The ramp is a possibility, but then you'd have to answer the more obvious question "what idiotic public works department would waste money building a ramp at the end of an uncompleted overpass and why?"
I meant "oh crap, the bus is headed for that break with three minutes warning -- luckily we have a crew working on that offramp, so throw some steel plates together and prop them up with something and hope for the best" as a plot line. You then get the added drama of a work crew diving out of the way just as the bus hits the ramp, and the ramp itself falling to pieces just after the bus takes off.
Sure the ramp they build probably won't be adequate for the jump, but at least it shows they've considered the problem and wanted to throw out something semi-plausible. Sure there's no way they could do the work that fast, but at least it goes from "violates physics" to "totally impractical under the circumstances". It would also add drama when road workers scatter every which way at the last possible instant.
Movies have had real cars jumping over real gaps for years, and physics dictates that there's a limit to what you can achieve with that technique; it's pretty much been done.
So write it into the movie. It's possible to make a bus jump a gap like in "Speed" though it takes a ramp and explosives -- put a ramp and explosives into the plot and it becomes plausible. If they used a crane to carry it over the break, then put the crane in the plot. It's not like there's some standard of historical accuracy to worry about. The exact details of the deus ex machina need not be revealed, but its existence should be.
Of course, if they had a crane that could catch and lift a bus going 50 mph, there may not have been a movie. Why put it back down at all?
It would seem the frequency will have to be raised by a couple orders of magnitude to do anything beyond basic wireframes -- at that point perhaps it could be modulated in a manner similar to the Singing Tesla Coil, and provide not only the video, but the soundtrack as well? The sound would even be coming from the "surface" of the perceived object, no matter where the observer is.
Holographic people may turn out to be untouchable in a completely different way than depicted on Star Trek.
If someone is really intent on taking out a certain target (thus committing the resources), but even more intent on causing no collateral damage (unlike the Litvinenko hit), this method might make a bit of sense. Spend a lot of money, maybe you kill the guy or maybe you don't, but you don't harm anyone else either way. I can't think of any situations where this is less resource-intensive than assassination, but maybe Tom Clancy can.
Mailing Anthrax would take a very large box indeed.
Movie and cartoon physics have always been highly suspect. The difference is that until fairly recently, it was blatantly obvious when special effects "cheats" were called into play. This started to fall apart with the advent of the green screen, and ironically went completely to hell with CGI. Why ironically? Because the same computing power used to render can also be used to do the physics properly -- but it generally isn't.
Another irony is that some movies that look cartoonish (Pixar films, for example) have more reasonable physics than movies that are meant to integrate the computer-generated effects seamlessly. Cartoons are one place where suspension of physical law is often accepted in order to support the overall comic effect, though there seems to be a sort of convention of "cartoon physics" as well.
Many devices had screws designed to be turned by 100-yen coins (U.S. quarters are usually a good enough approximation), but this is just FRIGGIN' HUGE in today's miniaturized world, and wouldn't fit in on the OLPC either. Still, coins are not a bad thing to consider when designing for ersatz tool use. They're small, ubiquitous, easy to grip, and probably softer than the screws -- so any damage from ham-handedness is either cosmetic, or happens to the coin.
Are there any truly common sizes for low-denomination coins around the world?
Let's face it, the universe doesn't give a shit about humans one way or the other. It will evolve toward its final configuration -- heat death, the Big Rip, the Big Crunch, whatever -- with no regard to any intelligences living within it.
Humanity will also never occupy more than a tiny corner of the universe, as most of it is just too damn far away to be accessible. No matter what we do, our effects will be "local". Thus, we as a species should do what is best for ourselves (and for any other intelligences we may encounter, if we ever do) and our living conditions and not worry about "what the universe thinks", because if it thinks at all, it sure isn't thinking about US.
The answer in the short term to the lack of cases for the job is very simple: Lego and superglue.
This has always been an option for any form factor, but of course it quickly becomes impractical as Lego does not scale all that well when strength is a concern. With a motherboard this size though, the hard drive or optical drive are going to be the constraint on how small the case can be.
