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Cringely's 2002 Predictions
An anonymous reader submitted Cringley's
2002 predictions. Nothing totally
unexpected: XML will explode (hasn't it already?) and Microsoft will
keep their mits in every big deal in the tech industry. Other stuff
too, like the return of VCs and IPO frenzies (yawn), and that Rich
Media won't quite make it yet in 2002.
This from the man who agreed with Steve Gibson about how raw sockets in WinXP was going to destroy the internet. Seeing as how slashdot still exists, I think he may be just a little bit off base.
Gawyn
Freedom of Speech?
how do posts get rated? does someone actually read them all?
2001's predictions
he might be 70% right on the obvious stuff, but his stock predictions are 0% right, so I won't take any notice of the new ones
Mmmmmmm
I predict that within 100 years computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings in Europe will own them.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
10. Finally, I think last year's prediction for Cisco Systems will come true this year. I wrote "The answer to every problem with the Internet will continue to be 'pay more money to Cisco.' At current prices the stock is a bargain."
No, I don't own any Cisco stock.
I don't get it. Why listen to predictions if the author himself doesn't do what he expects everyone to do...
Hank! White!
How much is Cringely paying for appearances on /., anyway? Did he replace Katz? Every column he posts makes front page headlines? Really, if the story itself is mocking the article: "Nothing totally unexpected".
Here's my predictions: Everything will get cheaper except for the stuff that doesn't. Expect new companies to be formed, expect old companies make money, or not, expect companies to go out of business!
Hope his 'supercomputer cluster building' project goes better than his airplane-building project. (He convinced a producer that he could build an aircraft from the frame up in 30 days. Everyone he talked to told him it couldn't be done. They were right. But they needed a deliverable, so he went to a factory and helped build a plane. Which didn't make it off the ground in 30 days, either. Even when he cheated, he couldn't pull it off. Not to mention you had to listen him rant and whine about it- and you had to look at his @#$@#$ girlfriend...)
Will the MP4 format have copy protection? And will it be really cool? And will it be released multi-platform? All these and more....
Everything is mainstream now.
Maybe he doesn't research his predictions very well, but Covad pulled out of Bankruptcy..
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
You shouldn't trust him, as he most likely views his predictions thing as nothing more than a game, and certainly doesn't take them seriously himself. If he did, he'd have sold his MS stock and bought lots of Cisco. That or he's lying about the Cisco stock that he supposedly does not own.
However, since he said he sat at the sales division meeting, wouldn't that mean that he had some stock, or maybe they just invited him for the hell of it.
Gawyn
Freedom of Speech?
Look for further stratification as the banks come to realize that Redmond's goal is to take a piece of every online transaction, which is to say Microsoft intends to steal the banks' business.
I'm not sure many banks will see it that way, at least initially. I'm sure many will see this as a standardization push which will increase user spending online, meaning more transactions, and banks will still get a cut of transactions (maybe less if MS is taking a cut too). Is a smaller share of a larger userbase greater than a larger share of a smaller userbase? I think banks will pick the former...
creation science book
THis is quite odd, Cringley (Oh, how I love that name!) failed to predict the End of the Internet (tm) in one form or another. I think something's going on over there at infoworld of pbs or whomever is currently paying him.
That said, Cringely is my favorite comedy writer on the Net!
Actually, Comcast is buying AT&T's cable unit, not Cox.
What I got wrong the last time out was I wrote that the recession would be over by now, that Microsoft would be a bad stock to own, and that Cisco would be a good one.
.BOOM. With their price low (around $20 currently), don't look for CSCO to have a way to continue their old strategy. also, though a large percentage of the internet runs on their equipment, during a slow recession cycle, look for companies to hold their equip a little longer than previously. couple that with the fact that swtiches, routers, etc don't need constant upgrades like PCs and Servers and you are looking at a slow growth year for CSCO.
