[plug] Quotable quote: meet in the middle

[Leon Brooks]

Oliver White wrote:
> Leon Brooks wrote:
>>> We have started by eating the bottom of the market,
>>> we will work our way up and meet Solaris in the middle.

>> -- Richard Dag, answering John Dvorak's article panning Linux.

> Hmm, I felt the same way, except I'm really not sure I care to much
> about what runs on a 32 way SMP machine, not like I'm ever going to have
> anything to do with it. :-)

No? Even when Alpha-equivalent CPUs come down to 25c apeice and you pour
them into your CPU like gum into a candy machine? Moore's law says it
will happen.

Let's play with numbers! Given that an AMD K6-II-300 is (if you can get
one) about $70 now, that means $35 for the equivalent at the end of
2000, $17 by mid 2002, $8 by end 2004 (and $8 will buy you about one
candy bar by then), $4 by mid 2006 (probably cheaper than a box of Tic
Tacs at this point), $2 by end 2007, a buck apiece by mid 2008, 50c by
end 2010, and the target price by mid 2011.

If the rest of the computer follows suit, you'll be looking at a
K6-II-300/64M/8G for about three or four bucks. Plus Windows 2008 for
about $500. The lid of your pizza box will probably be a Linux-based
flexible ultra-bright active-matrix plastic display trying hard to sell
you your next pizza. (-: