GigsVT, I've modded you up enough times to respect your opinion.
If you can honestly look at this picture and tell me that the blur that stretches all the way into the computer monitor is part of the lego case, I'll believe you.
Admittedly, looking at this picture, it appears that the lock on the display case is not blurred, supporting your theory, and maybe that first picture is because they reduced the size/aspect ratio of the RAID array, but not the plexiglass/glass.
The root of my question, I suppose, is why is the front of the array semi-transparent? Is there a censored joke in there? Some sort of concern about light patterns? Perhaps it was just the material that was available at the time. Whether it's Photoshop or a diffusing sheet isn't really the source of my curiosity.
Sorry if this has been posted, but I see a whole bunch of people chastising you for using cleartext AIM, recommending ssh. I personally know of several situations where ssh is not an option, but AIM is.
If it's an option, I suggest using a public key signing at the minimum, best bet would be public key encryption. If a person would be able to take a java applet (or command lines, or GUI, or morse code on the mouse button(s)...) to take the text to send -- commands, passwords, etc., GPG sign or encrypt and spit out what to paste into the AIM window, that may provide security for the server and (only slightly less) usability for the client. Additionally, the server may be able to do the same, so if you could paste the encrypted/signed server text into another application, you'd be able to have more security for what the client sees as well.
This is only worth a damn if you can trust the server and the client. If you can't, you'd be best listening to the 50+ people telling you you're crazy.
Okay, the financer in me just jumped out. That's what I get for taking MBA classes on my way through the Masters of Engineering.
So, there you are, with $20k of credit card debt and, say, $30k of cash. Hey, you do save more than you spend, right? Since you're going to be living off a 2-4 unit apartment building, you're obviously very frugal, so you have been saving up this cash and debt for 2-4 years. (My wife and I took advantage of Fleet's 0.0% intro APR and put the money in a savings account to earn credit card interest for us for once-- it took a year to get $10k debt-- still not the $15k limit-- and paid it off.) The frugal life isn't for everybody. Sounds to me like this guy wants something this side of 2-4 years. Anyway.
Let's assume that you buy a duplex -- not a 2 unit apartment building, but easily found. Say you pay $150k for it (it's run down, but it's good enough). Put $20k down, keep the rest for incidentals like when the water heater bursts (they only last ~10 years these days), or replacing the roof, or whatever. Your mortgage payment alone will be ~$385/month. Assume another 4% property tax amortized over the year, and that's $500/month. This means, to break even, each unit of your duplex needs to bring in around $445/month to break even, assuming minimal upkeep and 0% vacancy. More likely, upkeep will be $100/month (many months without, some day a huge disaster will hit) and it'll be vacant for 1 month out of a year. Given all these assumptions, you're looking at $595/month to do a little better than break even on the duplex. We're talking cash flow, not ROI.
Most credit cards that I know of require between 2-3% minimum payment each month. Typically closer to the 3% at the beginning, and working like a ln() function down to 2%. Even at 2%, that's $400/month on the credit card. To keep the duplex above with positive cash flow, that's another $400/month. Of course, interest on that credit card will be almost $200/month, so paying the bloody thing off at the minimum rate will take a VERY long time. 8 years out, you're still paying $126.56/month as a minimum payment on your $6330 balance. Of course, real smart people can bounce from credit card to credit card to get 5.9% to 3.9% for a year or two, then the 1.9%-0.0% intro rates come in. But, even with a kind APR, you're still getting nailled for minimum balance.
Add it all up. At the beginning, you're paying $200/month on the credit card, $500/month on property tax (better rates can be found, as can worse, depends on the area) and $385/month on mortgage (we're skipping PMI for the sake of argument-- but that's likely another $100/month if you don't qualify to skip it). Divide it all by two, and your expenses are $543/month. How much rent do you expect for half a duplex? Most places, you can expect $500-$700. At best, you'd make $150/month for each unit.
$3600/year isn't anything to scoff at, but now you need to find a place to live and food to eat. Perhaps using credit card debt to fund a propterty investment isn't the best idea.
My math may be wrong, but for your $30k initial cash investment, I'm figuring you're going to make $3600/$30000 = 0.12 APR. Bonds do better. Hell, my savings account does better. Of course, property investment can have significant income tax advantages, don't get me wrong, but a first, incomplete pass suggests one thing. Take a little longer, skip the credit card debt part.
It's 9:00 in the morning on a Saturday, so if I've made any mistakes, please forgive me.
I argue that SCSI is what's trying to change what RAID originally stood for -- Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks -- to something different -- Redundant Array of Independant Disks. Sure, high end servers will use RAID and SCSI, Fibre, etc., but when RAID came on the scene, it was to enable people to make servers more cheaply than more novel, more reliable technologies. Inexpensive meant that the disks themselves were fairly cheap, and you could get the performance and reliability of a larger more novel disk by using several cheaper ones.
My whole point is this: RAID, as it was originally defined, no longer has value if drives are expected to last only a year (or warranties as short as 90 days as I've actually seen in some places). You'd spend so much time swapping out drives, you really SHOULD use more expensive disks. But what of the low end server people? Sure, if you want quality, you pay for quality, but RAID/IDE combinations once meant you could trade some "cheap" labor for some quality.
As an aside, any conspiracy theorists want to tie XP licensing/fingerprinting to shorter IDE lifetimes?
If they reduce the warranty to 1 year, they have reduced their overhead, hence the cheaper cost to us to buy them.
Fae it, we live in a throw away society. We want it cheap, and now.
I don't know how many people I speak for, but I know I speak for my friends. I don't "want it cheap, and now", I want it inexpensive and when it's reliable. I'm the kind of person who would spend a few bucks more and buy the Apple computer, the Sony TV and compact fluorescent light bulbs for my home.
Obviously, I'm not in the majority, but I don't particularly care for the heat of SCSI hard drives in lore, and all my current equipment has IDE (with longer warranties). I want a high end "prosumer" IDE hard drive with a 5 year warranty. It may or may not be in use the whole 5 years, but I certainly want it to be my choice. If that means I don't get terrabytes of storage, that's okay. I don't honestly have much of a use beyond 10GB anyway. If I wanted terrabytes of storage, I'd get a tape drive. If I wanted high speed, I'd get a SCSI drive and adapter. Cheap, low power, modest speeds and high reliability are what make IDE worthwhile. Isn't it IDE that puts the I in the Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks?
I'm not a karma whore with ready-made "Insightful +1" link-laden posts sitting around, but I'd like to offer an unfounded observation.
