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Robert X. Cringely Weighs in on 2006
Simon80 writes "With the beginning of a new year coming another set of 15 predictions from Robert X. Cringely as to how the tech world will shape up in 2006, preceded by a review of how his 2005 predictions turned out. Most of this year's predictions cover well known tech companies, with a few that are about specific technologies like WiMax, media center PCs, and VOIP."
About the only thing worth doing under 'Doze anymore is running certain peripherals, like the printer and scanner, that are fairly low-usage, with crappy FOSS driver support.
More intriguing, though, is exposing more people to the FOSS tradition of helping people without picking their pockets.
Not everyone is going to get all excited: plenty of users prefer the automatic-transmission feel of these commercial GUI offerings, but some will be seduced by the manual transmission sexiness of an operating system that doesn't leave the user stupider at logout than at login.
And, for the truly blessed, there is emacs...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Sounds like he expects '06 to see properietary gain on OSS. Thats a prediction that I both think is false, but also, for the sake of the computing world as a whole, hope proves false. 2006 (imho) actually does have the potential to be a great year for the linux desktop, assuming that a big hardware company (Dell, HP, anyone) gives it a chance (a novice-oriented linux desktop like Linspire has the potential to get users aquainted w/ OSS and GNU/Linux, and allows them to easily move on up to more advanced distros). Lets hope '06 doesn't live up to Cringely's expectations.
Well, not quite two weeks into the year and he's got one wrong already.
KFG
Palmisano has been slashing costs for more than a year ... and not for the customer-facing and service areas, only the admin and other 'infrastructure' areas.
I like most of this guy's article, but some of the things he says are too vague, and anyone with common sense would say the same things. For example:
I was right when I said AMD would give Intel further fits.
Two huge companies in dead competition would give each other fits? Obviously that is bound to happen on some degree over the course of the year. Also, he never really defined "fits", just some kind of conflict that is bound to happen when two major corporations are competing in the same market.
I predicted the RIAA would continue to sue music lovers and they have, despite the fact that it doesn't help anyone and actually hurts everyone to do so.
What would the RIAA do, stop suing? I don't know of any other way to prosecute violators of copyright law besides offing them like the mafia. Again vague and full of common sense.
Cringely (the author) did make some great predictions that came true this year (e.g. PS3, VoIP, TV networks embracing video downloads). I think I might have read his article last year and enjoyed it also. Personally, I would like to see a lower accuracy rate and less vague predictions. However, most people will be fooled like customers to a palm reader
The voice of the next generation. "In this tower, in my mind..." Babble - Tower
"The next big consumer market will be a network computing appliance."
This one has been predicted for a long time. If it hasn't happened yet, what makes Bob think it's going to happen now? I'll stake my personal reputation (note that I'm posting as AC) that he's wrong.
Did you hear about the clairvoyant's convention?
It was cancelled due to unforseen circumstances.
.. weighed in and subsequently went on a diet.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
We can only hope.
Google will continue to roll out new products and services as it builds out its infrastructure for a huge push in 2007. They'll need money, of course, so I predict a supplemental stock offering timed with a 20-to-1 stock split.
I already know this one is wrong. Page believes in keeping the stock priced out of the range of the average investor as a way of preventing the company from becoming too focused on the individual quarterly returns. They're not splitting, plain and simple.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Forget the predictions -- I'm just surprised he spelled RADAR with all-caps.
Holy balls, that's interesting speculation.
It's also in my opinion the single most wrong speculation in the entire list. Apple has already demonstrated that they want to keep the system on Apple-only hardware. That's part of the reason for getting TPM chips in the hardware. Ultimately, they'll get hacked, but they'll go after it hard. No matter how much we all say we'd love it if they weren't, Apple is and will always be a hardware company and a company fiercely protective of their intellectual property.
Just look at how they treat rumors sites.
I think he's mostly right, though I can't comment on the financial rumors about TiVO & Google. However, betting on plasma TV Macs, pirated beige box Macs, or the "never gonna happen" pipe dreams of the dot-com era -- streaming video and network appliances -- is just a losing proposition. Until network technology improves significantly, streaming video portables are doomed (especially portables with only 802.11b access), and network appliances will never take off when cell phones, laptops, and desktops can do everything they do better.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Between 5 and 15 Million units of the One Laptop per child is supposed to ship in 2006 getting ready for 100-150Mu in 2007. I think he should have mentioned the expected succes or failure of this program. If successful it will make Linux the #1 client OS, surpassing Windows and totally change the tech dynamics in 2/3 of the world. FYI 2005 shipments of Laptops was 42MU.
