You are dismissing the fact that ideally this would allow them to drop the price on new games. Ideally. Will they do that? Yes, but it is doubtful by much (see iTunes, horrendously expensive for non-physical media).
Pre-iTunes: CDs for $20-$30 for a dozen songs. That you would still need to rip Post-iTunes: $1 per song
A >50% drop in the price seems about right to me as far as eliminating physical media goes.
Because the stores don't pay very much for used games. The used game that you bought for $30 (instead of $45 new or probably $20 on a Steam sale), the store paid $5. At most. Yes, the stores will occasionally pay as much as $10 for new and hot titles, but those get sold used for as little as $5 off the price of a new copy.
The used games stores are bad for the industry. All the bad things that publishers say about games piracy? The loss of sales and money being diverted away from the people who make the games? The need to jack up prices to make up for sales lost due to alternate means of acquisition? All that shit is actually true about the used games industry. With the kicker that the people lost to the used games pawnbrokers are actually paying customers, which is something you can't say about the pirates.
Some people obviously don't actually play modern 'games'. I'd love to see some definition of what made classic games more 'game' than things like Battlefield, Portal or Minecraft.
See, this is why most companies just say 'screw it, ignore the entire mess'
I doubt there is a single person on Slashdot who can honestly say that they don't own a single thing that was produced at some level using what is effectively slave labor. Apple is doing more than 99% of companies do to ensure that their workers are treated properly around the world. Not perfect, but better than most. And the reward for even acknowledging the problem is righteous condemnation from the peanut gallery while companies that brush it under the rug get a pass.
Or it could be that, having acquired Anobit, Apple no longer considers them a separate company. Or perhaps Apple had not been dealing with Anobit directly, but rather through a third party who is on the list. Or that the list was compiled from sources that lag behind actual production by a number of months and Anobit will show up on the next update. Lots of possible reasons without having to stretch for a conspiracy.
Laugh while developers adopt your architecture. Once you have the developers, getting users is just a matter of time.
See, this is the part that is actually backwards. Users attract developers, not the other way around. It turns out that before someone will spend six months developing a application for your platform they need to be reasonably sure that customers exists who will buy it. Yes, you will get a small subset of developers who make something for themselves and then release it into the wild, but that's never going to be big.
I don't think I can name a single successful platform where the developers and software came first and the users adopted it after.
Windows is famous for having all the users and so any and all software is readily available for windows despite any personal bias on the part of developers. Linux represents a high number of server users and has a massive amount of server and DB software developed for it. Linux has a very small percentage of desktop users and so has Tux Racer, GIMP and eternal complaints about why no one bothers providing proper drivers.
iOS represents the single largest (in $) mobile application platform. It has more developers than it knows what to do with. MeeGo doesn't even chart.
Well, for one thing we don't have the same kinds of 'decaying urban core' that you get in the US. The downtowns tend to be arts districts and active office buildings, not barren wastelands. And social assistance and subsidized rent kicks in quite fast. For the basic stuff it doesn't last long either, but in 90% of the cases it doesn't have to. A couple months to get something new together and off you go.
I suspect that the biggest difference is lower debt and fewer sudden costs. People tend to rely on credit cards less for day-to-day use and things like unexpected healthcare costs don't really exist. So if someone (particularly if it's one member of a two-income household) loses their job chances are that belt tightening and some minimal saving and credit will get them through a few months without much trouble.
aka: It would be nice if this worked, despite evidence to the contrary
market-hyped
aka: What everyone actually wants
I love the philosophy of OLPC, but I don't think it is a particularly useful actual project. The original project worked for years on the cutting edge trying to make a cheap laptop that everyone in the world could access. And by the time the technology became readily available for their goal to be achieved... the technology was readily available for everyone else to do the same thing. Now the big manufacturers and Chinese OEMs are making netbooks and laptops and such far cheaper than OLPC ever dreamed of.
Now they want to do a tablet? Why? By the time the supply chain is in place for them to make a super cheap tablet... the supply chain will be in place for anyone to make a super cheap tablet.
The software is what matters, not the hardware. OLPC would be better off working with the CyanogenMod people to make a customized android install that runs on all hardware and supports the OLPC ideals. Let the ten million companies out there make heap hardware. They already are, and will regardless of what OLPC does or does not do. Let OLPC focus on opening it up and connecting and educating the users.
I'm not sure comparing a single-client business and the production of mass media is a very useful analogy.
The very idea of mass media is that a large production cost is recouped by many small sales. Who would you suggest is the single client that could replace all those individual sales? And a client that then needs additional sub-sales to recoup their cost doesn't count.
