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20 Factors That Will Change PCs In 2002
bstadil writes: "CNN's tech site has posted a list of the 20 most significant factors that will change the PC in 2002. Its not very technical but it would be interesting to get the take on this from the Slashdot community plus what they think needs to be added."
I think that 1GHz Palmtops, IM, new fuel cells, and that new screen technology could be combined into one super PDA that has been promised since someone uttered convergence.
The Handspring Treo will replace my phone, my PDA, and my Blackberry. Now there's a something I'd shell out hard cash for in 2002.
I really got my hopes up as I read through it - I thought for once, I would see an article about The Future that didn't say the equivalent of, "This year is really the year when voice recognition will be everywhere." But noooo, they had to say that voice-driven web portals will be one of the Big Things.
What is it about voice recognition that suckers journalists in every time? Nobody seems to get it: voice recognition is here, it's been here for a long time, it's just that the accuracy isn't good enough. You can't walk up to somebody else's installation of ViaVoice and start dictating a letter without missing a few words in each paragraph at the bare minimum.
Now they're talking about voice navigation of web sites? Let me get this straight: half of the sites I visit are so poorly designed that it's hard to tell where to CLICK, let alone what I would say if the site was actually listening to my voice. And if I have to read instructions on how to surf a specific site, you can bet I won't bother reading it - or even clicking.
I didn't bother reading the rest of their Big Futuristic Ideas, but if they're the kind of journalists that include voice recognition, it's not the kind of article I want to read.
What's your damage, Heather?
This ARTICLE should be modded -1 Flamebait
> Your desktop PC specs in 2004
[..snip..]
> Operating system: Some version of Windows (you
> expected Linux, perhaps?)
Hard disks that are faster, not bigger. If I need more space, I'll add more spindles. How about giving me a disk that can push 50 or 100 MB/sec from the platters?
Bring back those monitors-with-built-in-USB-hubs.
Cheap SMP. I'll take my dual 550 over a single 1 GHz any day of the week. How about 8x500 MHz on the desktop, instead of 1x4GHz which is still crippled by 1 CPU hogging app?
Less patronizing Windows UI ("My Documents", "My Computer")
A decent NFS client for Win32.
That's all I can think of for now. I'm not terribly interested about vapor markup languages or 1 GHz palmtops. Give me something I can use.
dd if=/dev/coffee of=/dev/geek
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Subscription based Software / Services (games, streaming content etc etc)
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Advanced operating systems. Defining technology as a subset of an unresponsive monopoly OS is a waste of time.
Efficient programming tools. If four programmers could write a better Photoshop in two months and distribute it electronically, then things will change.
Human factors driven technology. People will buy more stuff that works easily and makes them happy.
I think that the largest change coming in the next few years, at least for laptop users, will be the increasing prevalence of pervasive, high bandwidth wireless networks based on the IEEE 802.11a-g protocols. I have the pleasure of working for one of the few companies that makes extensive use of these devices (we design them, actually), and I can't imagine working without them. When I go to a meeting, I just plug a card into my laptop and go. In the meeting I can bring up all of the relevant documents and data, check my email and stocks, and, most importantly, read Slashdot.
These technologies will have an even larger impact in academic institutions. At this moment, I know of at least two universities (Carnegie Mellon and, interestingly, Akron University in Ohio) that have essentially omnipresent 802.11b wireless networks. Students with laptops can access the campus network as well as the internet from any point in the university, even the football field.
I think that this will be the area of largest noticeable change because it is not incremental. We expect faster processors, greater storage capacity, faster busses, etc., but the ability to connect to the internet with a broadband connection from almost anywhere, that will be new and therefore more noticeable. However, even though it is novel, it is implemented with mature technologies that have been tried and tested for several years now, at least in the case of 802.11b.
What's cool? Even Moore's Law eventually gets trumped by the laws of physics. In a few years, the current method of packing ever greater numbers of transistors onto a chip will hit a wall. But a technology called Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography may break that barrier. Intel estimates that EUVL chips will boast 400 million transistors -- about ten times more than the Pentium 4's 42 million.
Sooooo...
(42 * 2)^n = 400
n = 3.3 lots of 18 months
3.3 * 18 = ~60 months
60 / 12 = 5 years
When's it coming? In three to five years.
Move along people... nothing to see...