Another viable option is to use a case designed for an optical drive. Once the supplied electronics are gutted (and possibly used elsewhere), it should be possible to shoehorn this board, a 3.5" drive, and a slimline optical drive in there. All you'd have to hack would be the front and back panels, which is pretty trivial with Lexan and a rotary tool.
Some people refuse to believe that something can be right, without being literally and absolutely true. Usually these are known as lawyers, and they do it because they get paid (I'm not sure about the believing part, but they argue it). Preachers do it as well, and many of them get compensated nicely (again not so sure about the believing). My question is why there are people who espouse this point of view when it costs them so much personally? Perhaps because they cannot grasp the cost?
To these people, anything that contradicts their document (never mind that it's a translation in the first place, which introduces all sorts of weirdness) must be proven false, lest their entire worldview vanish in a puff of smoke. There is nothing wrong with sometimes being wrong, if you are willing to accept, correct, and adapt.
How many false positives do you think will be triggered from people who have just fueled the car? The more we move toward ethanol as the primary constituent of fuel, the more people are going to come into contact with it with their hands. Do you stop and wash your hands after fueling? I sure don't; gas station bathrooms are often nasty enough to make it a questionable move.
My drive home -- about 32 miles -- fluctuates wildly between a dead stop and 50-55 mph. If I am lucky enough to hit a relatively open freeway, I may hit 70-75 mph, but that is by far the minority of the trip. Acceleration is crucial. I know electric vehicles have plenty of acceleration when required, but just how much does this reduce the operating radius?
For an electric car -- or fuel cell, or anything else -- to be practical for me, these are the requirements:
* 0 to 60 mph in 11 seconds, max. This would put it on a par with most economy cars in decent condition. * A range of 100 miles per charge or refueling, minimum, regardless of traffic conditions. Not 100 miles on a good day, but 100 miles, every day, including those days it takes 3 hours to go 3 miles. OR, the ability to recharge in 3 to 5 minutes, and half that range, perhaps by swappable fuel cells or batteries. * A top speed of 70-75 mph, minimum. 80 would be better, but 70-75 would suffice. The catch is that it has to be able to do this up moderate hills, not just level surfaces. It will not do to drop to 50 mph every time I have to go uphill. This means that the car only has to be designed to handle 75, but the powertrain probably has to be capable of considerably more to account for uphill slogs. * Air conditioning. This is a considerable power draw, and it has to be designed for, not just bolted on.
That is what it takes to get the average L.A. commuter to and from work every day, with a trip to the store on the way home. A car that does less will find itself roundly ignored.
Is this any better than plain old graphite for electrical conductivity, and more like pure graphene? If so, it could be very useful in places that won't get wet (which would include most existing electrical applications). It would be more useful still if it cold be applied dry with something like a pencil, then the solvent (which could still be water) would be applied. This would make home-brewed printed circuit boards much simpler and much less hazardous to create. No more resist masks and acid dipping.
There is another important point -- in the very same places that have the worst pollution problems, you generally have heavy traffic. Electric cars do not have to idle while sitting in traffic, though the A/C and the radio and the GPS are drawing something.
At some point it may be economically viable to cover a car in solar panels. They will come in any color you like, as long as it's black. This way you could recharge your car -- and maybe even power your office -- by parking out in the open. Even if it is not terribly efficient (when people start wanting more than black cars, something has to be reflected), it is still generating power from otherwise wasted surface area. You would know who is driving the plug-in Priuses (Prii?) versus the regular one then, because the self-charging ones have bird shit on them (from parking in the open) and the regular ones don't.
The down side would be that, along with "check your tire pressure" and "take your golf bag out of the trunk", you could now add "wash the damn car" to the list of things you must think about for efficiency.
You are right that the idea is still valid, it just has to be implemented correctly. Sure you'll pay a premium by buying from Pink Dot, and the delivery area is limited, but if you're in that area, and trying to put a party together, you may find that you forgot the bean dip... or 10 more people showed up than you accounted for and you need 5 pounds of hot dogs for the grill, and you need them 10 minutes ago. You aren't going to hop in the car and go to the store with 40 people milling around your property if you have even the least bit of sense. You could send someone you trust to do it for you, or you could just pick up the phone and call Pink Dot. Hell, have them deliver a keg since they're coming out anyhow.