Without a secure framework that allows for a producer to recoup the cost of work in many small installments, large scale mass media goes away. Period.
That doesn't mean that current copyright is particulary sane or useful. But it does mean that its total removal would also end the viability of much of our current media.
And where would they get the free software? I know... how about a central repository that contains a large searchable selection of software?
Any application platform where the users are expected to audit the software has failed on a fundamental level. It's like a car company that expects their customers to mill their own replacement parts. Yes, technically possible and some people have the skills, but it has missed the point so completely that it's not even wrong.
No... copyright is by default. It is automatic. Under the Berne Convention everything that is made is automatically covered under copyright. There's a reason Slashdot has the little "comments are owned by..." at the top of every section. It is basically impossible to create anything without copyright.
While Handbrake is an awesome piece of software, it's not a remuxer. It doesn't support passthrough for the video streams. They will always be re-compressed. Often with little or no loss of visible quality, but some loss will occur.
1) I've never had problems with using Handbreak for chapters. But one anecdote is about as useless as another for this kind of thing. 2) Only system I've ever found that supports.mp4 but not the subtitles is the PS3, and all indications are that it was deliberate. So fuck Sony and the horse they rode in on (slung underneath). On the other hand, PS3 doesn't support mkv at all
3) This is not a good thing if your goal is to play back the content on any system but the one it was made on. Ever gone internet hunting for that one weird codec that you used for a few months a couple years ago? No? Me neither because I'm not dumb enough to think that 'can jam anything into it' is a good thing in a media format.
4) This is... debatable. Both formats are open standards and open source. You can look at the specs and the code for either. The patents for.mp4 are known and need to be licensed if you are a large commercial operation. The patents for mkv are god-knows-what and may or may not get eaten alive the first time that the patents ever become important. No one knows. Pick your poison.
1) This is debatable, but not really relevant for the discussion. Depends on how you judge the difference between known licenses and god-knows-what patent issues.
2) Not sure if this counts as a positive feature. AVIs are famous for the ten-million random codecs they might contain. Just because you can get the container to wrap around a particular stream doesn't mean you will ever be able to play it back again.
3) Those 'versions' are actually a feature of the h264 codec, not the container. You get the same thing on mp4 or mkv. You may not have realized it because it's just assumed that mkv is incompatible;)
It's a combination of the supported profiles/levels. Basically rising levels of extra quality in exchange for higher hardware requirements. They are fully forward-compatible, so anything compressed with the standard profiles will play on any device that supports higher profiles, but something that has been recorded specifically for a high-end system will not play on a low-end one. Even phones are now starting to support level 5.1 high profile, which is the highest, so in another year or so the entire issue will disappear.
4) Again, I'm not sure this is a feature. Being able to jam anything you can dream of into a container is a poor choice if the goal is to play it back on any system but the one that was used to make the file.
Why would you change away from x264 and mkv. They are the industry standards.
Stick with x264. It is open source and industry stanard. Not open licensed from a commercial point of view, but all the software side and standards are completely open.
Ditch.mkv as soon as possible. It's an almost completely unsupported container. Even among software that supposedly supports it there can be compatibility issues. It's popular in the ripping/pirate communities precisely because it's a pain to use. Just getting your videos to work on a regular basis is a mark of distinction.
Switch to a standard.mp4 container. Much better supported on hardware or software. Some day you will want to be able to stream from your server to a thin set-top box or load a file on your kid's phone. On that day.mkv will make you cry.
There are server remuxers floating around that repackage the video and audio streams into a new container. No re-compression or quality loss. You can fold any subtitle files or other extras into the file at the same time.
Look at Rebecca Blacks Friday song. She has made a shit ton of money from one single all because of the crowd sourcing effects of YouTube... Look at open source projects.
A shit-ton of money? Seriously? Grand total, before taxes and any cuts she needs to make to management or to pay costs, the song generated between $25,000-$50,000. As a one-hit fluke that's awesome, but a career it does not make. Randomly being the one video in a million that happens to catch on for a moment is not exactly a strategy you can build a life around. Google "Rebecca black sales" if you want to see the numbers.
Can you name two dozen OSS projects that are even paying their contributors living wages? I think I could get about a half dozen before I was really stretching.
For all the hype, our new tech is really not changing the basic economic equations of any industry. Replacing some bits with the new equivalent, but not changing the fundamental equation. Why? Because the costs and limiting factors are almost never related tot he technology, regardless of the industry.