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
I guess they are kidding: 512 MB DDR RAM is nothing, even by today's standards. I guess people will hit the 4 GB limit on traditional x86 desktops even before the end of 2004.
There's a rule that today's hard disk capacities are RAM capacities in five to seven years. By this estimate, we're going to hit 4 GB during 2003, I suppose.
Operating system: Windows
Price: $2,000 and up
You didn't read that correctly; The price of the hardware will be so cheap it will be laughable. Windows, on the other hand, will cost $2000 and up. The funny thing is many suckers would probably pay it.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
Look at the price...
PC's are commodity items of last year. If people can't buy a computer for $500, they won't be paying 4x that in 2004.
OLED? When they start to come out the LCD people are going to get very nervous and they have much more room to play on the price cut front. Result, OLED meet ch 11 and its back to LCD.
IM? Thats too much like peer to peer file sharing for the media folks. I predict M$ will get its self in court with the MPAA people as well as RIAA within a year.
Wireless? Why? The last stuff that was rolled out is a hackers dream. You think large compaines are going to try it again? Other than the cool, look I can do ____ from the other side of the room, whats it worth to most compaines? No one is spending on toys anymore.
XML? TLA for the decade. Its going to be here for a long time. Much more difficult to parse than most text files and this looks like a cool idea to thouse who didn't understand why we have LALR grammar.
Multi-threading made faster. Oh joy... how many programs do I have now that are multi-threaded. Most users are more than happy with the spell check thread running under word and about 90% of applications thread well.
Magnet bubble memory is back... one more time its going to be the best thing since sliced bread. Its cool to be able to put the same 64mbyte card in my camera and my mp3 player but my rio seems to be having problems with its 1st sector as its fash has faded.
Fuel cells will be great if they don't get banned by the local fire marshal. I figure with H2's bad rap (think Hindenburg), all it will take is one accident and this will be baned in some major city. Then others will follow.
Voice portals... One more thing to strangle... too bad I can't put my hands around the things neck.
Smart cards are great. Now its difficult to get a magnetic card writer (who do you know that has one). Now everyone with a PC and the balls to walk into a Tandy shop can get what it take to reprogram some smart cards. The CPUs are too slow to do meaningful crypto and as the cable TV compaines have found out, there are people who can tell you the circut thats sealed in that thin plastic. My bet is smart card fraud will exceed US$500 by Dec of 2002.
G3? is this Gimik 3? DoCoMo will finaly get its act together, get live porn to phones in Japan. G3 will be dead anywhere they can export to or thouse parts of the world that don't have the guts to drop dead tech that isn't going to work.
Digital Cameras with more pixels. Ever try to explain to Mom why the screen can't show as many dots as the camera took and why good 35 mm fill is still 20000 lines of resulution while the overpirced camera has a few thosuand? What I want to know is why can't these $300 cameras have a lense better than a $10 disposable camera?
400 gigs and a cloud of dust: AFC hard drives
:)
:)
Not a bad idea. As the average amount of free space per PC increases, software makers will find a way to utilize it. They always have.
PDAs move to another level: The 1-GHz palmtop
Doubtful. Unlike cell phones, the demographic that buys palmtops aren't made up of teenagers. The people who buy and use palmtops aren't obsessed with making them smaller. They want connectivity first, then speed, then glitz. Besides, the typical uses of a palmtop don't extend to high-end computing. Having 1 Ghz under the hood isn't going to allow you to write your term paper any faster.
Scintillating screens: Organic-light-emitting diodes
Vastly overhyped. The intensity of OLEDs fade with time. When compared next to TFT, they look like shit, perform like shit, and go bad far quicker than TFT. They're also more expensive to produce. It'll be a novelty, but, it wont go anywhere in the end, IMHO.
The message is the medium: Next-generation instant messaging
Uhhh.....Ever heard of IRC? CUSeeMe? This is hardly a new technology. Its the same paradox as the video phone. Everyone thinks that videophones would be totally cool, but no one's willing to have their hair and make-up done in order to answer the phone. Pound for pound, text remains the best medium for large groups of people to share information. What good is a teleconference if only one person at a time can talk? If more than one person starts talking, you might as well be listening to a washing machine.
Tireless wireless: 802.11 networks
I absolutely agree. 802.11 is the beginning of something very big. Community networks, and the death knell for wire-provided technologies like DSL, Cable, 56K modems, etc.
