You're totally missing the point. Remember all that energy the evil robots got out of all the captive human beings in the Matrix? They got way, way more out than they spent caring for/feeding all those bodies and entertaining them with a virtual world, even. So there.
Oh, yeah, I'm just SO impressed by "news sources" other than blogs. MOG. Forbes. Fox. As far as I can see, the only thing editors are doing, if editors even exist any more, is to fire anyone trying to do serious journalism.
1) I can't securely delete a file. Vista "helps me" by remembering infinite versions, unless I turn this off, which I can't, because it will always remember at least one version back no matter what I do. 2) Office 2007 is a mess. I hate the ribbon menus, I don't want to retrain myself on a whole new menu system just so I can use the same old shit, and things work badly (Excel recalc, for example, is subtley broken). 3) Shadowing of files. The shadowing of Program Files is broken. If a Program Files file is shadowed, and then updated with an install utility, the shadow copy is not updated; yet the shadow copy overrides the newly installed copy. Net result: upgrade fails. 4) It's slow. I don't know why -- this laptop is new and should be screamingly fast (which is obvious once I'm running an app). But the OS is sluggish compared to XP.
I'm not that bothered with the security pop-ups. I agree that they are useless for the average user, but so far I am not irritated enough by them to complain.
I congratulate you, sir, on your polite response to a wholly unjustified attack.
I would add one "worst" scenario -- receiving oral sex while driving. If you've ever driven a truck any distance, such as a U-Haul, it's really surprising what you see.
Well, perhaps we are jousting with windmills. Rothbard argues that consumption taxes inevitably devolve into income taxes, anyway. From http://www.mises.org/story/1768:
The Impossibility of Taxing Only Consumption
Having challenged the merits of the goal of taxing only consumption and freeing savings from taxation, we now proceed to deny the very possibility of achieving that goal, i.e., we maintain that a consumption tax will devolve, willy-nilly, into a tax on income and therefore on savings as well. In short, that even if, for the sake of argument, we should want to tax only consumption and not income, we should not be able to do so.
Let us take, first, the Fisher plan, which, seemingly straightforward, would exempt saving and tax only consumption. Let us take Mr. Jones, who earns an annual income of $100,000. His time preferences lead him to spend 90 percent of his income on consumption, and save-and-invest the other 10 percent. On this assumption, he will spend $90,000 a year on consumption, and save-and-invest the other $10,000. Let us assume now that the government levies a 20 percent tax on Jones's income, and that his time-preference schedule remains the same. The ratio of his consumption to savings will still be 90:10, and so, after-tax income now being $80,000, his consumption spending will be $72,000 and his saving-investment $8,000 per year. [9]
Suppose now that instead of an income tax, the government follows the Irving Fisher scheme, and levies a 20 percent annual tax on Jones's consumption. Fisher maintained that such a tax would fall only on consumption, and not on Jones's savings. But this claim is incorrect, since Jones's entire savings-investment is based solely on the possibility of his future consumption, which will be taxed equally. Since future consumption will be taxed, we assume, at the same rate as consumption at present, we cannot conclude that savings in the long run receives any tax exemption or special encouragement. There will therefore be no shift by Jones in favor of savings-and-investment due to a consumption tax. [10] In sum, any payment of taxes to the government, whether they be consumption or income, necessarily reduces Jones's net income. Since his time preference schedule remains the same, Jones will therefore reduce his consumption and his savings proportionately. The consumption tax will be shifted by Jones until it becomes equivalent to a lower rate of tax on his own income. If Jones still spends 90 percent of his net income on consumption, and 10 percent on savings-investment, his net income will be reduced by $15,000, instead of $20,000, and his consumption will now total $76,000, and his savings-investment $9,000. In other words, Jones's 20 percent consumption tax will become equivalent to a 15 percent tax on his income, and he will arrange his consumption-savings proportions accordingly. [11]
Yes, I was being flip about the car to make a point about consumption taxes. Still, one can always buy a used junker. Or barter for one, and pay zero tax. A $20,000 car is a huge luxury. When I was growing up, many folks in my neighborhood never had a new car, ever.
But anyway, see my comment on a parallel thread with regard to the car example. You can't compare item to item; you have to compare total spending to total spending. What looks regressive maybe isn't regressive at all.
Let's limit the discussion to income tax vs. consumption tax on a Federal level.