The trick to making an operation like this work is simply one of population density. You have to have enough customers within a reachable radius to pull it off. Webvan set up shop in places lacking this population density, and didn't pull in enough market share even where they did have enough people in theory. Expenses almost always exceed income for a start-up, but eventually that situation has to reverse or there is no viable business model. If timing of the dot-com bubble burst could have been predicted (the bubble bursting was inevitable, only the timing was in doubt), perhaps Webvan could have modeled its business to be profitable before all sources of capital disappeared forever. They could have done well by emulating Pink Dot in markets that were uncontested but worthwhile. They wouldn't have been so high-flying and ambitious, but they might still be here today.
If you have a newer but less lovable keyboard of similar type, you may be able to swap the cables between them and get rid of one converter at least. I have done this to update a couple of keyboards now, when their less durable but more recent kin have bitten the dust.
I suspect I have the exact same clicky Fujitsu keyboard you do, and it is doing quite well with the PS/2 style cable taken off some $10 model I picked up at a swap meet. I know adapters are cheaper than $10, but it's not like you would be rendering the $10 keyboard useless -- it can have the old AT-style cable and adapter and serve as backup.
Sadly, the clickyboard is on its last legs (or leg, I think one of them broke off a long time ago) -- I have had to place supplemental springs under a couple keys now. Fortunately the keys in question are PgDn and F12, so the stiffer action doesn't pose much of a problem. I have also placed booster springs under Caps Lock, but not because it is broken. I just want it to be hard to press. Even my keyboard here at work has a rubber band underneath the Caps Lock, and it takes a good 20 pounds or more of force to activate it. It is not something I can do accidentally.
This is largely due to a lack of a Killer App out there that really necessitates upgrading. If you need to do something special, really fast, you can patch together lots of off-the-shelf hardware to do the job. For the rest of us? Well I have had this Sempron machine an awful long time. Dual-monitor video, a 200 GB drive, a faster DVD-RW, more RAM -- all these have accreted onto it over time, but at no point have I really thought "man, this machine just isn't fast enough." I've thought my connection is slow, or this or that subsystem is slow, but the processor is usually not the problem.
I will pretty much be forced into a major upgrade at some point, since ATA is dying, AGP is an ex-parrot, and Socket A is way past its prime. Fortunately, I do have SATA ports, and DDR is not completely impossible to get, so one of the core components would have to die and be irreplaceable before I really will be compelled to start over.
I have used faster machines. I use a 3 GHz Prescott machine at work, and have spent long stretches on a dual core Pentium D. Yes, they are smoother. Yes they burp less when you start getting close to their limits. But there is little I could do on one of them that I can't do reasonably well on this machine. Other people using this machine don't gripe about the speed either (though it is rare that anyone tries, between the Dvorak keyboard and left-handed mouse).
The next box will almost be a specialized machine -- a multi-track audio workstation, or a PVR, for example. It will be designed from the ground up to do something I can't do right now. As it ages, it will probably be relegated to more generalized duty, and any recyclable hardware will go into the next specialty box.
When there is an app that people REALLY want, that will work at some level of hardware that is affordable but also not what they have now (so there is no good upgrade path), then people will start another upgrade cycle. Microsoft was hoping that Vista would be all that and a slice of buttered toast on the side, but people want computers to DO something, not just run a flashy OS. Software can and does drive the upgrade cycle, but only if people want it badly enough.
There was a time when you could unlock the multiplier on an Athlon chip with a pencil as well. When AMD went from the ceramic to the "organic" packaging, this no longer worked -- you needed a conductive pen instead, which was still possible, but more error-prone. After all, you can just erase a stray pencil mark, and the silver pen ink tends to spread unless you tape off adjacent areas.
I don't know if these pens were readily available (though I bet they existed) when you had to repair your old Atari, but one of them would have provided a permanent solution to your problem.
