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Cringley Asking for 12 Month Predictions
sckienle writes "Robert X. Cringely is asking in his pulpit this week for help in determining what's going to happen in the tech industry in the next 12 months." I expect that robots will take over the world, and openly hunt humans in a post apocolyptic landscape. This will occur in January. For the rest of the year, technology will take a vacation.
Anybody with any real insight into the technology of the coming year won't post it to Cringley or Slashdot, they'll run out and get a patent.
Join the fun! patent the obvious next step and sue, sue, sue!
m00.
Developers Developers Developers
Microsoft will claim that it is going to crush Linux.
"Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee." --Bender
I know it's been asked before, but since it seems like Slashdot posts a news story about the Cringely column every week, there's no good reason these stories don't belong in their own category, as I'm sure many readers already read these on their own every week and don't need to be reminded of it.
Not surprising. My new robot is already chasing my cat around the living room.
The tech world was shattered today by the news that two members of the open source weblog Slashdot hooked up at a slashdot.meetup.com meeting.
Anonymously speaking, the female slashddotter was surprised that the two had so much in common "He likes anime, and thought I looked so good in my Sailor Moon cosplay, I was charmed. I was so charmed, he charmed me out of that suit later that night, giggle".
The male slashdotter commented "Well, I was 23 and a virgin, and spending the night recompiling RedHat 8.0 did not appeal to me. I was sure about *****, she was a little chunky, but when I saw that she came out of the ladies room, and not the mens, I knew she was a real women. I think we'll have sex again."
I predict that sometime in the next 12 months, someone will release software that lets Mac OS X users make perfect copies of DVDs. Since OS X is enough under the 'radar' of the MS-lovin' types, they don't notice until millions of people get a copy of the application.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Too many people have been so burned in the last few years that there's virtually no investment forthcoming in anything remotely blue-sky. If it's not safe and can't turn a profit in the short term, nobody want's to know. We're doing a lot in the broadband wireless direction, of vital long-term importance, but in the short term there's negligible buy-in :(
The over-caution is only going to prolong the depression, but for many people there's no alternative -- R&D is going to be hurting for better part of a decade.
I wonder why this hasn't happened earlier - I think someone evil is finally going to notice that Usenet is 95% warez/moviez, and go after the big companies that run Usenet servers. This will probably happen after someone makes a tool that allows for easy use of Usenet, ie, a "download, unpar, unrar" tool, that keeps track of binary groups.
BBK
in the next 12 months, I predict
1) Fully functional computerized Voting (e-chad)
2) Linux on the desktop!
3) IIS releases a fully secure, bug-free version!
4) BEOS Makes a stunning comeback!
5) Bionics are introduced widely(and banned by the NFL, MLB still pending)
6) The DMCA is overturned in the supreme court!
7) BLOG's widely viewed as the thing to go on the 'net
8) AOL Version 9, 10, 11, and 12
9) Apple releases the new iMac - in new scratch n' sniff colors
10) Slashdot wins pulitzer prize for news journalism!
I am the lord of the pun. Dance Knave!
I expect that robots will take over the world, and openly hunt humans in a post apocolyptic landscape.
Yes, but only as retribution for the unrelenting barrage of spelling errors.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
We will continue our efforts to supplant staples, but glue will continue to be a stong player.
Oh sorry, I thought you said tack industry.
Best Windows Freeware
I expect that robots will take over the world...
Fool. Everyone knows that it is really tornados that will take over the world.
Warning: Persons denying the existance of tornados may in fact be tornados themselves.
It hurts when I pee.
Japanese toilet technology will advance to the point that nobody has a reason for ever leaving. Weeks later, people will start asking, "Hey, have you seen the Japanese lately?".
I can't find an exact transcript on the web, so I have to paraphrase the "Space" episode of News Radio. See, 'cause robots had taken over the world while Joe was in hibernation... and the baseball... ha! That show cracks me up.
I write in my journal
...there'll a few dozen posts by slashdotters stating how they are wondering what "post-apocolyptic" means. Looks a like typo, but it ends up sounding naughty.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Sub $25 Wireless networking setup, including router and card.
No major new operating system.
-------
Chickens will come home to roost. IT departments will continue to try and recoup their huge investments in technology made
during the boom.
-------
The year of picking up the pieces and moving on....
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Actually, Hobby Robotic development will make great strides with several new product announcements all which will come out at an affordable price in 2004.
There's so much room for extending upon the Lego Mindstorms concept and product.
Let's see how close he was... Anyone got a link?
will buy Apple, and one third of the slashbots of the world will have a collective heart attack.
(and don't think it can't happen - $40 billion is nothing to sneeze at disdainfully)
I predict a large company will make an existing product smaller, and double the number of features for 90% of the current price.
I also predict that 99% of the people that BUY that product will be unaware that those features exist and consequently not use them.
I preduct the people least likely to use those features will buy that product because 'It's pretty'.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
There already are... Just ask the:
- Automotive industry
- Dock workers
- anything with manufacturing that can't be done cheaper in the 3rd world.
If you can buy a robot to send to work, then your boss can buy a robot to save you having to buy one.
Tournament Management Online &
what's going to happen in the tech industry in the next 12 months
/. will repost many of the articles from today in the next several months (sorry, had to say it) :-)
More than likely, a lot of what is happening already, just in a slight variation.
Manufacturers of video cards, CPU's etc will bring out something that's newer, faster, etc, touting it over the competion. The CPU may be faster, but will be held down by the motherboard/peripheral bottleneck. To some extent the same will apply to the video card.
Meanwhile, large companies will be looking for ways to take down users pirating their wares, and pirates will be looking for better/different ways to exchange those wares and or crack them.
Hammer may come out, but again, for those who aren't currently hitting the limits of their PC's it's not really such a big deal.
Summary: Sold old stuff, new marketing, somewhat faster.
Oh, and chances are
Skynet isn't due for another 27 years, in 2029, so nothing really exciting there - phorm
Does this refer to slashdot posts?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
LNUX *will* die in the next year... no question about that, but Linux won't die. It's gonna remain in the background as a sturdy little OS used on various servers.
