Slashdot Mirror
The Best and Worst Technologies of 2003?
Phoe6 asks: "Last year, at Hexadecimals discussion group we shared a news that Worst Technology of 2002 was TIA (Total Information Awareness by DARPA).
What is the Worst Technology of 2003? For the Best, Time Magazine seems to have adjudged Steve Jobs' iTunes as the Invention of 2003.
What are your ratings?"
Pan: SCO - do I need to list the reasons.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
I'd say the PowerMac G5. For one thing, its a completely new design internally, losing a lot of the legacy of old Mac OS machines. (Which they can do since they don't need to support a 20 year old BIOS or OS.) Another advancement is the attention spent on creating a case that can effectively, efficiently, and quietly cooling the new design.
Rutan's rocket ship! Broke the sound barrier in 2003, though it's suborbital spaceflight will be in 2004.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
How about Serial ATA drives which became popular this year. It was about time that the old fashioned ribbon cables were replace with something more modern.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
Linux Kernel 2.6
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Ok, technically it's not out this year, but they have started releasing beta copies to people.
Right before windows XP came out, the majority of home/business users were finally 'getting it' -- they were figuring out the filesystem, the menus, etc.
Then XP came out and turned their world upside down. Sure you can revert the theme and menus back to win2k, but I don't know anyone that has done that. Not to mention new features integrated into explorer, like CD burning and MP3 playing. Quite a steep learning curve for XP's majority users.
Longhorn is going to come out, and users buying a new Dell or Gateway will get it automatically. Sidebars, and SQL data storage? Their world will be turned upside down once again.
_______
2B1ASK1
Just to touch on the other topic posted here about DVD burners the fact that there is multiple formats out has got to be the worst. I don't think the VHS/BETA fight took this long to figure out a winner. One format would help everyone in the long run and its about time we got to it!
Make me your friend. All my friends get +1 modifier and I need friends :)
I'd second that. Unlike countless other software, free or not, 2.6 actually made the machines faster. It reminds me of using the Tempus text editor on an Atari ST way back. Atari TOS/GEM was hardly a speed demon. Scrolling windows took forever. With Tempus the power of the ST was very apparent because everything was *FAST*. I feel the same way about the 2.6 kernel. Windows snap open faster, the mouse is less sluggish, it seems to spend less time switching between applications.
Best: Sharp Zaurus 5x00SL series Linux PDA's.
Worst: Spammer Viruses
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Lemmie see if I got this straight. Inferior camera, none of the advantages of digital apply here, costs more than a disposable film camera.... what's the advantage again? Okay, I can see saving one use film strips, so it is 100% reusable, but that is the only benifit. OTOH, now that it can be hacked, there may be one benifit. A cheap digital that you can take in poor environemntal conditions and not feel bad about wrecking it. ALso, you can use it in situation where you know you will destroy it, such as taking close up pics of explosions, etc.
Extensible Firmware Interface EFI
Worst technology introduced. MS/Intel
Replaces traditional PC BIOS and Consumer Rights simultaneously.
I'd like to nominate the Longhorn hype machine for worst technology. All the press garnered by an OS we won't see until 2006 at the earliest is stupifying at best, and patently annoying at the worst.
Plus, with OS X Panther, I have 95%+ of the Longhorn "Innovation" today - tell me why I should wait three years?
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
How about Total LACK of Information Awareness by SCO. Their "technology" is trying to kill open source.
Another awful invention was the Welchia/Nachi "fix" for the MSBlaster worm. I don't know what this person was thinking, but it was annoying as hell. I think it's supposed to die tomorrow, so it sneaks in under the wire.
Two more technologies that suck are spyware (I'm not sure when they were invented -- more like infected -- but they sure became annoying this year) and spam worms that hide their origin, send out adverts for penis enlargers, and oh yes DOS attack anti-spam crusaders. I hope these people die of hyper-penile growth.
Best technology? Well, I'm rather fond of the 2.6 kernel. I like the new KDE too.
Apple has only done one thing right: iTunes.
