
·
· Score: 1
Win 95 is the worst example ever of efficent code. The thread is about code from 1985 and older not 1995.
Windows 95 is a prime example of the mentality that creates crappy slow software.
The bottle necks in computing lately haven't been the CPU but the RAM and HD access. The CPU is running at like 4 GHz but its accessing upto 66Mhz PCI bus and up to a ~1Ghz memory bus... Now with the latest chipsets and processors they are improvingt the memory side of thing using wider memory buses and dual channel. Why don't they make multichannel boards? Need a fast machine? Pop in a few cheap 256meg dimms...
Another thing I would like to see them do is to put more than one die in a package so 128megs of cache or high speed ram would be pratical. While we are on this subject why not put the full system in one package hardwired together in one epoxy package. Would make cooling simpler, one big heatsink for video, processor and ram.
We don't need faster clocks speeds, we need wider buses(Athalon 64), faster ram(multichannel?) and more intergration(keeps cost low).
In the mean while I'd love to get a cheap motherboard with more than 3 ram slots.(I know power is a problem with alot of ram)
Another beef is why they still have parallel, RS-232 and PS2 ports on monther boards. USB has finaly reached its potential, lets do away with all the legacy crap, there's lots of adapters on the market for people wanting to use their old stuff. Same goes for PATA, SATA is getting cheap now dump the old crap. This will free up lots of board space so they can make smaller motherboards or add more slots..
Well getting busted for warez is unheard of here in Canada. Someone can only be sued for copyright infringement and most kids have nothing to lose in that respect. Downloading MP3s is pretty much legal.
I've got a little bit of a life going but its still cool to have access to the latest movies and music. Its great having the latest movies in my living room and it makes for a much cheaper date... ($40+ to see a movie, 2x $10 addmission + food + taxi...)
Its not about being the fastest any more for me, its just about having lots of choices and no wait.
You wouldn't really need any trigger/sync logic, that can be easily done in software. The input amplifiers and attenuators wouldn't take much. The tricky part is creating reference signals for calibration.
Most electronics have a DC-DC converter built in these days. MY little linksys wireless router for example runs off a 12vDC wall wort but internally everything is running at 3.3v
Switching regulators are pretty damn effiecent, some text even refer to them as DC transformers. They are also pretty small, ususally just a small 4 or 5 pin device with a few small inductors, resistors and capacitors.
Actually they could require you to register before downloading the torrent. Then they could direct you to a torrent with advertizements for your area or interest. Kind of like google ads for TV. I'd love to see ad's for things I'm interested and no more maxipad and tampon commerials would be great.
Under linux you can't delete system files unless your root and there is no reason to be root on a day to day bases. Unlike windows you can install apps and what not in your home directory.
Windows, while it has improved greatly since the days of 95, 98 and ME. Its still full of security flaws and bugs. Their orginal model for windows is generally flawed and now that they are trying to fix the security problems(XP SP2) everything else is breaking.
One problem I've been running into lately is WinXP's poor handling of multiable soundcards and network interfaces. My motherboard has onboard sound and I have a M-Audio Delta 1010lt proconsumer recording soundcard. Both cards install fine but after a little use windows seems to loose track of what one I have set as default and then says there are none installed when I try to set the default(reinstalling fixed it, but its annoying). I'm having a simlar problem with my NIC's, this motherboard has dual onboard lan, everyonce in a while on port just stops working and then the other one won't detect a cable being plugged in. I've had various other strange happings with the network interfaces.
Well I may not want to watch it again now but in 6 months or next week I'll be bored and I'll want to watch something then and now. No waiting 40min+ to download a tv ep that may not be avaible then. I want a big collection so that when friends come over and want to watch something or listen to a partictular song, I have it right their on the lan and I don't have to spend hours looking for it and then wait for it to download.
Its like having a personal archive of everything produced, no waiting and no searching(Well other than the local lan).
For me its more about having something to entertain my friends with. Nothing makes people lose intrest more than waiting for something to download. Its always great being able to help a friend out by sending them a song or video they are looking for.
Also I got 25 gig or so of music that I haven't listened to yet, most of the bands I've never even heard of. Its all about trying new things, I just gota get the time to go through the collection. I love just loading the entire collection and playing on shuffle. Every song is a new sound and opens my ears to new music. Its like radio except the playlist has more than 20 songs.