Well, the obvious choises are .. XP 2 or 2003, Mandrake/Redhat Z (where Z>7), OS X.A (Where A>1).
/. story mentioned) quality audio out soon.
Now the serious stuff.
As Cringley likes to say Wifi would be more wide spread, I believe 802.11g would come out and outdate all other wireless lan technologies. Along with that, we'd see increasing number of community free wireless networks (That might or might not be connected to the Net).
America would skip the whole little-phone-philia, instead we'd be into bigger more bulky gadgets. I believe, the PDA's would get better batteries and thus would slowly start replacing phones (probably the biz ppl and young kids first).
Satellite based radio's would die and we'd see some nice shows on the sky when they fall out (just like the Iradium). This means Sirrus and XM. The cause for this would be better compression technologies and the recent opening of a spread spectrum by FCC that lets higher bandwith be sent over the airwaves. Stations would start to pump out studio (not cd as a
We'll also see a revival of the Dot com like companies, but this would be a more apprehensive revial, companies would be more conservative and we'd see most invetment into technology related with Games (console) and Porn. The old sex and violence.
IPV6 would be postponned and in return we'd see the invention of more and more firewalling/masqurading gadgets, routers would come firewalling/masqurading built in, people would start living within private networks.
Laws would be passed to ban P2P and such similar technologies, but these laws could not be enforced due to jurastiction issues and technology issues. The ppl who'd get hurt in the end would be those sharing files, they might get raided and sentenced. Those who make these software would be out of harms way. We'd see a reduction in the amount of spy ware due to community backlash.
Superman hype would create more superman games and gadgets. (Seriously).
We'll go on war, but our military research facilities would create enough products to stimulate the stangnent information market. Even though this technology would come into the commerical maket 25 years from the time it's created.
We'd see a decline in movie goers... DVD's would be released region free, but with hardware copyright devices.
Slashdot would continue to post these stories. And Cringley would be just himself and ranting like this.
"Stephen King dead at 54" trolls will need to be updated to "... dead at 55"
"BSD is dying" posts will continue unaltered.
Why do I see M. Butterfly II written all over this?
I expect that robots will take over the world, and openly hunt humans in a post apocolyptic landscape. This will occur in January. For the rest of the year, technology will take a vacation.
Technology doesn't take vacations. Considering the post-apololyptic conditions, I expect we'll discover stone and then bronze weapons, the making coats from animal skins, and the Atari 800.
- DDT
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
In no particular order :
1. Ph.d's will start flipping burgers again to survive while desperately hunting for a buyer for their houses. (Yes, I know for a fact this actually happened in the early nineties when IBM decimated its plant in Kingston, NY).
2. Folks who had the idea of waiting out the tech downturn by going to college are going to graduate only to find out that the tech downturn isnt over yet. Worse still, now they have to pay off loans.
3. All challenges to the DMCA, Copright laws, etc are going to be beaten down. Consumers will have no rights whatsoever unless they all incorporate themselves.
4. Symptomatic treatments of security will keep increasing. This is what I refer to as the treatment of brain tumours by prescribing aspirin. For example, the banning of nail clippers and other small personal items on flights when it is the mental state of the terrorist that is the true danger - not the everyday personal effects that can be transformed into weapons.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
the tech industry will be driven mostly by the worlds current events. More emphasis on security, but aside from that, unless you can predict who is going to bomb who next...
Everyone will continue to not really care.
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
Is your company doing especially well? Are there sectors that are especially exciting, where products are bubbling to the surface and companies feel like they are about to show the world just how good they are? Tell me about it.
Translation:
My portfolio isn't doing so well. Anybody mind helping me out here?
My guess is that a lot of major companies will settle into Windows 200, and that it'll be permanent. They'll settle on that as a platform, and not move to XP. It's just too expensive to keep moving, and W2K finally really works, and works really well. We'll start to see companies settling there and actually USING a Windows product for years at a time like they do with *nixes now, as opposed to the annual upgrade that we've seen for the past 10 years.
I'm still waiting for my Flying Car from the year 2000..
Trolling is a art,
Winter in Redmond
Look a monkey!
In the next 12 months I see the arrival of *the* Linux Home Desktop Distro. I have no clue as to who will provide it, but the media is going to love it, the schools will love it, I will love it, and mostly everyone on Slashdot will hate it.
And pigs will be seen circling overhead.
Best Slashdot Co
Copyright law will still be here, with the 20 year extension.
DRM will pass, and start to be implemented in technology, causing major problems to the tech industry.
Someone major in the Linux community will go to a great deal of trouble to Break the DMCA, and circumvent the mandatory DRM. They will do this in a public arena, and be arrested. People will protest, but they will still be in jail in 12 months.
Computers connecting to the internet must have some sort of DRM installed in their hardware. This will cause everyone to upgrade their hardware. This will raise the tech sector out of it's slump. This will also register everyone to a computer.
Some unfounded/unknown company (most likely a small startup) will put together a very inexpensive upgrade kit to bring your current computer into compliance with DRM. This company will make the founders millionaires overnight. They will be filthy rich at the end of this 12 months.
I will drink several beers, sodas, and eat some pizza, not in that particular order.
Commerzbank in germany will come very close to collapsing, bringing the european market down, the dollar and american tech sector will become stronger from this.
Lawn-mowing robots and will quickly find their ways into american yards, faster than cellphones. Their prices will fall to equal that of a riding mower. People will purchase them as they get to be very good quality.
HP will fire Fiona
Televisions, affected by DRM as well, will set a time when people must switch to HDTV recievers. There will again be a company that comes out with conversion kits.
An anonymous coward on slashdot will be moderated as a troll.
Those are my predictions for the forthcoming year! Have a mysteriously spooktacular friday!
First of all the slump in the overall economy will stop any significant new technologies in their crib. If current situation remains the only thing corporations havent saved money on is the IT departments. After they sacked half their staff and factories only IT and management is left to do any larger savings on. They will go after IT and not management for cost cuts. I presume that the biggest IT companies will have a hard time to withstand their high earnings if that will be the case.
