I'm sure you've noticed that TONS of the newer pop-ups use graphics to look like a regular Windows window, so there's 2 x's to click. I'm sure plenty of people see one and click it, and are instead taken to the company's website.
Of course, it just makes it really funny when viewed under OS X or a Linux browser, where the windows look entirely different (OS X especially, since usually the red "close" button is sticking out on the left side of the browser, since they figure "hey, let's stick out a bit but not where the close button is!" Whoops!)
Well, OS X does make a distinction betwteen administrator and root. There's actually no easy way to even stay logged in as root when you're an administrator -- every program and setting has inherent time-outs built into it.
So most of the time someone IS going to stay logged in as an administrator. But it won't bork the system, since a user can simply enter the admin password to accomplish the exact same tasks as the administrator.
And the admin has to enter a password whenever he messes with system folder stuff, such as changing accounts, writing to the unix core folders (/usr,/etc, all those folders that are 'hidden' from view for even the administrator in the Finder).
An easy test that it's NOT easy to screw up an OS X system is that if you're logged in as administrator, the standard 'rm -rf/' prank doesn't work -- it forces you to sudo. You can do that the same as a user, sudo up to an admin, so there's really no inherent difference if you're the main user of a computer. Users are for "everyone else." Root is disabled as a user by default, and once you turn it on, you need to reboot the computer, hold S, and then log in as root -- not something that "joe random" is going to do if he doesn't know what he's doing.
Of course, the big difference is that Apple understands that most people are going to be admin so they make it rather safe to be admin.
I seem to recall hearing that NO EULAs have stood up in court. They don't usually make it into court, since it's rare where someone will do something illegal that breaks one -- in many cases, they're simply to excuse the company from the user doing something questionable with the product.
So they don't make it into court that often, from my understanding. But they don't exactly have very strong precedent if, indeed, the more limiting ones have never stood up in court.
As many software companies will tell you, they're usually more of a guideline, and people don't read them. Companies will even sometimes put jokes or goofy things in there, because they know it won't be an issue.
Some books are provided free to people. Public domain works, free information books (and booklets), other information guides.
And plenty of websites are NOT free. Any website with subscription content or "pay access" is not free.
It's entirely possible to pay for the printing of a book and give it away to people for free. It's also entirely possible to put the entire works of a given author up on a website, in HTML, and put it in a pay or subscription section, hiding from the rest of the web.
The web is just a different publication medium. The inherent difference is digital vs. analog, not "pay vs. free."
It leads the user to the printed work, showing them how it's relevant to their search. Without the search, the user would not be aware of the printed work nor its relevance.
And it's well known that Google does not place any ads on copyrighted work pages. Meaning it *costs* them money.
Ha, it is somewhat true, though -- plenty of the richest people in the world donate tons of money simply to avoid paying taxes. Still, there's a great deal more rich people who simply keep it all and buy stupidly expensive things for their own enjoyment. The fact that Gates set up the B&MG Foundation as well as supporting lots of secondary causes means that it's not just cos he's "bored" or has "money overload."
It's funny that in 1st world countries, Gates is generally regarded as head of Microsoft, a not-always benevolent-looking company. Yet in the 3rd world, he's most well known for all of the money he pours into charities and research.
The software might be questionable, but at least the guy in charge of it puts his assets to good use.
The catch to that that many don't realize, as well, is that piracy concerns aren't necessarily the "freeloader techie" variety. In many cases, the people buying pirated goods are doing just that -- buying them. They're already spending money on the product, and the only reason they're buying pirated goods is a) it's not yet available or b) it's not going to be available. Sure, there are some instances where someone will buy the cheap VCD pirate copy of a movie over the $5 more expensive DVD copy, but in plenty of situations the pirated copy isn't that much cheaper, nor does it include any of the standard specials.
In the theater case, it doesn't play in the theater. Even here, there are people who would go see a movie if the DVD came out the same day, and they admit it: "Oh this movie is so worth it to see in the theater." In many cases it's the only way big explosive action movies do well.
I do think that many in the states overlook the fact, though, that crime is already doing it for money, and people support it because it's faster, not because they're criminals.
What I meant to say without being too wordy was that there's still a lot of programs that don't support multiple CPUs, mostly due to the fact that by and large the largest number of systems out there are just single CPU systems.
Windows itself supports the CPUs -- it wouldn't recognize the other cores otherwise.
It may have changed as more and more dual cores are coming on the market, but multi-cpu systems are still the vast minority for x86 systems out there.
I like how after the full analysis, the ultimate result is that there's really no answer. Cheap is slower, expensive is faster. Dual core has poor support in Windows currently.
Not exactly surprising, but I wonder how much of that is tied to the OS (f'rinstance, dual core kicks ass on OS X for processor-intensive tasks). Similarly, I wonder how much of it is simply benchmarking the wrong kinds of things. Comparing "office productivity" is mostly useless, as they say in the article, yet it still gets benched. Similarly, graphics, while still relying on the CPU, uses the GPU more and more.
I've found in my own little "tests" that heavy-duty rendering and long-term CPU processes are really where the benchmark tests are at. Fire up something like VirtualDub and compare the time it takes to transcode video files, for instance, or use ffmpegX on Mac OS X. That's where the real CPU tests come into play. Not office and games.
(I'd also be curious to see what happens if you start switching around operating systems. Test to see if an AMD chip and NVIDIA board is better running a Linux flavor compared to Intel, for instance).
That's the rub. I've honestly never run into someone [who wasn't just trying to be reactionary] who thought the idea of copyright was a bad thing. It makes sense -- someone makes something, they should be able to profit from it reasonably.
What most people disagree with is what we've got now -- someone makes something, and a company profits from it indefinitely by any means necessary.
Why patent and trademark law differ so much compared to copyright, despite the inherent similarities, pretty much has to do with profitability -- people and companies make more money with longer copyrights.
Critics are missing the point, yes. Critics often miss the point, though.
Everyone else is buying or thinking of buying the new iPods;D
I do think this is the sign that "it's time." People want to take video with them, on a small device that makes it easy, without messing with formats or other shit. Critics say "Archos does this better," and they do -- I've got an iPod for music, and an Archos AV420 for video precisely for this reason. In no way would I swap my Archos for the current iPod. But I'd swap my iPod for the new iPod.
After all, the people who actually want iPods are saying "oooh, bigger screen, slimmer body! Hey, it can do some video stuff too!"
it's because when the 4G iPods came out (the ones right before the Photos), on a fair portion of the devices you could hear a faint whine and distortion whenever the harddrive spun up, if you were using high quality headphones.
This is true -- I hear it all the time when I'm at work. But it doesn't bother me -- it doesn't affect the music, nor is it very loud, nor is it consistent. It's once every 10 or 15 minutes if you're listening straight through, or at the beginning of the song if you make the HDD spin for seeking around.
The Mini also had some quirks with wiggling the headphone jack and causing distortion. That was an isolated problem and Apple offered to fix players affected by it.
But because of those two incidences, there are some people (who simply read the news and latch on to the idea, rather than actually own the devices or know people who own the devices) who regurgitate what they heard and exaggerate.
The problem on the full players went away with the photos, which all iPods currently are. But as someone who listens to probably 2 hours of music on my iPod at work on very high quality headphones and actually hears the noise, I can't say it's enough to make me want to buy a replacement iPod -- it's not that bad. If I didn't want to hear it, I'd just use the provided earplugs. But I like my bass;D
When you double check your findings against more traditional sources, have you found that Wikipedia is more often correct, or incorrect?
The few times I've decided to double-check items stated as fact in Wikipedia, I've found other, more "traditional" sources putting forth the same information.
I do think this is one aspect that people are seriously overlooking. Wikipedia is usually up front about certain articles or sections of articles containing bias. Similarly, articles that are short, barely informative, or placeholders, are usually tagged as needing more work. The bias present in Wikipedia is only noticed in more well-known encyclopedias when you realize that those encyclopedias are biased through what they omit.
However, Wikipedia has SO much more content than a pay-for-content encyclopedia, in my experience. It's not evident for regular use, sure, but once you start delving into drastically different subject areas, you realize that if the content in Wikipedia were to be put into print, it'd put those "4 bookshelves of books" encyclopedias to shame.
The other thing that I think a lot of people overlook is how up to date Wikipedia stays. It's quite useful as a music/album tool, and as soon as an album is released those pages are updated by someone to reflect tense changes, newer reviews, or other content.