Is it just me, or have we been seeing a lot of these types of announcements lately? There was this whole "Lindows" thing at Wal-Mart. Gateway moving to Corel. Didn't Dell (or Compaq or somebody) do the same thing a few months ago? And just before that (weeks?), didn't another of the big boys move to Open Office? I know the answer to those questions is "Google", but I'm no search string guru (Another topic is that I can type in what I think is intuitive for Google, and get nothing but junk, but fellow/.ers can find what they want by hitting the "I feel lucky" button).
In the beginning, the PC world was filled with choice. There was Dos, DrDos and a few clones like that, and they shipped with new computers. Then, there were multi-tasking shells (Quemm? Windows, Norton system commander?), and they shipped with new machines. Word, Word Perfect, Word Star, etc. shipped with new machines, too. Was it Windows 95 that ended the diversity? Or had Office been the de facto before that?
I'm wondering if perhaps the Justice Department thing may end up bringing some diversity back to a previously-diverse world. Not that I think the ruling will be anything to speak of, but rather a warning shot that lets the independant vendors go with other products without (much) fear of retribution. Or is this just noise in the grand scheme of things, and ammunition for M$ to scream, "Look, they chose to go with other vendors, then came back to us for superior products!"?
This reminds me of my college years. When I was a senior, a few things had happened to me-- among them was learning the value of silence and respect. Maturity was not one of them.
I had this neighbor, a sophomore, who exercised his free speech rights (on private property on the campus of a private school) by putting vulgarities, profanities, artwork (I've seen similar art and links to such moderated as trolls here, to give you the idea) on his door. And, he had the idea that, as long as his door was closed, his stereo could be as loud as he wanted. The stereo at 3am on a school night was too much for me.
One day, I had suffered the last time asking him to turn his stereo down and having him turn it up another notch and ask if THAT was better. Bastard had a friend who would watch out for campus security coming over to get him to turn it down and it would be quiet 100% of the time they came by. I figured out the IP of his "stereo". With my lack of maturity, limited experience of Linux and hatred of my neighbor, I found the site www.rootprompt.org and the ability to silence my neighbor.
From then on, the only way for him to know his stereo was too loud was a BSOD. His temper tantrums were louder than the music, but for a 2 minute screaming session I would get 2 hours of silence. A while:; do loop helped me get the sleep I needed finals week.
That is the wrong way to think about it. You are asking yourself if it is worth something to commit a crime. What you should be asking yourself is, if what you are doing is fundamentally wrong. If it is (and I would say that it is) then stop doing it.
I wonder how fast his lawyer can type, or if his lawyer just dictates slashdot responses to his secretary.
I'm married, have a paid-for car, a good job, and share a house with the bank. I've got responsibilities. At this point, I'm using 100% paid for (or free or Free) software. Please allow that fact to color my response.
Everything in life is a cost-benefit analysis. Sure, the MBA people will tell you they came up with it, and they're the only people who truly understand how it works, and now I wonder if they're right. There's a risk in driving to work every day. Is it right? Well, it puts money in the grubby hands of a greedy corporation that cars about the environment to the extent required by the EPA. I could get killed. Therefore I shouldn't drive? Certainly are downsides to working, not to mention risks. Flying home for Christmas to visit the in-laws? Well, that involves the pollution of the airplane, more money in the hands of terrorist supporting oil barons, and again, that risk of death on my part.
Everything in life is a trade-off. Just sticking with what's right isn't enough -- few things are inherantly right. Just sticking with what's legislated isn't right. Now, say I am interviewing students for a job that involves using windows on a daily basis. I'll choose the candidate who pirated windows to get practice over the candidate who did the "right thing" and has honestly never seen windows because he can't afford it. Explain to me what is right there? Those who are too poor to "do right" shouldn't take risks?
Take a survey of college students. Some will certainly agree, but many won't. Don't bother asking attorneys, or people worried about their next parole board, but ask people with little money and a great concern for their futures.
Now, back to Mr. Tresco's situation. Is it "right" to hijack Institute computers to violate copyrights? One could easily argue the "Robin Hood" perspective; less easily, one could attempt to learn how much software enters MIT illegally then compute a net flow.
Let's assume that Mr. Tresco, or someone like him, is single, and has very few obligations. What's the risk??? Get caught, stripped of your job, sent to jail for almost 3 years. No freedom. Potentially unkind things happen there. If done well, someone could take advantage of the free room and board, earn a GED, BA or BS, and put together an outline on your experiences and sell the book/movie rights on how you're a better person. There are a lot of people out here for whom jail is not a punishment, but rather a new place to live with new opportunities. "What's right" is for the ethicists. Cost benefit analysis for the rest of us.
Clean record, time with my wife, commute to work for me, please.
You mean "33rd" birthday, and "not yet"...
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Slashdot Turns 5
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· Score: 2
By my calculations, Slashdot will be turning 33 In a few months.
Seriously, thanks for the waste of time. I mean that. My boss on the other hand...
Re:G4 800 faster than Athlon 2Ghz?!
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RC5-64 Success
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Am I missing something here? Are they claiming the 800mhz G4 is over 1.4 times as fast as an Athlon 2ghz??
You're not missing anything. For some coursework when I was in school, I ended up sending some e-mail to the dnet staff. I mentioned that I needed to design a processor on an FPGA for a class, and asked what would be "ideal". They basically said, "Take Motorola's 7400 specs, that's the ideal processor."
The Velocity Engine / AltiVec / VMX engine really was good at processing multiple keys (2?) simultaneously, and conducting the XOR rotates in record clock cycles (if I remember correctly). The processor architecture itself is mostly 1993 technology (PowerPC 603), but the vector engine is what makes it worth its weight in sand for some specific tasks.
My statement:Inexperienced teenagers (a large subset of all teenagers) and newbies are unable to refute your statement that Linux is as bad as Windows
Kiwimate:I'm sorry, but I couldn't let this one go. The original poster didn't make such a statement. Not even such an inference. The post, instead, merely pointed out the hypocrisy demonstrated by the attitudes described.
And it was correct.
If I have misinterpreted CTRamsden's original intent of the statement that, [when faced with vulnerabilities, the open-source community responded with] "Windows still sux..." [paraphrasing, hopefully not too liberally], please forgive me, and I will ask for kiwimate to accept my thanks for pointing out a misinterpretation.
I have seen too many people equate the vocal non-coding, quick to criticise Microsoft Slashdot subgroup as characteristic of the entire open source movement. I think it's very important to remember and recognize that those people are out there -- but equally important to understand that others are out there who accept criticism as constructive.
I find it terribly amusing how for years the open-source community has used the larger number of holes found in Windows systems as one of their arguments against it. Yet now when the open-source community is also plagued with the same thing the comments tend to be along the line of 'Windows still sux.' and 'Do you know how much you're hurting the open-source movement? Please stop.'