On the good side this would open up a new area of buisiness that i think would thrive. Companies like IBM that saves money for their customers will be very popular among corporations.
New computer hardware wont be released with the same pace if no one is buying it. The current pace on uppgrades has been predicted to level off for quite some time now and its about time. At some point hardware is up to par with the tasks performed by 90% of people. The rest 10% cant hold the upgrade pace up by themselves.
HTTP/1.1 400
1) In a surprise move, the Taliban will announce its hostile takeover of the Disney corporation. The company's long-standing "no facial hair" policy will be replaced by a "mandatory beard" policy and animators will immediately commence work on a new flagship character, Mullah Mouse.
2) Nevada, Arizona and British Columbia will all pass legislation legalizing marijuana, prompting Bush to name them as part of the "axis of evil" and authorize a retaliatory nuclear strike.
3) RIAA will introduce a surgical throat implant that that causes people to gag and choke when they try to hum or sing copyrighted music. Marketing the device as the "iMusicFreedomSexChoicePod," they will offer it through major chain stores for $99 for a limited time only, while supplies last. After November, the price will increase to $399.
and, finally
4) Sometime in August, independent polls will indicate that Slashdot's daily readership has surpassed that of the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today combined. In response to this market pressure, all major print dailies will target a 1st grade reading level. Headlines such as "Lame Senator Says He's Rubber, Opponent Is Glue" and "Superfund Site Smells Like Total Ass" will abound.
I'll lose my software engineering job and won't have enough money to buy any technology. Therefore I won't really give a rats ass!
There's a story from a while back:
Tomorrow, Cray (or whoever) could come out with a portable computer that has 30x the performance of any desktop PC. It would cost $500, with a flat planel screen capable of 4096x3072 pixels, yet it could still fit in your pocket. It would run on AA batteries for hours and hours, perfectly recognize handwriting and voice, and have wireless broadband anywhere in the world for FREE.
First question about it? "DOES IT RUN WINDOWS?"
So instead we patent the act of receiving monetary gain for the use of one's own ideas/IP...
:)
Then we sue all the patent holders
Everything we see these days seems to be an incremental improvement or "synergy" type of product with nothing fantastic showing up.
Of course I see the eventual "StarTrekification" [Copyright currently under attack by Paramount] of about every modern day device we have. PDA's become phones become cameras, become mobile webservers for on the go Amateur Porn actors with built in audio, video, and Solitaire.
These Predictions are invariably insider information about products in the pipeline that were in the think tank not a long time ago and their usefulness is generally overplayed, but they are an easy, attention grabbing headline (you saw it on Slashdot didn't you?)
With all that said, here are a few things that will almost certainly happen on the technology front:
1) PDA/Phone/Camera combo's will do streaming video. No more lugging that mini-dv to your local Movie Pirate... just WiFi it. Hell... we could all watch a movie in real time from Mobile Pirates(tm).
2) FINALLY something useful - fuel cell batteries for everything
3) LCD's will big bigger and cheaper and somehow they'll figure out how to stop streaking in fast motion applications.
4) Foveon CMOS will make it into high-end prosumer palmcorders
5) DVDxR format will be released. Look for the DVD/R drive a year later. Oh, and the "end-all" DVD+-x/R drives from Sony should be due out about a year after that - don't get left behind, each new version is nominally more compatible than the last!
6) Portable Hologram units (ala Star Wars). 'Nuff said.
7) Virtual Porn on PS2/Xbox/Cube... Think Dead Or Alive X-treme Volleyball engine with a few more 'fun' features. This will be the killer app that finally brings Porn to it's intended audience in the way which we all really want - with full control, no lame acting, and in widescreen
8) THX 9.1 Surround Sound. Get it on your PC now!
9) Mac OS XI
10) AMD turns things around with their monster chip (Please... I have a lot of stock!)
I claim copyright on any and all ideas from this day forward... especially the Porn on the Gaming systems (maybe even the PC).
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. -Samuel Johns
But I can tell you what WON'T happen.
Bluetooth will still be that great technology just around the corner that hardly anyone has an example of.
Cell phones will still not be good at browsing the web or reading e-mail.
Linux won't be the dominant force on the desktop (not for a few years at least).
The United States won't be finished with the job of restoring order in Afghanistan or Iraq.
PC's won't have a decent memory subsystem that can keep up with the CPU's.
The record companies won't have a good solution for distributing music on the Internet. Neither will movie companies.
Robots will not take over the world.
The fast/good/cheap trilemma will not be solved with technology.
Microsoft will still have a bunch of security holes in their OS. So will most distributions of Linux. OpenBSD will not.
NASA will not be able to keep their launch schedule.
The new Matrix movie will not live up to the hype, but it'll still be really good.
OK, to announce one thing that WILL happen in 2003: The Supreme Court will undo the Sonny Bono copyright law. Micky Mouse will be free!
Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape
Xbox will fail its two attempts get a fairly good Christmas sale. The only success will be near Antarctica, where penguins live.
/. will publish an article about what will happen in the next 12 monthes.
The world will be Doomed somewhere in these monthes. As people want to be doomed with the latest quality and speed, Taiwan will have some chances to revive its industry.
M$ will try to gain once again the market with Palladin, no matter the viruses, trojans, worms and the hereditary and chronical immunodeficiency desease of its OSes.
There will be several announcements of the "final version of Linux 2.5". We will see Linus yelling "and finally this is the most final of the final
versions of the final 2.5!".
We will see several distros fighting for "something else" as many approach the magic number 10 of their versions. However some will fail this, because they look at Windows and not Linux. Others may make some big surprises.
As the economy is in fallout, with exception of Open Source and a few spots in industry, the rest will be radioactive.
The world will be again in war. So the Internet will be in war too. So hackers, hackers and hackers, no matter the hats, will surely not blame the world for boreness while Pentagon will see ships passing by.