It's like with films, you constantly see the hype about how cheap equipment will free us from the studio system. But the costs of film making have never been the equipment, it's always been paying fifty people who know what they are doing for two months to get a project made. That hasn't changed. Printing costs (the only thing digital eliminates... sort of) have never been the expensive part of bringing a book to market. Duplication costs have not been holding the record industry back for half a century.
'Changing the font and size' is about the least part of what a typesetter/layout person does. And it's a job that is particularly important for digital media where consciously choosing how things are displayed makes a massive difference to the readability. What font gets used? How large are the indents and how will the book treat text-wrapping for long lines? How are chapters and other headings handled? Are there quotations or other types of inset text?
God help you if you are doing something actually complicated with illustrations or funky layout tricks.
These things are what separates a professional book from a wall of text. And you have never noticed them in your life because they are always done long before it sees your hands. Go read some of the 'self-published' stuff on Amazon and try and figure out why the reading experience feels so clunky.
Yes, all you get from a publisher is up-front fees and marketing. And professional editing. And layout and typesetting.
And the way you say 'marketing' makes it sound like an easy thing. There are a quarter of a million books published every year in North America alone. Writing the first rough draft isn't the hard part. Writing the much better eighth draft is harder. Then getting anyone to read the damn thing, much less pay for it, is hardest.
No one is getting rich in the book industry. No one. Not the publishers, not the editors, not the authors. As an industry it is notorious for how much money it doesn't make.
If there were an easy way to successfully chop out any of the various book production positions it would have already happened long ago. And not years ago but decades ago.
No, if the decade old HP tablet was released today it would not have 'violated' anything. These are design patents. It's more like copyright. It's the same kind of thing that stops anyone but Coke from selling cola in those specifically shaped bottles. And it's not about any one of the claimed similarities. It's about all of them at once.
If Samsung had changed a single thing on their products there would be no case. Square buttons or a different colour or differently shaped speakers. Anything and the case would never have even been filed.
Every time this comes up on Slashdot the threads of filled with people treating these like a regular patent case. Running around for prior art and latching on to singe points of data. It got old months ago and has really killed any sort of actual discussion about the lawsuits.
Why? Because the number of twins that are (both) also professional actors and are the right age/build/look is a frighteningly small set. A decade ago they would have just used camera trickery and filmed everything twice to double the one actor. Now, shooting everything once and swapping the face saves them lots of money, if only because filming time is crazy expensive.
So... everything that was around before the iPhone?
I only joke a little. These lawsuits have never been about Samsung copying any single design feature, they have been about the copying of many design features. The inclusion of any one of these 'suggestions' (or any other significant design difference) would would have made the lawsuits DOA.
If the speakers/microphone were a set of stylized vertical grills (which might look quite nice actually), there would be no lawsuit. Square screen (and why couldn't someone make a nice UI for a square screen?) and there is no lawsuit. Screen offset from the center (perhaps a row of function buttons underneath?) and there is no lawsuit. A significant colour difference anywhere on the device and there would be no lawsuit. Hell, make the buttons rounded squares and you have probably killed any possible claims.
These lawsuits were easy to avoid. Everyone else managed.
I guess 4 cores isn't enough to open menus smoothly. You think at some point they will let the hardware and software engineers talk to each other? Perhaps even get their hands on the product before it ships?
Yes, but power consumption can be a tricky thing. If enough can be off-loaded to a GPU that is more efficient it can come out better in the end. That's basically been Apple's strategy with the iPhones and iPads. An OK processor coupled with a GPU that that been customized to fit the device and software customized to get the most out of the hardware.
Do one better than this. You have a month. Go and borrow old photo albums from people and start scanning. You family will thrill over old wedding and vacation photos with embarrassing haircuts and awful fashions that they had forgotten.
See how many pictures of their parents as kids you can find for your nieces and nephews. Bonus points if they are wearing clothes or fashions that are completely different from their current personalities (Hey dad was completely metal!) with double bonus points if it highlights parental hypocrisy in a funny way (Mom, that skirt is way shorter than the one you won't let me wear...)
Stuxnet is the first widely reported example of a digital attack on the infrastructure of one nation by (what is believed to be) another nation or nations. This is a big deal. This is one that is likely to be in course syllabuses 50 years from now. If not in the CS department then probably in the PoliSci department. Anything connected to Stuxnet is inherently interesting and potentially newsworthy.
Any actual technical capabilities that Duqu may or may not have is the least interesting part of this story.