One way to look at this is the way that mortgage companies look at it: you WILL spend 2/3 of your net income, and you'll only have 1/3 of it left for mortgage + taxes + insurance. They enforce this ratio no matter how much money you make (maybe the ratio has changed since I applied for a mortgage, but whatever new ratio they've settled on is irrelevant to the argument). I found their assumption of spending rate incredible (it certainly didn't and doesn't apply to me), but they're probably right; that's probably how most people live, and the overall pathetic savings statistics for Americans back them up. So if we all are spending 2/3 of our net income, and that 2/3 of net is VAT'd at the same rate, then simple algebra says everyone pays the same percentage of income in taxes, and VAT is not regressive.
Which means the car example from before is not realistic. If person A buys a car for $20,000, and person B who makes 10 times more buys a car for $60,000, so what -- you can't compare the tax on the cars. You have to compare the tax on the total spending of the two individuals. The mortgage broker predicts that they'll both spend the same percentage of net income. If you believe the mortgage broker, you must also believe that they will pay the same percentage of income in VAT.
As far as reforming the income tax system to make it truly progressive, Americans have shown they're unwilling to support that, or at least unwilling to mobilize sufficiently to overcome the lobbying of the rich.
Yes, that's the classic definition. But nobody "made" you buy the car. You can take the bus. You can walk. You can ride a bicycle. The things you absolutely need to live -- food, rent, maybe some clothes -- aren't taxed.
The problem with income tax is, you get taxed no matter what. You have no control over your tax rate. With a consumption tax, you can control your consumption, so you can control your tax.
Finally, income tax is only partially progressive in the US, because the percentage tops out, as well as favoring the wealthy in other ways. And there are lots of ways for the extremely rich to avoid tax, which is one reason why the statutes are so thick (to allow them to do so).
you can't "really make taxation progressive by taxing the percentage of the vehicle's value to bring in the necessary revenue," because that's the same principal as sales tax which is the primary example of a regressive tax.
Sales tax is regressive? How so? If my consumption goes up (i.e., I'm rich), then I pay more tax. If my consumption goes down (i.e., I'm poor), I pay less. If food is not taxed (typically it's not), and (say) children's clothing is not taxed, then the regressive components of sales tax are minimized.
A nationwide VAT (with the above exceptions) is really a much better idea than an income tax. Easier to administer; easier to monitor; much more difficult to avoid. Rich people will buy lots of expensive stuff and pay lots of taxes. Poor people won't.
Of course, eliminating the income tax would cause a host of other problems, like the elimination of the mortgage interest deduction (the subsidy the government pays to the housing industry), the elimination of agricultural subsidies through favorable taxation, and so on. So it's not something that can be done casually, or without a great deal of pain to [someone].
You're my age, no doubt, since our kids are the same age.
I suspect you'd probably agree that the key to child-rearing isn't monitoring or rules. The key is consistency, from a very early age. When a child is raised to understand that "No" means "No," not "Maybe," life becomes very easy indeed. Especially if the parent isn't petty about when s/he says "No." Pick your fights, and win them. All of them. But allow the child to argue his case if you're not sure of the answer, and let him win if he can come up with a compelling argument. He'll respect you for it, even if he's annoyed at the occasional "No."
The children growing up next to me at the moment have been taught from an early age that "No" doesn't mean much. As a result, their parents now must scream like banshees to get their attention. One of the ran into the street after a ball the other day, nearly losing his life, despite a decibel level from the mother that would have shattered plate glass.
Now, I wonder what they'll do when they're teenagers? Answer: Anything they want to, doesn't matter whether they're monitored or not.
Precisely. YOU try coming up with content that gets attention week after week. All these columnists are looking to differentiate themselves from the horde in order keep their jobs, so they pretty much have to say something trollish.
Furthermore, although this has nothing to do with the above point, I don't even know "which" Cringely we're talking about anymore, or who is the "Cringley" behind "Cringely" when it isn't the original Cringely, who, all other criticisms aside, was at least amusing (as I recall) back in the day.
I'm a complete idiot when it comes to car repair, but in 1976 I replaced the head gasket on my Oldsmobile Rocket 350 V8 with a couple of adjustable wrenches. Super easy to work on.
I remember when the heater core went -- no sweat, pull the hose off the heater core input, plug it back into the block, done deal. Six months later when I had the money I pulled the heater core and replaced it.
Front bearings need to be repacked? Piece of cake. Just don't forget the cotter pin that holds the whole damn wheel on, and you're good to go.
Car was unbeatable in a straight line. Handled like crap otherwise, though, but who cared. Nothing like a 350 with a racing transmission and a 4 barrel off the line, baby.