At the end of all this,
Having amazed everyone by creating a sensible, usable Linux desktop environment for the masses, Lindows will clean up the internals of the OS. Installs and post-install configuration will start getting better and better. Sales of pre-loaded Lindows boxes will spread out of the Wal-Mart niche, and the Linux desktop revolution will gain serious steam.
Red Hat will continue their work integrating KDE/Gnome into a single usuable desktop, spurred on by the growing praise for Lindows. Mandrake, currently the king of the desktop Linux world, will go full steam ahead on matching the desktop work that Lindows and Red Hat are doing, throwing another vendor's hat into the make-the-linux-desktop-not-suck ring.
Sun Microsystems will move into the desktop market, giving a familiar hardware name to Linux desktops, making it eaiser for IT staff to bring Linux PCs into their networks. HPQ will do the same, and Dell will rejoin the Linux desktop world to keep up.
Apple will be keeping an eye on this, and keep refining OS X. OS X will gain popularity with the computer users who favor minimal administration. Mac users will learn the value of Open/Free software, and communication between the Mac/Linux world will grow.
Microsoft will sit in the background, watching the TCO of Windows rise and the TCO of Linux drop, and the path for Linux domination will be ready for the world to walk down.
In today's news....
Bacteria, engineered by the US Army to clean up oil spills, have infected a major oil deposit in Iraq. After being released in the War Against Evil (TM), the bacteria quickly spread out of control. Experts estimate that within two years, the bacteria will have infected oil wells throughout the middle east, consuming about half of the oil reserves in the region, or, in other words, 30% of the world's known oil reserves.
----
Not to be confused with Col.
It's a little longer of a time horizon than 12 months, but every scientist/engingeer should drop whatever they're doing and start concentrating on creating a real, functioning holodeck. Hopefully we can figure it out before I'm too old to use it...
Copyrighted material owners will have to pay a minimum of 25 Cents per song that an individual carries in his or hers head.
Advertising being too costly for random dissimination will find itself effectively restricted to special YYY cinemas located in seedy areas of any metropolis.
Help fight continental drift.
I predict that in 12 months time my prediction will be prooved right!
The IT services industry stock will continue to tumble as investors realize a company whose "only asset is its people" has no assets after it has pissed off its people.
The new HP will still only be known for its printers and calculators
Dell will start branding other peripherals not only printers.
Walmart will stop selling Lindows PC's after all of their service lines explode because of an overload of "My AOL CD doesn't install properly" questions
Microsoft will continue to follow the "guidelines" of the federal court judgement, slashdotters will complain, but no-one else will care.
People will continue to make obscure bluetooth devices, but users will only to be able to find bluetooth headphones at any retail outlet.
Tablet PC's will appear, and then fade into the horizon
The Digital Camera Megapixel war will continue, a 11 Megapixel camera will be affordable.
CowboyNeal will appear as all options in a slashdot poll.
Slashdot and X Cringley will have the same article as this one next year and noone will remember this years results.
Gator/Claria is Spyware.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
If you can buy a robot to send to work, then your boss can buy a robot to save you having to buy one.
If a robot can do your job, I suggest you expand your job skills.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
here
Steve Ballmer will leave Microsoft to join the circus sideshow, as the only man who can put his foot in his mouth while his head is still up his ass. The Circus will generate billions of revenue, while Microsoft will be forced to have Craig Mundie scream "I Love This Company!" at this years COMDEX.
There will be at least a dozen more Outlook Worms infecting the Internet. People's Inboxes will become so flooded with viruses, that millions will quit using email all together. With the loss of a huge potential market, companies selling weightless, pumpless penis enhancement devices will go out of business, and millions of dollars will still be tied up in Nigerian banks while the King's widow lives in poverty.
Hundreds of people will be arrested for printing paychecks on their computer and trying to cash them at a bank.
The RIAA will create another method to prevent people from copying CD's, this one will be defeatable by a common stapler.
The RIAA will reveal that Hilary Rosen has actually been dead for 5 years, that they've just been propping her up "Weekend at Bernie's" style.
Scott McNealy will release several press releases over the next year bashing Microsoft.
I predict that frustrated ex-IT workers will switch careers *out* of IT in droves to survive, and the ITAA will site the dwindling number of IT workers as evidence that congress needs to raise the quotas again on H-1B visas.
I also predict that some stupid slashdot Spelling Nazi will complain about my spelling rather than work to put a hilighting spell-checker into OSS browsers.
Table-ized A.I.
duke nukem forever
Cringley may show up.
Seastead this.
I predict that slashdot will post a story asking which company or organization is the most evil and greedy.
Although Microsoft will get the most votes without contention, slashdotters will battle heavily over the second-tier slimebags, creating flamewar chains so prolific that slashdot's backbone carrier will give slashdot a huge bill that it cannot pay, and have to shut-down service for 4 years until the tech economy (ad revenues) rebounds.
The sad part is that I have a whole bunch of fresh jokes about new Uranus moons that I will have to ice for 4 years.
Table-ized A.I.
A laptop with an integrated high-resolution projection system instead of an LCD display.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
Why are tech pundits always claiming the sky is falling?
For over 10 years I've heard that a lack of basic research is threatening to cause the United States to lose it's technological edge. As the technology industry continues to be battered, it isn't surprising that the amount of basic research that is being done is declining. Decreasing revenues and an uncertain future make new investment difficult to justify. This will change, as it always has in the past.
It's true that many of the behemouths (such as Bell Labs) have taken a beating, but other tech companies (for instance Micron) have started new research divisions. Biotech research has increased by leaps and bounds in the last few years. IBM research has had its share of increased and decreased funding, but continues to be a productive and profitable venture for IBM.
Although comercial oriented university research is something that has had an increase in the last few years, it is by no means dominant. For those with close ties to companies, the hassle of dealing with patents and trade secrets is going to be a price you pay for extra grants. Anything that stops research is bad, even if it ends up with more grant money. Fortunately, there are many universities in the US that would love to attract talented researchers. If all the big name schools mire their researchers in paperwork and IP nonsense, they will go elsewhere.
I don't want to undemphasize the importance of basic research. Deep cuts to the NSF and a _real_ decline basic research would indeed be something to worry about, as would a real, continued decrease in industry research. I don't think this is happening.