Finally, I think last year's prediction for Cisco Systems will come true this year. I wrote "The answer to every problem with the Internet will continue to be 'pay more money to Cisco.' At current prices[emphasis mine] the stock is a bargain."
there are a lot of things Cringley is - an asute business man, he is not. CSCO was at a high around $86 in Sept 2000. That was the pinnacle for the company. Since then it has been proven that their plan to buy small companies - 20 to 25 a year - was not a fantastic growth plan for the
so is $20 a good price to get in on? prolly - but it isn't going to pop and hit $80 in the next 12 months, so as long as that is not your plan, sure, by some. i avg'd down in nov. if you own some CSCO this is a prime time to do that.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
Other stuff too, like the return of VCs and IPO frenzies (yawn)
How can you yawn at that idea? Obviously you don't live in work in the real world if you find the idea of the tech industry rebounding and causing hoards of cash to be thrown back into it boring!!!
So you're saying that Steve Gibson may be right? Even so, with the raw sockets exploit, UPnP propogation, "spoofed DDoS attacks gone rampant", and everything else Gibson predicts, the internet will continue fine.
Unless something extraordinarily stupid happens, such as some of the major internet backbones being exposed and targeted by DDoS attacks, the internet will continue just fine, with sites vanishing for a while, then re-appearing, as they currently do.
Gawyn
Freedom of Speech?
You think XML has exploded already? You need to step into reality. Nobody but nobody (except standards proponents) touch XML.
HERE
whole slew of trained monekys read them and choose.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
Or is Bob just behind the times?
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
..think that this guy is a complete assclown?
Microsoft will keep their mits in every big deal in the tech industry.
Hmm. I'm surprised this article wasn't from the loking-in-the-crystal-bal dept.
mit
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
...are just educated extrapolated from the past.
Frankly, I think that predictions on business trends and technology are the toughest to make since in the past ten years or so things have changed so darn quickly. If anything, the old rules of business still apply, but with some new loopholes and tricks being found by avid entrepeneurs. To predict the direction of technology right now though is sheer guesswork.
From what cringely says in the article, it seems that he is completely ignoring the most important issues of physical infrastructure, market appeal, consumer demand, and even the continually growing influence of open-source and other public developments in technology. Despite the apparent 'lock-in' of proprietary technologies, I'm betting that most of mr. cringley's predictions will be stimied by the significant development of truly interoperable software, much of which will be contributed by the open-source community.
I'm done with sigs. Sigs are lame.
From 2000 [1]:
. html
. html
Microsoft will NOT settle with the Department of Justice.
From 2001 [2]:
Microsoft WILL settle with the Department of Justice.
From 2002:
And Microsoft will make itself a part of every deal, everywhere, no matter what happens with its anti-trust case.
Don't bet against Microsoft in 2002.
I feel like I'm on a gerbil wheel, with the end of Microsoft being dangled in front of me...I'm always right there, but never quite within reach.
[1] http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19991230
[2] http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010104
... I'm just wondering whether the right social factors are in place for a broad-based uptake of XML. The real advance of the web IMHO is not w3c/AOL/etc but the IETF with its RFCs ... this allows companies, consortiums and even consumers to describe a protocol, and let the free market compete to provide implementations. Witness BXXP (or now renamed beepcore) which has Java, TCL, Ruby, etc libraries as well as C/C++ reference.
Now look at the same issue with DTDs. The fundamental constraints are that they are industry specific, tied to specific domain knowledge and it takes a lot of to-ing and fro-ing to come to consensus. Once a DTD is officially published, then modifying/varying it can be difficult. For example, I wanted to modify the XBEL (XML bookmark exchange) to add in a deprecate-by date field but it would be incompatible with all the existing implementations. Trying to work with large industry standards would be even more cumbersome as there are so many entrenched interests (just look at the proliferation of billing-based XML). How do large groups resolve the negotiations and compatibility issues (and talking about sub-schemas is another can-of-worms), not to mention the ontological definitions of any specialised language corpus (witness the biological community trying to define items in a rapidly moving field). XML might be the currency of computer originated messages but who guarantees its inter-convertibility (present and future)? For a XML based application to work seamlessly, cooperative structures that span multiple groups probably need to be established. While corporates would be more than willing to set forward, general mistrust based on past misbehaviour does not auger well for wide-spread uptake of the technology. How do you know whether that biz-talk or TLA of-the-day is not secretly sending out sensitive information? And if technical guys are dubious about security, how can you expect consumers to embrace something which is beyond their understanding and has little immediate benefits (XML IMHO is more useful for computer-computer transactions than computer-human).
