Great article. This guy was definately a visionary. I know he wrote an important report which had a enormous impact on US Science and Technology policy. It was called something like "Science the endless frontier" Anyway, here's my favorite quote from the article:
For their own purposes the physicists promptly constructed thermionic-tube equipment capable of counting electrical impulses at the rate of 100,000 a second. The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.
It could be that the last word was a misspelling, but if he was using Moore's law, he would have been looking about 10 years into the future...to 1955.
Say you do a search on Google; if you hit the next button, then the pages that were generated get knocked a few points.
If you hit Google again a few minutes later with a variant search, then knock a few points to *all* the pages that got listed
in the previous search. If a user goes back, and hits 'related' pages, increase the points to that page, and all the related
pages. Repeat the above algorithm for every hit to Google.
This is a great idea. What you are suggesting is a form of user moderation that doesn't require any user effort. To build on that idea, perhaps every click-out could increase the revelance ranking (maybe with some way to guess at the time spent on a suggested page).
...the point that Amazon is probably not scamming, that they have the right to set whatever price they want--it is us who choose whether to buy--is valid
I don't think most people are argueing that Amazon shouldn't be allowed to do this. I think the issue is that Amazon is using their superior access to information to take advantage of unsuspecting consumers, who assumed prices were standardized. In order for those consumers to get the best deal, they must also acquire superior information. Most importantly they need to become aware that Amazon is doing this, and then must understand their options for dealing with it (price shopping services, etc.)
Some people will certainly find value in dealing with a retailer who they can rely on to provide good recommendations, prompt shipping etc., even if their price isn't always the best. For these people, the best option may be to shop at Amazon. Other people will always try to find the best price and/or will resent being played for a sucker. For these people, the best option may be to avoid Amazon.
One more thought: Change furnace filters regularly. A HVAC tech once told me he was amazed at the number of folks that never change their furnace filter.
...I cannot understand how such specious reasoning would find its way out of the mouth of a Microsoft
representative. How could they possibly argue that since users are already at much greater risk from other
features/exploits, one more "minor" inconvenience shouldn't matter?
It is amazing what "Public Relations" folks can come up with. This is essentially a "troll"; it attempts to change the focus of a discussion by raising a partially related, but potentially inflamatory point. Most good journalists/interviewers wouldn't let them get away with this without providing a counterpoint.
The big question though is whether this is an example of
particularly poor government performance or just typical of what you'd find in
most Internet-linked systems
A third possibility is that the grades were issued for political reasons, and therefore may bear only a limited relationship to reality. The original report was issued by the General Accounting Office, which has a reputation as being authoritatative and non-partisan, but the GAO did not issue "grades". The "grades" (which are more value-laden, and have more PR appeal) were issued by a House committee, which is controlled by the Republicans. And they are criticizing governmental departments, which are controlled by the Clinton/Gore administration. In particular they are criticizing the technology performance of those departments, supposedly a Gore strong-point.
The airlines and hotels alter their pricing because they have a "perishable" product. An unsold airline seat becomes worthless as soon as the plane takes off. They call it yield management. They alter the price as it gets closer to the expiration date, in order to maximize their revenue.
The technique being used by Amazon is actually quite different, since books and CDs are not perishable. Amazon is altering the price based on who is doing the buying. If they know you are a loyal Amazon customer, they may charge you more because they think they can get away with it. If they know you are a price shopper, they may charge you less, because they think it is the only way they will get your business.
Auto dealers take a similar approach. If you are a loyal customer of XYZ dealership, you will pay more for a car, because that dealer knows you prefer to buy from them.. There is also research that shows women and minorities pay more for cars, apparently because the dealerships (on average) feel that women and minorities (on average) have less bargaining power. Essentially they are taking a profile of what they know about you (previous customer) or what they assume about you (male/female; white/black/brown/tan) and using that profile to adjust their pricing.
What is happening with online shopping is even more insidious. Because online retailers have the ability to create detailed profiles and automatically adjust the prices accordingly, they can really take advantage of the situation. The unfortunate thing is that loyal customers will often get the worst deal.
This is not that uncommon. For example, I think priceline.com does the same thing. The first time a new customer makes a "bid" on a plane ticket, they will usually "win" it. This creates goodwill (loyalty?) on the part of the customer. After that, Priceline will alter their acceptance/rejection of that customer's bids, to determine how price sensitive the customer is. Their subsequent pricing will take advantage of that information. This is not traditional yield management (Priceline does not own the commodity, so from their perspective the commodity is not perishable), rather it is profile-based price management.