I am the administrator for two Linux servers, a Slackware 7.0 box and a Debian Woody box. I'm scared that I'll get rooted again, but do you know what I'm thinking anyway? "Bring it on." Let these worms propagate, let some publicity get out, and let the patches come. They will come, just as they always have. I'll be a wget %1;upgradepkg %1 or apt-get update;apt-get upgrade away from being back up to speed.
The open-source community, contrary to your assertion, has for years said two things 1) Lazy admins risk getting hacked and 2) Open source patches flow more freely than closed source ones. I don't think the number of holes against NT 4.0 (for example) is criticised, but rather the length of time between exploit and patch-- the criticism is of the number of documented, unpatched holes. If you show me a list of documented, unpatched holes, I'll show you a mailing list / IRC channel / news group that just found a list of things to do for the afternoon. Inexperienced teenagers (a large subset of all teenagers) and newbies are unable to refute your statement that Linux is as bad as Windows and resort to childish retorts and pleas for silence.
Bring it on, hackers, help us audit the code. Win prestige for you, win a better OS for us.
Actually, I'm seriously interested in buying a product that merges my wallet and my cellphone.
Maybe I'm the only slashdotter here who has to say this, but my wallet doesn't exactly smell like roses. I'm not saying it's because I sit on it 10 hours a day, or that it's because of the god-only-knows-where-it's-been money, but it's not something I want to keep by my face for the length of a phone call. Unless it means winning a prize.
I am a lighting product engineer for GE, and our new 'RealLight'(tm) bulbs are very good for this type of lighting. Also, you'd be patronizing a fellow/.er:-))
Patronizing mode on. Since you're new here, we typically post a link whenver possible. Especially if our employers use websites that require Java to successfully navigate ("Mouse over for more information" is not acceptable). I'm not dogging you for working for a mega-corp, just that if you expect someone to look at what you're doing (and believe me, I was interested for 7-8 minutes), you need to help us out. I'm not familiar with all your product lines, you will undoubtedly be more efficient navigating them and pointing out the wonderful fruits of your labor. 5 minutes of your time finding the product you recommend, whose sale inflates your paychecks/ bonuses, are 5 minutes that 50 or more people here won't have to spend. Patronizing mode off**
I don't use Java -- the most obnoxious non-stop moving, color cycling ads that are so distracting that I can't read the text are flash -- which won't show up on my machine with Java and Javascript disabled.
I don't understand why a bunch of people want to run OS X anyway. It's proprietary and completely closed source. If you're a serious graphics designer, sure, I can see your reason for wanting OS X.
But, slashdot geeks... I can't understand why they'd want something that removes all kinds of ability to tinker and has a shitty EULA. The OS may be a step up from Windows, but the EULA is almost as shitty.
I'm a/. geek. I'm here running Moz 1.1 on my OSX 10.2 dual G4 500. I love this machine. I ran OS/2 and NT for years. When I didn't have the hardware for a decent machine, I put Linux on it and got a few extra miles. Last year, I was the recipient of a used Mac, the mecca of my class of geek. What did I want? I wanted UNIX class stability and speed (and that familiar command line from 7 years of *nix use). I wanted main stream apps, natively.
To me, a non-programmer sort, Linux adds little value. There's some geek value I can pretend to have when I apt-get the Debian box under my control, or wget/make config/make install my Slackware server, but there's something great to running Office, Starcraft/Warcraft, Bloatus Notes and then drop to a shell that uses sane commands (ipconfig, ls, etc.). And if there's an update, Software Update takes care of that for me.
Oh, and I don't care about an EULA. Like the rest of America, I just click through and never read them.
"(...) to create a plane that might be simple to build and maintain, would be reliable, would produce no emissions, and would be inherently quiet."
... and would not blow up a building if it ever hits one.
You must mean that the airplane with the long extension cord (i.e. not covered by this story) would have that ability. Or, you're suggesting that these batteries and fuel cells be replaced by an inert substance. I see a Nobel prize for the first guy who can store energy (not kinetic, and not height delta potential) in an inert substance. Don't we get this power from a chemical reaction?
Not to mention that the narrow end of the fin contacting the substrate decreases channel/substrate leakage. This is a VERY cute idea. It probably can get better density, too, as it gets developed further.
Now, with additional gate surface area, we'll have LOTS of gate leakage to look forward to!
For your best media coverage in the US, please turn to listener supported NPR. Here in Austin, TX, I have the impression that Clearchannel is taking a day to build a brand name. NPR is doing what they always do, trying to represent as best as they can the events that happen.
Save bandwidth. Listen to the radio. Or, if you're at work and can't get radio reception (like me), their live program stream is available in Quicktime,
Real, or Windows Media. Politics aside, most people's computers can handle one of those programs.
Their online coverage is available here,
and their program schedule is here. Please note that all times are in Eastern time.
Hmmmm, how much money could be saved in mass marketing if replaced with the word of
mouth die hard big file swapers?
I'm a regular/. reader, typically munching through most of my pre-allocated 15 ad-free comment views per day of my subscription. I'm pretty die-hard geek; you have to be to do what I do at work (which I can't publically discuss until 2005, sadly). My wife is the only other real die-hard geek I know of at this point, and she's not into this whole file sharing thing either. I've been known to turn to Gnutella to snag a file instead of unpacking my CDs from my move. With a collection of 500+, unpacking and organizing each time we move is a chore. If I have a copy, I figure it's legal. Enough background. You know where I'm coming from. Suffice it to say that I've not ready any Tolkein novels after The Hobbit because of how much time I've spent on the computer.
I've never downloaded a cinema feature, whether or not I've owned it (how long would it take to squeeze through my horridly capped cable modem?). I sure won't download Twin Towers, and because of my limited exposure to other file sharing folk, I wouldn't even know it was coming out if it weren't for the expensive mass marketing you propose to eliminate. Sure, I'd read on/. about how this was the first movie to skip the expensive advertising campaign, but I likely wouldn't hear about the second.
P2P people tend to have an over-inflated view of themselves and the impact of their sub-culture. My unsupported personal belief is that the RIAA/MPAA heard of this P2P thing, how easy it was and how many download starts happened. They didn't bother to investigate how many of those were first-starts or how many were re-starts because of a failed download. Certainly the P2P generation is having an impact on the entertainment industry, but I don't think that it's as significant as everyone estimates. There was a time when everyone at work was checking it out, but strangely they don't have computers where they play music. Do normal lay-people have MP3 decoders in their cars, entertainment centers or work-out class sports walkmans yet? All that I know ended up listening to their pirated songs once or twice and then junking them, having investigated the novelty and realizing how much hard drive space they used up in the endeavor. Nobody I know of has the patience for the expected quality of a cinema feature download.