In search of a common language: Markup languages for everything
Here we go again, failing to learn from history. People, its like this -- Programmers dont think alike. Thats what makes them programmers. You'll no sooner see people using the same language for markup as you'll see people coding in Smalltalk. People gravitate towards languages based on their ability to be proficient at it. No matter how good XML is, people will still use HTML becuase it suits them better, or PHP, or Perl, or C, or Assembly, or freakin Smalltalk if they want. Name a single time in history when a programmer was considered proficient in his art, WITHOUT knowing more than one language. Get my drift?
Getting a little hyper: Hyper-threading
Big clue for ya, gang--99.9% of your PC's lifespan is spent waiting for your lazy human ass to tell it what to do. Hyperthreading assumes that Moore's Law will flatline. It wont. What good is greater availability of processing power when you're STILL not addressing the fact that for most of your machine's usable lifespan, it's sitting idle anyway? Its like code optimization research. As time goes on, it becomes more and more irrelevant.
And now, my short list of what WILL take off:
802.11 and its offspring
Corporation-controlled P2P trading
P2P For Programmers--Wide and seamless code-sharing environments that replace segmented environments like SourceForge, Savannah, etc. Why not search for a bunch of good 3D engine s to pick from instead of just MP3s?
GUI optimization. Out with the old, in with the new. The need for a more intuitive interface always wins in the long run, over tradition-based designs. (cough)Scrollball(cough)
User-centric computing instead of application-centric computing.
Self-regulating and self-maintaining applications...Just picture it. Your antivirus software is eventually rendered obsolute because each of your applications, independant of one another, monitors its own structure and is aware of viruses that may attempt to exploit it. Also downloads and applies new updates, code patches, etc. Maintenance-free from a user standpoint.
Government requirements for both OS security and application security. Possibly even a ratings system.
Where will it end!
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
This sounds a hell of a lot like magnetic core memory. It's funny that they portray magnetic RAM as something new. Yes, I know the new implementation of this will be very different (sub micron scale etc) but the idea was popular decades ago. Does anyone have a good comparison of the old way and the planned new way?
A new bug that allows remote access will be found in Windows XP. People will be urged to install the critical update or move to a real OS.
A new bug that allows root access will be found in the latest version of wu-ftpd. People will be urged to patch it or move to a real FTP server.
A new bug that allows root access will be found in the latest version of Sendmail. People will be urged to patch it or move to a real MTA
A kid will be diagnosed with cancer, and will have few days left. People will send him lots of postcards.
Youll receive a warning about a terrible virus that can reformat your hard drive, and neither Microsoft nor the antivirus companies has the ability to fix it.
Motorolla will fill for Chapter 11 because it spent so much money giving cellular phones to everybody who sent lots of e-mails
Amazon will not make profit in 2002
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Requiring copy-protection to be built in every single computer peripheral capable of storage is kinda significant, yet merits no mention. Maybe nobody's supposed to know about it?
-A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Only a fool discounts voice recognition. I haven't dialed my sprint phone for the past six months, instead I simply tell it who to call and it does.
:-)
I'm sure Douglas Adams would be giggling uncontrollably but that's OK, I think that's pretty neat technology.
Voice recognition has come to high-end cars (remember the "rain stop" commercials?" And it's come to TV remotes. When it's put into microwaves I'll be one of the first to buy it.
There was a time not ten years ago where nobody would dream of doing stuff like this but now we're on the verge of getting rid of the clunky typewriter keyboard and our children may look at our use of these devices as quaintly as we look upon our great great grandparents as they huddled around the radio listening to broadcasts of the lone rangers.
So while you may stop reading future trend articles because they talk about voice recognition I won't read one that doesn't because like it or not, it IS the wave of the future and every year the technology entrenches itself a little more into our lives.
And that is a very good thing IMHO
Your desktop PC in 2004: Two years from now, your desktop system will be slimmer and trimmer. Flat-panel screens will replace bulky CRTs, and rewritable-DVD drives and fast graphics subsystems will turn your PC into a movie lover's dream.
And DVD and CD so fscked up with copy protection that you can't use any of it on your PC
CPU and RAM: 4- to 5-GHz microprocessor with 512MB of DDR memory and a 600-MHz system bus
Try more memory, 512 isn't that uncommon in off the shelf computers today. And as for CPU, how about mentioning 64 bits, like the Hammer, instead of yammering on about that ancient Pentium 4
Hard disk: From 300GB to 400GB on a Serial ATA bus
And no backup technology even close, so you'll have to have RAID standard or risk losing all those pr0n videos. Rather have SCSI, too.