Nowadays, I open the hood and it's a sea of hose assemblies and pipes, can't even see the block. If you buy the shop manual, you find out the first thing you need is a zillion-dollar set of metric torque wrenches before you even start. Screw that.
Then the solenoid went on my Honda Accord, and I found out you can't buy a solenoid any more. You have to buy the whole "alternator assembly" which includes alternator, solenoid, voltage regulator, and God knows what else -- to the tune of $400. I came THIS CLOSE to ripping the goddamn "alternator assembly" apart and fixing the solenoid myself, except I actually have to work for a living. So frustrating.
I'm old, so I remember. I remember when IBM was so clearly the Great Satan. Like suing IBM clone mainframe peripheral vendors in the 60's and 70's. Like trying to push the PS/2 down our throats in the 80's.
Bastards.
Now they are good guys. Why? Because having lost the OS battle, they turn to open source for succor. Not sure this makes them good guys, exactly. They got sued by SCO, but that doesn't make them good guys either, although it is fun watching them pound SCO into paste.
I'm very nervous about their patent portfolio. I'm nervous about everyone's patent portfolio. A time will come when you can't write a line of code without stepping on someone's software or process patent. And that will be the end of a creative era that has known no equal in human history.
Software should not be patentable. Processes should not be patentable. Period.
Right. I grew up in Massachusetts, where the concept of timed traffic lights has exceeded the mental capacity of the DPW for as long as I can remember. At the moment, they seem to be all excited about installing sensor-driven lights that don't actually turn until someone pulls up. Brilliant! Screw the major highway! Joe Dufus on Mulberry Lane is waiting! Let's let everyone sit at interminable traffic lights, idling and polluting and wasting fuel! The concept of making Joe wait an extra-long time until an off-cycle seems to be too intellectually challenging.
I remember signs on the Fellsway West (Route 28) and on the Mystic Valley Parkway (Route 16) stating that the lights were deliberately NOT synchronized, as some kind of wacky traffic control measure. "Hey, don't take this road, the lights suck!" Gee, thanks. By the way, did you notice that it's a state fucking highway, and there's no other way to get there from here? Whose brilliant idea was this? So instead of cruising past Medford on the handy Route 16 bypass, traffic backs up from Winthrop Street all the way to Arlington. Hope you Medford residents are enjoying the exhaust fumes from the omnipresent line of idling traffic.
Now I live in Metro West (Framingham) and I get to enjoy the lack of light synchronization on Route 9. If they synchronized the lights, there would never be a backup on 9. Ever. There's simply not enough traffic. You'd be able to zip through the Natick Mall area without ever stopping. I also enjoy the favoritism given to local roads. Temple Street in Framingham, for example. Why should this rinky dink street have light priority over Route 9? Why should there be a back up every day that stretches for miles? It's ridiculous.
I have a memory, though. I can still remember driving down to New Jersey and experiencing the "green wave" on Route 1 through Edison. If you kept your speed steady, you never had to stop. Ever. It was like a dream. I had to pinch myself. I couldn't believe it.
I wonder why JPL keeps focusing on a few big Mars rovers instead of lots of small ones.
Maybe because it costs so damn much to get a payload to Mars, you might as well send a payload that's going to pay back. Sojourner was only designed to last 7 days; and even after 83 days it had only traveled 100 meters. Compared to what the big rovers have accomplished, Sojourner was a joke.
You need a big vehicle with big wheels or tracks and a complex suspension system to navigate around a rock-strewn plain, which by the way seems to pretty much describe the entire planet. A skateboard with a solar panel on top won't get very far.
I'd argue that slow boot is a software problem, not a hardware problem. The transfer rates from hard drives are plenty fast enough to provide near-instant boot, if anyone cared enough to engineer it. Two things stand in the way: (1) booting is actually a fairly hard problem, and (2) the incentive for improving its speed is basically zero in the current desktop OS monopoly environment.
As far as capacity is concerned, enough is never enough, and folks who've made statements like that have lived to regret them (Gates being one). I'd actually agree with you, except I know I'd regret it later.
The reliability argument should be valid; except it might be a little premature given that we have, let's see, 50+ years of data on rotating magnetic storage failure modes/rates, and how many years of data on PRAM? Anyway, if two hard drives (RAID 1) are cheaper than PRAM, disk wins, PRAM loses as far as I'm concerned. Gimme the capacity, I'll live with the speed deficit.
There have been lots of proposals to use "slow RAM" throughout the years, and there's even been real hardware that tried to take advantage of it in various ways.