The problem with using pencils to fix broken traces is that there is a high resistance -- not so much within any one flake of graphite, but in the gaps between them. As the trace gets longer and/or thinner, that resistance goes up until the device just stops working. A single sheet or ribbon of graphene would neatly sidestep the issue this causes.
I can confirm one more case of this. I had a 256 MB flash drive go through the wash and the dryer about a year and a half ago, and the cap came off at some point (wash or dry, I don't know). By the time I discovered it, it was quite dry and quite warm, but looked none the worse for wear. I tested it out and it had the same four photographs on it that I had loaded onto it that morning.
Fast forward to today, and I e-mailed my boss to ask if she ever intends to give it back. I put a couple of videos on it (total of about 80 MB) for her to take home two and a half weeks ago, and haven't seen it since. I don't particularly even care if she returns the same device. Any 256 MB -- or larger, I'm not picky;) -- flash drive will do. I probably would not lend out anything larger than a 256. If the situation calls for anything larger, burn a CD and I don't care if it comes back.
My anecdotal evidence indicates that a flash drive is more likely to be permanently borrowed than it is to fail from environmental causes. It did come back the first two times, and it may yet come back this time, but I doubt I'll manage to burn it out without deliberately trying to do so.
PS2 also benefited from the fact that people with no console at all (or a much older one) could buy a PS2 and immediately borrow or buy all the existing PlayStation games. The GameCube had no such untapped market segment to exploit. Even for PlayStation owners, the PS2 could serve as the only console on the shelf, meaning no swapping or switching to play the games they already had. This also freed up the old console to live in the kid's playroom or wherever it might still be desirable. It didn't hurt that the PS2 would play DVDs, but it probably didn't help all that much either.
Slashdot Mirror
I meant "oh crap, the bus is headed for that break with three minutes warning -- luckily we have a crew working on that offramp, so throw some steel plates together and prop them up with something and hope for the best" as a plot line. You then get the added drama of a work crew diving out of the way just as the bus hits the ramp, and the ramp itself falling to pieces just after the bus takes off.
Sure the ramp they build probably won't be adequate for the jump, but at least it shows they've considered the problem and wanted to throw out something semi-plausible. Sure there's no way they could do the work that fast, but at least it goes from "violates physics" to "totally impractical under the circumstances". It would also add drama when road workers scatter every which way at the last possible instant.
Mal-2
Hiring a backup band so you can sing a song you wrote does not make it any less your song.
Mal-2
So write it into the movie. It's possible to make a bus jump a gap like in "Speed" though it takes a ramp and explosives -- put a ramp and explosives into the plot and it becomes plausible. If they used a crane to carry it over the break, then put the crane in the plot. It's not like there's some standard of historical accuracy to worry about. The exact details of the deus ex machina need not be revealed, but its existence should be.
Of course, if they had a crane that could catch and lift a bus going 50 mph, there may not have been a movie. Why put it back down at all?
Mal-2
It would seem the frequency will have to be raised by a couple orders of magnitude to do anything beyond basic wireframes -- at that point perhaps it could be modulated in a manner similar to the Singing Tesla Coil, and provide not only the video, but the soundtrack as well? The sound would even be coming from the "surface" of the perceived object, no matter where the observer is.
Holographic people may turn out to be untouchable in a completely different way than depicted on Star Trek.
Mal-2
If someone is really intent on taking out a certain target (thus committing the resources), but even more intent on causing no collateral damage (unlike the Litvinenko hit), this method might make a bit of sense. Spend a lot of money, maybe you kill the guy or maybe you don't, but you don't harm anyone else either way. I can't think of any situations where this is less resource-intensive than assassination, but maybe Tom Clancy can.
Mailing Anthrax would take a very large box indeed.
Mal-2
Movie and cartoon physics have always been highly suspect. The difference is that until fairly recently, it was blatantly obvious when special effects "cheats" were called into play. This started to fall apart with the advent of the green screen, and ironically went completely to hell with CGI. Why ironically? Because the same computing power used to render can also be used to do the physics properly -- but it generally isn't.