Removable storage: Rewritable DVD and -- yes -- the unsinkable 1.44MB floppy
DVD+RW or something else, perferably without some built in copy protection lock, like HP's unit has.
Internet connection: Cable or DSL broadband if you're lucky; 56-kbps modem if not
If there's ANY left and IF they provide in a reasonably open service format and IF it doesn't cost $100/mo so they're profitable.
Video: 3D graphics card with 128MB of video RAM
And still able to play NetHack? :)
Display: 18- to 21-inch flat-panel LCD screen capable of 1600 by 1200 resolution
And weighs less than 20 lbs and lasts longer than 30 minutes on battery? I'd be happy with inexpensive 17", thanks.
Ports: USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394
Input devices: Wireless (Bluetooth) mouse and keyboard
What? Now Eye-mouse or Gyromouse?
Operating system: Some version of Windows (you expected Linux, perhaps?)
Some version of Linux (you expected Windows, perhaps?)
Other: An 802.11b wireless network designed for users with more than one PC
Or a more up to date version of 802.11, but why not network it to more than just PC's, or did the future vision 15 watt bulb start to grow dim?
Price: $1,500 to $2,000
Well, ok, but only because the $900 model has that crappy P4 in it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
From what I've heard, voice recognition is fairly good at this point -- the one remaining problem is that human speech isn't all that clear. ("Humorist" would not be a viable career choice otherwise.) If you read a list of random words aloud in your normal speaking voice (not taking care to separate words and talk clearly), chances are most people would mis-identify a quarter to half of them. Read normal sentences aloud, and the error rate of humans who understand the topic is pretty low -- because usually there are many ways the words could be interpreted, but only one way they fit together into a sensible sentence. But there are always some misunderstandings of spoken speech, because now and then there is another coincidental interpretation that seems even better.
Voice recognition systems are actually pretty good at identifying the words. Where they fail is at deciding which of the various possible interpretations of a sentence make sense -- since machine understanding of a typed-in English sentence is still hit or mostly miss, the machine is not going to get enough help interpreting ambiguous sounds from the context of the sentence...
So you aren't going to be able to dictate to your Palm Pilot and get a business letter that you can mail without proofreading and revision. But a human stenographer can't do that either, unless she understands quite a lot about the subject and has experience with how _you_ want the letters to come out. But there was a time when most businessmen thought it worthwhile to pay the wages of a stenographer even though they had to revise every letter and send it back to be re-typed. It beat banging on the old typewriter yourself... I think the best voice recognition now is roughly equivalent to a stupid stenographer; it should do grammar better and spell perfectly, but get the wrong word more often. It's not for me (imagine trying to dictate C code!), but if you aren't willing to lug around a full-size keyboard, or haven't become good at typing, it is quite likely that it will be faster to dictate to a voice machine and then do the needed corrections than to type a document into a palmtop.
As for why print journalists fixate on voice recognition, that's obvious. There was a time when they'd take notes on a little pad, then race to a typewriter -- now that they have laptops, they can add back strain from lugging around the 'puter and many sets of batteries to the older occupational diseases of writers cramp and carpal tunnel. And they still have to run around finding someplace to set the laptop. So say "voice recognition" and they're all dreaming about being able to just find a quiet corner and talk into a palmtop. And let the editors do the re-write, they will anyhow!
I find this fascinating. On the one hand, we have great programming languages, tools, and libraries whose only disadvantage compared to C, C++, Java, and C# is that they are maybe 10x slower. We have the processors to run them faster than we could run assembly a few years ago. Yet, whenever these new processors come out, everybody goes back, wastes lots of time tuning their C/C++ code and then complains that all those cycles are useless. There are still endless debates even in 2001 whether Gnome or KDE is faster. The Linux kernel developers don't even want to move to C++
Folks, those cycles are very useful. Not for some obscure technology that you know nothing about. They are very useful to let you program faster by worrying less about fine-tuning your software and for automating lots of tasks. They are very useful also for making programs safer and more robust automatically by eliminating common bugs like buffer overflows. And they are very useful for component-based software construction, which requires some form of runtime reflection--much better done automatically.