A interesting example is the IBM 2301 drum memory device. Originally used as main memory, 2301's were later converted to paging devices. They had great transfer rates, but they became obsolete as soon as RAM sizes increased enough to cache a reasonable number of pages.
The reason is that even though "slow RAM" like drum memory seems intuitively useful as a "third stage" paging device, if you do the math versus the two-stage combination of very fast RAM and very much slower disk, you find that the RAM/disk combo performs almost as well. The conclusion therefore has been that it makes little sense to throw away your money on medium-speed RAM, because you'd have gotten more bang for the buck by spending it either on (a) more fast main memory, or (b) bigger/better disks.
Finally, if you look at history, the rotating storage industry continues to confound all of these "fast RAM" technologies by increasing performance and dropping $/bit at an amazing rate. Nothing is more primitive, to my mind, than spinning a disk platter in 2007 -- but there's still nothing better, and the technology shows no sign of dying.
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You're totally missing the point. Remember all that energy the evil robots got out of all the captive human beings in the Matrix? They got way, way more out than they spent caring for/feeding all those bodies and entertaining them with a virtual world, even. So there.
s/"Wrong hat/"I take a seven-and-a-half."/
Oh, yeah, I'm just SO impressed by "news sources" other than blogs. MOG. Forbes. Fox. As far as I can see, the only thing editors are doing, if editors even exist any more, is to fire anyone trying to do serious journalism.
1) I can't securely delete a file. Vista "helps me" by remembering infinite versions, unless I turn this off, which I can't, because it will always remember at least one version back no matter what I do.
2) Office 2007 is a mess. I hate the ribbon menus, I don't want to retrain myself on a whole new menu system just so I can use the same old shit, and things work badly (Excel recalc, for example, is subtley broken).
3) Shadowing of files. The shadowing of Program Files is broken. If a Program Files file is shadowed, and then updated with an install utility, the shadow copy is not updated; yet the shadow copy overrides the newly installed copy. Net result: upgrade fails.
4) It's slow. I don't know why -- this laptop is new and should be screamingly fast (which is obvious once I'm running an app). But the OS is sluggish compared to XP.
I'm not that bothered with the security pop-ups. I agree that they are useless for the average user, but so far I am not irritated enough by them to complain.
I congratulate you, sir, on your polite response to a wholly unjustified attack.
I would add one "worst" scenario -- receiving oral sex while driving. If you've ever driven a truck any distance, such as a U-Haul, it's really surprising what you see.
Yes, then we could have more billion dollar bridges to nowhere.
Yes, I was being flip about the car to make a point about consumption taxes. Still, one can always buy a used junker. Or barter for one, and pay zero tax. A $20,000 car is a huge luxury. When I was growing up, many folks in my neighborhood never had a new car, ever.
But anyway, see my comment on a parallel thread with regard to the car example. You can't compare item to item; you have to compare total spending to total spending. What looks regressive maybe isn't regressive at all.
Let's limit the discussion to income tax vs. consumption tax on a Federal level.
One way to look at this is the way that mortgage companies look at it: you WILL spend 2/3 of your net income, and you'll only have 1/3 of it left for mortgage + taxes + insurance. They enforce this ratio no matter how much money you make (maybe the ratio has changed since I applied for a mortgage, but whatever new ratio they've settled on is irrelevant to the argument). I found their assumption of spending rate incredible (it certainly didn't and doesn't apply to me), but they're probably right; that's probably how most people live, and the overall pathetic savings statistics for Americans back them up. So if we all are spending 2/3 of our net income, and that 2/3 of net is VAT'd at the same rate, then simple algebra says everyone pays the same percentage of income in taxes, and VAT is not regressive.
Which means the car example from before is not realistic. If person A buys a car for $20,000, and person B who makes 10 times more buys a car for $60,000, so what -- you can't compare the tax on the cars. You have to compare the tax on the total spending of the two individuals. The mortgage broker predicts that they'll both spend the same percentage of net income. If you believe the mortgage broker, you must also believe that they will pay the same percentage of income in VAT.
As far as reforming the income tax system to make it truly progressive, Americans have shown they're unwilling to support that, or at least unwilling to mobilize sufficiently to overcome the lobbying of the rich.
Yes, that's the classic definition. But nobody "made" you buy the car. You can take the bus. You can walk. You can ride a bicycle. The things you absolutely need to live -- food, rent, maybe some clothes -- aren't taxed.