So how can consumers protect themselves? The most important thing is to minimize the amount of information a retailer has about you. The less a seller knows about you the better. This is because companies that use profile-based pricing will almost always offer a "new" customer the best deal in the hopes of gaining your trust (so you will hopefully become a "loyal" customer and they increase their pricing and profit later).
Other things consumers can do:
(1) Do not patronize companies that practice this approach.
(2) Publicly condemn companies that take this approach
(3) Utilize price comparison services
(4) Be ruthless about price shopping
(5) Do not become loyal to a single retailer
(6) Shop as anonymously as possible
(6) Just say no
Fritz Attaway, executive vice president and
Washington general counsel at the MPAA [said] "The vast
majority of content won't be copy-protected, and the
marketplace requires the ability to time-shift."
Later he said: "Of course if the marketplace requires it, consumers will pay for it, and we want to charge for it".
In a related development, the authors of DeCSS said "We are looking forward to the FCC's ruling, which we hope will provide us with a new and exciting challenge."
I wonder how they are planning to control the altitude. There needs to be a way to make sure this thing isn't too high up when it crosses from daylight into nighttime. Otherwise the internal gas would condense, causing the balloon to decend rapidly (i.e. crash).
Two ideas came to mind: (1) instead of a single internal fluid, use a blend of of internal fluids, with a range of boiling points, so the transition from bouyant to non-bouyant is more gradual, and (2) use a highly heat absorbant surface on the top of the balloon (so it rises a lot when the sun is high in the sky) and a less heat absorbant surface on the sides of the balloon (so it starts to decend as the sun gets closer to the horizion).
You raise some interesting and valuable points, especially the concept of the new planet's technology only lagging a few short years behind the best available technology here on earth. But let's play out a scenario:
Let's say we transport 10 smart and fertile earthlings to a nearby planet, which is comparable to the earth except that it lacks life and thus lacks a biosphere. Along with the people, we transport an initial protective structure. We also send an appropriate assortment of seeds, machines, repair parts, and basic materials (steel, aluminum, fertilizer, uranium, chemicals, etc.). Let's say for the sake of argument this would cost $100 Billion (certainly a gross underestimate)
The group arrives safely and the population begins to grow at a rate of 3.5% per year (equivalent to the most rapidly developing countries here on earth). If we assume this continues for 400 years, this gives us a population of about 10 million people. As the population grows, these people become equivalently productive as their ancestors on earth. If we assume productivity of a highly developed country here, this means their economic output would be about $30,000 per person per year.
Under these optimistic assumptions, the economic output of the planet would be $300 billion per year after 400 years. But how would this output be spent? My contention is that a major portion of the economic output would go to overcoming the obstacles related to the lack of a biosphere.
For example how do you prospect for and mine minerals on the other side of the planet? Unless you go with a 100% robotics model (and overcome repair issues, etc.), you must have people there. To have people there, you must provide a supply line for oxygen and water and food. These will be very high cost items under this scenario. And these high costs would dramatically reduce the net economic output of the new planet.
Until the economy of the new planet can spare $100 Billion or so, there is no way they will be able to launch a second generation expedition to another planet. And I believe it is extremely unlikely any new society could afford it in 400 years.
This ignores the political issues related to population growth. The history of the earth's societies has been a history of competition (war) over the control of resources. And it goes without saying that war is almost always a waste of resources. It is hard to imagine that the new culture would be immune to these issues. One mitigating circumstance would be that the new culture could be relatively homogeneous, at least to start, and thus relatively immune to conflicts regarding class, religion, etc.
On earth we are able to consider space travel because we have a high economic output. We have a high economic output because our ancestors were able to rapidly add economic value by doing outdoor work, for just the cost of a few meals a day. But our hypothetical new planet would lack a biosphere, therefore this low-cost outdoor work would be impossible. This leads me to conclude that the economic growth needed to support space travel would take a much longer time to develop on the distant planet than it would here on earth.
The article's suggestion of massive distribution makes sense to me. Once it is widely distributed, the costs to the MPAA for stopping further distribution become overwhelming.
Napster could be used to distribute this, but Napster only works with files having a MP3 extension. However folks could distribute this on Napster by putting the file in a directory with their other MP3s and renaming it with an MP3 extension. For example rename the file as follows:
...\DeCSS (to run change extension from MP3 to EXE).MP3
And good luck to the MPAA sending a "please stop" email.