Another irony is that some movies that look cartoonish (Pixar films, for example) have more reasonable physics than movies that are meant to integrate the computer-generated effects seamlessly. Cartoons are one place where suspension of physical law is often accepted in order to support the overall comic effect, though there seems to be a sort of convention of "cartoon physics" as well.
Mal-2
Many devices had screws designed to be turned by 100-yen coins (U.S. quarters are usually a good enough approximation), but this is just FRIGGIN' HUGE in today's miniaturized world, and wouldn't fit in on the OLPC either. Still, coins are not a bad thing to consider when designing for ersatz tool use. They're small, ubiquitous, easy to grip, and probably softer than the screws -- so any damage from ham-handedness is either cosmetic, or happens to the coin.
Are there any truly common sizes for low-denomination coins around the world?
Mal-2
Actually I would much prefer to listen to DVDA than Kenny G.
That is such an unfortunate choice of acronym...
Mal-2
Let's face it, the universe doesn't give a shit about humans one way or the other. It will evolve toward its final configuration -- heat death, the Big Rip, the Big Crunch, whatever -- with no regard to any intelligences living within it.
Humanity will also never occupy more than a tiny corner of the universe, as most of it is just too damn far away to be accessible. No matter what we do, our effects will be "local". Thus, we as a species should do what is best for ourselves (and for any other intelligences we may encounter, if we ever do) and our living conditions and not worry about "what the universe thinks", because if it thinks at all, it sure isn't thinking about US.
Mal-2
The answer in the short term to the lack of cases for the job is very simple: Lego and superglue.
This has always been an option for any form factor, but of course it quickly becomes impractical as Lego does not scale all that well when strength is a concern. With a motherboard this size though, the hard drive or optical drive are going to be the constraint on how small the case can be.
Another viable option is to use a case designed for an optical drive. Once the supplied electronics are gutted (and possibly used elsewhere), it should be possible to shoehorn this board, a 3.5" drive, and a slimline optical drive in there. All you'd have to hack would be the front and back panels, which is pretty trivial with Lexan and a rotary tool.
Mal-2
You only say that because it snot yours!
Mal-2
Some people refuse to believe that something can be right, without being literally and absolutely true. Usually these are known as lawyers, and they do it because they get paid (I'm not sure about the believing part, but they argue it). Preachers do it as well, and many of them get compensated nicely (again not so sure about the believing). My question is why there are people who espouse this point of view when it costs them so much personally? Perhaps because they cannot grasp the cost?
To these people, anything that contradicts their document (never mind that it's a translation in the first place, which introduces all sorts of weirdness) must be proven false, lest their entire worldview vanish in a puff of smoke. There is nothing wrong with sometimes being wrong, if you are willing to accept, correct, and adapt.
Mal-2
How many false positives do you think will be triggered from people who have just fueled the car? The more we move toward ethanol as the primary constituent of fuel, the more people are going to come into contact with it with their hands. Do you stop and wash your hands after fueling? I sure don't; gas station bathrooms are often nasty enough to make it a questionable move.
Mal-2
My drive home -- about 32 miles -- fluctuates wildly between a dead stop and 50-55 mph. If I am lucky enough to hit a relatively open freeway, I may hit 70-75 mph, but that is by far the minority of the trip. Acceleration is crucial. I know electric vehicles have plenty of acceleration when required, but just how much does this reduce the operating radius?
For an electric car -- or fuel cell, or anything else -- to be practical for me, these are the requirements:
* 0 to 60 mph in 11 seconds, max. This would put it on a par with most economy cars in decent condition.
* A range of 100 miles per charge or refueling, minimum, regardless of traffic conditions. Not 100 miles on a good day, but 100 miles, every day, including those days it takes 3 hours to go 3 miles. OR, the ability to recharge in 3 to 5 minutes, and half that range, perhaps by swappable fuel cells or batteries.
* A top speed of 70-75 mph, minimum. 80 would be better, but 70-75 would suffice. The catch is that it has to be able to do this up moderate hills, not just level surfaces. It will not do to drop to 50 mph every time I have to go uphill. This means that the car only has to be designed to handle 75, but the powertrain probably has to be capable of considerably more to account for uphill slogs.
