GPS, Bluetooth, MP3, MIDI, and the kitchen sink, all wrapped up in a cell phone with internet access over twice as fast as 56K modems. None of these are a great innovation in and of themselves, but together that's pretty spiffy. Wonder what that's going to do to battery life?
It's also interesting to note that, while this thing's using an ARM-based CPU, the signaling is PowerPC compatible. I knew that Motorola was a big player in the cell phone biz, but didn't think they'd be forcing PPC tech here. Anyone with more info on this?
Sure, Sony has a bunch of groups under their umbrella. Something to consider, however, is that each group has their own set of books that they have to reconcile. It is probably unnecessary to make all of Sony look bad, just hurt the Music group (and whomever they directly report to, if you want to go the extra mile).
Case in point: In a previous life, I sold computers in a large retail environment. Whenever I'd get a really clueless customer who really just wanted to play games, I'd send them over to the games department to get a Playstation or N64. The store would make more money (game systems and games have a much heftier profit margin than computer systems), and the customer would end up vastly happier (no system config or hyper-fast obscelence to deal with). When it was discovered that I did this, however, my manager gave me a stern talking-to, as I was screwing up his numbers and making him look bad, regardless of the fact that it was better for the customer and store.
Do the same thing to Sony Music, and that's >90% as effective as boycotting the whole company, and far easier to do.
Actually, this is pretty cool, and you can thank the wonderful folks at ID for making insane stuff like this possible. If ID wasn't opensourcing their old code, these guys would be stuck doing pseudo-practical work on these devices.
I think this one takes a close second to text-mode quake for sheer cheesiness, but I like it. Yea, ID!!!
Hmmm. Turn down the voltage by cutting the noise produced by unneeded circuits...
I wonder how much of this happens already (sans the voltage lowering that would actually save power) in RAM chips in systems with tons of it. If a cell hasn't been used yet, it should be set to zero, and shouldn't be producing much if any noise). Unless refresh gets in the way.
RAM isn't usually a big problem power-consumption wise, but it should be possible to turn off bits of DRAM circuits that aren't in use. The chipset should be able to signal that automagically by looking at the page tables. In power-hungry devices, any savings should help (not to mention devices that currently have heatsinks on the RAM like RDRAM and the new nVidia card). Anybody have an idea on how much page table and processor state info modern chipsets keep around?
I wonder if there are any other devices that this can be applied to...
Another interesting possibility for this is to make self-reassembling chips (ala Transmeta "code-morphing"). If the chips could be made malleable enough internally, it sure would be interesting to see chips evolve with time. Wouldn't that throw a wrench in compiler technology?
Sure these look neat, but most of them will have serious problems complying with FCC regs on electromagnetic interference. Moreover, the EM generated by these things has got to be scary and generally not a Good Thing for one's person. Let's see--cell phones might cause brain cancer. Unshielded cases are generally located under the desk, so that means... I don't think I want to risk getting cancer THERE.:-O
Hell, I get nervous hanging around in the server room too long, and that stuff is all properly shielded... I hate to be a stick-in-the-mud, but has anyone thought of this?
There is the flip side of the coin: Spending so much time doing test cases that you'd have been better served just calling tech support in the first place. At one point, this was the norm with my company in dealing with Cisco, M$, Dell, and a few other vendors because we desperately don't want to be told just to RTFM.
A good rule of thumb is to compare costs. Figure out how much time you've spent on something and multiply it by your hourly pay rate. If this comes out to be double what you'd pay for the tech support call, it's time to call (even if you do sound like a dumbass). Once you hit that point, you've learned all you can while still being not completely unprofitable--time to let the (hopefully) better-connected guy handle it from here.
I know that this isn't what happens most commonly (usually folks err on being too call-happy), but realize that it can happen...
First, protecting space vehicles from microdebris. This would be the single most useful space application of this technology for sattelites, shuttles, etc., as dust particles tend to hurt metal a lot if they're travelling at relative speeds of thousands of miles per hour. Since the terrestrial version of this thing has to be contained, however, I don't know if this is possible.
