There have been news items all year about how the E5 was going to usher in a new era of low-cost 10 GbE LOM (LAN on motherboard). Even today's news stories are talking about it. But where's the beef? I've looked through about 30 motherboards from Supermicro, Tyan, etc., and the only 10 Gb LOM I've found is on a proprietary Supermicro MB and it's not even ethernet. Sure, system integrators have them, but I'd rather build my own box.

Anyone have an idea where they are?

Sorry, I'm not trying to be obtuse. Maybe I can put it more simply. In 24-bit color (8-bit per channel), there is a maximum of 256 levels of brightness (for any and all colors): 0 is the darkest, 255 is the lightest. That is nowhere near the number of distinct brightness levels we can see with our eye. Hope that helps.

Actually, it is. On a 10-bit-per-channel display (with 10-bit software, 10-bit O.S., and 10-bit cable), you can display 1024 distinct values, each increasing value brighter than the next. If you display the exact same image on an 8-bit-per-channel display, there will only be 256 levels. There are a variety of techniques for compressing them with the smallest amount of image degradation (such as dithering to avoid artifacts from quantization error), but no matter what technique is used, the human eye can *definitely* see the difference.

That's all fine and well as far as colors go, but what about *range*? Even the layman can easily distinguish more than the paltry 256 levels provided by 24-bit video. It's very difficult to compress 12-14 stops of dynamic range (a typical DSLR raw file or film negative) into 256 levels. You can spread the levels out so that each doubling of intensity has about 18 levels to it, but it looks terrible ("low contrast"). Of you can compress a huge number of stops into just a few levels, so that you preserve the lion's share of the levels for midtones to have an attractive image ("high contrast", "pop", etc.). Or you can just cut the head and feet off the image until it's down to just 7 or 8 stops, which is easier to fit inside the 8-bit range limitation.

I disagree. Do you really believe that human vision is limited to seeing just a paltry 256 values for the entire range of light to dark? Not even close.

I love the column on video, where the 1995 columns says "24-bit", and the 2012 column...oh wait, we're still 24-bit. Everything else has advanced by several orders of magnitude, but we're still limited to just 8 bits per color channel (RGB = 24 bits in total) going out over the DVI cable (and the display itself). Sure, now you can drop a few G's on a 10-bit (30 total) monitor (if your software can even make use of it), but it's kind of sad that progress has been so slow.

Is there anything they condo about that?

“There are two types of fool. One says, 'This is old, therefore it is good.' The other says, ‘This is new, therefore it is better.’" --Twain

I only buy from manufacturers that have easy and inexpensive (or free) advance replacement.

HDD manufacturers never realized that they had everyone over a barrel. When the Thailand flooding happened, they figured it was a nice opportunity to try some price collusion (triple prices after a 25% drop in production). They never thought it would go so well, and now they're scrambling to roll out similar changes everywhere else, such as dropping the warranty five-fold. Next they will discontinue all the low-end and low-capacity models to "be more consistent with the consumer electronics and technology industries". After that will be to demand a seat on the security council with veto power. Finally, the world. :D I, for one, welcome our hard drive manufacturing overlords. /tinfoil hat.

Two statistics majors went on a police ride-along to see how the new crime prediction model was working. They went to the first predicted location on 200th st., but there was no crime. Then they went to the second second predicted location on 100th st, but again no crime. Just when they were about to admit defeat, a call came in about a crime on 150th st and they both yelled "we did it!"

It doesn't matter whether the $450 for a 5-minute procedure goes to the doctor's salary or to clinic's investors. That's not the point.

Are you saying that $450 is justified because of that?

Thanks for that, friend, but I haven't gotten anything from her except liquid nitrogen and a variety of prescriptions written on paper. Do homeopaths have a special deal with pharmacies and billion-dollar pharmaceutical corporations where my prescriptions for Zyrtec, Nasonex, Proventil, etc. get secretly switched with water if they are written by a homeopath? Because they sure seemed identical to the drugs I got with the MD's prescription in the previous year.

Thanks. I wonder why the Empire Blue fraud department said those were the correct codes for a 5-minute wart spray visit with the PCP. But maybe they were just giving me the quick brush off because they didn't want to bother with the hassle over a measly $450.

I don't really know, but as I hinted in the original post, my guess is that it's due to our braindamaged tax laws:

* Employer plans are tax deductible, while individual plans are not. In my tax bracket, that means I can get a $1700/mo plan for the same effective cost as a $1100 plan if I were to buy it using increased income and an individual plan. If individual premiums were deductible above the line, I'd rather take the $1700/mo in salary and buy whatever plan I actually needed.
* Avoiding the painfully retarded double taxation (dividend tax) by compensating owners through insurance.
* IRS Employee "equality" rules forbidding owners from having nicer insurance than employees.
* Avoiding non-deductible health care costs. For example, paying an extra $500/mo in deductible premiums instead of $500/month in premiums, copays, co-insurance (which still wouldn't be enough to reach the 7.5% rule).