* Air conditioning. This is a considerable power draw, and it has to be designed for, not just bolted on.
That is what it takes to get the average L.A. commuter to and from work every day, with a trip to the store on the way home. A car that does less will find itself roundly ignored.
Mal-2
Wouldn't it be easier, cheaper, and produce more energy to put up a big sign reading "FREE LIPOSUCTION", then burn the reclaimed McCalories?
Sheesh.
Mal-2
Is this any better than plain old graphite for electrical conductivity, and more like pure graphene? If so, it could be very useful in places that won't get wet (which would include most existing electrical applications). It would be more useful still if it cold be applied dry with something like a pencil, then the solvent (which could still be water) would be applied. This would make home-brewed printed circuit boards much simpler and much less hazardous to create. No more resist masks and acid dipping.
Mal-2
There is another important point -- in the very same places that have the worst pollution problems, you generally have heavy traffic. Electric cars do not have to idle while sitting in traffic, though the A/C and the radio and the GPS are drawing something.
At some point it may be economically viable to cover a car in solar panels. They will come in any color you like, as long as it's black. This way you could recharge your car -- and maybe even power your office -- by parking out in the open. Even if it is not terribly efficient (when people start wanting more than black cars, something has to be reflected), it is still generating power from otherwise wasted surface area. You would know who is driving the plug-in Priuses (Prii?) versus the regular one then, because the self-charging ones have bird shit on them (from parking in the open) and the regular ones don't.
The down side would be that, along with "check your tire pressure" and "take your golf bag out of the trunk", you could now add "wash the damn car" to the list of things you must think about for efficiency.
Mal-2
That does seem a bit like being an experienced suicide bomber.
Mal-2
Just how do you intend to play games -- more than once, anyhow -- with a Smoke Emitting Diode display?
Mal-2
You are right that the idea is still valid, it just has to be implemented correctly. Sure you'll pay a premium by buying from Pink Dot, and the delivery area is limited, but if you're in that area, and trying to put a party together, you may find that you forgot the bean dip... or 10 more people showed up than you accounted for and you need 5 pounds of hot dogs for the grill, and you need them 10 minutes ago. You aren't going to hop in the car and go to the store with 40 people milling around your property if you have even the least bit of sense. You could send someone you trust to do it for you, or you could just pick up the phone and call Pink Dot. Hell, have them deliver a keg since they're coming out anyhow.
The trick to making an operation like this work is simply one of population density. You have to have enough customers within a reachable radius to pull it off. Webvan set up shop in places lacking this population density, and didn't pull in enough market share even where they did have enough people in theory. Expenses almost always exceed income for a start-up, but eventually that situation has to reverse or there is no viable business model. If timing of the dot-com bubble burst could have been predicted (the bubble bursting was inevitable, only the timing was in doubt), perhaps Webvan could have modeled its business to be profitable before all sources of capital disappeared forever. They could have done well by emulating Pink Dot in markets that were uncontested but worthwhile. They wouldn't have been so high-flying and ambitious, but they might still be here today.
Mal-2
If you have a newer but less lovable keyboard of similar type, you may be able to swap the cables between them and get rid of one converter at least. I have done this to update a couple of keyboards now, when their less durable but more recent kin have bitten the dust.
I suspect I have the exact same clicky Fujitsu keyboard you do, and it is doing quite well with the PS/2 style cable taken off some $10 model I picked up at a swap meet. I know adapters are cheaper than $10, but it's not like you would be rendering the $10 keyboard useless -- it can have the old AT-style cable and adapter and serve as backup.
Sadly, the clickyboard is on its last legs (or leg, I think one of them broke off a long time ago) -- I have had to place supplemental springs under a couple keys now. Fortunately the keys in question are PgDn and F12, so the stiffer action doesn't pose much of a problem. I have also placed booster springs under Caps Lock, but not because it is broken. I just want it to be hard to press. Even my keyboard here at work has a rubber band underneath the Caps Lock, and it takes a good 20 pounds or more of force to activate it. It is not something I can do accidentally.