Finally, while I know that there are other online encyclopedias that use effective linking, and sometimes the choice of links in Wikipedia are... curious... I find myself regularly reading more and more about subjects whenever I visit the site thanks to that. I know it's not unique to Wikipedia, but it's definitely one strength for online knowledge-bases that actually USE links, rather than simply relying on hierarchical categorization.
So honestly, I'm not sure how a lot of people can say that the content in Wikipedia is worse than a regular encyclopedia. In many cases, it reports facts -- reporting population statistics, diameters of planets and magnetosphere information, properties of matter, or the more pulpy history of the Klingon empire or documentation of old open source text editors -- and those things don't change.
You touched on it, but I think the dollar argument could use more explanation.
Yes, the reason science is on the decline is largely because politicians in power have devalued the work of scientists. Scientists work based on grants from governments in probably 75% of their research. Cutting funding not only means that there's less money for individual scientists, it also means that there's less room for new scientists in the field.
As it is, there's absolutely no reason for a scientist to realistically pursue research that doesn't have a high payout factor. Looking into a field that has no tangible and direct marketability, meaning that the tech industries will ignore your results, is moot. Why bother if you can't work and make even a modest living?
(It also doesn't help that scientists are disillusioned from teaching science, much in the same way an english teacher would be if they were told "Shakespeare was just a writer, and his works are viewed by some as offensive. We recommend the latest bestseller, available at Borders and Barnes & Noble for $19.95!")
Seriously, though, if you want to look at what commercializing science leads to, you need look no further than the glut of copycat drugs on the market. Tons of allergy medicine, stomach medicine, and sex medicine. Nothing that really cures a problematic disease -- it's all comfort medicine that sells very well.
Since so many have had to put up with "fundies," and the "just a theory" camp.
The problem, as I see it, is often that those who question the theories don't have anything better to back them up -- they're just presented with skepticism or an alternative answer that has nothing to do with physics.
Of course, I think there's more room for that in astrophysics, given the focus on math and proofs rather than testing (due to rather obvious logistics). A new mathematical proof can come out that completely changes how people view space (or, heck, an appropriate use of an old mathematical proof, as the article shows).
But I can understand why some people would be a trifle edgy nowadays. I'm not saying that you provoked the argument, as I've dealt with scientists (heck, I live with one and hang out with her friends), but I have to ask -- when you said it was a 'mildly promising theory,' did you present an alternative opinion? One thing I learned is that scientists really dislike people saying "I don't believe that" or "I think that theory is wrong" but then don't offer what they DO believe in that's based on science. After all, that doesn't accomplish anything -- it just states a claim of belief, which isn't science.
But I don't think I need to explain why an "accepted theory" will have people assume that it's accurate and "true" and be reluctant to drop it just at some new information or test or mathematical proof. That older theory generally has plenty of evidence to back it up -- the new theory has none. So people will look at the new theory, run through the math or tests on their own, and confirm, therefore changing the general understanding. That's how science works. The reluctance to accept just any new information without seeing a lot more proof is one of the reasons science tends to add to a base of knowledge, rather than jumping down any old path.
So if it's perfectly legal to circumvent region coding... why aren't more companies in the hardware business rejecting the idea?
I mean, if the only reason we have region encoding is because the content manufacturers say "Pretty please," why hasn't there been more uproar or at least dissent?
That's how I see it. That's also why Apple has been reluctant to release one into the iPod line until recently.
There's a small market for one, but that market tends to want a lot of features and a big screen. Heck, I've got an iPod and a PVR (Archos) because I live far from my family and take at least 3 flights a year. Is it worth it for those 3 flights? Well, perhaps not, but I like it, and that's what matters;D And it's useful for those times at home where you want to sit in bed but don't want to buy another TV, or if you're out for a long drive, or, heck, just want to use it to store photos as a backup when you're out on vacation (which has worked great -- only need one moderately sized memory card, instead of 3-4).
If you're around a TV all the time, sure, they seem less important. But as video becomes more digital and less "let's wait around for the broadcast of said show," the uses for digital playback devices will increase. Why invest in a set-top recorder/playback when you can spend a little more for a much smaller device that has a screen built in and works independently from the TV?
But even though I don't use mine every day, I still am very happy with it, and it does seem a fair amount of use.
One of the things I really enjoy about Firefly is that there aren't any aliens. There's no need for them, and they don't hide behind them. They don't make "humans" near-perfect and use aliens to introduce conflict.
