There's always a tradeoff between doing a job well and doing a job quickly, and clients generally want something in the middle of the spectrum, i.e. they aren't willing to pay through the nose to get it perfect when they could get something "good enough" for much less. If you are doing a site that's getting millions of hits a day, you might want everything hand-coded and optimized; but bandwidth and processor time is cheap compared to the labor required to optimize a website, so most of the time you're better off quickly throwing something together that works using an editor. The less hours you work to get the job done, the higher hourly rate you can charge: the clients will still end up paying less overall, and you'll have more time for other projects.

a Linux-powered Steam Box in the works? Probably not, given the technical challenges of getting Steam's huge library of DirectX-based games to run reliably on Linux, but it's an intriguing possibility.

I can download an album in less time than it takes to listen to it. I can barely tell the difference between the downloaded version and what I would buy at a record store. And it's already in the format I want, either for listening to it on the computer or putting it on my iPhone.

A movie, on the other hand, I'm probably going to have to leave to download overnight. It still won't be quite as good quality as the DVD version, and it will certainly be inferior to the BluRay version. If I want to watch it on my TV, I have to go to the hassle of burning it to a DVD. (If I want to watch it on my iPhone, I have to go to the even greater hassle of transcoding it.) It's probably easier to just walk to the video store around the corner and shell out the $4 to get 3 movies right away.

What's more, that 200 MB album I downloaded is probably going to get listened to dozens of times. The 2 GB movie might get watched twice if it's REALLY good.

I've heard that if they get up to 88 mph, you can arrive before you leave.

Let's not forget, they're only counting that very small percentage of geeks that actually gets laid. Using that methodology, I'd bet you'd find that hideously deformed mutants make even better lovers, because for you to be bonking a hideously deformed mutant, he/she/it must be really good in the sack.

Farther West
Farther East

I live at the North Pole, you insensitive clod!