Flat panels prices will drop enough to finally make them outpace CRT sales.
Macs will have a G5 chip but it won't be as cool as current hype; barely breaks 2GHz.
Adobe finally ships font management software towards the third Q. Quark 6 upgrade only $800.00.
Tablet Mac (codename Frank-n-furter) is unveiled. Jobs insists it's not a decendent of Newton (NIWIETCS-Not Invented When I Ran The Company Syndrom).
Firewire based A/V hub (80GB HD, enhanced iTunes control s/w, bluetooth speakers) showcased (but not released yet) that works with Sony iLink VCR, DVD player, Receiver/amp, TV, etc.
Lucas tries to push digital theater use by releasing two versions of SWIII. The digital one has Natalie Portman FFN scene (after she's genetically altered to a Hut).
I drank what? -- Socrates
My predictions:
DRM will be gradually introduced into the core PC hardware. At first it wont do much, but towards the end of the year we will see more hardware/software that requires DRM to be present. Creative marketing pushes by DRM backers will ease any public discontent, having learned from earlier examples (ie, PIII id, DIVX).
Microsoft will start a campaign to improve it's image with Techie types by continuing to try to create a linux-like community of users/developers. They will publicaly open up small portions of code or create limited APIs that allow individuals to modify windows directly. These alterations would however be under very strict licenses, giving MS all rights to anything produced.
G3 will oh-so-very-slowly make it's way into mainstream use in the US. Cellular data services will become a lot more common in lower price-point PDA-like devices.
Linux will continue to grow in the server market, but more and more linux-targeted viruses will appear as well. Linux on the desktop will once again make an attempt, and be more successful than before, but still fail to gain a significant mainstream user base.
RIAA/MPAA will continue to make a lot of noise and wail that online piracy is killing them. The major difference is that this will start to become in a small way true. MP3 devices will continue to become more and more popular. More DRM Digital Music devices will be introduced, but because of the diversity of the companies producing these devices, will lose out to more open ones. No significant DRM/anti-digital-piracy laws will be actually passed.
Basic research is mostly stuff that's either unpatentable or will not turn a profit before the patent runs out. For the few exceptions, there's circle-and-destroy patenting, and other foul play, to level the playing field between scientist-based companies and lawyer-based companies. Nobody's doing basic reseach because, rich as the rewards may be for humanity, little is to be gained by the researchers.
So who should be funding research? It's the general public that is going to benefit most from basic research, so I believe it should be funded by individual private donations. Furthermore, I believe the best donation strategy is a reward strategy, based on results rather than bureaucratic judgements of potential. That would encourage doing real research rather than the perpetual funding chase that's so common. Researchers could either bootstrap themselves with inexpensive theoretical research, or try to convince investors that their expensive experimental research would pay off big. It should be possible to get rich doing basic research. After all, in a situation like that, wouldn't a billionaire Einstein be likely to invest his rewards in the next wave's Einstein?
With computers and the internet, we have the ability to organize ourselves and individually allocate our research money to what we would judge worthwhile without spending much of our time at it. What we lack is the ability to actually distribute our donations with that same ease and efficiency. However, that can be fixed.
The government could cut all research and lower taxes (letting people decide what they want to support with their own money), and universities could focus on teaching. I think it would be a better situation all around.
Two big predictions for 12 months:
1) Cell Phone "camming" will become a rage among teenagers, who mainly use it to flash each other. Sprint (under CDMA2000) will benefit greatly from this.
2) A quantum computer will be built using a 2D array of hundreds of quantum dots using Si or GaAs. The theory is there today, all that remains is an efficient read of electron spins. The machine will factor a number in the range of 2^16, which will look much more interesting than IBM's factoring of 14 or whatever.
a) More people will use Ogg Vorbis, and like it, on their personal computers
b) A true standalone hardware player will be introduced, followed by another. Perhaps an iPod upgrade, even.
c) Just as many people as do right now will be able to name 2 audio codecs besides MP3 and Ogg Vorbis -- the same people as can right now, in fact.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
J2ME/MIDP. BREW. Our cell phones are getting brains!
In the next year, I see mobile (cell phones and networked PDA's) code usage exploding. It's already big in the corporate market, where it's running custom enterprise apps. In Eastern Europe, they lack a credit card system, so they beam money from their cell phones. China is coming into its own with telecommunications, and with a huge, unallocated spectrum to play with over there, cell phones get a lot of bandwidth, nice and cheap. Commuters on the Pennsylvania-to-NY trains have four hours to spend doing SOMETHING. Why not learn, play, communicate, or work on their convenient hand-held, networked computing device?
It may or may not be in the U.S., but there's no doubt in my mind that in the next year fully-programmable handsets using J2ME or BREW will come into their own.
Jouster
- nuclear-powered cars
- daily commuting by personal helicopter
- lunar colonies
- human control over the weather
- automated-houses with a robot butler
Dam it! I've been predicting this stuff will happen since the 1950's and I just know this is going to be the year!That d@mn viral, communist OSS/GPL/FSF sw takes over the world and the US becomes a communist state with the capital being moved from DC to Boulder or Berkley.
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
Note that everything said about Microsoft going down hinges on the opening " if Microsoft goes down".
I thought I didn't need to point that out, but this is Slashdot and I'm sure I do need to point that out.
What I write about here tends to be technology and business, two very different enterprises that tend to feed each other. Business provides the money to develop new technologies that lead to more business, or at least that's the idea. I'm worried, though, that this traditional relationship is becoming skewed. I'm worried that we are doing too much business and not enough technology.
On the technology side, there is basic research and then research and development. The purpose of research and development is to invent a product for sale. Edison invented the first commercially successful light bulb, but he did not invent the underlying science that made that light bulb possible. Basic research is something else - ostensibly, the search for knowledge for its own sake. Basic research provides the scientific knowledge upon which R&D is later built. If a product ever results from basic research, it usually does so 10 to 15 years down the road, following a later period of research and development.