Second, fusion reaction containment. Since several plans for fusion technology seem to involve rather large heat generation, it'd be nice if this could be used to absorb the heat generated by the reaction and transmit it to generator equipment more safely (i.e. without frying the container). If the plasma is guided by magnetic fields (like so many things are), the extra energy should push the plasma bubble bigger, which can be used to induce currents directly. I'm guessing that this isn't a new idea, but I still think it's worth mentioning, especially since this would theoretically be one of the more efficient fusion->electricity conversions.
Either of these would be a huge advance (along with the rest of the stuff mentioned), so this is an impressive development indeed!
If you need to, you can install the Citrix ICA Client on the terminals and/or have a product such as NCD Wincenter running on a Windows Terminal Server if some (or even all) users desperately must have one or more Windoze apps.
We've had Wincenter + Terminal Server + X terminals here for four years, and most users are hard-pressed to tell that they aren't running Windows on their desks.
Again, this is not quite what you're looking for, but it does provide a nice backdoor if it doesn't quite work out.
However, because most gamers are quick-fix "short attention span" computer users...
I would tend to disagree. Folks who play games on PCs tend to be those who do the most performance tweaking of anyone. This is what is driving the market for packaged video cards from 3DFX and nVidia--the ability to play games better. If gamers weren't willing to rip into their PCs and install a different card, those companies would only be selling to OEMs.
This segment of people run Windows because (and only because) there are more games that they want to play on that platform, and are willing to put up with the stability and other issues for that reason. I used to sell computers in a past life (c 1995), and remember directing folks to the Sony Playstation for stability reasons (these were pure gameplayers that obviously were in no shape to handle DOS-mode configuration or graphic/sound nuances). DOS-mode config has largely gone away, but other technological issues have popped up in its place (OpenGL v. Glide v. DirectX, network config, etc.).
For not much more knowhow than that which is needed to get a modern 3D networked game running on a general-purpose PC, you could have a real OS, too. If the games are there, the gamers will flock. Period. "Short attention span" computer users play solitare or have a console system.
There are sometimes valid reasons for abortions. There are never valid reasons for the exploitation of children.
I would argue that, in the minds of many pro-lifers (not most, but a significant minority), there are never any valid reasons for abortions. I've known some that are extreme enough that they reject the big three "acceptable" abortion issues (rape, incest, life of mother).
Further, so what if there are sometimes valid reasons for abortions? That doesn't explain the harassment described above. The fact remains that the need for privacy vastly outweighs the need of random, unqualified jerks to invade it. The police have strict entrapment rules for a reason, and there is no reason that these same rules shouldn't apply de facto to everyone else.
An observer at the other end of the machine, will first see some energy appear at his end of the machine, then later see some disappear from the other end. This would violate the law of conservation of energy for the second observer and is thus a no-no.
I agree, except for one minor change: This would appear to violate the law of conservation of energy for the second observer and would appear to thus be a no-no. I'm no expert on relativity, but I do believe that appearances deceive:-)
M$ has the ability to make less profit on its support because it makes a scandalous amount of cash on the software itself, while support's one of the only profit points RH has. The idea is that you pay to become an expert, and there's no high entry fee to just become a novice (i.e. with expensive software). As for them coming to you, just wait until RH has sales offices everywhere and reasonable demand exists, or when RH makes nationwide deals with a couple of training centers--and that can't happen until there is a critical mass of RHCEs out there to train them all. 1,500 RHCEs is nothing in comparison with the hundreds of thousands of CNAs, CNEs, MCPs, and MCSEs. It will just take time.
As for certified folks wandering off to greener pastures, deal with it. This happens to every new hot certification. I wonder how many early MCSEs or CCIEs had the same desire to go to where the money or work environment was better with the same effect on their employer. When the market hits some kind of parity, the problem will evaporate. That's just the way it is.