I know there are some people who go for the alternative side. We certainly like to try to spend our money in ways that have the most benefit.
The principle behind the diamond is to symbolize your commitment. You're telling her that you want to spend the rest of your life with her. Resale value? Are you sure that marriage is the right next step? Perhaps there are some more conversations to have.
I've been proudly and happily married to the love of my life for almost 2 years.
Better quality diamonds are able to be man made for cheaper. But, a good jeweler won't serve them. Volunteer to make up for your conscience. Show your love by finding a good jeweler, being honest, and buying what she deserves. First, find out why you're worrying about resale value and take care of it.
Ignore time value of money? Okay, giant leap of faith that is utterly bizarre and wholy unrealistic.
Well, if I didn't ignore the time value of money, then I'd have to pay attention to the time value of the ecosystem, which would force me to get into what parts of the ecosystem I care about (just life continuing on earth until well after the sun burns out, or human kind as we know it continuing with its current lifestyles?). That's just a can of worms that I'll just stay out of.
Then, of course, there would be the cash flow fanatics, who don't really care what kind of ROI they have as long as they can borrow like mad from the bank and pay themselves along the way. Of course, there are intricate workings to make that profitable, but I've not studied it well enough to defend myself there. The solar thing would be a fixed cost up front, and at that point never require cash to keep up; depending on the state, it could generate some, too.
Ignoring the time value of money is not like you say, utterly bizarre and wholly unrealistic, it's an assumption like any engineer has to make every day. There are some faults, but some simplifications to be gained.
Are you sure your wife's stock options are worth anything? Toilet paper is remarkably cheap.
I'm sure they're worth something, but not enough to retire on. Had she had them vested three years ago, we probably wouldn't have been able to retire, but we sure would be better off.
For those unfamiliar with Home Power, this is a typical article from them. Their typical monthly magazine has an article about "Solar Guirrilas", or people who decide to put up solar panels, plug them into the "grid" (municipal power supply) and not get the permits for it. They also toss in a "I use solar panels and/or a wind turbine to make 10-100% of my own power, using/shunning batteries in the process" article that makes one think that such a thing is so great, why doesn't everybody do it? (The answer is in a very attractive tabular form that has a dollar figure at the bottom.) Recently, although I don't think it's always, they have had an article on how easy it is to convert your existing car to an electric one. As near as I can tell, it's a thinly veilled advertisement for one of their sponsors (and possibly an editor, sheesh I wish I remembered why I suspected that).
Okay, cynicism aside, because that's what slashdot's all about, Home Power is actually one of my favorite magazines. They help me think about what I can do in my day to day life that may have an impact on the environment. I'm not likely to blow $20k on solar panels on my roof, not likely to get a wind turbine that always needs maintenance during the worst times even after I get approval from my homeowner's association, and I'm not even likely to convert my car into a $3k worth of batteries beast that maxes out at 65mph. I did, however, convert all my light bulbs to fluorescent and blew the $20 on the programmable thermostats. I'm even considering one of those insulating spreads that you wrap around the water heaters. Now if I could blow $4k on my car and make it a battery driven beast that could handke 85 as I commute down Parmer Lane in Austin...
I dream of, one day when I'm rich off of my wife's stock options, building a house with solar panels on the roof and maybe a pretty, whirring wind turbine in the back yard while I contribute to urban sprawl.
To pre-emptively strike against a good slashdot myth, yes, solar panels will pay for themselves. They earn back the energy that it took to make them (and start to net negative CO2) after 1-3 years of operation, depending on if you're in California/Arizona or Vermont, and if you ignore the time value of money, can earn their dollar cost back in 10-20 years, depending on costs, location and care.
Which industry would that be? The gaming industry is slowing down as far as graphics go.
Hi, FortKnox, I'd like to disagree with your "marked words". I'd say that anything that dramatically increases the performance of graphical gaming will be welcome. I grew up playing PC-Man, Friendlyware PC Arcade and other ASCII games. I eventually progressed to Doom, to Quake (by way of Heretic, which I liked more than my friends). On opening day, I bought Warcraft III. Turns out my 16 meg Radeon doesn't play it perfectly smoothly, so I may end up buying a new video card by the end of the year for my dual G4. In my case, the vid card is clearly the bottleneck.
People have been talking a deal over the years about how consumers don't want anything prettier (or won't notice), they're happy with what they have. Game play is what's important. Don't try to tell me that Myst was more than an eye candy excuse. Sure, consumers are happy with what they have now, but it turns out that pretty is what sells in the stores -- nobody wants to read a novella describing "game play", they want to see screenshots!
I'm rambling, but I think that these new video cards aren't going to be this big explosion that they were in the past. Sure they are big and powerful, but people aren't going to fork over the cash to get this one when they can get a good GeForce2 that can play their games just as well.
You actually remind me of the neigh-sayers (or nay-sayers, depending on where you're from) a decade, two or three ago saying that games were nothing more than a distraction on computers. Nobody ever designs a computer for the things, and certainly nobody would fork out over $500 just to play games! Can you tell me which industry is driving which? I won't say that iD is single-handedly responsible for Intel's bottom line over the past 10 years, but I will say that consumer's demand for "prettier, better, smoother" has been responsible for a great many computer sales. They don't need 2GHz Pentiums / Athlons to balance their checkbooks or play with Mozilla (yet).
The ultimate in game play, I'm willing to bet, is an eyepiece or two that behaves as a huge, high-res screen, but takes up the entire field of view. That will be a great number of pixels (dare I guess 10k horiz by 5k vert per eye?) Maybe we'll have some game play innovations along the way, but there is certainly a need for more innovation. Perhaps we'll be stopping by 32" LCDs (or OLEDs) on the way, banks of seamlessly tiled conventionally sized screens, or even something different. The fact of the matter is, consumers are happy with what they have -- until they see something better. That's where the bucks are. Where would Gateway/ Dell/ Compaq/ Toshiba/ HP/ Apple be without those consumers wanting the next pretty thing?
Oh, and yes, I do see the mod community getting bigger. They even have some great successes. But, do you see them modding Wolf 3d? Doom I? Or do they move on, exercising the latest engines to the fullest of their abilities? Would they prefer engines that allow them to show on the screen what they have in their heads?
Slashdot Mirror
being competitive is far more prevelant in the USA than here in just about every single thing
In your FACE!
GigsVT, I've modded you up enough times to respect your opinion.