Slashdot Mirror
You are dismissing the fact that ideally this would allow them to drop the price on new games. Ideally. Will they do that? Yes, but it is doubtful by much (see iTunes, horrendously expensive for non-physical media).
Pre-iTunes: CDs for $20-$30 for a dozen songs. That you would still need to rip
Post-iTunes: $1 per song
A >50% drop in the price seems about right to me as far as eliminating physical media goes.
Because the stores don't pay very much for used games. The used game that you bought for $30 (instead of $45 new or probably $20 on a Steam sale), the store paid $5. At most. Yes, the stores will occasionally pay as much as $10 for new and hot titles, but those get sold used for as little as $5 off the price of a new copy.
The used games stores are bad for the industry. All the bad things that publishers say about games piracy? The loss of sales and money being diverted away from the people who make the games? The need to jack up prices to make up for sales lost due to alternate means of acquisition? All that shit is actually true about the used games industry. With the kicker that the people lost to the used games pawnbrokers are actually paying customers, which is something you can't say about the pirates.
Some people obviously don't actually play modern 'games'. I'd love to see some definition of what made classic games more 'game' than things like Battlefield, Portal or Minecraft.
See, this is why most companies just say 'screw it, ignore the entire mess'
I doubt there is a single person on Slashdot who can honestly say that they don't own a single thing that was produced at some level using what is effectively slave labor. Apple is doing more than 99% of companies do to ensure that their workers are treated properly around the world. Not perfect, but better than most. And the reward for even acknowledging the problem is righteous condemnation from the peanut gallery while companies that brush it under the rug get a pass.
Or it could be that, having acquired Anobit, Apple no longer considers them a separate company. Or perhaps Apple had not been dealing with Anobit directly, but rather through a third party who is on the list. Or that the list was compiled from sources that lag behind actual production by a number of months and Anobit will show up on the next update. Lots of possible reasons without having to stretch for a conspiracy.
Laugh while developers adopt your architecture. Once you have the developers, getting users is just a matter of time.
See, this is the part that is actually backwards. Users attract developers, not the other way around. It turns out that before someone will spend six months developing a application for your platform they need to be reasonably sure that customers exists who will buy it. Yes, you will get a small subset of developers who make something for themselves and then release it into the wild, but that's never going to be big.
I don't think I can name a single successful platform where the developers and software came first and the users adopted it after.
Windows is famous for having all the users and so any and all software is readily available for windows despite any personal bias on the part of developers. Linux represents a high number of server users and has a massive amount of server and DB software developed for it. Linux has a very small percentage of desktop users and so has Tux Racer, GIMP and eternal complaints about why no one bothers providing proper drivers.
iOS represents the single largest (in $) mobile application platform. It has more developers than it knows what to do with. MeeGo doesn't even chart.
Well, for one thing we don't have the same kinds of 'decaying urban core' that you get in the US. The downtowns tend to be arts districts and active office buildings, not barren wastelands. And social assistance and subsidized rent kicks in quite fast. For the basic stuff it doesn't last long either, but in 90% of the cases it doesn't have to. A couple months to get something new together and off you go.
I suspect that the biggest difference is lower debt and fewer sudden costs. People tend to rely on credit cards less for day-to-day use and things like unexpected healthcare costs don't really exist. So if someone (particularly if it's one member of a two-income household) loses their job chances are that belt tightening and some minimal saving and credit will get them through a few months without much trouble.
fundamental mission
aka: It would be nice if this worked, despite evidence to the contrary
market-hyped
aka: What everyone actually wants
I love the philosophy of OLPC, but I don't think it is a particularly useful actual project. The original project worked for years on the cutting edge trying to make a cheap laptop that everyone in the world could access. And by the time the technology became readily available for their goal to be achieved... the technology was readily available for everyone else to do the same thing. Now the big manufacturers and Chinese OEMs are making netbooks and laptops and such far cheaper than OLPC ever dreamed of.
Now they want to do a tablet? Why? By the time the supply chain is in place for them to make a super cheap tablet... the supply chain will be in place for anyone to make a super cheap tablet.
The software is what matters, not the hardware. OLPC would be better off working with the CyanogenMod people to make a customized android install that runs on all hardware and supports the OLPC ideals. Let the ten million companies out there make heap hardware. They already are, and will regardless of what OLPC does or does not do. Let OLPC focus on opening it up and connecting and educating the users.
I'm not sure comparing a single-client business and the production of mass media is a very useful analogy.