The author of this article (or is it an editorial?) trivializes the challenge of colonizing other planets. He makes the assumption that a transplanted civilization would be able begin its own extraplanetary explorations after only 400 years on its new new host planet.
To me this is naive. The earth is hospitable to human life only because it has harbored other types of life for billions of years. These primitive life forms oxygenated the atmosphere (it was originally carbon dioxide) and created the biomass necessary for agriculture. It took a long time for these processes to occur.
This biomass and oxygen can be thought of as a natural infrastructure that allowed humans to colonize the planet. This colonization allowed humans to gather and exploit mineral resources, and build a technical infrastructure. Competition for these resources caused the development of a political infrastructure to manage this competition. And finally the exploitation of these resources caused the development of an economic infrastructure.
For a civilization to begin space exploration, all these infrastructures would have to be in place. But the limiting path would appear to be the development of the natural infrastructure (biomass and oxygen). It does not seem reasonable to suggest that this could happen in 400 years.
Colonizing a new continent on earth only required a man, a woman, a boat, a vision, and some luck. Colonizing a new planet is significantly more difficult. The author seems to miss that point.
The nondisclosure agreements were apparently offered with a claim that signing them would bolster Sun's commitment to resolving the problem quickly, Henkel said. Sun customers began reporting the problem as long as 18 months ago, he said.
Wow does that sound like a bad idea! Talk about giving up your leverage. Sun must have offered some serious concessions in order to get them to sign this. I wouldn't even consider something like this without an expiration date. That would at least give the hardware vendor some incentive to focus their resources on resolving the problem.
(1) Bands produce the music
(2) Record companies promote and distribute the music with very little money going to the musicians
(3) Consumers buy the music
It looks to me like the record companies are the simply middlemen between producers and consumers. The internet is starting to eliminate the middlemen in many industries. And their product is digital, which makes them more vulnerable. This guy's bluster makes for a good story, but lets come back in 10 years and see where things stand. He'd better hope his salary isn't dependent on backing up those statements.
There are two ways to do this. One is to get someone else to pay you and the other is to do it freelance. Either way your most inportant assets are your credentials, but more importantly your credibility. Develop a reputation for scrupulous accuracy and ethics.
Get a degree in computer and history related fields. Start writing papers and articles on the topic. Work to develop relationships with, and be a resource for others who have a similar interest. And while it is a lot of work, a PhD will open up many more options for you (including being a professor specializing in this area).
As computer history begins to become more "ancient", the interest in it will increase. When that happens, the call for your services will also increase, especially if if you are recognized as one of the respected people in this area. Another avenue to consider is collecting. You could do this on your own, or maybe offer to act as curator for some rich geek with a similar interest.
Sounds like and interesting career idea. Hope it works out for you.
I wouldn't be holding my breath for this to replace silicon in your laptop. While it is a wonderful concept, and a scientific tour-de-force, the reliability of these things will probably be miserable. I'm sure someone will eventually put together a molecular computer. But what happens when it gets too hot? What happens when a single chemical bond gets screwed up? The only ways I see to address this reliability issue is with either redundancy or self-repair. The first is easier, but the second is probably an long way off.
This may have shorter term applicability in composite/injectible medical devices. Imagine a million mini-machines injected into your bloodstream to remove the Sirloin-Steak-Cholesterol from your arteries. Hopefully no problems with overheating here, and who cares if 90% fail. That's what your kidneys are for.
So far so good, but imagine even later when one of these mini-machines somehow mutates and takes off to do its own thing. Bacteria commonly exchange DNA, so it it possible that these things will combine themselves with bacteria. Maybe this won't happen with the first generation of devices, but once these things are have self-repair chemistry (presumably using RNA) it becomes more likely. It is both awe inspiring and scary to realize that we are entering the era where human induced evolution will greatly outpace and overwelm natural evolution.
One of the big advantages of consoles is the standardization they provide. Plug in a game and it works...no questions asked. One of the big advantages of PCs is their ever increasing processing power (and upgradability).
In order to simulate reality, PC gamers stay near the bleeding edge of technology, to get the most processing power and best simulations. But the cost is reliability, standardization and stability. Movement away from the bleeding edge improves standardization/stability, but degrades the ability to simulate reality.
Obviously we are heading toward incredibly inexpensive computing power. Raw processing power doubles every 1.5 years. Hard Storage capacity doubles every 1.0 years. Graphics Capacity doubles every 0.5 years, and RAM continues to drop, but in a more erratic fashion.