The real revolution with XML will be social, not technological.
LL
From a quick glance, their XML queueing stuff looks like the sort of stuff that the open source community should be building as well. Anyone up for building an LGPL XML queue and similar Java and Javascript APIs?
If he did own stock in Cisco there would be howls of protest about how he's just trying to make money by pushing that particular stock. You can't have it both ways--either he's honest and doesn't own stock related to what he writes about, or he does own such stock and then exposes himself and his publication a lot of very nasty criticism.
It will take new markets for new services to truly make the semantic web, and hence XML, necessary. Meta-auctions might be one such services, but the big auction players are doing a good job of keeping such services from collecting data.
My prediction for 2002 is that linux will push out the other unices in everything but the top tier of serving needs, and that Microsoft will own everything else. Apple will sink beneath 5% userbase as most home users back off from its increasingly expensive (relative to PCs) machines.
IBM will also back off of linux somewhat in 2002 as it fails to bring home substantial new incomes for the company.
Red Hat will wipe out the other distros.
One of Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft will leave the console market.
2. Linux will continue to be no more than a sliver of 1% of the desktop.
3. Linuxites will misunderstand the reasons for both 1 and 2, and will argue about them endlessly on slashdot.
Not really -- Covad filed what is known as a prepackaged bankruptcy (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-000064425aug08 .story) , where the debt holders have already agreed to trade some or all of their debt for equity and some cash, reducing the amount of debt service the company had to support. From where I'm sitting, there was no question that Covad would reemerge from bankruptcy.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
I would have found this post interesting, but I got lost in the sea of acronyms...
I haven't paid attention to this guy in the past, but WOW! Why is this bunch of random guesses (about 20% of the total number) and obvious "predictions" even being looked at? He says that he is right 90% of the time, which seems suspiciously like a record of window's uptime reliability, in that with the system given, it should be much higher if it were any good.
If all of his predictions were not obvious, and he got even 50% of them right, I would be impressed, but he seems to be using techniques perfected by fortunetellers centuries ago: make a couple of obvious predictions, and a couple of guesses with almost no basis, and then when a couple of the wild guesses come true, parade them around while ignoring the huge rate of incorrect guesses, and even using statistics to "show" that he makes good guesses.
What a load of bull, and we all seem to pay attention anyways!
I'm a concientious
8. Rich media doesn't absolutely require broadband, but it sure helps. And 2002 will be a pivotal year for broadband, which took a lot of lumps in 2001 with the fall of companies like Northpoint, Rhythms, Covad, and Excite@Home. What is key here is the deal for Cox Cable to buy AT&T's cable TV unit. If that goes through (and I think it will), Cox will try to make its big investment pay off by competing for local and long distance phone service over its cable system. Other cable companies will follow suit and the only way for the local phone companies to fight back is with expanded DSL.
i predict that at&t will be bought by comcast,not cox.good chance too since it already happend.
Collecting data is only the first step toward wisdom. But sharing data is the first step toward community
Just about every ISP worth the money you pay per month does this. I'm not sure how many ISPs do filter, but it's a very simple, one line addition to the Cisco routers, to check to see if the source IP is within it's IP pool. If not, then you can either discard and ignore the packets, or discard and flag them, based on repeat offenders, and from there, track down which user is sending them and inform them of this.
Gawyn
Freedom of Speech?
He says in the article that Cox is buying AT&T Broadband, but in fact, Comcast has already made a deal for AT&T Broadband.
He's already down to 90% before he issued the prediction...
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
1) Any article that compares two competing products, be it OSes, gaming consoles, software products, will instantly generate into a massive flamewar.
2) Any article written by Katz will have at least 75% of all replies be flames to Katz.
3) Life will continue as normal for no less than one year.
I know I read Slashdot, but still, here's my immediate future:
- I haven't upgraded my Win2K to WinXP and probably won't. My next box may in fact be an Apple OSX machine. It's sexier and Unix.
- My Mom and my brother (both newbies) haven't and won't upgrade to XP either because they don't have the cash or any real reason.
- I'd choose a PS2 instead of XBox if only for the bigger library of games.