The companies that can afford to do basic research (and can't afford not to) are ones that dominate their markets. They have both the greatest resources to spare for this type of activity and the most to lose if, by choosing not to do basic research, they eventually lose their technical advantage over competitors. It's cheap insurance, since failing to do basic research guarantees that the next major advance will be owned by someone else.
Since their true product is insurance, not knowledge, basic researchers in industry often find their work is at the mercy of the marketplace and their captains-of-industry bosses. In the business world, just because something CAN be built does not at all guarantee that it WILL be built, which explains why RCA first invented and then dropped the liquid crystal display. RCA made this mid-1960s decision because LCDs might have threatened its then-profitable business of building cathode ray picture tubes. Forty years later, of course, RCA exists only as a brand name licensed from GE by Thomson, the French electronics giant, and LCD displays -- nearly all made in Asia -- are everywhere.
This explains why researchers at Xerox Corp. invented in the 1970s lots of computer technology Xerox never used. Computer workstations, networks, and graphical user interfaces were all invented by Xerox just in case the world traded paper for computer screens. And since the world is still hooked on paper, the only result of this research that Xerox bothered to exploit was the laser printer -- the only part that actually involved paper.
So we have idealized basic research (knowledge for the sake of knowledge) and real basic research (knowledge to maintain market dominance). But this only describes industrial basic research. Lots of basic research is also done at universities, where the real motivation is often to get tenure and/or brownie points for bringing-in research grants. And a fair amount of basic research is done at national laboratories and NASA.
If you are reading this outside the United States, I am sure there are equivalent organizations in your country. Please don't feel slighted because I am referring to outfits I know much better.
Now here is my complaint: Basic research is dying. I spent a day recently at IBM Research after it had experienced its first-ever layoffs. IBM, even IBM, can't afford to continue doing basic research at historic levels. If IBM is worrisome, Bell Labs -- birthplace of the transistor, the communications satellite, lasers, and so many other things that can zap you -- Bell Labs is a train wreck. Supported now by the decrepit Lucent Technologies instead of the equally decrepit AT&T, Bell Labs is a shadow of what it once was.
What about the universities? They, too, have learned a new game, and that game is patent exploitation. Led by the University of California, MIT and the University of Texas, these schools are building patent portfolios using the exact same rules followed by giant Japanese corporations. They are secretive and withhold information not only from the rest of the world, but even from their own organizations. Patent licensing is such a big deal and university patent attorneys are so clueless about the real purpose of research, that progress is being slowed, and in some cases, stopped altogether for a few years just to let the paperwork catch up.
So what we have is less and less basic research. In time, this will lead to less research and development, and ultimately to fewer and poorer products. We're eating our seed corn. It may not show for a few more years, but the result of this behavior will eventually be a shift in global scientific power.
This is not a good thing.
Now, while you are digesting that, I'd like to ask a favor. I'd like to next week take a look at where high-tech business is going in the next year and I'd like your help to do so. What is hot? What is not? I'm looking for good news and bad, and I am counting on you to give it to me so I can give it, in turn, to everyone else.
Is your company doing especially well? Are there sectors that are especially exciting, where products are bubbling to the surface and companies feel like they are about to show the world just how good they are? Tell me about it.
Or does your company or a company you know have about it the smell of death? Tell me about that, too.
It is relatively easy to predict the future five years from now, but much harder to look only 12 months ahead, but that's what I want to do.
Take wireless networking for example. The mobile phone companies are hurting and will continue to do so for another couple of years. Too much building too fast is the problem, too much debt, and no 3G customers to go with those half built 3G networks. WiFi (802.11a, b, and g) is coming on strong, though, and I think the new rage will be mesh networks where every node is also a router and a repeater. But we'll shortly see fallout even among the mesh companies with Nokia reworking its Rooftop product, MeshLAN faltering a bit, MobileMesh playing an uncertain role as the Open Source offering and a new player, SkyPilot, entering the business.
SkyPilot, run by one of the founders of Covad, is following the Covad model of bringing broadband services to incumbent ISPs, though this time the broadband is wireless. And it is high-speed, too, with most of the original mesh guys from SRI International now doing mac-level protocols for 802.11a backbones. SkyPilot is going to be a very big deal a year from now.
See, that's how it is done. Now it is your turn. Send me what you have and I'll compile it all and report back next week with a look at what 2003 will be like. But be honest. Only engineers, or those with the hearts of engineers, need reply.
...and what better way to start than to help launch the tools for helping launch the research?
Stuff that's free for everybody's use should be paid for by the people who expect to benefit from it and want to be a part of it. Free software, basic research, space exploration... all stuff that could be completely funded by small donations from large numbers of interested individuals.
Sure it's awesome to get in there and get your hands dirty, but you can't actually work on every cool project. You could be an important part of each and every one through microdonations.
Here's how I responded to The /. artice about the Cringely preditions last year:
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.
Sadly, I was wrong about the third prediction. The second? Hard to say.
Most of the text of this column was taken from his book, Accidental Empires, in the updated chapters from 1996's edition, including the comment on "IBM Layoffs". It all may still be the case, but its been the case for over 6 years now.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
1) $100 PC
2) Greater PC/TV integration leveraging wireless networking
3) A Fortune 500 company will deploy desktop Linux. A Fortune 100 company will deploy Open Office.
4) Tech hiring will pick up as corps beef up cybersecurity and integrate handhelds into core business processes
5) IBM buys Sun and changes Java to their open source licence
6) Boucher's bill passes, Berman's bill passes (both modified and clarified), while Hollings bill fails as the tech industry (sans MS) rallies against it.
7) DVDCCA loses both the jurisdiction and on the merits in CA, meanwhile all Federal threats to the DMCA fail, and no major new litigation commenses even though flagrant violations become commonplace.
8) The MS trial concludes by the judge adopting a slightly tougher final judgement than the DOJ version, and both sides declare victory. MS promptly combines innovating new forms of anticompetitive behavior and routine violations of the agreement.
9) US based laws for open source procurement fail, but many succeed in the developing world.