Star Wars had plenty of human conflict, but it also had alien conflict and in many ways the "differentness" of the aliens to humans allowed people to simply say 'well they're aliens, they're different.' That doesn't happen in Firefly -- the bad guys are human, the good guys, the in-between guys. The scariest guys in the movie/show are, in many ways, too human.
I do wonder how much of that is simply that the users who can look at and understand the code don't have easy access to update the source.
Similarly, making the fix is different from making the fix and testing against what that changes.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, mind, as lots of people just like open source because someone else can look at the code and fix it. But I would imagine that viewing the source and using that as a basis for submitting bug reports back to the main group would be significantly more effective than "The program does this thing, go find it in the code and fix it please." And there might as well have been individuals who really cared about security who simply fixed it themselves and recompiled.
No, that's pretty much anyone uses it for. Be afraid, though -- stating the obvious when it comes to "homebrew development" can attract the ire of angry fanboys.
I was looking into it quite a bit when I bought a dreamcast, thinking "Hey, this has been out for a while, there might be some cool games that people coded in their spare time!" Nope. All just emulators to play NES or SNES games, or hacks to play CD-R copies of dreamcast games. When I got my Xbox, some people said "Awesome, you can turn that into a media box! I know a guy who has like every arcade game on his, and he downloads Xbox games and plays them and has like 100 movies on it!"
I would really support it if people were getting into the guts so they could code their own games, as indie games can often be a lot of fun. I think a lot of people would like to have an old-school FF-style RPG. But outside of Asteroids and Pong clones, it's just emulators.
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Of course, it just makes it really funny when viewed under OS X or a Linux browser, where the windows look entirely different (OS X especially, since usually the red "close" button is sticking out on the left side of the browser, since they figure "hey, let's stick out a bit but not where the close button is!" Whoops!)
I believe it has to do with the antenna requirements for the format.
So most of the time someone IS going to stay logged in as an administrator. But it won't bork the system, since a user can simply enter the admin password to accomplish the exact same tasks as the administrator.
And the admin has to enter a password whenever he messes with system folder stuff, such as changing accounts, writing to the unix core folders (/usr, /etc, all those folders that are 'hidden' from view for even the administrator in the Finder).
An easy test that it's NOT easy to screw up an OS X system is that if you're logged in as administrator, the standard 'rm -rf /' prank doesn't work -- it forces you to sudo. You can do that the same as a user, sudo up to an admin, so there's really no inherent difference if you're the main user of a computer. Users are for "everyone else." Root is disabled as a user by default, and once you turn it on, you need to reboot the computer, hold S, and then log in as root -- not something that "joe random" is going to do if he doesn't know what he's doing.
Of course, the big difference is that Apple understands that most people are going to be admin so they make it rather safe to be admin.
So they don't make it into court that often, from my understanding. But they don't exactly have very strong precedent if, indeed, the more limiting ones have never stood up in court.
As many software companies will tell you, they're usually more of a guideline, and people don't read them. Companies will even sometimes put jokes or goofy things in there, because they know it won't be an issue.
And plenty of websites are NOT free. Any website with subscription content or "pay access" is not free.
It's entirely possible to pay for the printing of a book and give it away to people for free. It's also entirely possible to put the entire works of a given author up on a website, in HTML, and put it in a pay or subscription section, hiding from the rest of the web.
The web is just a different publication medium. The inherent difference is digital vs. analog, not "pay vs. free."
And it's well known that Google does not place any ads on copyrighted work pages. Meaning it *costs* them money.
Ha, it is somewhat true, though -- plenty of the richest people in the world donate tons of money simply to avoid paying taxes. Still, there's a great deal more rich people who simply keep it all and buy stupidly expensive things for their own enjoyment. The fact that Gates set up the B&MG Foundation as well as supporting lots of secondary causes means that it's not just cos he's "bored" or has "money overload."
The software might be questionable, but at least the guy in charge of it puts his assets to good use.
In the theater case, it doesn't play in the theater. Even here, there are people who would go see a movie if the DVD came out the same day, and they admit it: "Oh this movie is so worth it to see in the theater." In many cases it's the only way big explosive action movies do well.
I do think that many in the states overlook the fact, though, that crime is already doing it for money, and people support it because it's faster, not because they're criminals.
Windows itself supports the CPUs -- it wouldn't recognize the other cores otherwise.
It may have changed as more and more dual cores are coming on the market, but multi-cpu systems are still the vast minority for x86 systems out there.
