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Tech Predictions for 2004
Quirk writes "The Independent has the predictions of Charles Arthur for 2004. 'The ubiquity of the iPod, the return of the Mac, and the simplicity of the portable memory stick are just some of the developments that could change our lives in 2004.'"
Practically the entirety of business now relies on Post-Its for just about everything, yet few, if any, can find careers working with Post-Its?
What is wrong with this picture (paraphrasing) "in 2004, the cost of 256 MB USB memory will cut in half from it's current $223 (125 pound) price". What planet is he buying flash memory from?
"Spam will get worse"
"Apple won't release a tablet, phone, or camera"
These are some of the most amazingly crappy predictions I've ever seen. Easily half of them have already come true. The rest are obvious enough that my 5-year-old already knows they will happen.
---gralem
USB "flash memory" sticks will become very popular, and applications will be released that can be stored on them to run on any computer without altering its settings.
These things are hard to part with once you get them. They're so nice to have, being able to carry around documents or what have you, but the only thing that stinks about them is that you can't just "hand them off" to others like you can do with floppy disks or CD-Rs. When something like that costs $40 or $50, it's hard to let it go.
The other disappointing thing is that, unlike Floppys / CDs, if your system goes to hell, the BIOS isn't equipped to automatically boot or mount a USB memory stick, leaving you shit outa luck if Windows is behaving badly (reminds me of the time I thought I could help someone install a service pack on an XP machine by keeping it on my memstick...turns out that he needed the service pack to help fix a problem he had with USB devices (downloaded and installed a USB 2.0 driver fix for his motherboard that needed XP SP1, which he didn't have) and it left us both high and dry until I got back and burned it onto CD...he didn't really want to wait four or five hours to download the 50MB file from his modem).
But you know, I'd LOVE to see a bootable pendrive option...it would be so sweet and easy to help someone fix their computer by just plugging your handy-dandy USB memstick right into a USB port and have everything right there at your fingertips, rather than carry around bulky CD-R media.
yeah. sure.
did anybody actually click on this? You have to pay to read the 2003 article...
very kind of him to explain "consolidate"
oh, btw what does "galvanise" mean?
is this really noteworthy? all download stores use mp3.
yeah. sure.
aka "files"
on the computer there will be a general software framework that can "read" these "files" and enable you to "work" with the "contents" independent of the OS and hardware: document files, excel files, image files, html files, audio files.
can anyone imagine normal users doing that?
I don't use the Mac, but I can't imagine that to be true: document and email macro viruses?
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sigamajig...