Gotta second that one. I wrote my first GUI miniapp a couple of weeks ago using Glide almost completely without issue. I've used VB and VBA extensively (and done quite a bit of straight C under Linux) and found that it made the transition really easy. That's not to say that Glide can't stand some improvement, but it's a great start.
Citrix isn't bad, but you do occasionally run into problems that aren't found on open platforms (like X). We use a model of ICA terminal that has CLIENT-side freezups occasionally that pop up when the user runs Outlook on the server. That really isn't supposed to happen. Ever. Server-side freezes are expected with MS trash, but client-side? Thanks to the closed source nature of ICA, we can't ever troubleshoot it effectively, and our vendor is completely unresponsive. Fortunately, the rest of the company is running on XTerms (NCD has a decent add-on for WTS that lets it do its magic over X), so we only have to deal with it for the remote offices (ICA is much better over the WAN than standard X, and out terminals don't support LBX).
The other problem with WTS is all the hoops you have to jump through to get programs properly configured (I've certainly done more than my share of registry hacking to get it all working--even with standard apps like Office '97). Without proper configuration, wierd stuff happens, like any user being able to change applicaion defaults for the entire system or file sharing violations.
All in all, it makes me want to port our proprietary DB stuff to HTML and run Office apps via Wine on a beefy Linux box. At least proper configuration for multiple simultaneous users would be easier (that's a scary thought).
Funny, I have about 70 users running Neoware Xterms (not Winstations, Xterms) that log into Win Terminal Servers using X (NOT ICA) and UIS, and I found that X's performance blows ICA and RDP out of the water over a LAN (just try scrolling a web page side-by-side to see the difference). On a WAN, ICA rocks (unless you're using lbxproxy or whatever), but X is definitely king if you have the bandwidth to support it.
I'll have to second that emotion. My current ISP for DSL isn't even remotely in the same league customer-service-wise as my former dialup provider. ISPs that have been around for a while have it all over public utilities.
Don't forget also that ISPs also have other ISPs that they connect to for their access to the Internet. Unless you're a massive tier 1 provider (which I don't think even @Home qualifies as yet), you're using an ISP to connect to the Internet...
I last visited the Dallas area about a year ago and was appauled at the lack of planning the city has. Businesses seem to be clumped together in such a way as to cause horrendous traffic problems (and we're not talking collaberative enterprises -- we're talking a mile-long stretch of gas stations or fast food). The city (like towns in SV) seems to have congealed more than actually evolved properly.
I used to listen to stories ad nauseum about how well the Phoenix area was planned (he's a commercial real estate broker there), but I had no appreciation for that until I visited Dallas and had to deal with their traffic. Oddly enough, living in Santa Clara (and working there, too), I've run into less traffic problems than I did on my visit to Dallas (mostly North Dallas).
I don't mean to start a "my city's better than yours" flamewar, but I think folks need to consider the following when moving: 1. Visit, but try your potential commute for a couple of days before commiting and make sure you can live with it. 2. Make mapquest your friend and look up all apartments there (relative to potential employers) so you get the hang of where everything is. 3. Make sure you can live with the culture shock. 4. Check any resource that compares cost of living with where you're living now and don't forget to account for changes in the tax rate if appropriate.
Moving to Silicon Valley, I was ready for this, and the $1,500/mo for a 2BR/2BA was no particular shock. I had a number that my potential employer had to beat before I'd work for him/her, and I more than made it. On the whole, I have ~$500 more in disposable income/month than I had in Phoenix, much better weather, a much more interesting job, and more opportunity than I can shake a stick at. It was a good move, and fairly well-planned.
Cliche time: People don't plan to fail, they fail to plan.;-)
How long's it been since you said "I need a faster paralell port" or "I need to upgrade my serial port to a faster UART?" These have been integrated onto motherboards for quite some time now, to the point that we don't even think about it anymore. Sure, faster UARTs can be had, but we don't need them as a general rule. I can see other components hitting that ceiling soon, too.