If you can honestly look at this picture and tell me that the blur that stretches all the way into the computer monitor is part of the lego case, I'll believe you.
Admittedly, looking at this picture, it appears that the lock on the display case is not blurred, supporting your theory, and maybe that first picture is because they reduced the size/aspect ratio of the RAID array, but not the plexiglass/glass.
The root of my question, I suppose, is why is the front of the array semi-transparent? Is there a censored joke in there? Some sort of concern about light patterns? Perhaps it was just the material that was available at the time. Whether it's Photoshop or a diffusing sheet isn't really the source of my curiosity.
Okay, I looked at it. Heck, for the sake of argument, let's say that I'll believe Google started business made out of Legos.
Can you tell me why the heck there are always blurs of one type or another shielding the front of the box from view?
Sorry if this has been posted, but I see a whole bunch of people chastising you for using cleartext AIM, recommending ssh. I personally know of several situations where ssh is not an option, but AIM is.
If it's an option, I suggest using a public key signing at the minimum, best bet would be public key encryption. If a person would be able to take a java applet (or command lines, or GUI, or morse code on the mouse button(s)...) to take the text to send -- commands, passwords, etc., GPG sign or encrypt and spit out what to paste into the AIM window, that may provide security for the server and (only slightly less) usability for the client. Additionally, the server may be able to do the same, so if you could paste the encrypted/signed server text into another application, you'd be able to have more security for what the client sees as well.
This is only worth a damn if you can trust the server and the client. If you can't, you'd be best listening to the 50+ people telling you you're crazy.
Okay, the financer in me just jumped out. That's what I get for taking MBA classes on my way through the Masters of Engineering.
So, there you are, with $20k of credit card debt and, say, $30k of cash. Hey, you do save more than you spend, right? Since you're going to be living off a 2-4 unit apartment building, you're obviously very frugal, so you have been saving up this cash and debt for 2-4 years. (My wife and I took advantage of Fleet's 0.0% intro APR and put the money in a savings account to earn credit card interest for us for once-- it took a year to get $10k debt-- still not the $15k limit-- and paid it off.) The frugal life isn't for everybody. Sounds to me like this guy wants something this side of 2-4 years. Anyway.
Let's assume that you buy a duplex -- not a 2 unit apartment building, but easily found. Say you pay $150k for it (it's run down, but it's good enough). Put $20k down, keep the rest for incidentals like when the water heater bursts (they only last ~10 years these days), or replacing the roof, or whatever. Your mortgage payment alone will be ~$385/month. Assume another 4% property tax amortized over the year, and that's $500/month. This means, to break even, each unit of your duplex needs to bring in around $445/month to break even, assuming minimal upkeep and 0% vacancy. More likely, upkeep will be $100/month (many months without, some day a huge disaster will hit) and it'll be vacant for 1 month out of a year. Given all these assumptions, you're looking at $595/month to do a little better than break even on the duplex. We're talking cash flow, not ROI.
Most credit cards that I know of require between 2-3% minimum payment each month. Typically closer to the 3% at the beginning, and working like a ln() function down to 2%. Even at 2%, that's $400/month on the credit card. To keep the duplex above with positive cash flow, that's another $400/month. Of course, interest on that credit card will be almost $200/month, so paying the bloody thing off at the minimum rate will take a VERY long time. 8 years out, you're still paying $126.56/month as a minimum payment on your $6330 balance. Of course, real smart people can bounce from credit card to credit card to get 5.9% to 3.9% for a year or two, then the 1.9%-0.0% intro rates come in. But, even with a kind APR, you're still getting nailled for minimum balance.
Add it all up. At the beginning, you're paying $200/month on the credit card, $500/month on property tax (better rates can be found, as can worse, depends on the area) and $385/month on mortgage (we're skipping PMI for the sake of argument-- but that's likely another $100/month if you don't qualify to skip it). Divide it all by two, and your expenses are $543/month. How much rent do you expect for half a duplex? Most places, you can expect $500-$700. At best, you'd make $150/month for each unit.
$3600/year isn't anything to scoff at, but now you need to find a place to live and food to eat. Perhaps using credit card debt to fund a propterty investment isn't the best idea.
My math may be wrong, but for your $30k initial cash investment, I'm figuring you're going to make $3600/$30000 = 0.12 APR. Bonds do better. Hell, my savings account does better. Of course, property investment can have significant income tax advantages, don't get me wrong, but a first, incomplete pass suggests one thing. Take a little longer, skip the credit card debt part.
It's 9:00 in the morning on a Saturday, so if I've made any mistakes, please forgive me.
Nope It's SCSI that puts the I in RAID really.
I argue that SCSI is what's trying to change what RAID originally stood for -- Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks -- to something different -- Redundant Array of Independant Disks. Sure, high end servers will use RAID and SCSI, Fibre, etc., but when RAID came on the scene, it was to enable people to make servers more cheaply than more novel, more reliable technologies. Inexpensive meant that the disks themselves were fairly cheap, and you could get the performance and reliability of a larger more novel disk by using several cheaper ones.
My whole point is this: RAID, as it was originally defined, no longer has value if drives are expected to last only a year (or warranties as short as 90 days as I've actually seen in some places). You'd spend so much time swapping out drives, you really SHOULD use more expensive disks. But what of the low end server people? Sure, if you want quality, you pay for quality, but RAID/IDE combinations once meant you could trade some "cheap" labor for some quality.
As an aside, any conspiracy theorists want to tie XP licensing/fingerprinting to shorter IDE lifetimes?
If they reduce the warranty to 1 year, they have reduced their overhead, hence the cheaper cost to us to buy them.
Fae it, we live in a throw away society. We want it cheap, and now.
I don't know how many people I speak for, but I know I speak for my friends. I don't "want it cheap, and now", I want it inexpensive and when it's reliable. I'm the kind of person who would spend a few bucks more and buy the Apple computer, the Sony TV and compact fluorescent light bulbs for my home.
Obviously, I'm not in the majority, but I don't particularly care for the heat of SCSI hard drives in lore, and all my current equipment has IDE (with longer warranties). I want a high end "prosumer" IDE hard drive with a 5 year warranty. It may or may not be in use the whole 5 years, but I certainly want it to be my choice. If that means I don't get terrabytes of storage, that's okay. I don't honestly have much of a use beyond 10GB anyway. If I wanted terrabytes of storage, I'd get a tape drive. If I wanted high speed, I'd get a SCSI drive and adapter. Cheap, low power, modest speeds and high reliability are what make IDE worthwhile. Isn't it IDE that puts the I in the Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks?