Another way to look at this is that if no one had these huge collections the p2p networks would really suck, you wouldn't be able to get anything older that a few days. Everyone would just download and delete, then the media is avaible to no one.
I got a friend who is working on getting every single snes and nes rom. Not only is he downloading every rom he is also playing them long enough to atleast get a good screen shot. Currently he has around 4000 roms and every one has a screen shot. When someone is hanging out at his house he always has a game they played as a kid on his xbox. Four player bomberman for snes seems to be the most popular followed by mario cart.
The PC could basicly just become an ethernet switch that connects the display, input devices(keyboard and mouse), speakers(with built in DAC and amp), and other media devices together. You just login to your ISP's 'mainframe' and your desktop is basicly just a trusted webpage from which you could use a webbroswer to browse to untrusted sites. You should beable to login to the trusted 'mainframe' from any computer anywhere in the world and have all your desktop settings, etc... Once logged in, the trusted 'mainframe' would probe your local network and provide links to your hardware and setup stuff like audio feeds to your speakers. The connection between your hardware and the ISP's mainframe would be only permitted while your logged in.
Ofcourse all this is going to require fiber to the home or atleast to the neighborhood and copper from there. Lots of bandwidth will be needed for realtime loss less audio and video.
This is the only way really to ensure security. Sure we lose the ablity to run our own OS, save media locally, etc... But we gain the abillity to have our documents, media and settings go where ever we do. You will beable to walk up to any computer and instantly have all your custom settings. Ofcourse it all has to have end to end encryption.
All this is quite a few years off yet, maybe google will get things started with their OS.
This thing really is the future of computers. I know alot of geeks don't really want hear that.
There really isn't any need for a large HD, 3d video, fast processor, upgradablity, etc... in an office PC or even a home PC. Something like this little box is all you need. Legacy free, simple, cheap, etc...
The only software an office PC really needs is a webbroswer and all the applications can be webbased. This kind of goes back to the mainframe style computing of the 70's. Current broswers are not really suited for this but you get the idea.
Once standards get alittle more defined there will be no need to upgrade a computer. Things are already leveling off in proformance. Its just the big companys trying to maintain upgrade cycles to keep the revenue streams going thats fueling faster processors.
A PC for the people will just be a small box like this with a few USB ports, maybe USB 3.0 will become the standard. With a simple standardized interface so that no 3rd party drivers will be needed. No internal HD. Lots of ram, OS in rom, most apps will be internet based. This requires alot of future looking standards to be put in place.
If so someone wants todo video editing, the video editing software will run right on the camcorder, they just plug the camcorder into the usb port and go. No need for the video files ever to see the PC. The DVD burner will be built right into the camcorder, this will be pushed by the copyright lobbist. Same goes for music...
If someone wants to Play games they buy a console or play webbased games(kinda like flash games but with 3D maybe). The game console may not connect to the TV, it may just plug into a USB port.
All these changes are going to be fueled by a few things. 1) Copyright, PC's with HD's and burners make media copying to easy. 2) People want simpler computers, the adverage person dosn't want to have to worry about upgrading or installing software or drivers. People want true plug and play. For this to work we need strict standards. 3) Security - If you can't install any software than worms and virus can't install them selfs basicly. Its the only real solution to todays virus/worm/spyware problems. 4) Price - people want cheaper PC's, by removing the drives and other moving parts PC's become cheaper and last longer.
The only place left for us geeks will be on high priced servers where all the web/net based applications are done.
Anyway the target market is the 3rd world but these things are the future of computing. Most people don't require a big bulky, expensive, non-standard PC. A simple box like this is really the solution in offices and schools. Its basicly a low cost thin client.
This box has lots of potential, so why not hack it to its full potential.Kidney dialysis machines are very expensive while you can make a bong out of a free pop bottle. While this box is really cheap and PC's for mobile applications are pretty expensive.
Here in NF, Canada we have problems with gambling addiction and VLT's in the back of bars. The VLT's are goverment regulated cash cow for all parties except the people playing them ofcourse.
Every bar has a few video lottery terminals in the back and they are very accessable for people to use day to day. Rather than going to a big mega casino which usually requires a special trip its right there. And thus it the VLT's are easy to get addicted to.
I've only ever used them once, I put in $2 and pulled out $20 and I haven't used them since. I'm not going to push my luck.
