what seems the most interesting to me is that when you think about it, should the monkeys go on as they do, communication will become more complex. given a few thousand years and a very luckily unscathed civilization and habitat (ha...), does anyone else not find the idea of them eventually forming some semblance of civilization possible, and intriguing? personally i say seal the suckers off and go god complex on their asses, time to play some real life spore

If I remember correctly, Microsoft seems to be positioning Project Natal as a sort of new console launch. The dvd problem is mitigated in their eyes by the introduction of digital downloads (although some consumers do not regard them as equal. As for the RROD, console hardware gets new revisions during its lifetime. The 360 has been through three or four of them I think. Combine more efficient hardware revisions, improved hard drive capabilities (please let us install our own....), and a new software interaction paradigm and you can get something resembling a new console. side note: as a graphics programmer, it seems to me that we're reaching a point of diminishing returns in real-time realism. its to the point where some developers choose a less realistic look to avoid the uncanny valley, and real time ray-tracing not being hungrily pursued by everyone due to raster algorithms being "good enough"

I read that the speed of Windows 7 is a result of some under the hood programming. They implemented concurrency in the drawing component of GDI, which in theory allows for smoother graphics when multiple GDI apps are running. The old way of doing things was a single lock, and the time it took to lock/unlock is what seems to have caused past responsiveness issues.