I'm not a karma whore with ready-made "Insightful +1" link-laden posts sitting around, but I'd like to offer an unfounded observation.
Is it just me, or have we been seeing a lot of these types of announcements lately? There was this whole "Lindows" thing at Wal-Mart. Gateway moving to Corel. Didn't Dell (or Compaq or somebody) do the same thing a few months ago? And just before that (weeks?), didn't another of the big boys move to Open Office? I know the answer to those questions is "Google", but I'm no search string guru (Another topic is that I can type in what I think is intuitive for Google, and get nothing but junk, but fellow /.ers can find what they want by hitting the "I feel lucky" button).
In the beginning, the PC world was filled with choice. There was Dos, DrDos and a few clones like that, and they shipped with new computers. Then, there were multi-tasking shells (Quemm? Windows, Norton system commander?), and they shipped with new machines. Word, Word Perfect, Word Star, etc. shipped with new machines, too. Was it Windows 95 that ended the diversity? Or had Office been the de facto before that?
I'm wondering if perhaps the Justice Department thing may end up bringing some diversity back to a previously-diverse world. Not that I think the ruling will be anything to speak of, but rather a warning shot that lets the independant vendors go with other products without (much) fear of retribution. Or is this just noise in the grand scheme of things, and ammunition for M$ to scream, "Look, they chose to go with other vendors, then came back to us for superior products!"?
This reminds me of my college years. When I was a senior, a few things had happened to me-- among them was learning the value of silence and respect. Maturity was not one of them.
I had this neighbor, a sophomore, who exercised his free speech rights (on private property on the campus of a private school) by putting vulgarities, profanities, artwork (I've seen similar art and links to such moderated as trolls here, to give you the idea) on his door. And, he had the idea that, as long as his door was closed, his stereo could be as loud as he wanted. The stereo at 3am on a school night was too much for me.
One day, I had suffered the last time asking him to turn his stereo down and having him turn it up another notch and ask if THAT was better. Bastard had a friend who would watch out for campus security coming over to get him to turn it down and it would be quiet 100% of the time they came by. I figured out the IP of his "stereo". With my lack of maturity, limited experience of Linux and hatred of my neighbor, I found the site www.rootprompt.org and the ability to silence my neighbor.
From then on, the only way for him to know his stereo was too loud was a BSOD. His temper tantrums were louder than the music, but for a 2 minute screaming session I would get 2 hours of silence. A while :; do loop helped me get the sleep I needed finals week.
That is the wrong way to think about it. You are asking yourself if it is worth something to commit a crime. What you should be asking yourself is, if what you are doing is fundamentally wrong. If it is (and I would say that it is) then stop doing it.
I wonder how fast his lawyer can type, or if his lawyer just dictates slashdot responses to his secretary.
I'm married, have a paid-for car, a good job, and share a house with the bank. I've got responsibilities. At this point, I'm using 100% paid for (or free or Free) software. Please allow that fact to color my response.
Everything in life is a cost-benefit analysis. Sure, the MBA people will tell you they came up with it, and they're the only people who truly understand how it works, and now I wonder if they're right. There's a risk in driving to work every day. Is it right? Well, it puts money in the grubby hands of a greedy corporation that cars about the environment to the extent required by the EPA. I could get killed. Therefore I shouldn't drive? Certainly are downsides to working, not to mention risks. Flying home for Christmas to visit the in-laws? Well, that involves the pollution of the airplane, more money in the hands of terrorist supporting oil barons, and again, that risk of death on my part.
Everything in life is a trade-off. Just sticking with what's right isn't enough -- few things are inherantly right. Just sticking with what's legislated isn't right. Now, say I am interviewing students for a job that involves using windows on a daily basis. I'll choose the candidate who pirated windows to get practice over the candidate who did the "right thing" and has honestly never seen windows because he can't afford it. Explain to me what is right there? Those who are too poor to "do right" shouldn't take risks?
Take a survey of college students. Some will certainly agree, but many won't. Don't bother asking attorneys, or people worried about their next parole board, but ask people with little money and a great concern for their futures.
Now, back to Mr. Tresco's situation. Is it "right" to hijack Institute computers to violate copyrights? One could easily argue the "Robin Hood" perspective; less easily, one could attempt to learn how much software enters MIT illegally then compute a net flow.
Let's assume that Mr. Tresco, or someone like him, is single, and has very few obligations. What's the risk??? Get caught, stripped of your job, sent to jail for almost 3 years. No freedom. Potentially unkind things happen there. If done well, someone could take advantage of the free room and board, earn a GED, BA or BS, and put together an outline on your experiences and sell the book/movie rights on how you're a better person. There are a lot of people out here for whom jail is not a punishment, but rather a new place to live with new opportunities. "What's right" is for the ethicists. Cost benefit analysis for the rest of us.
Clean record, time with my wife, commute to work for me, please.
By my calculations, Slashdot will be turning 33 In a few months.
Seriously, thanks for the waste of time. I mean that. My boss on the other hand...
Come on, "Baby Bells Deregulated" didn't really happen in the past 5 years, did it?!"
Am I missing something here? Are they claiming the 800mhz G4 is over 1.4 times as fast as an Athlon 2ghz??
You're not missing anything. For some coursework when I was in school, I ended up sending some e-mail to the dnet staff. I mentioned that I needed to design a processor on an FPGA for a class, and asked what would be "ideal". They basically said, "Take Motorola's 7400 specs, that's the ideal processor."
The Velocity Engine / AltiVec / VMX engine really was good at processing multiple keys (2?) simultaneously, and conducting the XOR rotates in record clock cycles (if I remember correctly). The processor architecture itself is mostly 1993 technology (PowerPC 603), but the vector engine is what makes it worth its weight in sand for some specific tasks.
Now, what will I do with my dual 500MHz G4?
My statement:Inexperienced teenagers (a large subset of all teenagers) and newbies are unable to refute your statement that Linux is as bad as Windows
Kiwimate:I'm sorry, but I couldn't let this one go. The original poster didn't make such a statement. Not even such an inference. The post, instead, merely pointed out the hypocrisy demonstrated by the attitudes described.
And it was correct.
If I have misinterpreted CTRamsden's original intent of the statement that, [when faced with vulnerabilities, the open-source community responded with] "Windows still sux..." [paraphrasing, hopefully not too liberally], please forgive me, and I will ask for kiwimate to accept my thanks for pointing out a misinterpretation.
I have seen too many people equate the vocal non-coding, quick to criticise Microsoft Slashdot subgroup as characteristic of the entire open source movement. I think it's very important to remember and recognize that those people are out there -- but equally important to understand that others are out there who accept criticism as constructive.