Routing is just L3 switching. But routers typically do more than just route traffic. They do NAT, filtering, traffic shaping, build routing tables, etc...
The lines between a switch and a router have been come blurred and they are quickly becomming the same device as the demand for low latency and high throughput increase.
Traditionally the diffrence between a switch and a router is that a switch is done in hardware and a router is software. The other diffrence is that a switch only uses the L2 headers to decided where the packet should go while routers look at the L3 headers.
Today all high end routers do the packet switching in hardware and have some sort of route processor to build routing tables. High end routes typically don't do NAT.
The way things are going software routers will only be used for things like NAT and all other routing will be done by multilayer switches.
Protocols like MPLS are also going to change the face of routing. Once a packet hits the first core route it will be given a Label and then switched on that label through the backbone until it reaches the core router serving the destination. From a tcp/ip point of view it will look as if there are very few routers in between your host and the desitnation host. ATM sort of dose this today. On a traceroute from here to anywhere on the net it only looks like my ISP has only 3 routers while the packets actually go through 10 or 15 ATM switches.
The products that are targeted by XORP and linux are cisco's 2600, 3600 and even the 7200 serise routers.
Home and small offices are more plug in and go with little configuration. Current generation $79 routers own this market and they are likely to hold it.
The job I see for PC based routers in in enterprise NAT and firewalling. Where you have a few hundred users doing typical task. Not for a network of power users, server farms, backbone or core routing.
Support is going to be the issue, the same problem you have with linux in the enterpise in general.
High end routers are really switches. They have a processor and software for building routing tables and management but the packets never see the processor they only go through a application specfic intergrated circuit(ASIC).
Where XORP and linux based routers come in is in places where you need to use NAT or Filtering, not at the network core where you have high end routers.
Unless some company starts spiting out a cheap L2 to L4 Switching ASIC, highend core routers are going to be expensive and cisco is going to be in business.
Current PC hardware can handle a few 100mbit of typical traffic where as high end routers can handle 40gbit or more.
Then there is stuff like SONET and ATM/POS/MPLS etc... which requires very expensive hardware interfaces. Usually a single card can cost more than a high end cisco router. OC-12 cards are something like $12,000 or more. I can't imagin how much an OC-192 card cost.
For ethernet routers PC's are where its at, but for backbone/core routers you really need hardware L3 switching. Software routers like cisco's 2600, 3600 and 7200 serise are just not worth the money, PC hardware can simple outproform them at a fraction of the cost, for reliablity you can just buy two and have one running as a hot standby.
One thing I see missing is that there is no hot standby software for linux, that montiors the other router and takes over automaticly when the other fails.
You don't need to power the entire system, just the ram and then the CPU long enough to write the internal registers to ram. Then when it powers back up the bios could load the registers from ram back into the CPU and your back to where you left off.
The main problem is usefullness. The Gamecube dosn't have a harddrive or DVD/CD-ROM drive. So there isn't really a simple way to download games and play them on it.
Face it, no one is modding an xbox or ps2 to run linux, 99% of mod chips are being used to play games without buying them. Running linux is just an extra feature.
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Yea I totally agree. Within the next few years you won't beable to buy the latest hardware without the DRM "feature". This hardware won't run linux or any unsigned code. Very much like the XBox, but mod chips won't help if they put the DRM in at the chip level.
Stock up on HD's and blank media while you still can!
Sure you will still be able to get hardware wihtout DRM but it will cost 2 or 3 times as much.
DRM also has another selling point, if only signed code will execute that pretty much puts an end to all the virus/worms/adware problems the average users have. MS and the other big companys will push the technology as virus/worm/security protection.
Another thing I see coming is thin clients in big business or anywhere that custom software is needed. Custom software will run on DRM free but expensive mainframe computers. This is taking a step backwards but its the only real solution to Big business' problems with secruity and support. (Insted of lots of PC's where the users can do want they want and there is alots of hardware to fail, their will just be a few mainframe machines and lots of cheap generic thin clients, hardware failours could be handled by mantience/jantors, just swap out the thin client and go)
Man you don't go out much do you?
Everyone has custom ring tones these days. Sitting on the buss you can hear everything from techno to country being played through the tiny 1" or smaller speaker when someone's phone rings.
You know fsck this PC business, cell phones are where the money is at.