Help fight continental drift.
My final score was 10 correct and five incorrect, for a dismal 66 percent -- my worst showing EVER. Could my job be in danger?
I dunno Robert, with the hit rate you normally have on predictions, I don't think this is a prediction you want in your 2006 list!
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Ubuntu
4) Enough about Apple. Google will continue to roll out new products and services as it builds out its infrastructure for a huge push in 2007. They'll need money, of course, so I predict a supplemental stock offering timed with a 20-to-1 stock split. 2006 is a building year for Google.
I don't know on this one. By coincidence I was recently coddling, Yesh my preciousisess, my worn copy of Security Analysis: Principles and Technique by Benjamin Graham, David L. Dodd, Sidney Cottle, Charles Tatham. This is the goto book on investment fundamentals, that guy Warrant Buffy, or something like that, you know the guy who owns the Hathaway shirt company, learned the basics of investment from this book. IMHO there is no way to go about investing without first coming to terms with the knowledge contained in 'Security Analysis: Principles and Technique'. But I'm unsure as to how B. Graham would have parsed Google stocks. In 60's parlance Google would be a go-go stock and might have been shunned by Graham. Also I'm unsure as to Buffet's take on Google. Does the Berkshire Hathaway fund hole any Google stock? Maybe Google will split when the Berkshire Hathaway fund splits. :)
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
all information that has been on the rumor sites for months.
2) The reason Apple changed its MacWorld announcements at the last minute was because the company sued little Burst.com a few days before, trying to invalidate the Burst patents. But since Apple sued Burst, Burst shares have gone UP by 30 percent. The market is rarely wrong. Suing Burst was an enormous mistake for Apple, casting a pall on their video strategy and potentially costing the company strategic alliances with networks and movie studios. Apple realizes this now and is struggling internally to find a way to change course and put a positive spin on the course correction. Apple will lose and Burst will win, and Apple won't be able to afford to wait for the courts to decide anything, since time is critical in staking out Internet video turf. I predict that Apple will eventually take a license from Burst, that is UNLESS SOME OTHER COMPANY (Google? Real? Yahoo?) doesn't snatch up Burst first.
mmmmaybe. but would apple jeapordise their macworld address in this timeline? do the head and the tail not talk anymore? doubtful..
3) But Apple WILL make some inroads against Microsoft. The new Intel Macs will run Windows XP unofficially, and Apple Support acknowledges that they are only days from running XP officially, too. So Apple finally has a solid argument why Windows-centric companies and homes should consider trying a Mac. The best case, though, says that Apple sells an additional million units, which aren't enough for Steve Jobs, so I see him going into a kind of stealth competition with Microsoft.
old news. been beaten here and on other websites to death.
4) Enough about Apple. Google will continue to roll out new products and services as it builds out its infrastructure for a huge push in 2007. They'll need money, of course, so I predict a supplemental stock offering timed with a 20-to-1 stock split. 2006 is a building year for Google.
bzzt! i doubt the google split will happen. they have lost traction on a few efforts last year, and are supposedly growing. diversity growth != profit ergo != rising stock prices.
5) Still no good news for Sun. Those Galaxy servers are very nice, but they aren't enough to support the company and Eric Schmidt is too smart (I hope) to bail out his old firm.
man. i hear a lot of fish in that barrel. sun has been on the hardware ropes for what, 3 years now?
6) IBM will get in trouble with its customers as it becomes clear that Sam Palmisano didn't learn much, if anything, from Lou Gerstner. Gerstner's fat-cutting is long forgotten, so all IBM knows how to cut these days is customer service.
*shrug* IBM is cost competitive in the low end.. they seem to be making money and are still on the short list of "laptops that just work"
7) Microsoft still sucks at security and users suffer for it. My best guess is they are planning on putting all this new technology in the "next" operating system, which seems to be yet another year behind schedule. The important question the world will soon be asking -- "Do we need another Windows operating system?" In 2006, Windows XP gets another service pack and/or facelift. Nothing more.
ZzZZzzzZZ... oh sorry you were saying something?
8) Sony's PS3 hits the market with a dearth of games. Howard Stringer loses his job, not because of the game problems but because he's undermined by the Japanese parts of his company. But there is good news for Sony, too. Interne
... Robert X. Cringely Weighs in AT 2006?! Sure, we all break our resolutions sometime in January, but for Pete's sake, we're not even halfway through the month!