I find it terribly amusing how for years the open-source community has used the larger number of holes found in Windows systems as one of their arguments against it. Yet now when the open-source community is also plagued with the same thing the comments tend to be along the line of 'Windows still sux.' and 'Do you know how much you're hurting the open-source movement? Please stop.'
I am the administrator for two Linux servers, a Slackware 7.0 box and a Debian Woody box. I'm scared that I'll get rooted again, but do you know what I'm thinking anyway? "Bring it on." Let these worms propagate, let some publicity get out, and let the patches come. They will come, just as they always have. I'll be a wget %1;upgradepkg %1 or apt-get update;apt-get upgrade away from being back up to speed.
The open-source community, contrary to your assertion, has for years said two things 1) Lazy admins risk getting hacked and 2) Open source patches flow more freely than closed source ones. I don't think the number of holes against NT 4.0 (for example) is criticised, but rather the length of time between exploit and patch-- the criticism is of the number of documented, unpatched holes. If you show me a list of documented, unpatched holes, I'll show you a mailing list / IRC channel / news group that just found a list of things to do for the afternoon. Inexperienced teenagers (a large subset of all teenagers) and newbies are unable to refute your statement that Linux is as bad as Windows and resort to childish retorts and pleas for silence.
Bring it on, hackers, help us audit the code. Win prestige for you, win a better OS for us.
Actually, I'm seriously interested in buying a product that merges my wallet and my cellphone.
Maybe I'm the only slashdotter here who has to say this, but my wallet doesn't exactly smell like roses. I'm not saying it's because I sit on it 10 hours a day, or that it's because of the god-only-knows-where-it's-been money, but it's not something I want to keep by my face for the length of a phone call. Unless it means winning a prize.
I am a lighting product engineer for GE, and our new 'RealLight'(tm) bulbs are very good for this type of lighting. Also, you'd be patronizing a fellow /.er :-))
Patronizing mode on. Since you're new here, we typically post a link whenver possible. Especially if our employers use websites that require Java to successfully navigate ("Mouse over for more information" is not acceptable). I'm not dogging you for working for a mega-corp, just that if you expect someone to look at what you're doing (and believe me, I was interested for 7-8 minutes), you need to help us out. I'm not familiar with all your product lines, you will undoubtedly be more efficient navigating them and pointing out the wonderful fruits of your labor. 5 minutes of your time finding the product you recommend, whose sale inflates your paychecks/ bonuses, are 5 minutes that 50 or more people here won't have to spend. Patronizing mode off**
I don't use Java -- the most obnoxious non-stop moving, color cycling ads that are so distracting that I can't read the text are flash -- which won't show up on my machine with Java and Javascript disabled.
I don't understand why a bunch of people want to run OS X anyway. It's proprietary and completely closed source. If you're a serious graphics designer, sure, I can see your reason for wanting OS X.
But, slashdot geeks... I can't understand why they'd want something that removes all kinds of ability to tinker and has a shitty EULA. The OS may be a step up from Windows, but the EULA is almost as shitty.
I'm a /. geek. I'm here running Moz 1.1 on my OSX 10.2 dual G4 500. I love this machine. I ran OS/2 and NT for years. When I didn't have the hardware for a decent machine, I put Linux on it and got a few extra miles. Last year, I was the recipient of a used Mac, the mecca of my class of geek. What did I want? I wanted UNIX class stability and speed (and that familiar command line from 7 years of *nix use). I wanted main stream apps, natively.
To me, a non-programmer sort, Linux adds little value. There's some geek value I can pretend to have when I apt-get the Debian box under my control, or wget/make config/make install my Slackware server, but there's something great to running Office, Starcraft/Warcraft, Bloatus Notes and then drop to a shell that uses sane commands (ipconfig, ls, etc.). And if there's an update, Software Update takes care of that for me.
Oh, and I don't care about an EULA. Like the rest of America, I just click through and never read them.
"(...) to create a plane that might be simple to build and maintain, would be reliable, would produce no emissions, and would be inherently quiet."
... and would not blow up a building if it ever hits one.
You must mean that the airplane with the long extension cord (i.e. not covered by this story) would have that ability. Or, you're suggesting that these batteries and fuel cells be replaced by an inert substance. I see a Nobel prize for the first guy who can store energy (not kinetic, and not height delta potential) in an inert substance. Don't we get this power from a chemical reaction?
Not to mention that the narrow end of the fin contacting the substrate decreases channel/substrate leakage. This is a VERY cute idea. It probably can get better density, too, as it gets developed further.
Now, with additional gate surface area, we'll have LOTS of gate leakage to look forward to!
Same problem, different place.
For your best media coverage in the US, please turn to listener supported NPR. Here in Austin, TX, I have the impression that Clearchannel is taking a day to build a brand name. NPR is doing what they always do, trying to represent as best as they can the events that happen.
Save bandwidth. Listen to the radio. Or, if you're at work and can't get radio reception (like me), their live program stream is available in Quicktime, Real, or Windows Media. Politics aside, most people's computers can handle one of those programs.
Their online coverage is available here, and their program schedule is here. Please note that all times are in Eastern time.
Hmmmm, how much money could be saved in mass marketing if replaced with the word of mouth die hard big file swapers?
I'm a regular /. reader, typically munching through most of my pre-allocated 15 ad-free comment views per day of my subscription. I'm pretty die-hard geek; you have to be to do what I do at work (which I can't publically discuss until 2005, sadly). My wife is the only other real die-hard geek I know of at this point, and she's not into this whole file sharing thing either. I've been known to turn to Gnutella to snag a file instead of unpacking my CDs from my move. With a collection of 500+, unpacking and organizing each time we move is a chore. If I have a copy, I figure it's legal. Enough background. You know where I'm coming from. Suffice it to say that I've not ready any Tolkein novels after The Hobbit because of how much time I've spent on the computer.
I've never downloaded a cinema feature, whether or not I've owned it (how long would it take to squeeze through my horridly capped cable modem?). I sure won't download Twin Towers, and because of my limited exposure to other file sharing folk, I wouldn't even know it was coming out if it weren't for the expensive mass marketing you propose to eliminate. Sure, I'd read on /. about how this was the first movie to skip the expensive advertising campaign, but I likely wouldn't hear about the second.