Strange, I've found XP to be faster than Linux/KDE on my PII400 laptop with 128Megs of ram. Under linux stuff like scrolling webpage in firefox is rough while under XP it scrolls smoothly. Loading times around around same.
As much as I'm not a MS fan windows XP outproforms linux on the desktop for most task. I've hated win9x and ME but MS really got their act together with 2000, XP and 2003. Except of course on the secuity side. On most machines XP is much faster than 98. There are alot of variables in the HW, some is better supported than others. Playing video under linux with a PII 400 is almost impossible while XP will do it.
Now for servers I'll never trust a microsoft product.
Win 95 is the worst example ever of efficent code. The thread is about code from 1985 and older not 1995.
Windows 95 is a prime example of the mentality that creates crappy slow software.
Yea you hit the nail on the head here.
The bottle necks in computing lately haven't been the CPU but the RAM and HD access. The CPU is running at like 4 GHz but its accessing upto 66Mhz PCI bus and up to a ~1Ghz memory bus... Now with the latest chipsets and processors they are improvingt the memory side of thing using wider memory buses and dual channel. Why don't they make multichannel boards? Need a fast machine? Pop in a few cheap 256meg dimms...
Another thing I would like to see them do is to put more than one die in a package so 128megs of cache or high speed ram would be pratical. While we are on this subject why not put the full system in one package hardwired together in one epoxy package. Would make cooling simpler, one big heatsink for video, processor and ram.
We don't need faster clocks speeds, we need wider buses(Athalon 64), faster ram(multichannel?) and more intergration(keeps cost low).
In the mean while I'd love to get a cheap motherboard with more than 3 ram slots.(I know power is a problem with alot of ram)
Another beef is why they still have parallel, RS-232 and PS2 ports on monther boards. USB has finaly reached its potential, lets do away with all the legacy crap, there's lots of adapters on the market for people wanting to use their old stuff. Same goes for PATA, SATA is getting cheap now dump the old crap. This will free up lots of board space so they can make smaller motherboards or add more slots..
[/rant]
Well getting busted for warez is unheard of here in Canada. Someone can only be sued for copyright infringement and most kids have nothing to lose in that respect. Downloading MP3s is pretty much legal.
I've got a little bit of a life going but its still cool to have access to the latest movies and music. Its great having the latest movies in my living room and it makes for a much cheaper date... ($40+ to see a movie, 2x $10 addmission + food + taxi...)
Its not about being the fastest any more for me, its just about having lots of choices and no wait.
You wouldn't really need any trigger/sync logic, that can be easily done in software. The input amplifiers and attenuators wouldn't take much. The tricky part is creating reference signals for calibration.
Most electronics have a DC-DC converter built in these days. MY little linksys wireless router for example runs off a 12vDC wall wort but internally everything is running at 3.3v
Switching regulators are pretty damn effiecent, some text even refer to them as DC transformers. They are also pretty small, ususally just a small 4 or 5 pin device with a few small inductors, resistors and capacitors.
Actually they could require you to register before downloading the torrent. Then they could direct you to a torrent with advertizements for your area or interest. Kind of like google ads for TV. I'd love to see ad's for things I'm interested and no more maxipad and tampon commerials would be great.
Under linux you can't delete system files unless your root and there is no reason to be root on a day to day bases. Unlike windows you can install apps and what not in your home directory.
Windows, while it has improved greatly since the days of 95, 98 and ME. Its still full of security flaws and bugs. Their orginal model for windows is generally flawed and now that they are trying to fix the security problems(XP SP2) everything else is breaking.
One problem I've been running into lately is WinXP's poor handling of multiable soundcards and network interfaces. My motherboard has onboard sound and I have a M-Audio Delta 1010lt proconsumer recording soundcard. Both cards install fine but after a little use windows seems to loose track of what one I have set as default and then says there are none installed when I try to set the default(reinstalling fixed it, but its annoying). I'm having a simlar problem with my NIC's, this motherboard has dual onboard lan, everyonce in a while on port just stops working and then the other one won't detect a cable being plugged in. I've had various other strange happings with the network interfaces.
I think you have a point here. Linux needs to become more standardized. We need a unified package system and a standard UI/window manager/toolkit.
KDE and Gnome are too bloated, we need a simpler standard.