The problem with income tax is, you get taxed no matter what. You have no control over your tax rate. With a consumption tax, you can control your consumption, so you can control your tax.
Finally, income tax is only partially progressive in the US, because the percentage tops out, as well as favoring the wealthy in other ways. And there are lots of ways for the extremely rich to avoid tax, which is one reason why the statutes are so thick (to allow them to do so).
you can't "really make taxation progressive by taxing the percentage of the vehicle's value to bring in the necessary revenue," because that's the same principal as sales tax which is the primary example of a regressive tax.
Sales tax is regressive? How so? If my consumption goes up (i.e., I'm rich), then I pay more tax. If my consumption goes down (i.e., I'm poor), I pay less. If food is not taxed (typically it's not), and (say) children's clothing is not taxed, then the regressive components of sales tax are minimized.
A nationwide VAT (with the above exceptions) is really a much better idea than an income tax. Easier to administer; easier to monitor; much more difficult to avoid. Rich people will buy lots of expensive stuff and pay lots of taxes. Poor people won't.
Of course, eliminating the income tax would cause a host of other problems, like the elimination of the mortgage interest deduction (the subsidy the government pays to the housing industry), the elimination of agricultural subsidies through favorable taxation, and so on. So it's not something that can be done casually, or without a great deal of pain to [someone].
Cool, you're making me feel young!
Thank you, it is quality comments like this that keep me reading slashdot.
You're my age, no doubt, since our kids are the same age.
I suspect you'd probably agree that the key to child-rearing isn't monitoring or rules. The key is consistency, from a very early age. When a child is raised to understand that "No" means "No," not "Maybe," life becomes very easy indeed. Especially if the parent isn't petty about when s/he says "No." Pick your fights, and win them. All of them. But allow the child to argue his case if you're not sure of the answer, and let him win if he can come up with a compelling argument. He'll respect you for it, even if he's annoyed at the occasional "No."
The children growing up next to me at the moment have been taught from an early age that "No" doesn't mean much. As a result, their parents now must scream like banshees to get their attention. One of the ran into the street after a ball the other day, nearly losing his life, despite a decibel level from the mother that would have shattered plate glass.
Now, I wonder what they'll do when they're teenagers? Answer: Anything they want to, doesn't matter whether they're monitored or not.
Outstanding, thank you. Unfortunately I do not have mod points today.
Hey, that's very funny! Thanks for making me chuckle early on a virtual Monday.
Precisely. YOU try coming up with content that gets attention week after week. All these columnists are looking to differentiate themselves from the horde in order keep their jobs, so they pretty much have to say something trollish.
Furthermore, although this has nothing to do with the above point, I don't even know "which" Cringely we're talking about anymore, or who is the "Cringley" behind "Cringely" when it isn't the original Cringely, who, all other criticisms aside, was at least amusing (as I recall) back in the day.
Well, someone else already pointed out that it was the starter assembly, not the (misremembered) alternator assembly. So I rest my case!
I'm a complete idiot when it comes to car repair, but in 1976 I replaced the head gasket on my Oldsmobile Rocket 350 V8 with a couple of adjustable wrenches. Super easy to work on.
I remember when the heater core went -- no sweat, pull the hose off the heater core input, plug it back into the block, done deal. Six months later when I had the money I pulled the heater core and replaced it.
Front bearings need to be repacked? Piece of cake. Just don't forget the cotter pin that holds the whole damn wheel on, and you're good to go.
Car was unbeatable in a straight line. Handled like crap otherwise, though, but who cared. Nothing like a 350 with a racing transmission and a 4 barrel off the line, baby.
Nowadays, I open the hood and it's a sea of hose assemblies and pipes, can't even see the block. If you buy the shop manual, you find out the first thing you need is a zillion-dollar set of metric torque wrenches before you even start. Screw that.
Then the solenoid went on my Honda Accord, and I found out you can't buy a solenoid any more. You have to buy the whole "alternator assembly" which includes alternator, solenoid, voltage regulator, and God knows what else -- to the tune of $400. I came THIS CLOSE to ripping the goddamn "alternator assembly" apart and fixing the solenoid myself, except I actually have to work for a living. So frustrating.
I'm old, so I remember. I remember when IBM was so clearly the Great Satan. Like suing IBM clone mainframe peripheral vendors in the 60's and 70's. Like trying to push the PS/2 down our throats in the 80's.
Bastards.
Now they are good guys. Why? Because having lost the OS battle, they turn to open source for succor. Not sure this makes them good guys, exactly. They got sued by SCO, but that doesn't make them good guys either, although it is fun watching them pound SCO into paste.