Not exactly surprising, but I wonder how much of that is tied to the OS (f'rinstance, dual core kicks ass on OS X for processor-intensive tasks). Similarly, I wonder how much of it is simply benchmarking the wrong kinds of things. Comparing "office productivity" is mostly useless, as they say in the article, yet it still gets benched. Similarly, graphics, while still relying on the CPU, uses the GPU more and more.
I've found in my own little "tests" that heavy-duty rendering and long-term CPU processes are really where the benchmark tests are at. Fire up something like VirtualDub and compare the time it takes to transcode video files, for instance, or use ffmpegX on Mac OS X. That's where the real CPU tests come into play. Not office and games.
(I'd also be curious to see what happens if you start switching around operating systems. Test to see if an AMD chip and NVIDIA board is better running a Linux flavor compared to Intel, for instance).
What most people disagree with is what we've got now -- someone makes something, and a company profits from it indefinitely by any means necessary.
Why patent and trademark law differ so much compared to copyright, despite the inherent similarities, pretty much has to do with profitability -- people and companies make more money with longer copyrights.
Everyone else is buying or thinking of buying the new iPods ;D
I do think this is the sign that "it's time." People want to take video with them, on a small device that makes it easy, without messing with formats or other shit. Critics say "Archos does this better," and they do -- I've got an iPod for music, and an Archos AV420 for video precisely for this reason. In no way would I swap my Archos for the current iPod. But I'd swap my iPod for the new iPod.
After all, the people who actually want iPods are saying "oooh, bigger screen, slimmer body! Hey, it can do some video stuff too!"
it's because when the 4G iPods came out (the ones right before the Photos), on a fair portion of the devices you could hear a faint whine and distortion whenever the harddrive spun up, if you were using high quality headphones. This is true -- I hear it all the time when I'm at work. But it doesn't bother me -- it doesn't affect the music, nor is it very loud, nor is it consistent. It's once every 10 or 15 minutes if you're listening straight through, or at the beginning of the song if you make the HDD spin for seeking around. The Mini also had some quirks with wiggling the headphone jack and causing distortion. That was an isolated problem and Apple offered to fix players affected by it. But because of those two incidences, there are some people (who simply read the news and latch on to the idea, rather than actually own the devices or know people who own the devices) who regurgitate what they heard and exaggerate. The problem on the full players went away with the photos, which all iPods currently are. But as someone who listens to probably 2 hours of music on my iPod at work on very high quality headphones and actually hears the noise, I can't say it's enough to make me want to buy a replacement iPod -- it's not that bad. If I didn't want to hear it, I'd just use the provided earplugs. But I like my bass ;D
The few times I've decided to double-check items stated as fact in Wikipedia, I've found other, more "traditional" sources putting forth the same information.
However, Wikipedia has SO much more content than a pay-for-content encyclopedia, in my experience. It's not evident for regular use, sure, but once you start delving into drastically different subject areas, you realize that if the content in Wikipedia were to be put into print, it'd put those "4 bookshelves of books" encyclopedias to shame.
The other thing that I think a lot of people overlook is how up to date Wikipedia stays. It's quite useful as a music/album tool, and as soon as an album is released those pages are updated by someone to reflect tense changes, newer reviews, or other content.
Finally, while I know that there are other online encyclopedias that use effective linking, and sometimes the choice of links in Wikipedia are... curious... I find myself regularly reading more and more about subjects whenever I visit the site thanks to that. I know it's not unique to Wikipedia, but it's definitely one strength for online knowledge-bases that actually USE links, rather than simply relying on hierarchical categorization.
So honestly, I'm not sure how a lot of people can say that the content in Wikipedia is worse than a regular encyclopedia. In many cases, it reports facts -- reporting population statistics, diameters of planets and magnetosphere information, properties of matter, or the more pulpy history of the Klingon empire or documentation of old open source text editors -- and those things don't change.
Yes, the reason science is on the decline is largely because politicians in power have devalued the work of scientists. Scientists work based on grants from governments in probably 75% of their research. Cutting funding not only means that there's less money for individual scientists, it also means that there's less room for new scientists in the field.
As it is, there's absolutely no reason for a scientist to realistically pursue research that doesn't have a high payout factor. Looking into a field that has no tangible and direct marketability, meaning that the tech industries will ignore your results, is moot. Why bother if you can't work and make even a modest living?