Sound is a great example of this. The leap from the PC speaker to the SoundBlaster-ish digital audio was great. The the leap from PCM to wavetable MIDI was not as great, but still very good. The jumps from there on are incremental to the point that there is probably little reason to go to much farther past the SB Live or its competitors in performance (though audiophiles and professionals will always push the envelope). It's just like the jump from the 8250 to the 16450 (great), the 16450 to the 16550 (very good), and so on for serial ports.
Eventually you hit a point where the vast majority of folks out there don't need to worry about pushing that envelope too much farther. At that point, integration has probably already happened and was a Godsend, as it saved you quite a bit of money, and the performance is as good (if not better) than the seperate chips.
I can see it already with sound. Video will take somewhat longer and probably be more like IDE controllers (you still need to upgrade your motherboard every now again to get the latest and greatest UDMA/whatever, but not too many folks complain about that).
I'd really like to see one of the sound folks (Creative or Yamaha, for example) publish a reference ASIC design for all to use (for extremely low cost/free) so that chipset makers can just integrate it into all designs and make it completely ubiquitous. That would kill the ultra-low-end sound card market, but that market was pretty much dead anyway (Avance Logic and Analog Devices are the only two folks there anymore, and I don't think the cheesy sound chips are their primary business). Having a tried-and-true design (such as the Creative Vibra 16) in all chipset designs on the market would be quite helpful, and add-on cards and software could still be added to bring the performance to a level above the default.
How many times have folks beckoned to their creator in the hope that it might somehow bring a server back up, or clear network congestion, or even ensure that a cable is not too short to reach the FRAD (or whatever)?
Being able to get a patron saint medal that can be stuck to the front of a server isn't a bad idea at all, IMHO. Seriously, most sysadmins can use all the help they can get!
Slashdot Mirror
GPS, Bluetooth, MP3, MIDI, and the kitchen sink, all wrapped up in a cell phone with internet access over twice as fast as 56K modems. None of these are a great innovation in and of themselves, but together that's pretty spiffy. Wonder what that's going to do to battery life?
It's also interesting to note that, while this thing's using an ARM-based CPU, the signaling is PowerPC compatible. I knew that Motorola was a big player in the cell phone biz, but didn't think they'd be forcing PPC tech here. Anyone with more info on this?
Sure, Sony has a bunch of groups under their umbrella. Something to consider, however, is that each group has their own set of books that they have to reconcile. It is probably unnecessary to make all of Sony look bad, just hurt the Music group (and whomever they directly report to, if you want to go the extra mile).
Case in point: In a previous life, I sold computers in a large retail environment. Whenever I'd get a really clueless customer who really just wanted to play games, I'd send them over to the games department to get a Playstation or N64. The store would make more money (game systems and games have a much heftier profit margin than computer systems), and the customer would end up vastly happier (no system config or hyper-fast obscelence to deal with). When it was discovered that I did this, however, my manager gave me a stern talking-to, as I was screwing up his numbers and making him look bad, regardless of the fact that it was better for the customer and store.
Do the same thing to Sony Music, and that's >90% as effective as boycotting the whole company, and far easier to do.
Actually, this is pretty cool, and you can thank the wonderful folks at ID for making insane stuff like this possible. If ID wasn't opensourcing their old code, these guys would be stuck doing pseudo-practical work on these devices.
I think this one takes a close second to text-mode quake for sheer cheesiness, but I like it. Yea, ID!!!
Hmmm. Turn down the voltage by cutting the noise produced by unneeded circuits...
I wonder how much of this happens already (sans the voltage lowering that would actually save power) in RAM chips in systems with tons of it. If a cell hasn't been used yet, it should be set to zero, and shouldn't be producing much if any noise). Unless refresh gets in the way.
RAM isn't usually a big problem power-consumption wise, but it should be possible to turn off bits of DRAM circuits that aren't in use. The chipset should be able to signal that automagically by looking at the page tables. In power-hungry devices, any savings should help (not to mention devices that currently have heatsinks on the RAM like RDRAM and the new nVidia card). Anybody have an idea on how much page table and processor state info modern chipsets keep around?