Mal-2
This is largely due to a lack of a Killer App out there that really necessitates upgrading. If you need to do something special, really fast, you can patch together lots of off-the-shelf hardware to do the job. For the rest of us? Well I have had this Sempron machine an awful long time. Dual-monitor video, a 200 GB drive, a faster DVD-RW, more RAM -- all these have accreted onto it over time, but at no point have I really thought "man, this machine just isn't fast enough." I've thought my connection is slow, or this or that subsystem is slow, but the processor is usually not the problem.
I will pretty much be forced into a major upgrade at some point, since ATA is dying, AGP is an ex-parrot, and Socket A is way past its prime. Fortunately, I do have SATA ports, and DDR is not completely impossible to get, so one of the core components would have to die and be irreplaceable before I really will be compelled to start over.
I have used faster machines. I use a 3 GHz Prescott machine at work, and have spent long stretches on a dual core Pentium D. Yes, they are smoother. Yes they burp less when you start getting close to their limits. But there is little I could do on one of them that I can't do reasonably well on this machine. Other people using this machine don't gripe about the speed either (though it is rare that anyone tries, between the Dvorak keyboard and left-handed mouse).
The next box will almost be a specialized machine -- a multi-track audio workstation, or a PVR, for example. It will be designed from the ground up to do something I can't do right now. As it ages, it will probably be relegated to more generalized duty, and any recyclable hardware will go into the next specialty box.
When there is an app that people REALLY want, that will work at some level of hardware that is affordable but also not what they have now (so there is no good upgrade path), then people will start another upgrade cycle. Microsoft was hoping that Vista would be all that and a slice of buttered toast on the side, but people want computers to DO something, not just run a flashy OS. Software can and does drive the upgrade cycle, but only if people want it badly enough.
Mal-2
There was a time when you could unlock the multiplier on an Athlon chip with a pencil as well. When AMD went from the ceramic to the "organic" packaging, this no longer worked -- you needed a conductive pen instead, which was still possible, but more error-prone. After all, you can just erase a stray pencil mark, and the silver pen ink tends to spread unless you tape off adjacent areas.
I don't know if these pens were readily available (though I bet they existed) when you had to repair your old Atari, but one of them would have provided a permanent solution to your problem.
The problem with using pencils to fix broken traces is that there is a high resistance -- not so much within any one flake of graphite, but in the gaps between them. As the trace gets longer and/or thinner, that resistance goes up until the device just stops working. A single sheet or ribbon of graphene would neatly sidestep the issue this causes.
Mal-2
I can confirm one more case of this. I had a 256 MB flash drive go through the wash and the dryer about a year and a half ago, and the cap came off at some point (wash or dry, I don't know). By the time I discovered it, it was quite dry and quite warm, but looked none the worse for wear. I tested it out and it had the same four photographs on it that I had loaded onto it that morning.
;) -- flash drive will do. I probably would not lend out anything larger than a 256. If the situation calls for anything larger, burn a CD and I don't care if it comes back.
Fast forward to today, and I e-mailed my boss to ask if she ever intends to give it back. I put a couple of videos on it (total of about 80 MB) for her to take home two and a half weeks ago, and haven't seen it since. I don't particularly even care if she returns the same device. Any 256 MB -- or larger, I'm not picky
My anecdotal evidence indicates that a flash drive is more likely to be permanently borrowed than it is to fail from environmental causes. It did come back the first two times, and it may yet come back this time, but I doubt I'll manage to burn it out without deliberately trying to do so.
Mal-2
PS2 also benefited from the fact that people with no console at all (or a much older one) could buy a PS2 and immediately borrow or buy all the existing PlayStation games. The GameCube had no such untapped market segment to exploit. Even for PlayStation owners, the PS2 could serve as the only console on the shelf, meaning no swapping or switching to play the games they already had. This also freed up the old console to live in the kid's playroom or wherever it might still be desirable. It didn't hurt that the PS2 would play DVDs, but it probably didn't help all that much either.
Mal-2