In hardware, however, it is the same old smoke-and-mirrors story. They come up with the best looking boxes to hide "leading edge of last year" slow technology, and cover it up with cooked benchmarks.
The iPod looks good on the front end, but watch hate for the thing rise once you have to replace the $150 batteries. If you can't put the bunny inside, don't buy it.
I woke up on Christmas to little kids driving up and down the street on gopeds and mopeds outside my parent's house. At first I thought they were battery powered and didn't go very fast, but I was apparently wrong. They honk at each other and idle them outside, polluting the air in more ways than one. They fly down the road faster than anyone without traffic sense should be allowed. And people wonder why americans are generally overweight and unhealthy.
So in evaluating technologies as best and worst, are there any personal feelings people rate these with? Personally I would say that improvements to communication and travel are good because it brings family and friends closer - 1200 miles doesn't seem as far as it used to, and it's a lot cheaper to get there (It was actually cheaper for me to drive home for Christmas than fly this year). On the other hand, people like my father refuse to use a self-propelled lawn mower because it forces him to get some routine exercise. He wouldn't say it's a bad technology, just not useful to him.
I nominate OnStar vehicle GPS system for both best and worst.
Best because (among other uses) if your car gets ripped off, they can find it fast.
Worst because it can be used as vehicle-embedded spyware.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Actually, Iraq's chemical weapons are NOT from the United States.
9 84.html
http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/research/factsheet-1
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, they are probably German or Japanese. In fact, they explicitly ruled out the possibility of them coming from the US.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
I would have to say your wrong on this point. Windows Server 2003 is the most complete Windows os to date. I'm not saying this because I'm pro MS in anyway, but the 2003 operating system is 100 times better then Windows 2000 and about 100 times better then XP (giving into the fact that XP is better then 2000 in many ways but opens many new problems that were are almost tottaly fixed in 2003). I enjoy the control and flow of 2003, and I praise them for locking it down in the install. This turned out to be a very valueable feature for our company that does Windows (as well as Linux and BSD) webhosting on both dedicated and shared systems (so we have 100s of machines to setup that we don't have to us an image system for that install right off the cd or over the lan without a hitch. Also as provider of distrubted LAN solutions for small to medium sized companies that can't afford full time IT departmarts, 2003 Server (including Small Biz Server 2003) simplifies setting up the distrubtied network and keeping it secure (all be it, it costs more for the hardware and software aspect to something that Linux could do with 5% of the resources required, but it still averages less then hiring someone full time).
Windows Server 2003 has the ability to do things that previous versions couldn't even fathum from a programming aspect. The networking aspect is about a thousand times better with the ablity to (not super dooper but good anough that anyone with experience with routing couldn't work something to just make it work).
Understand that I'm a born Linux user myself, and I end up installing Cygwin, Mozilla (Firebird mostly), GCC, Apache, PHP, Perl, TLC, and about a hundred other Linux tools on just about every windows machine I come across that I have to use for more then 10 minutes. I know that Windows has querks but I would rate it towards the top in this case.
No.
"iTunes is definitely the best in terms of overall quality and and ability"
Sometimes, users get so attached to their product of choice, they don't even realize how much they've fallen victim to the company's hype machine. While yes, iTunes is regarded by many as a worthwhile music app, it'd be foolish to assume the rest of the world (especially those who've taken the time to explore other options and features) agrees.
There's more to Winamp/Foobar/QCD/etc than just the number of codecs and a smaller download. The large margin between iTunes and other mp3-players is artificial, meant to downplay the features and hard work put into their competition. Have you really looked at Winamp 5? While it may not have it's own store, the media library is just as powerful if not more, and it's Internet TV implementation runs easier than I've seen with any other program (And of there's free pr0n, too). Throw in all the customization possibilities as opposed to iTunes limiting look, and the strong community support with plug-ins for nearly anything imaginable... It's hard to imagine this program not only uses drastically less resources than iTunes, but even Winamp 2x.
I use iTunes on my Mac, but there are much better alternatives, in terms of "quality and ability," on the PC.