I wonder if there are any other devices that this can be applied to...
Another interesting possibility for this is to make self-reassembling chips (ala Transmeta "code-morphing"). If the chips could be made malleable enough internally, it sure would be interesting to see chips evolve with time. Wouldn't that throw a wrench in compiler technology?
Sure these look neat, but most of them will have serious problems complying with FCC regs on electromagnetic interference. Moreover, the EM generated by these things has got to be scary and generally not a Good Thing for one's person. Let's see--cell phones might cause brain cancer. Unshielded cases are generally located under the desk, so that means... I don't think I want to risk getting cancer THERE. :-O
Hell, I get nervous hanging around in the server room too long, and that stuff is all properly shielded... I hate to be a stick-in-the-mud, but has anyone thought of this?
There is the flip side of the coin: Spending so much time doing test cases that you'd have been better served just calling tech support in the first place. At one point, this was the norm with my company in dealing with Cisco, M$, Dell, and a few other vendors because we desperately don't want to be told just to RTFM.
A good rule of thumb is to compare costs. Figure out how much time you've spent on something and multiply it by your hourly pay rate. If this comes out to be double what you'd pay for the tech support call, it's time to call (even if you do sound like a dumbass). Once you hit that point, you've learned all you can while still being not completely unprofitable--time to let the (hopefully) better-connected guy handle it from here.
I know that this isn't what happens most commonly (usually folks err on being too call-happy), but realize that it can happen...
First, protecting space vehicles from microdebris. This would be the single most useful space application of this technology for sattelites, shuttles, etc., as dust particles tend to hurt metal a lot if they're travelling at relative speeds of thousands of miles per hour. Since the terrestrial version of this thing has to be contained, however, I don't know if this is possible.
Second, fusion reaction containment. Since several plans for fusion technology seem to involve rather large heat generation, it'd be nice if this could be used to absorb the heat generated by the reaction and transmit it to generator equipment more safely (i.e. without frying the container). If the plasma is guided by magnetic fields (like so many things are), the extra energy should push the plasma bubble bigger, which can be used to induce currents directly. I'm guessing that this isn't a new idea, but I still think it's worth mentioning, especially since this would theoretically be one of the more efficient fusion->electricity conversions.
Either of these would be a huge advance (along with the rest of the stuff mentioned), so this is an impressive development indeed!
There is another CYA plus to this method:
If you need to, you can install the Citrix ICA Client on the terminals and/or have a product such as NCD Wincenter running on a Windows Terminal Server if some (or even all) users desperately must have one or more Windoze apps.
We've had Wincenter + Terminal Server + X terminals here for four years, and most users are hard-pressed to tell that they aren't running Windows on their desks.
Again, this is not quite what you're looking for, but it does provide a nice backdoor if it doesn't quite work out.
However, because most gamers are quick-fix "short attention span" computer users...
I would tend to disagree. Folks who play games on PCs tend to be those who do the most performance tweaking of anyone. This is what is driving the market for packaged video cards from 3DFX and nVidia--the ability to play games better. If gamers weren't willing to rip into their PCs and install a different card, those companies would only be selling to OEMs.
This segment of people run Windows because (and only because) there are more games that they want to play on that platform, and are willing to put up with the stability and other issues for that reason. I used to sell computers in a past life (c 1995), and remember directing folks to the Sony Playstation for stability reasons (these were pure gameplayers that obviously were in no shape to handle DOS-mode configuration or graphic/sound nuances). DOS-mode config has largely gone away, but other technological issues have popped up in its place (OpenGL v. Glide v. DirectX, network config, etc.).
For not much more knowhow than that which is needed to get a modern 3D networked game running on a general-purpose PC, you could have a real OS, too. If the games are there, the gamers will flock. Period. "Short attention span" computer users play solitare or have a console system.
There are sometimes valid reasons for abortions.