You could try, you know, ignoring them.
Robert X. Cringely (Mark Stephens) is a complete and utter fraud .
Why his every bowel movement makes the front page is anyone's guess.
there's more than one way to do me.
I predict that his web page will be really awful looking, with weird lime green colors and that the text will be shifted too far over to the left, so that black line slices right through the first letter of each paragraph. And BOOOM, just like that, I'm one for one (100%) for 2006.
Yeah. Apple plasma TVs. That's plasma, people. With Apple, with a Mac mini in a huge display.
When does the iPod nano with integrated, non-detachable domicile come out?
... and then they built the supercollider.
It becomes even more ironic when you think that we're really talking about a *publishing* business, and their BIGGEST concern is to prevent "publication" of their work.
It's all about trying to slam the lid on Eric Raymond's Magic Cauldron.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I thought we were talking about predictions, not miracles? :)
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
My prediction of three things we'll see before "network computing" being the next big consumer computer market:
- Practical Cold Fusion on your desktop.
- Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore co-hosting a telethon for gay dyslexic evengelical gun-owning welfare cheats.
- Monkeys flying out of Robert X. Cringley's butt.
Crow T. TrollbotAgree but this doesn't really count. There has been so much talk of this on the rumor sites that it is just a "gimme."
2) The reason Apple changed its MacWorld announcements at the last minute was because the company sued little Burst.com a few days before, trying to invalidate the Burst patents. But since Apple sued Burst, Burst shares have gone UP by 30 percent. The market is rarely wrong. Suing Burst was an enormous mistake for Apple, casting a pall on their video strategy and potentially costing the company strategic alliances with networks and movie studios. Apple realizes this now and is struggling internally to find a way to change course and put a positive spin on the course correction. Apple will lose and Burst will win, and Apple won't be able to afford to wait for the courts to decide anything, since time is critical in staking out Internet video turf. I predict that Apple will eventually take a license from Burst, that is UNLESS SOME OTHER COMPANY (Google? Real? Yahoo?) doesn't snatch up Burst first. Here's something I've noticed lately: Big companies believe in patents as long as they are talking about THEIR patents. Because Burst is three guys in an office in Santa Rosa, companies like Microsoft and Apple tend not to take them seriously. They forget that Burst spent 21 years and $66 million developing that IP, and the company has code that is still better than anything else on the market -- code not even Microsoft has seen. Unless someone buys the company first, Burst is going to win this and eventually license the world. They are in the right, for one thing, and in practical terms they now have as much money for legal bills as any of their opponents. Apple can't win this one.
Agree. Courts seem to be understanding that more money for more lawyers does not make a large company more right than the little guy. Patent defense by little guys will become a growth industry.
3) But Apple WILL make some inroads against Microsoft. The new Intel Macs will run Windows XP unofficially, and Apple Support acknowledges that they are only days from running XP officially, too. So Apple finally has a solid argument why Windows-centric companies and homes should consider trying a Mac. The best case, though, says that Apple sells an additional million units, which aren't enough for Steve Jobs, so I see him going into a kind of stealth competition with Microsoft. Here's how I believe it will work. Apple won't offer versions of OS X for generic Intel hardware because the drivers and the support obligation would be too huge. But just as you can buy a shrink-wrapped copy of 10.4 for your iMac, they'll gladly sell you a shrink-wrapped Intel version intended for an Intel Mac, but of course YOU CAN PUT IT ON ANY MACHINE YOU LIKE. The key here is to offer no guarantees and only limited support, patterned on the kind you get for most Open Source packages -- a web site, forums, download section. and a wiki. Apple will help users help themselves. With two to three engineers and some outreach to hackers and hardware makers, Apple could put together an unofficial program that could easily attract two to three million Windows users per year to migrate their old machines to the new OS. Imagine the profit margins of three engineers effectively generating $300-plus million per year in sales.
This is a creative idea, but does not smell like a typical Apple/Jobs move. I'll disagree.
4) Enough about Apple. Google will continue to roll out new products and service
Don't read any of these posts and don't make any comments. The Slashdot moderators will notice that these topics are non-starters and they won't accept them. He will fade from Slashdot.
I think that all the Cringely bashers ENJOY ragging on Cringely, so they actually want these posts so they have an excuse to whine. This is very typical Slashdot behavior: it's more about heat than light.
you can flame me if you wish but remember that i told you ahead of time. they are harsh predictions but due to certain sources and readings these are my personal conclusions.. #1. Playstation 3 will not be released in 2006...thats right will NOT.
