Side benefits of Multiboxing....

[Xzin]

While multiboxing costs money - have any of you seen any side benefits of boxing - outside of the game? Conversation starter, crazed roommate looks etc?

For me, I enjoy keeping up with the tech field. I also enjoy investing. During a bullish market, I like to invest in familiar companies that I feel are undervalued and/or have surprising growth potential. Since I follow new developments and trends fairly closely - I tend to know who the major players are and what their overall momentum is.



I have long since been an ardent fan of Nvidia. Their only main competition is not a strong player at this point in time. Their competitor's linux support is HORRIBLE (not that Nvidias open source offerings are any better - but at least their binary drivers work). They make really high quality processors. On a scale that surpasses some CPU designs. Their new CUDA platform, if widely accepted, would allow one to leverage their GPUs for all sorts of processor intense applications. Waiting to see on that one. While they are not powering the Xbox 360 this go around (they did the GPU for the original Xbox) - considering the number of red rings of death out there - that may not be a bad thing.

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda.html

They lead in stereo 3d, their DX 10 boards were available months before AMD/ATIs and AMD is bogged down integrating their chips with AMD - which has its own issues right now as their latest investments will not bear fruit into early to mid 2008 - and they are running low on cash. I still think AMD is compelling but they need to hit some home runs sooner than later rather than just be copied by Intel and sell cheap CPUs. (Which they do very well.)

Nvidia also has some other... interesting things up their sleeve.

Disclaimer. This is not stock advice. You sort of missed this bandwagon anyway. Don't complain to me if you lose money. These are my observations alone. As much as I love Nvidia - their stock is quickly approaching overbought. I do not anticipate a huge increase from where it is now in the near future.

Anybody else have any other interesting developments or other non multiboxing side benefits? It may not get you all of the ladies but surely there are some other "fringe benefits" that come out of it.

[Wilbur]

I find if I tell people I don't like about my "hobby" they tend to give me a wide berth for the rest of the evening. Its a fringe benefit ;-)

[Sam DeathWalker]

Ability to watch 6 movies at the same time ...

[Xzin]

I can already do that on one single 30". Don't need to box for that. Quite impractical though.

[Tealuin]

I haven't quite found a specific side benefit yet, but I figure with all the computing power I have (roughly 10 computers including a Mac) I should be able to find a legitimate way to put that horsepower to some money making use.

And I don't mean off a game like WoW, but when I'm not playing that's a fair amount of computing power not doing anything. I used to run SETI on a couple computers, so something like that for a bit o'cash would be awesome.

But this whole process over the last few weeks, and having 4 new identical boxes (beowulf cluster anyone ) has made the minimal business section of my mind kick in lately.

[keyclone]

tough question... what would people be willing to pay for that your computing cluster could provide.

grfx rendering? do you do any kind of 3d modeling?
leasing out your computing cycles ala seti@home?

besides that? ummm... (i'd love to hear some ideas)

[Tealuin]

Probably not enough to cover the electricity bills of running a full size setup 24/7

Heh, oh come now, if a lad in England can make big money just by selling the pixels on his monitor, surely there must be other creative ways to make money off computers. :wink:

[keyclone]

well, he was selling recycled pixels... very green, dontcha know

[Xzin]

Sold my NVDA a while back.



(It split 3:2).

Also just unwound Yahoo - a nearly 100% LT gain. Will probably sell Google as well but thye are just so innovative and are sitting on a TON of cash. I still see great things coming from Google. Android anybody?

Anybody else looking at the USD and going what the hell is going on?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I look at it and think it's probably a social problem that is manifesting itself as an economic one. Kinda like the old "run on the bank" thing but against the dollar. I'm not terribly surprised or overly worried about it as we are still innovating in almost all tech fields. So many factors that make non-US investors worried these days.

Looking back in hindsight should be fascinating 10-20 years in the future. See if any of my theories held water.