There are never valid reasons for the exploitation of children.
I would argue that, in the minds of many pro-lifers (not most, but a significant minority), there are never any valid reasons for abortions. I've known some that are extreme enough that they reject the big three "acceptable" abortion issues (rape, incest, life of mother).
Further, so what if there are sometimes valid reasons for abortions? That doesn't explain the harassment described above. The fact remains that the need for privacy vastly outweighs the need of random, unqualified jerks to invade it. The police have strict entrapment rules for a reason, and there is no reason that these same rules shouldn't apply de facto to everyone else.
An observer at the other end of the machine, will first see some energy appear at his end of the machine, then later see some disappear from the other end. This would violate the law of conservation of energy for the second observer and is thus a no-no.
I agree, except for one minor change: This would appear to violate the law of conservation of energy for the second observer and would appear to thus be a no-no. I'm no expert on relativity, but I do believe that appearances deceive :-)
M$ has the ability to make less profit on its support because it makes a scandalous amount of cash on the software itself, while support's one of the only profit points RH has. The idea is that you pay to become an expert, and there's no high entry fee to just become a novice (i.e. with expensive software). As for them coming to you, just wait until RH has sales offices everywhere and reasonable demand exists, or when RH makes nationwide deals with a couple of training centers--and that can't happen until there is a critical mass of RHCEs out there to train them all. 1,500 RHCEs is nothing in comparison with the hundreds of thousands of CNAs, CNEs, MCPs, and MCSEs. It will just take time.
As for certified folks wandering off to greener pastures, deal with it. This happens to every new hot certification. I wonder how many early MCSEs or CCIEs had the same desire to go to where the money or work environment was better with the same effect on their employer. When the market hits some kind of parity, the problem will evaporate. That's just the way it is.
--42
I forget. Does this evaluate to 42 and then decrement, or the other way around?
:-)
Hell, just ROT13 it...
Gotta second that one. I wrote my first GUI miniapp a couple of weeks ago using Glide almost completely without issue. I've used VB and VBA extensively (and done quite a bit of straight C under Linux) and found that it made the transition really easy. That's not to say that Glide can't stand some improvement, but it's a great start.
I think any site involving the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal would be rich smell-o-web fodder. Everything from cigars to month-old dried semen. Woo hoo!
How 'bout XML?
Citrix isn't bad, but you do occasionally run into problems that aren't found on open platforms (like X). We use a model of ICA terminal that has CLIENT-side freezups occasionally that pop up when the user runs Outlook on the server. That really isn't supposed to happen. Ever. Server-side freezes are expected with MS trash, but client-side? Thanks to the closed source nature of ICA, we can't ever troubleshoot it effectively, and our vendor is completely unresponsive. Fortunately, the rest of the company is running on XTerms (NCD has a decent add-on for WTS that lets it do its magic over X), so we only have to deal with it for the remote offices (ICA is much better over the WAN than standard X, and out terminals don't support LBX).
The other problem with WTS is all the hoops you have to jump through to get programs properly configured (I've certainly done more than my share of registry hacking to get it all working--even with standard apps like Office '97). Without proper configuration, wierd stuff happens, like any user being able to change applicaion defaults for the entire system or file sharing violations.
All in all, it makes me want to port our proprietary DB stuff to HTML and run Office apps via Wine on a beefy Linux box. At least proper configuration for multiple simultaneous users would be easier (that's a scary thought).
Funny, I have about 70 users running Neoware Xterms (not Winstations, Xterms) that log into Win Terminal Servers using X (NOT ICA) and UIS, and I found that X's performance blows ICA and RDP out of the water over a LAN (just try scrolling a web page side-by-side to see the difference). On a WAN, ICA rocks (unless you're using lbxproxy or whatever), but X is definitely king if you have the bandwidth to support it.
--bj
I'll have to second that emotion. My current ISP for DSL isn't even remotely in the same league customer-service-wise as my former dialup provider. ISPs that have been around for a while have it all over public utilities.
Don't forget also that ISPs also have other ISPs that they connect to for their access to the Internet. Unless you're a massive tier 1 provider (which I don't think even @Home qualifies as yet), you're using an ISP to connect to the Internet...
I last visited the Dallas area about a year ago and was appauled at the lack of planning the city has. Businesses seem to be clumped together in such a way as to cause horrendous traffic problems (and we're not talking collaberative enterprises -- we're talking a mile-long stretch of gas stations or fast food). The city (like towns in SV) seems to have congealed more than actually evolved properly.
;-)
I used to listen to stories ad nauseum about how well the Phoenix area was planned (he's a commercial real estate broker there), but I had no appreciation for that until I visited Dallas and had to deal with their traffic. Oddly enough, living in Santa Clara (and working there, too), I've run into less traffic problems than I did on my visit to Dallas (mostly North Dallas).
I don't mean to start a "my city's better than yours" flamewar, but I think folks need to consider the following when moving: 1. Visit, but try your potential commute for a couple of days before commiting and make sure you can live with it. 2. Make mapquest your friend and look up all apartments there (relative to potential employers) so you get the hang of where everything is. 3. Make sure you can live with the culture shock. 4. Check any resource that compares cost of living with where you're living now and don't forget to account for changes in the tax rate if appropriate.
Moving to Silicon Valley, I was ready for this, and the $1,500/mo for a 2BR/2BA was no particular shock. I had a number that my potential employer had to beat before I'd work for him/her, and I more than made it. On the whole, I have ~$500 more in disposable income/month than I had in Phoenix, much better weather, a much more interesting job, and more opportunity than I can shake a stick at. It was a good move, and fairly well-planned.
Cliche time: People don't plan to fail, they fail to plan.
How long's it been since you said "I need a faster paralell port" or "I need to upgrade my serial port to a faster UART?" These have been integrated onto motherboards for quite some time now, to the point that we don't even think about it anymore. Sure, faster UARTs can be had, but we don't need them as a general rule. I can see other components hitting that ceiling soon, too.
Sound is a great example of this. The leap from the PC speaker to the SoundBlaster-ish digital audio was great. The the leap from PCM to wavetable MIDI was not as great, but still very good. The jumps from there on are incremental to the point that there is probably little reason to go to much farther past the SB Live or its competitors in performance (though audiophiles and professionals will always push the envelope). It's just like the jump from the 8250 to the 16450 (great), the 16450 to the 16550 (very good), and so on for serial ports.
Eventually you hit a point where the vast majority of folks out there don't need to worry about pushing that envelope too much farther. At that point, integration has probably already happened and was a Godsend, as it saved you quite a bit of money, and the performance is as good (if not better) than the seperate chips.
I can see it already with sound. Video will take somewhat longer and probably be more like IDE controllers (you still need to upgrade your motherboard every now again to get the latest and greatest UDMA/whatever, but not too many folks complain about that).
I'd really like to see one of the sound folks (Creative or Yamaha, for example) publish a reference ASIC design for all to use (for extremely low cost/free) so that chipset makers can just integrate it into all designs and make it completely ubiquitous. That would kill the ultra-low-end sound card market, but that market was pretty much dead anyway (Avance Logic and Analog Devices are the only two folks there anymore, and I don't think the cheesy sound chips are their primary business). Having a tried-and-true design (such as the Creative Vibra 16) in all chipset designs on the market would be quite helpful, and add-on cards and software could still be added to bring the performance to a level above the default.
Is it just me, or is the fact that a do-it-yourself chain finally came around to the fact that they needed a (formerly) do-it-yourself OS kinda funny?
How many times have folks beckoned to their creator in the hope that it might somehow bring a server back up, or clear network congestion, or even ensure that a cable is not too short to reach the FRAD (or whatever)?
Being able to get a patron saint medal that can be stuck to the front of a server isn't a bad idea at all, IMHO. Seriously, most sysadmins can use all the help they can get!