#2. Bluetooth technology will suffer from new viruses..major viruses..nothing like the paris hilton fiasco. This will lead way to a technology that will make bluetooth obsolete. watch and see.
#3. SGI will file for bankruptcy. Mark It.
Yes these are harsh predictions and i cant say that i will get them all right but i am confident that i will get at least one of these right. i would love to hear your comments..and no flames.. serious discussion.
I second that.
At least The Powers That Be gave us a really easy way to ignore Jon Katz, who was just as irritating.
Though Cringely is buzzword-compliant alphabet soup as opposed to a broken record about Columbine... and you know just how much The Powers That Be LOVE those buzzwords.
No, it could go the other way - current Mac users won't use anything else and Apple will make a mint from people who want a real OS. Huge numbers of people will try it out because friends recommended it and they can still keep XP just in case something goes wrong. They'll fall in love but will be frustrated by their old hardware and will make a real Mac their next computer purchase. Something similar happened with the iPod and its quality outshines the competition far less than OSX does XP.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Corrected by inlining a constant: 2006 does have the potential to be a great year for the linux desktop, assuming FALSE.
Corrected even further by logical equivalence: 2006 does not have the potential to be a great year for the linux desktop.
I love Linux, but it's not going on to anyone's desktop any time soon. There are many reasons (No one profits from putting it on the computers sold at computer companies, it's still not ready for a lot of the hardware that's out there, it doesn't always "Just work"). Eventually, it will get to the point where unfortunate things happen rarely, but I am a power user and I still sometimes have to wrestle with it, so I would be reluctant to think of what others might do if they were like my parents.
AFAIK Buffet moved out of the stock market altogether a few years ago. He moved into commodites and also became very involved in global silver trade. He wouldn't invest in something he doesn't understand, and for him that means the tech market. He basically has little to no faith in the US stock market....
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
My prediction is still that these predictions won't matter, because the US economy/dollar is in serious troubble and the price of precious metals is going to completely explode. The foundation of these predictions is very simple:
a) the US economy has way too much debt
b) there is no way they can pay it off without printing up tons of money
c) the US economy is extremely efficient which means the adjustment will almost certainly
be harsh and brutal
Some other notes:
1) the dollar survived the 1920's because currency was still backed by precious metals
2) the dollar survived the inflation of the 80's becuase there wasn't a lot of debt
3) neither 1 nor 2 apply today, so hold on for the ride of your life when it hits
CHRIST people are babies around here sometimes. +5 Informative my ass.
You mean Slashdot improves its editing. :-)
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
The key test to know when to leave slashdot.org:
Roland Piquepaille posting a regurgitation of Cringley's articles.
Just wait for it!
- The RIAA will continue to exist and be a pain in the neck.
- Microsoft will release another operating system.
- Linus Torvalds will continue to be writing for the Linux kernel.
- MacIntosh will sell computers with a nice GUI.
- In the next week, you will talk to someone named Bob, Joe, Jane, Jack, Chris, Sam, or some name beginning with a 'J' or a female who's name ends in a pronounced vowel.
- IT proffesionals will continued to be ignored and low quality products will flourish in the market.
What do you think, guys?I'd be interested to hear from /.ers just what everyone thinks would actually amount to a "great year" for Linux on the desktop.
I'm a bit of a Mac fanboy, but from my perspective, Linux had a pretty damn fine year in 2005. Ubuntu is a story all by itself, and there are plenty of other distros that had a good ride last year (Mandrake and Mepis come immediately to mind). KDE got visionary and Gnome got even leaner. SUSE opened up.
There were some big deployments, and it's now obvious that developing nations love Linux for its affordability and independence from big American corporations.
Any other criteria?This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
I simply would not buy Google shares right now. Why? Stock prices are based on expectation, and the expectations made of Google right now are ridiculously high. Yes, it is possible for Google to perform better than expected, but there is much more room for the company to do worse and for the stock to take a hit. I would not buy Google until they make their first mistake and analysts stop expecting perfection of them. Note - I am not saying that GOOG is a bad stock, but all I'm saying is that they're downside is bigger than their upside right now.
4. They'll need money, of course, so I predict a supplemental stock offering timed with a 20-to-1 stock split. 2006 is a building year for Google.
./ers doubt this. Make no doubt about it, TiVo is worth buying for the brand name alone.