I'm very nervous about their patent portfolio. I'm nervous about everyone's patent portfolio. A time will come when you can't write a line of code without stepping on someone's software or process patent. And that will be the end of a creative era that has known no equal in human history.
Software should not be patentable. Processes should not be patentable. Period.
Right. I grew up in Massachusetts, where the concept of timed traffic lights has exceeded the mental capacity of the DPW for as long as I can remember. At the moment, they seem to be all excited about installing sensor-driven lights that don't actually turn until someone pulls up. Brilliant! Screw the major highway! Joe Dufus on Mulberry Lane is waiting! Let's let everyone sit at interminable traffic lights, idling and polluting and wasting fuel! The concept of making Joe wait an extra-long time until an off-cycle seems to be too intellectually challenging.
I remember signs on the Fellsway West (Route 28) and on the Mystic Valley Parkway (Route 16) stating that the lights were deliberately NOT synchronized, as some kind of wacky traffic control measure. "Hey, don't take this road, the lights suck!" Gee, thanks. By the way, did you notice that it's a state fucking highway, and there's no other way to get there from here? Whose brilliant idea was this? So instead of cruising past Medford on the handy Route 16 bypass, traffic backs up from Winthrop Street all the way to Arlington. Hope you Medford residents are enjoying the exhaust fumes from the omnipresent line of idling traffic.
Now I live in Metro West (Framingham) and I get to enjoy the lack of light synchronization on Route 9. If they synchronized the lights, there would never be a backup on 9. Ever. There's simply not enough traffic. You'd be able to zip through the Natick Mall area without ever stopping. I also enjoy the favoritism given to local roads. Temple Street in Framingham, for example. Why should this rinky dink street have light priority over Route 9? Why should there be a back up every day that stretches for miles? It's ridiculous.
I have a memory, though. I can still remember driving down to New Jersey and experiencing the "green wave" on Route 1 through Edison. If you kept your speed steady, you never had to stop. Ever. It was like a dream. I had to pinch myself. I couldn't believe it.
Maybe because it costs so damn much to get a payload to Mars, you might as well send a payload that's going to pay back. Sojourner was only designed to last 7 days; and even after 83 days it had only traveled 100 meters. Compared to what the big rovers have accomplished, Sojourner was a joke.
You need a big vehicle with big wheels or tracks and a complex suspension system to navigate around a rock-strewn plain, which by the way seems to pretty much describe the entire planet. A skateboard with a solar panel on top won't get very far.
I'd argue that slow boot is a software problem, not a hardware problem. The transfer rates from hard drives are plenty fast enough to provide near-instant boot, if anyone cared enough to engineer it. Two things stand in the way: (1) booting is actually a fairly hard problem, and (2) the incentive for improving its speed is basically zero in the current desktop OS monopoly environment.
As far as capacity is concerned, enough is never enough, and folks who've made statements like that have lived to regret them (Gates being one). I'd actually agree with you, except I know I'd regret it later.
The reliability argument should be valid; except it might be a little premature given that we have, let's see, 50+ years of data on rotating magnetic storage failure modes/rates, and how many years of data on PRAM? Anyway, if two hard drives (RAID 1) are cheaper than PRAM, disk wins, PRAM loses as far as I'm concerned. Gimme the capacity, I'll live with the speed deficit.
There have been lots of proposals to use "slow RAM" throughout the years, and there's even been real hardware that tried to take advantage of it in various ways.
A interesting example is the IBM 2301 drum memory device. Originally used as main memory, 2301's were later converted to paging devices. They had great transfer rates, but they became obsolete as soon as RAM sizes increased enough to cache a reasonable number of pages.
The reason is that even though "slow RAM" like drum memory seems intuitively useful as a "third stage" paging device, if you do the math versus the two-stage combination of very fast RAM and very much slower disk, you find that the RAM/disk combo performs almost as well. The conclusion therefore has been that it makes little sense to throw away your money on medium-speed RAM, because you'd have gotten more bang for the buck by spending it either on (a) more fast main memory, or (b) bigger/better disks.
Finally, if you look at history, the rotating storage industry continues to confound all of these "fast RAM" technologies by increasing performance and dropping $/bit at an amazing rate. Nothing is more primitive, to my mind, than spinning a disk platter in 2007 -- but there's still nothing better, and the technology shows no sign of dying.
Its not like we're still calling bios interrupts from DOS anymore.
Speak for yourself! I, for one... oh, never mind.