P2P people tend to have an over-inflated view of themselves and the impact of their sub-culture. My unsupported personal belief is that the RIAA/MPAA heard of this P2P thing, how easy it was and how many download starts happened. They didn't bother to investigate how many of those were first-starts or how many were re-starts because of a failed download. Certainly the P2P generation is having an impact on the entertainment industry, but I don't think that it's as significant as everyone estimates. There was a time when everyone at work was checking it out, but strangely they don't have computers where they play music. Do normal lay-people have MP3 decoders in their cars, entertainment centers or work-out class sports walkmans yet? All that I know ended up listening to their pirated songs once or twice and then junking them, having investigated the novelty and realizing how much hard drive space they used up in the endeavor. Nobody I know of has the patience for the expected quality of a cinema feature download.
I know there are some people who go for the alternative side. We certainly like to try to spend our money in ways that have the most benefit.
The principle behind the diamond is to symbolize your commitment. You're telling her that you want to spend the rest of your life with her. Resale value? Are you sure that marriage is the right next step? Perhaps there are some more conversations to have.
I've been proudly and happily married to the love of my life for almost 2 years.
Better quality diamonds are able to be man made for cheaper. But, a good jeweler won't serve them. Volunteer to make up for your conscience. Show your love by finding a good jeweler, being honest, and buying what she deserves. First, find out why you're worrying about resale value and take care of it.
Ignore time value of money? Okay, giant leap of faith that is utterly bizarre and wholy unrealistic.
Well, if I didn't ignore the time value of money, then I'd have to pay attention to the time value of the ecosystem, which would force me to get into what parts of the ecosystem I care about (just life continuing on earth until well after the sun burns out, or human kind as we know it continuing with its current lifestyles?). That's just a can of worms that I'll just stay out of.
Then, of course, there would be the cash flow fanatics, who don't really care what kind of ROI they have as long as they can borrow like mad from the bank and pay themselves along the way. Of course, there are intricate workings to make that profitable, but I've not studied it well enough to defend myself there. The solar thing would be a fixed cost up front, and at that point never require cash to keep up; depending on the state, it could generate some, too.
Ignoring the time value of money is not like you say, utterly bizarre and wholly unrealistic, it's an assumption like any engineer has to make every day. There are some faults, but some simplifications to be gained.
Are you sure your wife's stock options are worth anything? Toilet paper is remarkably cheap.
I'm sure they're worth something, but not enough to retire on. Had she had them vested three years ago, we probably wouldn't have been able to retire, but we sure would be better off.
For those unfamiliar with Home Power, this is a typical article from them. Their typical monthly magazine has an article about "Solar Guirrilas", or people who decide to put up solar panels, plug them into the "grid" (municipal power supply) and not get the permits for it. They also toss in a "I use solar panels and/or a wind turbine to make 10-100% of my own power, using/shunning batteries in the process" article that makes one think that such a thing is so great, why doesn't everybody do it? (The answer is in a very attractive tabular form that has a dollar figure at the bottom.) Recently, although I don't think it's always, they have had an article on how easy it is to convert your existing car to an electric one. As near as I can tell, it's a thinly veilled advertisement for one of their sponsors (and possibly an editor, sheesh I wish I remembered why I suspected that).
Okay, cynicism aside, because that's what slashdot's all about, Home Power is actually one of my favorite magazines. They help me think about what I can do in my day to day life that may have an impact on the environment. I'm not likely to blow $20k on solar panels on my roof, not likely to get a wind turbine that always needs maintenance during the worst times even after I get approval from my homeowner's association, and I'm not even likely to convert my car into a $3k worth of batteries beast that maxes out at 65mph. I did, however, convert all my light bulbs to fluorescent and blew the $20 on the programmable thermostats. I'm even considering one of those insulating spreads that you wrap around the water heaters. Now if I could blow $4k on my car and make it a battery driven beast that could handke 85 as I commute down Parmer Lane in Austin...
I dream of, one day when I'm rich off of my wife's stock options, building a house with solar panels on the roof and maybe a pretty, whirring wind turbine in the back yard while I contribute to urban sprawl.
To pre-emptively strike against a good slashdot myth, yes, solar panels will pay for themselves. They earn back the energy that it took to make them (and start to net negative CO2) after 1-3 years of operation, depending on if you're in California/Arizona or Vermont, and if you ignore the time value of money, can earn their dollar cost back in 10-20 years, depending on costs, location and care.
Which industry would that be? The gaming industry is slowing down as far as graphics go.
Hi, FortKnox, I'd like to disagree with your "marked words". I'd say that anything that dramatically increases the performance of graphical gaming will be welcome. I grew up playing PC-Man, Friendlyware PC Arcade and other ASCII games. I eventually progressed to Doom, to Quake (by way of Heretic, which I liked more than my friends). On opening day, I bought Warcraft III. Turns out my 16 meg Radeon doesn't play it perfectly smoothly, so I may end up buying a new video card by the end of the year for my dual G4. In my case, the vid card is clearly the bottleneck.
People have been talking a deal over the years about how consumers don't want anything prettier (or won't notice), they're happy with what they have. Game play is what's important. Don't try to tell me that Myst was more than an eye candy excuse. Sure, consumers are happy with what they have now, but it turns out that pretty is what sells in the stores -- nobody wants to read a novella describing "game play", they want to see screenshots!
I'm rambling, but I think that these new video cards aren't going to be this big explosion that they were in the past. Sure they are big and powerful, but people aren't going to fork over the cash to get this one when they can get a good GeForce2 that can play their games just as well.
You actually remind me of the neigh-sayers (or nay-sayers, depending on where you're from) a decade, two or three ago saying that games were nothing more than a distraction on computers. Nobody ever designs a computer for the things, and certainly nobody would fork out over $500 just to play games! Can you tell me which industry is driving which? I won't say that iD is single-handedly responsible for Intel's bottom line over the past 10 years, but I will say that consumer's demand for "prettier, better, smoother" has been responsible for a great many computer sales. They don't need 2GHz Pentiums / Athlons to balance their checkbooks or play with Mozilla (yet).
The ultimate in game play, I'm willing to bet, is an eyepiece or two that behaves as a huge, high-res screen, but takes up the entire field of view. That will be a great number of pixels (dare I guess 10k horiz by 5k vert per eye?) Maybe we'll have some game play innovations along the way, but there is certainly a need for more innovation. Perhaps we'll be stopping by 32" LCDs (or OLEDs) on the way, banks of seamlessly tiled conventionally sized screens, or even something different. The fact of the matter is, consumers are happy with what they have -- until they see something better. That's where the bucks are. Where would Gateway/ Dell/ Compaq/ Toshiba/ HP/ Apple be without those consumers wanting the next pretty thing?
Oh, and yes, I do see the mod community getting bigger. They even have some great successes. But, do you see them modding Wolf 3d? Doom I? Or do they move on, exercising the latest engines to the fullest of their abilities? Would they prefer engines that allow them to show on the screen what they have in their heads?