The operative phrase is "They'll need money", since shares of Google have never been within the reach of the average investor splitting the stock will create a short term boost. As a result they'd split then make an offering in a week or so, enough time to let people buy the price up but before the major investment firms start taking profits. The interesting thing about this prediction is that Google just offered up 4 billion in shares. Thus to say they'll need money is to say they'll try something big (like his gCube idea). It's a pretty bold prediction and I doubt it will come true.
11TiVo will be bought by another company
When I first read that I thought "That's about as bold as saying Microsoft will still suck at security". Then I saw how many
15.Whatever we expect from Google might just as easily appear from Yahoo, too. With so much attention on Google, Yahoo is operating under the RADAR and will have several surprises for the market while AOL continues to shrink.
This would have been good if he hadn't said "Whatever we expect from Google might just as easily appear from Yahoo, too." Whatever we expect from Google probably won't come out of Google because we have such high expectations. Still Yahoo has been flying under the radar, I expect them to use that to their advantage and introduce some interesting new services. The fact that he talks about Yahoo and AOL in the same sentence is very interesting. It leads me to beleive that he thinks Yahoo will start encrouching on AOL's turf.
The only way I see them doing that is if they release a browsing environment comparable to AOL and MSN to push their advertising further. Considering they don't have a dialup infrastructure to deal with they might be able to price it competitively.
... claiming some stuff to be your way when it is FAR from that is not nice :(
Also most of the things that he guessed were "captain obvious" grade ...
It is also pathetic how he is making his predictions almost in february ... a little more and he could be 100% true with the advantage of hindsight :)
From the new predictions the WiMax one is probably off again (but it is worded in such a way that he will be able to claim it nonetheless) and the ONLY one worth mentioning is the very last one!!!
A run-from-cd (or run-from-dvd, more likely) version of MacOS has to be technically possible. How long before someone hacks one up and it starts to get noticed around the 'net? What will Apple's response be? Of course their official response will be 'stomp on it hard', but what will their real response be?
A disk which you could shove into a vanilla PC which gave users a flavour of MacOS but which for some reason couldn't be fully installed onto the PC and so always ran at 'run-from-cd' speed would actually be a great marketing ploy.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Katz is the only bit of /. I've ever blocked, and I don't regret it for a second.
As for RSS... imo an RSS aggregator is an automated, user-controlled slashdot. Only without the comments.
"because the US economy/dollar is in serious troubble and the price of precious metals is going to completely explode"
I'll make two comments on this, since this is in the realm of predictions:
1) You've made several predictions in one sentence, and once doesn't follow from the other. The U.S. economy may be in trouble. But that doesn't mean the dollar will change significantly. However, even if the U.S. economy does poorly, and the dollar tanks, that may not have significant impact on gold/silver/platinum prices.
2) People have been making this prediction about precious metals pretty much forever (and usually they're precious metal speculators). Or as long as there has been an "economy". It hasn't happened yet. In fact, I can't think of a time in the last 200 years when this kind of prediction has been true on any kind of widespread basis. During Reagan's first term, this same predicion was widespread because Reagan used massive deficit, government spending as a way to stimulate the economy. Nixon and Johnson used inflation as a way of paying for the Vietname war. In neither case did gold rise significantly in price adjusted via the dollar.
Now, you may be right, but what you're really predicting is that the economy falls apart, businesses will all fail, and there won't be any way to purchase goods and services because those businesses will have all failed. If that's the case, don't buy precious metals, but goods and store them. Do you think people who lived in New Orleans during the flood would rather have 2 pounds of gold or a decent generator and a couple hundred gallons of gas? How about a few hundred pounds of rice?
Or, if you're worried about massive inflation, get a mortgage on a house. If inflation runs wild, you'll pay for your house inflated dollars, and you'll essentially get your house for free. Of course, see my previous advice. I'd buy a gun as well, because looters will probably be stealing and burning everything in sight.
P.S. your mention of factor #2 "the dollar survived the inflation of the 80's becuase there wasn't a lot of debt" is utter nonsense. Reagan ran up the deficit and federal debt massively to attempt to jump start the economy. That's because the interest rates in the late 70's reached 16% as the fed tried to use high interest as a way of reigning in inflation. We had inflation because Nixon in the late 60's and early 70's printed a lot of money to pay for the Vietnam war. So I'd say we've been through pretty tough times in the late 70's and early 80's and gold never really took off.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Cringely seems in a defensive mood, with rather a dull set of ideas. Predictions are meant to be fun. I don't think it matters whether they are precisely correct. Often, the writer gets the details wrong but the general thrust is entirely accurate. Maybe Cringely should have taken a tip from the ancient Persians and written the piece while blind drunk then rewritten it when sober. Maybe he did, and it's taken until mid-January to get over a monster hang-over.