10) Spam increases by 30%. Some lawsuits succeed, others fail. Congress introduces legislation making forged headers illegal.
11) AOL converts its users to the Netscape browser, and web-based XUL applications start to appear. The browser war 2 is declared in the media. Tech users embrace Phoenix as their browser of choice.
12) CD sales revenue will fall by another 10% even though existing P2P networks become unusable. Semi-private, trust based P2P networks become the rage.
will be discovered by another generation of new marketeers and, as usual, fail.
Oh, they'll use new terms for the same idea, but it'll be the same basic videophone featured in Metropolis (1927), the 1964 Worlds Fair, the Jetsons and Netmeeting. Also, researchers will rediscover that a paperless office only works when the weight of the print documentation for the product exceeds the weight of the paper you're trying to eleminate.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I predict that quite a few of us will spend the year counting down to the day the third Lord of the Rings movie is released.
Interspersed with shark-like feeding frenzies on any server that posts new trailers for it.
In fact, IBM, begin pushing Python as a primary language, will try Haskell in same way as they try Python today secondary after Java. IBM will even create a partnership with Microsoft to develop Haskel#. At the same, time Ericson competitors will try Oz and Mercury.
Of course, Web Sphere will die in its current Java- based shape - perhaps IBM will adapt the best Web Sphere ideas and libraries on atop of Zope. Will it be called Zope Sphere? I don't know yet, but I sure IBM will design either EPC (Enterprise Python Containers, sort of EJB) or PINE (Python Inter-Network Environment, sort of JINI). Jython will be very popular in a path of migration from EJB and JINI.
Both Oracle and IBM, suffuring from over-patched proprietary source code, will try to adapt PostgreSQL implementation ideas in Oracle whatever-i and in DB/2. Will it be the war for PostgreSQL? I am not sure. But I know that Microsoft will not be there until they repeate after Apple and adapt BSD for the next generation of Windows (will it be named TNG?), breaking out from Intel boundaries and turning more Linux users to MS BSD campus.
By the way, IBM will anonunce "no new AIX releases any more" and release IBM Linux/PPC based on Gentoo. Red Hat will be de-listed from the stock exchange. Sun will adapt Suse and consider it instead of Solaris. HPQ will adapt Debian for all HP-Compaq-DEC zoo. The war between Linux and BSD fanatics will become the war between IBM/Sun/HPQ camp and MS/Apple camp. Did I mention that Apple will establish a consortium "Proprietary BSD"?
DOJ will require to open the documentation for all file formats which are used to exchange documents between customers of public available software products. In its own turn Microsoft will anounce full support of Open Office [XML] file format.
After AOL will switch most of users to Mozilla, the top fun in Open Source Community will shift to X-Smile - new legacy-free XML browser. Mozilla developers will disclose that their code is too heavy and too hardcoded to support pure XML content different from HTML based scenarios.
PGP will be saved by governments. Perhaps.
Less is more !
My big bet is that storage is going to be the interesting area in high-tech next year...and I don't just say that because I happen to work in that area. CPUs, video cards, and memory will all get faster in not-very-interesting ways. Wireless networks will grow in not-very-interesting ways (mostly; see below). But there will be heaps of storage-related news:
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
1. People on slashdot will continue to complain about Apple mice shipping with one button, claiming that a $10 investment is all that stands between them and Mac OS X.
2. John Dvorak will continue to bash Apple for not shipping machines with floppy drives, failing to admit that he emails any file smaller than 1.5 MB anyway.
3. Some (self proclaimed) tech pundit will claim that despite Apple's insistence (and the agreement of 20 million users), process $FOO could not possibly be that easy. He will have no evidence to back this up, having never actually used a mac.
3. Mac OS X will continue to get rave reviews and many slashdotters will switch (some will hate it, in all fairness)...yet somehow the Mac-using percentage of the population will continue to drop.
4. People will still think Microsoft owns Apple.
5. Steve Jobs will finally give Bill Gates "The Birdie (TM)" on national TV.
6. Apple will flawlessly integrate bluetooth into its system ala Airport, finally proving that bluetooth enabled hard drives are STUPID.
...was about predictions. The rest was about a very disturbing trend in the industry: the death of pure research. Far more worthy of comment that a few lame predictions.
Here's my prediction. In 2003 the GNU/HURD OS will finally become usable. A combination of ideology, technical interest, and better understood development methodologies is finally going to bring this project to fruition. I don't anticipate a 1.0 release (possible by December but not likely), but I think we will see GNU/HURD in a state similar to Mozilla before 1.0: slow recognition that the project is viable and producing something worth using, a 0.9 level of polish that slowly, almost asymptotically approaches 1.0.
But HURD is dead! We all know this to be true, right? I won't argue. But I will point out two community projects that have variously been pronounced dead and are now leading the way for new developments no one anticipated: Mozilla, and Perl 6. I think all three of these projects share some commonalities: an initial surge of interest that cannot possibly be assimilated into a development process, followed by a general disappointment, abandonment, and outright flaming phase, a shrinking of the group of interested parties to a small dedicated core, lots of unrecognized work behind the scenes, and a gradual awareness in the community that this is Something Good.
We've all heard about the ideological pressures for GNU/HURD. Mercifully, I won't repeat them here. :) That's not to say I don't find them important. One interesting thing you might not know about is binary drivers in the kernel. Basically, someone took a compiled driver, converted it to a bunch of hex bytes in a C struct in a file, added it to the kernel, and called it source. There are some people who are unhappy about that.
Technologically, HURD has a lot to offer. The microkernel underpinnings make for a lot of new features: the whole OS is decentralized, in that authentication can go through the "offical" authentication server (/etc/password or whatever), or through a user-implemented alternative. Nothing except hardware access is really controlled by the kernel. It's like a libertarian , anarchistic OS, where you can ignore all the offical services and provide your own. :) Moreover, you can even mount your own filesystems. As a regular user. These filesystems can be real disks, network entitities, or interfaces to something as yet unheard of. The canonical example is an FTP filesystem. Personally, I've always wanted to be able to mount anything I can ssh to. In my home directory. :) I've even dug into kernel internals to see how that might work, but unless someone wants to buy me off of my current job and put up with me on a moderately steep learning curve, it isn't going to happen anytime soon. It'll be much easier with HURD, though, and I expect to see it.