As this happens, there will come a point where we have enough processing power to do ultra-realistic real-time virtual reality simulations. Once our machine's ability to generate information matches our eye's ability to absorb the information, then we will have little need for additional game processing power.
As we move in that direction, there will be less incentive to stay near the bleeding edge of PC technology. Therefore PC systems should become more and more stable and standardized. This will reduce the incentive for using consoles rather than PC games.
Slashdot Mirror
For their own purposes the physicists promptly constructed thermionic-tube equipment capable of counting electrical impulses at the rate of 100,000 a second. The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.
It could be that the last word was a misspelling, but if he was using Moore's law, he would have been looking about 10 years into the future...to 1955.
This is a great idea. What you are suggesting is a form of user moderation that doesn't require any user effort. To build on that idea, perhaps every click-out could increase the revelance ranking (maybe with some way to guess at the time spent on a suggested page).
I don't think most people are argueing that Amazon shouldn't be allowed to do this. I think the issue is that Amazon is using their superior access to information to take advantage of unsuspecting consumers, who assumed prices were standardized. In order for those consumers to get the best deal, they must also acquire superior information. Most importantly they need to become aware that Amazon is doing this, and then must understand their options for dealing with it (price shopping services, etc.)
Some people will certainly find value in dealing with a retailer who they can rely on to provide good recommendations, prompt shipping etc., even if their price isn't always the best. For these people, the best option may be to shop at Amazon. Other people will always try to find the best price and/or will resent being played for a sucker. For these people, the best option may be to avoid Amazon.
One more thought: Change furnace filters regularly. A HVAC tech once told me he was amazed at the number of folks that never change their furnace filter.
Yes, If you mean at the sperm bank.
Microsoft is working on similar software. It warns employees before they send an email that discloses antitrust violations.
It is amazing what "Public Relations" folks can come up with. This is essentially a "troll"; it attempts to change the focus of a discussion by raising a partially related, but potentially inflamatory point. Most good journalists/interviewers wouldn't let them get away with this without providing a counterpoint.
Can you say "Election Year Politics"?
The airlines and hotels alter their pricing because they have a "perishable" product. An unsold airline seat becomes worthless as soon as the plane takes off. They call it yield management. They alter the price as it gets closer to the expiration date, in order to maximize their revenue.
The technique being used by Amazon is actually quite different, since books and CDs are not perishable. Amazon is altering the price based on who is doing the buying. If they know you are a loyal Amazon customer, they may charge you more because they think they can get away with it. If they know you are a price shopper, they may charge you less, because they think it is the only way they will get your business.
Auto dealers take a similar approach. If you are a loyal customer of XYZ dealership, you will pay more for a car, because that dealer knows you prefer to buy from them.. There is also research that shows women and minorities pay more for cars, apparently because the dealerships (on average) feel that women and minorities (on average) have less bargaining power. Essentially they are taking a profile of what they know about you (previous customer) or what they assume about you (male/female; white/black/brown/tan) and using that profile to adjust their pricing.
What is happening with online shopping is even more insidious. Because online retailers have the ability to create detailed profiles and automatically adjust the prices accordingly, they can really take advantage of the situation. The unfortunate thing is that loyal customers will often get the worst deal.
This is not that uncommon. For example, I think priceline.com does the same thing. The first time a new customer makes a "bid" on a plane ticket, they will usually "win" it. This creates goodwill (loyalty?) on the part of the customer. After that, Priceline will alter their acceptance/rejection of that customer's bids, to determine how price sensitive the customer is. Their subsequent pricing will take advantage of that information. This is not traditional yield management (Priceline does not own the commodity, so from their perspective the commodity is not perishable), rather it is profile-based price management.
So how can consumers protect themselves? The most important thing is to minimize the amount of information a retailer has about you. The less a seller knows about you the better. This is because companies that use profile-based pricing will almost always offer a "new" customer the best deal in the hopes of gaining your trust (so you will hopefully become a "loyal" customer and they increase their pricing and profit later).
Other things consumers can do:
(1) Do not patronize companies that practice this approach.
(2) Publicly condemn companies that take this approach
(3) Utilize price comparison services
(4) Be ruthless about price shopping
(5) Do not become loyal to a single retailer
(6) Shop as anonymously as possible
(6) Just say no
Later he said: "Of course if the marketplace requires it, consumers will pay for it, and we want to charge for it".