Well I may not want to watch it again now but in 6 months or next week I'll be bored and I'll want to watch something then and now. No waiting 40min+ to download a tv ep that may not be avaible then. I want a big collection so that when friends come over and want to watch something or listen to a partictular song, I have it right their on the lan and I don't have to spend hours looking for it and then wait for it to download.
Its like having a personal archive of everything produced, no waiting and no searching(Well other than the local lan).
For me its more about having something to entertain my friends with. Nothing makes people lose intrest more than waiting for something to download. Its always great being able to help a friend out by sending them a song or video they are looking for.
Also I got 25 gig or so of music that I haven't listened to yet, most of the bands I've never even heard of. Its all about trying new things, I just gota get the time to go through the collection. I love just loading the entire collection and playing on shuffle. Every song is a new sound and opens my ears to new music. Its like radio except the playlist has more than 20 songs.
Another way to look at this is that if no one had these huge collections the p2p networks would really suck, you wouldn't be able to get anything older that a few days. Everyone would just download and delete, then the media is avaible to no one.
I got a friend who is working on getting every single snes and nes rom. Not only is he downloading every rom he is also playing them long enough to atleast get a good screen shot. Currently he has around 4000 roms and every one has a screen shot. When someone is hanging out at his house he always has a game they played as a kid on his xbox. Four player bomberman for snes seems to be the most popular followed by mario cart.
Alittle more to add to this rant...
The PC could basicly just become an ethernet switch that connects the display, input devices(keyboard and mouse), speakers(with built in DAC and amp), and other media devices together. You just login to your ISP's 'mainframe' and your desktop is basicly just a trusted webpage from which you could use a webbroswer to browse to untrusted sites. You should beable to login to the trusted 'mainframe' from any computer anywhere in the world and have all your desktop settings, etc... Once logged in, the trusted 'mainframe' would probe your local network and provide links to your hardware and setup stuff like audio feeds to your speakers. The connection between your hardware and the ISP's mainframe would be only permitted while your logged in.
Ofcourse all this is going to require fiber to the home or atleast to the neighborhood and copper from there. Lots of bandwidth will be needed for realtime loss less audio and video.
This is the only way really to ensure security. Sure we lose the ablity to run our own OS, save media locally, etc... But we gain the abillity to have our documents, media and settings go where ever we do. You will beable to walk up to any computer and instantly have all your custom settings. Ofcourse it all has to have end to end encryption.
All this is quite a few years off yet, maybe google will get things started with their OS.
This thing really is the future of computers. I know alot of geeks don't really want hear that.
There really isn't any need for a large HD, 3d video, fast processor, upgradablity, etc... in an office PC or even a home PC. Something like this little box is all you need. Legacy free, simple, cheap, etc...
The only software an office PC really needs is a webbroswer and all the applications can be webbased. This kind of goes back to the mainframe style computing of the 70's. Current broswers are not really suited for this but you get the idea.
Once standards get alittle more defined there will be no need to upgrade a computer. Things are already leveling off in proformance. Its just the big companys trying to maintain upgrade cycles to keep the revenue streams going thats fueling faster processors.
A PC for the people will just be a small box like this with a few USB ports, maybe USB 3.0 will become the standard. With a simple standardized interface so that no 3rd party drivers will be needed. No internal HD. Lots of ram, OS in rom, most apps will be internet based. This requires alot of future looking standards to be put in place.
If so someone wants todo video editing, the video editing software will run right on the camcorder, they just plug the camcorder into the usb port and go. No need for the video files ever to see the PC. The DVD burner will be built right into the camcorder, this will be pushed by the copyright lobbist. Same goes for music...
If someone wants to Play games they buy a console or play webbased games(kinda like flash games but with 3D maybe). The game console may not connect to the TV, it may just plug into a USB port.
All these changes are going to be fueled by a few things.
1) Copyright, PC's with HD's and burners make media copying to easy.
2) People want simpler computers, the adverage person dosn't want to have to worry about upgrading or installing software or drivers. People want true plug and play. For this to work we need strict standards.
3) Security - If you can't install any software than worms and virus can't install them selfs basicly. Its the only real solution to todays virus/worm/spyware problems.
4) Price - people want cheaper PC's, by removing the drives and other moving parts PC's become cheaper and last longer.
The only place left for us geeks will be on high priced servers where all the web/net based applications are done.