- I still use my Palm Vx and when I upgrade in the next year, it'll probably be to a Symbian "Smartphone" or a Palm phone. No PocketPC here and no "Stinger."
- I'm a consultant who uses Java mostly and have no use for
.NET - and when I recommend solutions to clients, I stear them away from trapping themselves with a M$ solution.
- I come from the fantastic state of California which hasn't given in to any settlement yet with Microsoft and hopefully won't until there's some real damage done.
What more can I say - it doesn't look rosy for Micosoft at all from my vantage point. Then again, this is only my experience, but it's the only real data I have to go by... Hey, Win2K is great to use, nice and stable and my Microsoft Wheel Mouse with the infred sensor on the bottom just plain rocks. But those were yesterday's purchases. In the coming year, I can see M$ playing much less a role in my life not more.Just my thoughts,
-Russ
Me
What acronyms? All I see are abbreviations.
The 70 Percent Solution
.NET strategy and the rest of the industry responds. Look for further stratification as the banks come to realize that Redmond's goal is to take a piece of every online transaction, which is to say Microsoft intends to steal the banks' business. This is a fundamental reworking of business that WILL happen over the next three to five years.
Bob's Predictions for 2002
By Robert X. Cringely
Each year at this time, I make predictions about what will happen in high tech business during the next 12 months. It's not really that hard to do if, like me, you read a lot, go to lunch a lot, and have smart friends. My predictions are 70 percent correct, year after year. What I got wrong the last time out was I wrote that the recession would be over by now, that Microsoft would be a bad stock to own, and that Cisco would be a good one. My other predictions, which included Microsoft settling with the DoJ without requiring a break-up, were all correct. You can find that column under the "Old Hat" button on this page or among the "I Like It" links.
This year, I am going to do things a bit differently just because this year feels different. There is a new feeling coming from the laboratories and boardrooms, a feeling that has nothing to do with terrorism and patriotism or even high tech, and has everything to do with waking up from a long sleep and realizing that the blanket has slipped off the bed and it is cold.
As we slouch through this recession, it is clear to me that corporate arrogance is a problem that has afflicted us for sometime, but there are signs of it weakening. Last year, when I predicted Cisco would do so well, it was only weeks after I had sat through the company's European, Middle East and African division sales meeting. At that moment, Cisco executives were setting high goals and expecting to reach them. Only it didn't work out that way. This made me realize even the most successful companies don't have any greater insight, just better luck. Back in October 2000, Cisco had basically no idea where it was really going, just expecting that a corporate body in motion would tend to stay in motion, that success would breed success.
Good companies learn lessons and not such good companies don't. It took years of staggering losses and the hiring of an outsider for IBM to turn around in the early 1990s. Big Blue has fared better than most of its competitors in recent years, and it is entirely as a result of that humbling. But losses and new blood aren't always enough. AT&T brought in Michael Armstrong for exactly the same reason, and all he did was make a $100 billion mistake. Same for Carly Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard, though her loss was smaller. Great corporate names, both, and they are threatened because of arrogance.
Now to this year's predictions:
1. The dominant theme will be the continuing battle between evil and evil as Microsoft expands its
2. The main technical tool for this reworking will be XML, and it will probably be easy to label 2002 as the Year of XML. This new data standard will be sprinkled on every type of software imaginable, whether it makes sense to do so or not.
3. Look for emergence of an XML industry, which is to say a rash of new startups built around XML services. Microsoft's dedication to the standard in its relatively pure form makes this emergence inevitable. The big XML hit for 2002 will come from a company called KnowNow.
4. KnowNow is a new company backed by Kleiner Perkins, the big venture firm, and represents the resurgence of venture capital in 2002. Having spent 2001 NOT investing money, the VCs this year have to either resume investing their funds or get out of the business. Look for the former, again thanks to XML, as the VC industry finds another type of business to spawn than pawn off on us.
5. The resurgence of VCs can only come with a resurgence of the market for Initial Public Offerings, which should happen by late spring.
6. Other hot IPO areas besides XML will include security (thanks to bin Laden and Microsoft's continued incompetence in this area) and an emerging niche called rich media.