In a related development, the authors of DeCSS said "We are looking forward to the FCC's ruling, which we hope will provide us with a new and exciting challenge."
I wonder how they are planning to control the altitude. There needs to be a way to make sure this thing isn't too high up when it crosses from daylight into nighttime. Otherwise the internal gas would condense, causing the balloon to decend rapidly (i.e. crash).
Two ideas came to mind: (1) instead of a single internal fluid, use a blend of of internal fluids, with a range of boiling points, so the transition from bouyant to non-bouyant is more gradual, and (2) use a highly heat absorbant surface on the top of the balloon (so it rises a lot when the sun is high in the sky) and a less heat absorbant surface on the sides of the balloon (so it starts to decend as the sun gets closer to the horizion).
You raise some interesting and valuable points, especially the concept of the new planet's technology only lagging a few short years behind the best available technology here on earth. But let's play out a scenario:
Let's say we transport 10 smart and fertile earthlings to a nearby planet, which is comparable to the earth except that it lacks life and thus lacks a biosphere. Along with the people, we transport an initial protective structure. We also send an appropriate assortment of seeds, machines, repair parts, and basic materials (steel, aluminum, fertilizer, uranium, chemicals, etc.). Let's say for the sake of argument this would cost $100 Billion (certainly a gross underestimate)
The group arrives safely and the population begins to grow at a rate of 3.5% per year (equivalent to the most rapidly developing countries here on earth). If we assume this continues for 400 years, this gives us a population of about 10 million people. As the population grows, these people become equivalently productive as their ancestors on earth. If we assume productivity of a highly developed country here, this means their economic output would be about $30,000 per person per year.
Under these optimistic assumptions, the economic output of the planet would be $300 billion per year after 400 years. But how would this output be spent? My contention is that a major portion of the economic output would go to overcoming the obstacles related to the lack of a biosphere.
For example how do you prospect for and mine minerals on the other side of the planet? Unless you go with a 100% robotics model (and overcome repair issues, etc.), you must have people there. To have people there, you must provide a supply line for oxygen and water and food. These will be very high cost items under this scenario. And these high costs would dramatically reduce the net economic output of the new planet.
Until the economy of the new planet can spare $100 Billion or so, there is no way they will be able to launch a second generation expedition to another planet. And I believe it is extremely unlikely any new society could afford it in 400 years.
This ignores the political issues related to population growth. The history of the earth's societies has been a history of competition (war) over the control of resources. And it goes without saying that war is almost always a waste of resources. It is hard to imagine that the new culture would be immune to these issues. One mitigating circumstance would be that the new culture could be relatively homogeneous, at least to start, and thus relatively immune to conflicts regarding class, religion, etc.
On earth we are able to consider space travel because we have a high economic output. We have a high economic output because our ancestors were able to rapidly add economic value by doing outdoor work, for just the cost of a few meals a day. But our hypothetical new planet would lack a biosphere, therefore this low-cost outdoor work would be impossible. This leads me to conclude that the economic growth needed to support space travel would take a much longer time to develop on the distant planet than it would here on earth.
Maybe someone could hack AOL and trick them into including DeCSS on all those stupid disks they send out.
The article's suggestion of massive distribution makes sense to me. Once it is widely distributed, the costs to the MPAA for stopping further distribution become overwhelming.
Napster could be used to distribute this, but Napster only works with files having a MP3 extension. However folks could distribute this on Napster by putting the file in a directory with their other MP3s and renaming it with an MP3 extension. For example rename the file as follows:
And good luck to the MPAA sending a "please stop" email.
The author of this article (or is it an editorial?) trivializes the challenge of colonizing other planets. He makes the assumption that a transplanted civilization would be able begin its own extraplanetary explorations after only 400 years on its new new host planet.
To me this is naive. The earth is hospitable to human life only because it has harbored other types of life for billions of years. These primitive life forms oxygenated the atmosphere (it was originally carbon dioxide) and created the biomass necessary for agriculture. It took a long time for these processes to occur.
This biomass and oxygen can be thought of as a natural infrastructure that allowed humans to colonize the planet. This colonization allowed humans to gather and exploit mineral resources, and build a technical infrastructure. Competition for these resources caused the development of a political infrastructure to manage this competition. And finally the exploitation of these resources caused the development of an economic infrastructure.