The very idea of mass media is that a large production cost is recouped by many small sales. Who would you suggest is the single client that could replace all those individual sales? And a client that then needs additional sub-sales to recoup their cost doesn't count.
Without a secure framework that allows for a producer to recoup the cost of work in many small installments, large scale mass media goes away. Period.
That doesn't mean that current copyright is particulary sane or useful. But it does mean that its total removal would also end the viability of much of our current media.
And where would they get the free software? I know... how about a central repository that contains a large searchable selection of software?
Any application platform where the users are expected to audit the software has failed on a fundamental level. It's like a car company that expects their customers to mill their own replacement parts. Yes, technically possible and some people have the skills, but it has missed the point so completely that it's not even wrong.
No... copyright is by default. It is automatic. Under the Berne Convention everything that is made is automatically covered under copyright. There's a reason Slashdot has the little "comments are owned by..." at the top of every section. It is basically impossible to create anything without copyright.
While Handbrake is an awesome piece of software, it's not a remuxer. It doesn't support passthrough for the video streams. They will always be re-compressed. Often with little or no loss of visible quality, but some loss will occur.
1) I've never had problems with using Handbreak for chapters. But one anecdote is about as useless as another for this kind of thing. .mp4 but not the subtitles is the PS3, and all indications are that it was deliberate. So fuck Sony and the horse they rode in on (slung underneath). On the other hand, PS3 doesn't support mkv at all
2) Only system I've ever found that supports
3) This is not a good thing if your goal is to play back the content on any system but the one it was made on. Ever gone internet hunting for that one weird codec that you used for a few months a couple years ago? No? Me neither because I'm not dumb enough to think that 'can jam anything into it' is a good thing in a media format.
4) This is... debatable. Both formats are open standards and open source. You can look at the specs and the code for either. The patents for .mp4 are known and need to be licensed if you are a large commercial operation. The patents for mkv are god-knows-what and may or may not get eaten alive the first time that the patents ever become important. No one knows. Pick your poison.
1) This is debatable, but not really relevant for the discussion. Depends on how you judge the difference between known licenses and god-knows-what patent issues.
2) Not sure if this counts as a positive feature. AVIs are famous for the ten-million random codecs they might contain. Just because you can get the container to wrap around a particular stream doesn't mean you will ever be able to play it back again.
3) Those 'versions' are actually a feature of the h264 codec, not the container. You get the same thing on mp4 or mkv. You may not have realized it because it's just assumed that mkv is incompatible ;)
It's a combination of the supported profiles/levels. Basically rising levels of extra quality in exchange for higher hardware requirements. They are fully forward-compatible, so anything compressed with the standard profiles will play on any device that supports higher profiles, but something that has been recorded specifically for a high-end system will not play on a low-end one. Even phones are now starting to support level 5.1 high profile, which is the highest, so in another year or so the entire issue will disappear.
4) Again, I'm not sure this is a feature. Being able to jam anything you can dream of into a container is a poor choice if the goal is to play it back on any system but the one that was used to make the file.
Why would you change away from x264 and mkv. They are the industry standards.
Stick with x264. It is open source and industry stanard. Not open licensed from a commercial point of view, but all the software side and standards are completely open.
Ditch .mkv as soon as possible. It's an almost completely unsupported container. Even among software that supposedly supports it there can be compatibility issues. It's popular in the ripping/pirate communities precisely because it's a pain to use. Just getting your videos to work on a regular basis is a mark of distinction.
Switch to a standard .mp4 container. Much better supported on hardware or software. Some day you will want to be able to stream from your server to a thin set-top box or load a file on your kid's phone. On that day .mkv will make you cry.
There are server remuxers floating around that repackage the video and audio streams into a new container. No re-compression or quality loss. You can fold any subtitle files or other extras into the file at the same time.
Look at Rebecca Blacks Friday song. She has made a shit ton of money from one single all because of the crowd sourcing effects of YouTube... Look at open source projects.
A shit-ton of money? Seriously? Grand total, before taxes and any cuts she needs to make to management or to pay costs, the song generated between $25,000-$50,000. As a one-hit fluke that's awesome, but a career it does not make. Randomly being the one video in a million that happens to catch on for a moment is not exactly a strategy you can build a life around. Google "Rebecca black sales" if you want to see the numbers.
Can you name two dozen OSS projects that are even paying their contributors living wages? I think I could get about a half dozen before I was really stretching.
For all the hype, our new tech is really not changing the basic economic equations of any industry. Replacing some bits with the new equivalent, but not changing the fundamental equation. Why? Because the costs and limiting factors are almost never related tot he technology, regardless of the industry.