7. XML is real, security is real, but rich media is not real -- at least not in 2002. Just as the online music industry grew up around MP3, rich media is built on MPEG-4, which is far more than just another video codec. MPEG-4 is a framework for building new types of entertainment that are more Internet-friendly. Beyond carrying traditional video, MPEG-4 enables the creation of entertainment products made of up many levels of artificial scenes, sets, even animated characters. It is the entertainment of the future, but alas that future won't start in 2002. The problem is that embracing rich media means rejecting old media and the tools aren't yet good enough to make that jump.
8. Rich media doesn't absolutely require broadband, but it sure helps. And 2002 will be a pivotal year for broadband, which took a lot of lumps in 2001 with the fall of companies like Northpoint, Rhythms, Covad, and Excite@Home. What is key here is the deal for Cox Cable to buy AT&T's cable TV unit. If that goes through (and I think it will), Cox will try to make its big investment pay off by competing for local and long distance phone service over its cable system. Other cable companies will follow suit and the only way for the local phone companies to fight back is with expanded DSL.
9. And Microsoft will make itself a part of every deal, everywhere, no matter what happens with its anti-trust case. Quite simply, Microsoft will take an equity position in every tech deal that's over $1 billion, leveraging to the hilt its close to $40 billion cash hoard. Don't bet against Microsoft in 2002. That is because, in addition to having deep pockets, Microsoft owns the start page, the defaults, the windowing environment, and the content standards. It turns out they also own the traffic, the audience management, and if you're watching closely what they're doing with Windows Media, they're going to force you to pay licenses to show your own content on-line. Today, on the desktop, tomorrow, on UltimateTV.
10. Finally, I think last year's prediction for Cisco Systems will come true this year. I wrote "The answer to every problem with the Internet will continue to be 'pay more money to Cisco.' At current prices the stock is a bargain."
No, I don't own any Cisco stock.
RE: " 10. Finally, I think last year's prediction for Cisco Systems will come true this year. I wrote "The answer to every problem with the Internet will continue to be 'pay more money to Cisco.' At current prices the stock is a bargain."
No, I don't own any Cisco stock."
All his predictions are XML, Microsoft and Cisco related. Here's what's really gonna happen as far as business computing:
1) Broadband for the masses will continue to tread water due to bankruptcies, less competition, rising prices and little to no progress on the main technological barriers. Economies of scale due to consolidation will not happen and everyone who writes for PC World and online media will wonder why.
2) The ASP market will no longer be dynamic. After the release of Windows XP, every IT department and individual consumer will be able to realize that virtually no operating system innovations have occurred and that will force people to keep their doors open. Long term commitments will become apparent and begin to happen. Software (even game) manufacturers will realize that PC computing consumers' purchasing power and awareness/savvy has hit a critical mass where the risk/reward ratio for software development will become worth it for product development even if the revenue produced is not a home run.
Just my opinion.....
Fair disclosure: I do own and have owned Cisco stock and call options.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Companies will continue to develop products that nobody needs nor wants. They'll all go behind schedule and over budget. Most of the projects will be mercy-killed before they even start to work. The few that make it to the store shelves will be ultra-niche items that cost 4x more than anyone would even dream of paying for them.
The companies that lose millions on these products will just scratch their heads, blame the economy, and start designing all over again.
The lucky ones will go out of business.
Guess so. Took the contents of the message too. Well, that was a wasted 10 minutes.
and yeah, I'd call that a bug.
...RedHat will buy SuSE and switch to the .deb packet format
Microsoft owns the start page, the defaults, the windowing environment, and the content standards. It turns out they also own the traffic, the audience management, and if you're watching closely what they're doing with Windows Media, they're going to force you to pay licenses to show your own content on-line.
..and they're not the only ones. Seems royalties are due often when a particular codec is used to make or even use a digital video file for a business. Yes, DivX too.
Now, I'm sure most companies would buy a product to make digital videos with a particular codec, but the thought of writing a check to a third party in order to use a particular file format seems just a bit much, especially when the contents of that file are 100% owned by that company.
I WILL KICK YOUR ASS
XML will explode
...killing everyone inside.
G.