The general approach seems to be that 2006 will be Apple's year, and maybe Sony's if there is a sudden spurt of interest in the cell processor. Everyone else will bide their time (Google), tread water (Microsoft) or go backwards (IBM and the rest of the world, apparently). Boring. And while everyone seems to be talking about the fabled media center, no one seems to have had a good enough sighting yet to provide a coherent description of what it will be like.
I'd love to have heard Cringely expound a little more on Google's shipping-container data centers he is so fond of mentioning, if they exist. And I guess he could have taken a few bets for us aficionados of the 33-1 outsider, like Sun and Novell both face investor-led crises and end up on Wall Street's M&A slab, and someone makes a grab for ATI.
And, on a small note, imho in 2006 Ubuntu have a great opportunity to consolidate their performance and establish themselves as the desktop of choice for Linux people, behind Red Hat and Novell (or what becomes of it) slugging it out in the corporate arena. Or perhaps that should read Red Hat consolidating it's near-monopoly in the corporate arena. Anyone up for a punt on Megacorp Inc. taking a swing at acquiring them?
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
I think Cringley might be right on some and wrong on others. He obviously has some very good connections, since he sniffed out that Apple was starting to work on wireless video streaming over a year ago and he might very well be right about Apple killing half the Macworld show due to legal problems with Burst, and I think he's right that Apple will lose. It was probably a mix of Burst's greed for big licensing money and Job's stinginess that broke the discussions about licensing down. But although Jobs can fuck up mightily from time to time, he's pretty good at salvaging something from the ruins (the Mac Cube was a disaster, the Mac mini a huge hit) so I think there will be something along the lines of a Mac TV out this year. In the end, Apple themselves might just buy Burst (and not Google as Cringely said) if it's important enough to them.
I'm pretty sure he's dead wrong about Apple selling boxes of OSX that can install on any PC, and in fact I'm dead sure of this because (read this, Cringely, you dumbass) OSX needs Intel's new boot firmware, EFI, to boot. It doesn't install or boot on BIOS machines. It only worked on the developer Intel macs. Of course it can be hacked, but that won't work for your average PC user.
About Google I think he's simply wrong because Google is pretty good about surprising investors, but who knows.
About the PS3 I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure that Soney will work very hard to make sure some games will be there at launch. Sony's English CEO getting axed will not be as dependent on the PS3 as it will on Sony's general fortunes. I doubt he knew much about the Sony DRM fiasco, but he definitely knows about its consequential lawsuit. My guess is he would get axed because of that.
Cringely doesn't even mention Windows Vista and claims it will not come out this year. Is he fucking daft? If Microsoft doesn't release Vista, they will lose even more ground to OSX and cheap Macs. Vista is Microsoft's big chance of winning over customers from deserting the platform for Macs. Microsoft has so much riding on Vista's back, in tools and products that they can't afford not to release it this year.
What would be really amazing would be if Microsoft were to launch its own hardware platform, on a PPC basis (not the XBox, a general computer). That would be a supreme irony, except that it will never happen.
Bravo! I know some very smart people, and I think I can spot 'em. Cringely is very, very smart. I read him religiously. Sure he gets a little whacky (retinal painting VR headset to be delivered in Nov 2005?) but I find that entertaining. Creative, smart people do that sort of thing.
:-).
Slashdot's noise/value ratio is really deteriorating. Maybe we need an experimental filtering method that would take a different approach to attaching ratings to comments. We could then decide if we wanted to filter on the current system or the new system. How about only old people (30+) could rate articles?
In the new system my ratings would be very important
John Faughnan
jfaughnan@spamcop.net
No, I think he was clearly talking about miracles. What's the tip off?
Somebody [...] releases Ubuntu prebundled on super cheap laptops,
Yep, clearly looking for a miracle. It's hard to tell, but I think Slashdot editing and UbuntuBooks might even be less likely than his last miracle:
Jesus comes back and smacks GWB in the face with a libel lawsuit.
Just sayin'.
No asswipe, it's called redundant. And you're like redundant, squared. Ask Mom for an advance on next week's allowance, and go buy an idea you can call your own.