It's like with films, you constantly see the hype about how cheap equipment will free us from the studio system. But the costs of film making have never been the equipment, it's always been paying fifty people who know what they are doing for two months to get a project made. That hasn't changed. Printing costs (the only thing digital eliminates... sort of) have never been the expensive part of bringing a book to market. Duplication costs have not been holding the record industry back for half a century.
'Changing the font and size' is about the least part of what a typesetter/layout person does. And it's a job that is particularly important for digital media where consciously choosing how things are displayed makes a massive difference to the readability. What font gets used? How large are the indents and how will the book treat text-wrapping for long lines? How are chapters and other headings handled? Are there quotations or other types of inset text?
God help you if you are doing something actually complicated with illustrations or funky layout tricks.
These things are what separates a professional book from a wall of text. And you have never noticed them in your life because they are always done long before it sees your hands. Go read some of the 'self-published' stuff on Amazon and try and figure out why the reading experience feels so clunky.
Yes, all you get from a publisher is up-front fees and marketing. And professional editing. And layout and typesetting.
And the way you say 'marketing' makes it sound like an easy thing. There are a quarter of a million books published every year in North America alone. Writing the first rough draft isn't the hard part. Writing the much better eighth draft is harder. Then getting anyone to read the damn thing, much less pay for it, is hardest.
No one is getting rich in the book industry. No one. Not the publishers, not the editors, not the authors. As an industry it is notorious for how much money it doesn't make.
If there were an easy way to successfully chop out any of the various book production positions it would have already happened long ago. And not years ago but decades ago.
No, if the decade old HP tablet was released today it would not have 'violated' anything. These are design patents. It's more like copyright. It's the same kind of thing that stops anyone but Coke from selling cola in those specifically shaped bottles. And it's not about any one of the claimed similarities. It's about all of them at once.
If Samsung had changed a single thing on their products there would be no case. Square buttons or a different colour or differently shaped speakers. Anything and the case would never have even been filed.
Every time this comes up on Slashdot the threads of filled with people treating these like a regular patent case. Running around for prior art and latching on to singe points of data. It got old months ago and has really killed any sort of actual discussion about the lawsuits.
Why? Because the number of twins that are (both) also professional actors and are the right age/build/look is a frighteningly small set. A decade ago they would have just used camera trickery and filmed everything twice to double the one actor. Now, shooting everything once and swapping the face saves them lots of money, if only because filming time is crazy expensive.
So... everything that was around before the iPhone?
I only joke a little. These lawsuits have never been about Samsung copying any single design feature, they have been about the copying of many design features. The inclusion of any one of these 'suggestions' (or any other significant design difference) would would have made the lawsuits DOA.
If the speakers/microphone were a set of stylized vertical grills (which might look quite nice actually), there would be no lawsuit. Square screen (and why couldn't someone make a nice UI for a square screen?) and there is no lawsuit. Screen offset from the center (perhaps a row of function buttons underneath?) and there is no lawsuit. A significant colour difference anywhere on the device and there would be no lawsuit. Hell, make the buttons rounded squares and you have probably killed any possible claims.
These lawsuits were easy to avoid. Everyone else managed.
I guess 4 cores isn't enough to open menus smoothly. You think at some point they will let the hardware and software engineers talk to each other? Perhaps even get their hands on the product before it ships?
Yes, but power consumption can be a tricky thing. If enough can be off-loaded to a GPU that is more efficient it can come out better in the end. That's basically been Apple's strategy with the iPhones and iPads. An OK processor coupled with a GPU that that been customized to fit the device and software customized to get the most out of the hardware.
Do one better than this. You have a month. Go and borrow old photo albums from people and start scanning. You family will thrill over old wedding and vacation photos with embarrassing haircuts and awful fashions that they had forgotten.
See how many pictures of their parents as kids you can find for your nieces and nephews. Bonus points if they are wearing clothes or fashions that are completely different from their current personalities (Hey dad was completely metal!) with double bonus points if it highlights parental hypocrisy in a funny way (Mom, that skirt is way shorter than the one you won't let me wear...)
Stuxnet is the first widely reported example of a digital attack on the infrastructure of one nation by (what is believed to be) another nation or nations. This is a big deal. This is one that is likely to be in course syllabuses 50 years from now. If not in the CS department then probably in the PoliSci department. Anything connected to Stuxnet is inherently interesting and potentially newsworthy.
Any actual technical capabilities that Duqu may or may not have is the least interesting part of this story.