Are you being dense?

No. I'm thinking, based on what info Apple has provided so far on this specific machine, rather than making assumptions. You should try it.

You have six TB ports, which are Mini-DisplayPort compatible

You're making an assumption here, when Apple has, this far, said the machine can drive three monitors. Your assumption may, or may not, be a good one. I, on the other hand, am not making any assumptions. However, if it turns out that all of these can drive monitors, that's good, but then that leaves me with firewire drives, which isn't.

Where do you put put it? You put the new Pro and an good external RAID box, and maybe a nice potted plant, in the huge empty space on your desk left by not having a huge tower case full of fans.

You assume I want a raid box. I don't. You assume all this will have a smaller and safer footprint than a current gen mac pro. It won't. You're going to need power strips, power bricks, and HD bricks *at a minimum*. As for space, the old Mac Pro (I have an 8-core, externally physically like the current gen), and do you see it inconveniencing me here? No, you don't. And I don't plan to go there, either.

Zworykin and filling patents for good US brands is all the history you need to know.

You're OK with six cords for six monitors, two cords for mouse and keyboard, but not one cord for a raid array? Come on...

note: I didn't say anything about a raid array. I just said HD.

Q: What happens when I pull a monitor, mouse or keyboard cable? A: Nothing. I put it back and go on with life. No harm done.

Q: What happens when I pull a drive cable? A: Anything. I could lose a lot.

Q: What happens when someone steals my mouse? A: I get a new one, no problem.

Q: What happens when someone steals my HD? A: You don't wanna know.

In reality, one cable is not the same as the next cable, now, is it?

Encapsulate this Mac Pro core cylinder inside a normal chassis of your choice, that has all the hard drive mounting space you could want, and contain all the wires that you're worried about your cat or Bubba unplugging. You can even bolt your custom chassis to the desk.

There are some issues -- like power up and down access -- but it's not a bad idea at all, really. Case with a big exhaust fan on top. If the cylinder fits inside a standard case. Or -- perhaps -- someone will build a solution so this machine is reasonable to use. Seems like a market opportunity.

Are you telling me that your cat keeps unplugging your mouse and keyboard too? Or has your solution been to go Bluetooth for those and invest in Duracell?

Yeah, my cat has unplugged my USB stuff many times. There's a fair bit of it. Powermate, MIDI control surface, microscope, scanner, oscilloscope, SDR, DSLR, guitar/bass input, keyboard... the mouse, happily, is bluetooth. See no reason to deal with a tail there. It's pretty annoying when I get "catted", but rarely even comes close to reaching the level of crazy that would be experienced if data on a drive was damaged. IMHO, drives belong in a safe, secure, vibration free environment. Which my desk most definitely is not. Other's milage may vary; but mine doesn't. I actually like your case-around-a-case idea, though.

but DVI is limited to 8-bit color while the displayport can supply the monitor with 10-bit color;

That's perfectly fine. The human eye can't discern a 1/256th step when the entire range lies within the normal human brightness capability without iris variance (which, if your monitor is adjusted correctly, is always the case when looking at one.) Try looking at a 256 level greyscale on a high quality linear (meaning, probably not an LCD) monitor one day; you simply can't pick out a single change -- and your eye is most sensitive to greyscale changes. You're even less able to tell the difference of one step out of a 16 million color range; compared to your rods, your cones kinda suck. :) Where extra bit depth actually benefits you the most is in the data of an image so you can recover very low contrast detail and stretch ranges without creating banding; not in its final display. And my DSLR and editing software have that handled quite well.

All thunderbolt ports are half PCIe and half displayport, meaning all 6 are also displayports. You can drive 6 2K monitors off this thing.

That's been the case, but the ads for this thing talk -- consistently -- about being able to drive three monitors at up to 4k. It's quite possible that they didn't hook a graphics engine to three of the ports, but instead, only the general bus stuff. Not saying they did or didn't, just that the marketing to date on the Apple site and at devcon really doesn't lay this out explicitly. So until they say "can drive six monitors directly", I'm not assuming that's the case. And, if it *is* the case, then I'm left with firewire for the drives -- desk-bricks -- which makes me pretty unhappy, especially when the current model has no such problem. So does the flash boot drive. I'm not yet to the point where I trust flash to survive for long, limited writes and etc (and on a system that writes logs constantly!), and although the flash is apparently replaceable, a replace and reinstall of the OS, plus possible disruption of apps... that's not exactly my favorite vision of the evening, you know?

As a history, the control of early electromechanical television was interesting.
If you knew you had light weight all electronic technologies ready to go in say 10-20 years - would you allow any one to roll out and get traction for mechanical system with a "commercial" television license before you where ready?
Read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Francis_Jenkins
A warning form history about been first, getting "experimental" ok from the FRC, not been allowed to advertise.
No ads where sold but public service annoucments about the kit form tv where made.
How does been first end? Been made bankrupt and having your assets sold.

> I know he catches some flak for this, but Stephen Hawking has it right.

No he doesn't.

In 10 years you will have proof that a) we are not alone, b) they look very similar to us, c) our fear of _them_ keeps them away as they know the true human potential whereas we are still ignorant & blind.

So then, what do you think of North and Poindexter? Since knowingly selling weapons to Hezbollah via a third party (Iran) not long after they had killed over a hundred US marines is apparently not enough to provide support to an enemy how the hell can Snowdon be considered to be supporting an enemy?

Another generation will think TV was a total US 1950's all electronic patent race.
What about the CRT work of Ferdinand Braun, the Nipkow disk, the 1929 work of Francis Jenkins in the USA?
The work of Telefunken? John Logie Baird? The US/German/UK patent hunt of the 1930's?

The US government isn't engaging in economic espionage

Boeing vs Airbus - not sure when it all came out in court (it was a few years back) but it certainly was in the news for a while.

I'd say it's stating an opinion that treason is telling people that their government agencies are lying to them and breaking the law, which is truly strange since even selling weapons to a terrorist group that had killed over a hundred US marines only a year previously isn't considered treason by US Republicans.
As soon as treason gets rolled out for leaking information you know that you are dealing with a fruitcake.

Thoughts?

Advertising is supposed to stop thoughts before voting.

Since some of the beans he spilled showed a large and tangled web of private companies with access to this stuff then China and Russia are bound to already have someone who is reading this stuff on their payroll. Do you really think nobody out of this cast of thousands has lost big at Vegas and had an offer of a bit of help?

An interesting bit from the wikileaks cables some time ago was an oil company executive reluctant to put something on the record because "US intelligence leaks like a sieve". I'd bet that a multi-national oil company is run on far more professional lines than this tangled web of NSA contractors and they'd have more of a handle on which employees are aware of confidential information.

That's the second part about whether a government is going to pay for it or not.