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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?
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
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*/
...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.
... 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
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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