One is led to wonder just how much this guy has invested in "KnowNow". He sure couldn't get enough of plugging it in his column. How unprofessional, it's almost as bad as Slashdot plugging ThinkGeek crap here.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
why dont you guys just hire this lame-o? oh yeah. I forgot. you guys and the linux community in general don't pay for shit, you just leech crap and stamp your label on top of it.
XML is a buzzword, not that many organizations actually use it. Sorry. I don't see this happening.
Lets see what media is commonly used on the web now: video, audio (mp3), streaming, html, graphics, PDF, etc. And something called "rich media" is a new concept?
It's a goatse.cx link!
One of Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft will leave the console market.
Unlikely.
Sony won't leave because they clearly have an edge on the market with their one year head start, large game library, and deals with Konami and Square for Metal Gear and Final Fantasy games.
Nintendo won't leave because they have done well enough so far and still have their best games in the works (the new Zelda game, new Metroid game, new Mario game, etc.).
Microsoft will perform the worst in the console market and probably should leave soonest, but they won't because Microsoft is stubborn and has the money to burn to try to make the XBox work. They will eventually leave, but not in 2002, unless they come up with a killer app somehow (though I still wouldn't want to play it given that their controllers have the poorest design I've ever seen).
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
Good post! I wholeheartedly agree.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Are these predictions for the coming year or a synopsis of 2001?
Guess you can't be wrong in restating the obvious.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Cringe's articles, are available as a slashbox. Coincidentally, one that I have as a default for my account.
Why is it, that we "need" every weekly article of his, posted as a front page story. Don'tcha think that the people that want to read him already are anyhow?
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
I was surprised that Cringely didn't mention the seemingly ubiquitous OS wars.
There are so many people convinced of one or both of the following: that Microsoft sucks; and that Linux will rule the desktop.
What is unfortunate about these viewpoints is that it obscures the real issue, which is making better software.
The industry has been crying out for a "killer app" for about 8 months. Basically, there are no reasons for people to upgrade their computer. But instead of really trying to make the "killer app", the Linux community is focused on:
-- emulating Microsoft, which is similar to those Wile E. Coyote cartoons, with Microsoft as the Roadrunner always being "one step ahead..."
-- trying to convince people that Microsoft sucks and that Linux is really better.
How about a New Years resolution for the Slashdot community? "For every comment I write on Slashdot, I will write at least 100 lines of code for an application that I believe will truly change the world. For every time I bash Microsoft for having poor security or buggy applications, I will contribute half an hour of my time to a project that I believe can truly succeed in a market dominated by Microsoft."
Remember, any executive will tell you that "This other product sucks" is a terrible business plan. However, "I have a plan to make x product more secure" is a great idea. And you don't need to be a programmer to change the world -- any good project needs marketing and donations and general help to succeed. It may be as simple as walking a newbie through the setup procedure or canvassing a message board looking for people who need help and offering to help them.
Here's my shocking prediction: in 5 years, the OS wars won't matter. Why is that? Not because Microsoft has been stomped, but because the world will have moved on. Look at TiVo, for instance. It runs Linux. So what? I don't get a bash prompt when I turn it on; I get a useful device that does exactly what I want to do. The fact that it runs Linux doesn't matter to the vast majority of TiVo subscribers.
Remember, people don't want something that has this feature or that feature. They want something that will solve an immediate need. Businesses are the same way. Prove that your solution will solve an existing and immediate need, and you're hired -- regardless of whether you're using Windows 2000, Linux, or a commercial UNIX to solve the problem.
So go out there and create that killer app, and stop arguing about whether Linux is this or that. I'm telling you, in 5 years, the Linux vs. Microsoft wars will be moot, but the killer application need will still be there. Don't argue about the platform; argue about whether your users' needs are being fulfilled.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Beyond all the hype over XML and the always pissing off approaches used by Microsoft, I predict that several companies will start moving their IT infrastruture to EAI products. This prediction is complelety against what research institutes such as Gartner and IDC say, but I think that when products such as Tibco, Webmethods, Vitria and [not-so] friends start being better known they will change the way most corporations design their IT stuff *in short term*.
I also have a prediction regarding traditional AD (application development). I predict 2002 will mark the beginning of the wide developers public comprehension about how bad the usual OO design approaches are, and some new and improved paradigms such as AOP (aspect oriented programming) will start being used in large projects.