Students are poor people!
Anyway the target market is the 3rd world but these things are the future of computing. Most people don't require a big bulky, expensive, non-standard PC. A simple box like this is really the solution in offices and schools. Its basicly a low cost thin client.
This box has lots of potential, so why not hack it to its full potential.Kidney dialysis machines are very expensive while you can make a bong out of a free pop bottle. While this box is really cheap and PC's for mobile applications are pretty expensive.
You don't cache to disk, you just cache to ram. Really all you want todo is boot from the flash and then run from the lan.
Depends on the application, for electronics and engineering PIC's and 68HC11's are where its at. Its all about the timer interrups.
Here in NF, Canada we have problems with gambling addiction and VLT's in the back of bars. The VLT's are goverment regulated cash cow for all parties except the people playing them ofcourse.
Every bar has a few video lottery terminals in the back and they are very accessable for people to use day to day. Rather than going to a big mega casino which usually requires a special trip its right there. And thus it the VLT's are easy to get addicted to.
I've only ever used them once, I put in $2 and pulled out $20 and I haven't used them since. I'm not going to push my luck.
Routing is just L3 switching. But routers typically do more than just route traffic. They do NAT, filtering, traffic shaping, build routing tables, etc...
The lines between a switch and a router have been come blurred and they are quickly becomming the same device as the demand for low latency and high throughput increase.
Traditionally the diffrence between a switch and a router is that a switch is done in hardware and a router is software. The other diffrence is that a switch only uses the L2 headers to decided where the packet should go while routers look at the L3 headers.
Today all high end routers do the packet switching in hardware and have some sort of route processor to build routing tables. High end routes typically don't do NAT.
The way things are going software routers will only be used for things like NAT and all other routing will be done by multilayer switches.
Protocols like MPLS are also going to change the face of routing. Once a packet hits the first core route it will be given a Label and then switched on that label through the backbone until it reaches the core router serving the destination. From a tcp/ip point of view it will look as if there are very few routers in between your host and the desitnation host. ATM sort of dose this today. On a traceroute from here to anywhere on the net it only looks like my ISP has only 3 routers while the packets actually go through 10 or 15 ATM switches.
The products that are targeted by XORP and linux are cisco's 2600, 3600 and even the 7200 serise routers.
Home and small offices are more plug in and go with little configuration. Current generation $79 routers own this market and they are likely to hold it.
The job I see for PC based routers in in enterprise NAT and firewalling. Where you have a few hundred users doing typical task. Not for a network of power users, server farms, backbone or core routing.
Support is going to be the issue, the same problem you have with linux in the enterpise in general.
High end routers are really switches. They have a processor and software for building routing tables and management but the packets never see the processor they only go through a application specfic intergrated circuit(ASIC).
Where XORP and linux based routers come in is in places where you need to use NAT or Filtering, not at the network core where you have high end routers.
Unless some company starts spiting out a cheap L2 to L4 Switching ASIC, highend core routers are going to be expensive and cisco is going to be in business.
Current PC hardware can handle a few 100mbit of typical traffic where as high end routers can handle 40gbit or more.
Then there is stuff like SONET and ATM/POS/MPLS etc... which requires very expensive hardware interfaces. Usually a single card can cost more than a high end cisco router. OC-12 cards are something like $12,000 or more. I can't imagin how much an OC-192 card cost.
For ethernet routers PC's are where its at, but for backbone/core routers you really need hardware L3 switching. Software routers like cisco's 2600, 3600 and 7200 serise are just not worth the money, PC hardware can simple outproform them at a fraction of the cost, for reliablity you can just buy two and have one running as a hot standby.
One thing I see missing is that there is no hot standby software for linux, that montiors the other router and takes over automaticly when the other fails.
You don't need to power the entire system, just the ram and then the CPU long enough to write the internal registers to ram. Then when it powers back up the bios could load the registers from ram back into the CPU and your back to where you left off.
People mod the xbox and ps2 console to play games without buying them. Running 3rd party software is just an extra.
The main problem is usefullness. The Gamecube dosn't have a harddrive or DVD/CD-ROM drive. So there isn't really a simple way to download games and play them on it.
Face it, no one is modding an xbox or ps2 to run linux, 99% of mod chips are being used to play games without buying them. Running linux is just an extra feature.