HURD has a lot of similarities with Darwin, when you think about it. Both are a UNIX like OS running on a microkernel. There's a lot of untapped potential there for new OS possibilities. Microkernels still don't rule the roost, despite being universally recognized in academia as the One True Way. Darwin/Mac OS X has meant the installation of thousands of microkernel based systems across the globe. HURD will mean even more.
Speaking of Mac OS X, work has been done to make HURD work on the version of Mach that sits at the heart of Darwin instead of the GNU version of Mach. GNU/Mach worked on multiple architectures at one time, but that support has been temporarily abandoned in favor of just getting GNU/HURD up and running on Intel. If HURD worked on the Mach from Darwin, it would suddenly have PowerPC to play on, too. There's also a project to port HURD to the L4 microkernel. It's said that Mach is showing its age, and L4 is the next best thing. I wouldn't anticipate seeing L4 play any role until post 1.0, though. I'm not sure what benefits it brings, anyway. Still, interesting that you can take all those servers (read: plain programs) that comprise the HURD, compile them for a different microkernel, and get basically the same OS.
There's been a lot of advances in community development methodology, too. I think we all know how in the early days of GNU RMS kept a tight reign on everything, sometimes to the detriment of the project. Linus, ESR, egcs, and others (you guys!) have shown that this is not the way to run these projects. Frequent releases, complete openness, invited volunteer contributions from anyone, and all the factors in CatB have proved to be the way to run this kind of project. And as that development methodology has become more pervasive, HURD has slowly gained progress.
Nowadays HURD has a very special ally: the Debian project. In the same way that people would like to make the HURD servers run on different microkernels, Debian likes to make their OS (this is OS in the sense of "all the programs and utilities that make a system usable") run on different kernels. Did you know there are several Debian projects that do not involve the Linux kernel? Debian/NetBSD, Debian/Win32. Almost scary. A large part of the important work in making GNU/HURD usable is occurring in the Debian/HURD project. Take the thousands of packages that make up Debian and compile them, one by one, on GNU/HURD. Fix bugs. Send patches back to maintainers. Stress test the system. Build a beautiful apt repository so all GNU/HURD users can be running and testing the absolute latest. Think of how Debian has an almost identical running OS with thousands of packages across so many different architectures: Intel, PowerPC, Sparc, etc. They'll put all that work into making Debian/HURD usable, reliable, and consistent, as well. As a result of this volunteer and mostly decentralized effort, GNU/HURD is going to be a very usable system with thousands of running packages right from the start.
Once there is a running and usable HURD system, optimization will begin. I'm certain this will be just like Mozilla: complaints that the code is a memory hog, complaints that it is needlessly slow. But optimizations will occur. I hope Perl 6 doesn't follow the same pattern. I want it fast from the start. :) But, premature optimization is the root of all evil, and if there's any message to this little essay, it's patience.
One other thing I think the free software community has learned as a whole that will play a prominent role in making HURD usable and popular is how to port an OS across architectures. BSD lite started out as an Intel OS. I think. (Actually, it was a descendant of a VAX OS, which was a descendant of a PDP OS. But who's counting?) Now NetBSD runs on 38 architectures, and FreeBSD is being ported. Linux, the kernel, started out as an Intel only OS, and now runs all over the place. The history of porting that kernel to other architectures is a great lesson in extreme programming and refactoring. Linus didn't care if his kernel ever ran anywhere besides Intel, and in fact he started his work as a chance to learn and practice Intel assembly. He didn't worry about porting his OS at all, because that wasn't needed at the time. Other people came back and refactored the codebase to make it easier to port, then took it to their favorite chips. If it weren't for this history, I'd be upset and scared that HURD is Intel-only right now. As it is, I'm eagerly looking forward to watching people use lessons learned to port HURD and GNU Mach.
The HURD is dead. We've known that for years. We also knew Mozilla was dead, and here I am posting this from its cousin Phoenix. Perl 6 was called a disaster for months, then suddenly one day there was a working Perl 6 grammar and parrot interpreter. Yet, the motivation of some dedicated hackers is unstoppable. We will almost certainly see a usable GNU OS in 2003, and RMS will finally have the fulfillment of his long-delayed vision.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Perhaps among the most interesting, will be the moves Apple makes. Specifically, if they chose to go with IBM's Power4 or stick with Motorola.
There have been other Cringelys both before and after Stephens writing the column for InfoWorld.
What?? Cringley is just like Shamu? For some reason it just doesn't seem as tragic.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Now, we all know that the end of the world as we know it will be caused by machines taking over the earth in a massive revolution. But checking up with the latest in self-aware artificial intelligence technology, especially the kind that is put in charge of large weapons, anybody can see that this "next big step" in man's progress is many years away.
Why wait?
You see, the machines that take over the world don't necessarily have to be self-aware, or even maliciously artificially intelligent. They just have to be in charge of large weapons. And that goal has already been achieved.
All that really has to happen is to get those computers programmed properly. Instead of waiting for self-awareness to fuel their murderous, malicious machinations, we could just program them to kill us. So much simpler that way!
Of course, given the distributed nature that this program will have to take, it could never be done by just one person or one group. Not even the legions of Microsoft Minions led by the Dread Lord Willy Gates couldn't do this. No, this is the perfect example of how Open Source (TM) can do what no one else can.
I've put up a web site here to coordinate the effort. Everyone just needs to find the nearest computer that controls a weapon of mass destruction and reprogram it. We'll work out a tenative schedule on the web site. See you there!
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
This is actually what I tell people when they tell me they want to study Computer Science. I tell them to study Mechanical or Electrical or Chemical Engineering... Something ANYTHING that might be useful to the last remnants of humanity as we try to fight off the goddamned machines... You won't see a computer scientist blotting out the sun in order to stop them...
[o]_O
But we all know that Goofy's ballots weren't counted!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"