Based on these insights, are you aware of any open-source/free/whatever projects related with EAI and AOP?
A DDoS attack is damaging, either spoofed or non-spoofed, but Gibson's main premise is that, with the inclusion of raw sockets into WinXP, spoofed DDoS attacks will conquer the internet, be untraceable and unblockable, and generally bring around the end of the world as we know it.
For more info on paranoia, read here. Then, before the marketing spin catches a hold of your soul, read here.
Gawyn
Freedom of Speech?
IP spoofing has legitimate uses when you have connections through two different ISPs and have situations where it makes sense to have stuff route in over one and then route out via the other, but identifying itself so that the responses come in via the first one again. For a good reference on when this is useful, see Matthew Marsh's Policy Routing Using Linux.
Your suggestion is in line with the basic Microsoft approach: take power away from the user; dumb down the options. Yet as we well know, that approach in practice hardly makes us more safe!
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Shut up asshole, they are whatever your flamer said they were. Shut the fuck up. They are acronymses. You been using some fucking acronymses again you stupid geek? If I ever meet you I will ram a yard of XML up your ass. Go try some bench press, and go run after chicks you stupid nerd.
Your friend's cam page is hilarious! Too bad his RC car is broken.
Slashdot will link to every article written by Bob Cringely in 2002. Bob Cringely will start writing for Slashdot, under a level two pseudonym. This post will receive a +5 funny.
I too think he is missing consumer demand.
For example, the success of MP3 has created a demand for component sized quiet PC boxes that can output to a TV using a remote control instead of a mouse. I believe some manufacturer will come to the market with this black or chrome box this year (or at least I hope they do.)
Because right now all the talk I hear is people creating their own boxes, or hacking old boxes or using laptops for such a device. The hunger is there for such a consumer box. It's one of those undercurrents that the people in the boardrooms are missing.
Such as P2P. It will still be strong and people will still want it cheap, and if RIAA shutsdown others, more will take their place.
I believe Linux will get bigger, maybe not in the US, but in the rest of the world which is seeking cheaper solutions for office and consumer PCs.
The sad thing is that media companies and manufacturers are always spending huge bucks trying to find what it is that people want. Why don't they just look around or ask them?
The format is only 1/3 of the battle. Agreeing on content arrangments/rules is the tricky part:
http://geocities.com/tablizer/softeng.htm
Table-ized A.I.
i read years back is just a nick for several writers. or has the original recovered the name.
Don't you pronounce XML as "eXzeeMaL"?
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
XML will explode (hasn't it already?)
Hardly. Slashdot doesn't even have an XML version of the messages or stories, only the headlines.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Maybe you should just moderate this as redundant, since I've posted it in several other Cringely-based stories on /.:
/. start page by editing your user preferences.
::Colz Grigor
You can add the I, Cringely slashbox to your
And slashboxes ought to have comments/discussions associated with them by default, so Anonymous Cowards don't have to submit every darn Cringely article as a story.
In fact, its hard to argue that OSX or Linux or Solaris is "unix" anymore by the classical definition of a small simple OS with tools that communicate over the simplest of protocols - the pipe (lifted from "The Unix Philosphy", by Mike Gancraz). Linux is already moving towards component architectures, and the rest of the unix-like systems globbed on so much additional functionality that they left "simple" behind long ago.
I argue that Windows 2000 can be made to be as much like whatver you see of unix in Linux, which I further argue is in name only.
Wow! Yet more proof that Robert Cringely is an idiot of legendary proportions and doesn't know a *damn* thing about anything of importance happening in computing today (or even yesterday). I think he and John Dvorak are soon to have a competition in making the least substantive comments about computing any human has ever uttered.
All these "forcasts" are stuff that is either non-important, or was obvious to even the most dim-witted long ago.
Oh, just shut up and get back to work cleaning my pool.
I'm not paying you by the hour to use my broadband and I certainly didn't give you permission to use my computer equipment.
You find all the answers for me.
You may say that it would be wicked that a man of Cringely's integrity would have any financial interest in knownow, either directly or indirectly via say a venture fund, while he disclosed that he didn't own stock in Cisco.
You may say that. I wouldn't ever say that.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?