(It also doesn't help that scientists are disillusioned from teaching science, much in the same way an english teacher would be if they were told "Shakespeare was just a writer, and his works are viewed by some as offensive. We recommend the latest bestseller, available at Borders and Barnes & Noble for $19.95!")
Seriously, though, if you want to look at what commercializing science leads to, you need look no further than the glut of copycat drugs on the market. Tons of allergy medicine, stomach medicine, and sex medicine. Nothing that really cures a problematic disease -- it's all comfort medicine that sells very well.
Especially since it makes it sound that a torpedo detonating on impact, and the resultant ship sinking, is somehow not as loud as a sonic blast.
But... Why not just make the current anti-torpedo defense systems louder?
The problem, as I see it, is often that those who question the theories don't have anything better to back them up -- they're just presented with skepticism or an alternative answer that has nothing to do with physics.
Of course, I think there's more room for that in astrophysics, given the focus on math and proofs rather than testing (due to rather obvious logistics). A new mathematical proof can come out that completely changes how people view space (or, heck, an appropriate use of an old mathematical proof, as the article shows).
But I can understand why some people would be a trifle edgy nowadays. I'm not saying that you provoked the argument, as I've dealt with scientists (heck, I live with one and hang out with her friends), but I have to ask -- when you said it was a 'mildly promising theory,' did you present an alternative opinion? One thing I learned is that scientists really dislike people saying "I don't believe that" or "I think that theory is wrong" but then don't offer what they DO believe in that's based on science. After all, that doesn't accomplish anything -- it just states a claim of belief, which isn't science.
But I don't think I need to explain why an "accepted theory" will have people assume that it's accurate and "true" and be reluctant to drop it just at some new information or test or mathematical proof. That older theory generally has plenty of evidence to back it up -- the new theory has none. So people will look at the new theory, run through the math or tests on their own, and confirm, therefore changing the general understanding. That's how science works. The reluctance to accept just any new information without seeing a lot more proof is one of the reasons science tends to add to a base of knowledge, rather than jumping down any old path.
I mean, if the only reason we have region encoding is because the content manufacturers say "Pretty please," why hasn't there been more uproar or at least dissent?
There's a small market for one, but that market tends to want a lot of features and a big screen. Heck, I've got an iPod and a PVR (Archos) because I live far from my family and take at least 3 flights a year. Is it worth it for those 3 flights? Well, perhaps not, but I like it, and that's what matters ;D And it's useful for those times at home where you want to sit in bed but don't want to buy another TV, or if you're out for a long drive, or, heck, just want to use it to store photos as a backup when you're out on vacation (which has worked great -- only need one moderately sized memory card, instead of 3-4).
If you're around a TV all the time, sure, they seem less important. But as video becomes more digital and less "let's wait around for the broadcast of said show," the uses for digital playback devices will increase. Why invest in a set-top recorder/playback when you can spend a little more for a much smaller device that has a screen built in and works independently from the TV?
But even though I don't use mine every day, I still am very happy with it, and it does seem a fair amount of use.
Star Wars had plenty of human conflict, but it also had alien conflict and in many ways the "differentness" of the aliens to humans allowed people to simply say 'well they're aliens, they're different.' That doesn't happen in Firefly -- the bad guys are human, the good guys, the in-between guys. The scariest guys in the movie/show are, in many ways, too human.
Similarly, making the fix is different from making the fix and testing against what that changes.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, mind, as lots of people just like open source because someone else can look at the code and fix it. But I would imagine that viewing the source and using that as a basis for submitting bug reports back to the main group would be significantly more effective than "The program does this thing, go find it in the code and fix it please." And there might as well have been individuals who really cared about security who simply fixed it themselves and recompiled.
I was looking into it quite a bit when I bought a dreamcast, thinking "Hey, this has been out for a while, there might be some cool games that people coded in their spare time!" Nope. All just emulators to play NES or SNES games, or hacks to play CD-R copies of dreamcast games. When I got my Xbox, some people said "Awesome, you can turn that into a media box! I know a guy who has like every arcade game on his, and he downloads Xbox games and plays them and has like 100 movies on it!"
I would really support it if people were getting into the guts so they could code their own games, as indie games can often be a lot of fun. I think a lot of people would like to have an old-school FF-style RPG. But outside of Asteroids and Pong clones, it's just emulators.