For a civilization to begin space exploration, all these infrastructures would have to be in place. But the limiting path would appear to be the development of the natural infrastructure (biomass and oxygen). It does not seem reasonable to suggest that this could happen in 400 years.
Colonizing a new continent on earth only required a man, a woman, a boat, a vision, and some luck. Colonizing a new planet is significantly more difficult. The author seems to miss that point.
The nondisclosure agreements were apparently offered with a claim that signing them would bolster Sun's commitment to resolving the problem quickly, Henkel said. Sun customers began reporting the problem as long as 18 months ago, he said.
Wow does that sound like a bad idea! Talk about giving up your leverage. Sun must have offered some serious concessions in order to get them to sign this. I wouldn't even consider something like this without an expiration date. That would at least give the hardware vendor some incentive to focus their resources on resolving the problem.
Hey you over there. Yeah you with the red dress. Come on up front. The bass player wants to meet you.
Does anybody have a checksum algorithm for DNA?
I guess if I get one of these I won't need a hair drier (unless it's raining).
(1) Bands produce the music
(2) Record companies promote and distribute the music with very little money going to the musicians
(3) Consumers buy the music
It looks to me like the record companies are the simply middlemen between producers and consumers. The internet is starting to eliminate the middlemen in many industries. And their product is digital, which makes them more vulnerable. This guy's bluster makes for a good story, but lets come back in 10 years and see where things stand. He'd better hope his salary isn't dependent on backing up those statements.
There are two ways to do this. One is to get someone else to pay you and the other is to do it freelance. Either way your most inportant assets are your credentials, but more importantly your credibility. Develop a reputation for scrupulous accuracy and ethics.
Get a degree in computer and history related fields. Start writing papers and articles on the topic. Work to develop relationships with, and be a resource for others who have a similar interest. And while it is a lot of work, a PhD will open up many more options for you (including being a professor specializing in this area).
As computer history begins to become more "ancient", the interest in it will increase. When that happens, the call for your services will also increase, especially if if you are recognized as one of the respected people in this area. Another avenue to consider is collecting. You could do this on your own, or maybe offer to act as curator for some rich geek with a similar interest.
Sounds like and interesting career idea. Hope it works out for you.
Because [...] sites pop up as rapidly as the old ones are taken down, the studios are facing a grim, unwinnable contest of legal Whack-a-Mole.
Thank you for playing, and better luck next time.
I wouldn't be holding my breath for this to replace silicon in your laptop. While it is a wonderful concept, and a scientific tour-de-force, the reliability of these things will probably be miserable. I'm sure someone will eventually put together a molecular computer. But what happens when it gets too hot? What happens when a single chemical bond gets screwed up? The only ways I see to address this reliability issue is with either redundancy or self-repair. The first is easier, but the second is probably an long way off.
This may have shorter term applicability in composite/injectible medical devices. Imagine a million mini-machines injected into your bloodstream to remove the Sirloin-Steak-Cholesterol from your arteries. Hopefully no problems with overheating here, and who cares if 90% fail. That's what your kidneys are for.
So far so good, but imagine even later when one of these mini-machines somehow mutates and takes off to do its own thing. Bacteria commonly exchange DNA, so it it possible that these things will combine themselves with bacteria. Maybe this won't happen with the first generation of devices, but once these things are have self-repair chemistry (presumably using RNA) it becomes more likely. It is both awe inspiring and scary to realize that we are entering the era where human induced evolution will greatly outpace and overwelm natural evolution.
One of the big advantages of consoles is the standardization they provide. Plug in a game and it works...no questions asked. One of the big advantages of PCs is their ever increasing processing power (and upgradability).
In order to simulate reality, PC gamers stay near the bleeding edge of technology, to get the most processing power and best simulations. But the cost is reliability, standardization and stability. Movement away from the bleeding edge improves standardization/stability, but degrades the ability to simulate reality.
Obviously we are heading toward incredibly inexpensive computing power. Raw processing power doubles every 1.5 years. Hard Storage capacity doubles every 1.0 years. Graphics Capacity doubles every 0.5 years, and RAM continues to drop, but in a more erratic fashion.
As this happens, there will come a point where we have enough processing power to do ultra-realistic real-time virtual reality simulations. Once our machine's ability to generate information matches our eye's ability to absorb the information, then we will have little need for additional game processing power.
As we move in that direction, there will be less incentive to stay near the bleeding edge of PC technology. Therefore PC systems should become more and more stable and standardized. This will reduce the incentive for using consoles rather than PC games.