If a tiny population is involved in farming, more people could work to produce the manufactured goods. Now if a tiny population is involved in manufacturing, more people can work to selling them.

A few individuals think of a revolutionary idea (mass produced motor car, IBM PC, iPhone), and millions make money making them, selling them, making accessories / programs for them. A few individuals think of another revolutionary idea to replace some of these products, and resources get diverted there.

When 90% population was involved in food production, there was zero market for personal computers.

Until singularity, I don't see this stopping. People can move on to the "next great thing". Singularity, if managed well, could make machines our "slaves" and we could all be "happily retired". It can lead to bad outcomes, but we have a lot of time to plan it.

What do you mean by "such an enclosure". Does SteamOS detect enclosure and refuse to run if it is not the correct enclosure?

To start with, I see nothing wrong with ASUS CM1735-US006S "http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220265", the first entry in newegg for the original post's mentioned range of $300-400. If Steam likes nvidia, look for nvidia GPU.

From your suggestion of Dell Zino, I guess you are thinking about small PCs from the start. That might need redesign which implies some "risk" for the OEM. BUT it is not necessary to take that risk. Any OEM can test the waters, e.g. ASUS can start with CM1735-US006S. If it doesn't begin to work, ditch it. If it begins to work, do a small redesign effort. Bite as much as you can swallow. Low risk, as I said.

Even if OEMs don't install SteamOS, the end users can install it. To begin with, at least.

It is not necessary to give the mostest elegantest solution to get much more profits than Valve is getting now. Non-too-elegant solutions win, or at least compete, in the technology sector all the time.

Your post suggests computer developer is the only new job created by technology. This is highly incorrect. E.g. telephone operators went away, now we have mobile phones. Low infrastructure costs , because less wiring is required. High margin for the operators. So they employ lots and lots of salesmen to convince people to switch to their service rather than the competitors.

I am sure in any system with a reasonable competition, mobile telephony salesmen vastly outnumber telephone operators 2 generations ago. US has a horrible telephony system, so may not hold there. But it is a problem with bad regulation as in not requiring meaningful competition, rather than a problem with technology itself.

Why don't you complete your posts? Anyway, here goes: ... Steam will come from the fires of thousands of court cases litigating about patents of existing high-performance graphics players (Nvidia and AMD for the most), a few from mobile graphics players, suing the kickstarter project's implementation company to kingdom come.

What is there to design? It is a PC, solved problem, get on with it. Low-ish end PCs that the GP is describing don't take much effort to put into small enclosures either.

Possibly they sell the same PC with Windows too. If there are too many returns, stop installing SteamOS, change the labels, and back to windows. If SteamOS is easy to install from within Windows to its own partition, like Ubuntu, OEMs can keep selling windows PCs, and users can make them Steam PCs.

Low risk for OEMs as no dedicated very distinct product line is required.

Low risk for Valve as there isn't much recoup required as it is not a loss leader. So they can sell cheaper games, supply some free games, charge developers non-exorbitant rates.

So low risk for developers.

Low risk for gamers - potentially cheaper, multi-purpose.

Chances for success will depend on execution, of course, but low risk is one battle won already.

Steve did try it on pancreatic cancer. Didn't work, though.

Nice. But it is stupid to have a browser application having write access to its own binary / installation directory. One arbitrary code execution, even by the attacker getting lucky, means that particular user is pwned for ever.

Linux distribution method seems ideal to me - root owning firefox installation, non-root running it. Can be replicated in most OSes - just don't give write permission to the user running it. Update manually (or automatically) from trusted sources.

And if a person uploads a photo for free to a website in exchange for privacy, who is the vendor? And why?

I don't think the traditional classificatin of business participants into vendor and customer are valid in the "free" internet age.

"Full" is not a word typically used for things with "restrictions". Fanboy speak is different, though.

SquareTrade does say they use robots to abuse the phones to standardize on angles and magnitudes of impacts. They could be lying, of course

So they did need Microsoft's money.

I'd say, small price to pay for compatibility with software (x86) written over last 20 years.

Full? You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Right. Looking again, sorry I misread your post.

I don't understand. The "business" can buy a printer exactly like yours, get better deals on materials, and beat you in price.

Which is also stupid. Because the "business" can buy a much much better printer at 100 times the price you paid. Possibly with features specifically required for their kind of "printing". And beat you in price, quality, durability, customer-service, aesthetics, ergonomics, safety.