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."

Comments

Ah, the ABM treaty...

[smittyoneeach]

The Anything But Microsoft (ABM) treaty will be greatly served if this pans out...

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.

Holy balls, that's interesting speculation.
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... ;)

Re:Ah, the ABM treaty...

[iggy_mon]

And, for the truly blessed, there is emacs... ;)

well, i don't like nazi/spelling whores as much as the next guy, but i thing you forgot the "v" and the "i" in that atrocious spelling of yours ;^) --iggy

Lots of Apple, Google and No Linux?

[adam.conf]

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.

Re:Lots of Apple, Google and No Linux?

[westlake]

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

Walmart has tried every varient of OEM Linux known to man and not one has caught fire. There is little or nothing out there to drive aftermarket sales, a poison pill in the retail market.

Might as well be a Palm Reader

[xXBondsXx]

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

Re:Might as well be a Palm Reader

[lawpoop]

His predictions aren't as vague and common sense as you make them out to be:

"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."

How can you assume that they would continue to be competitive throughout the next year? What if one makes a huge blunder and the other pulls ahead? What if one comes out with a great new product and thoroughly trounces the other's sales? If you knew they were going to remain competetive into the next year, you have forsight into the future that many would envy.

" 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?"

Well, why wouldn't they? It's totally ineffective and is creating immense public hostility towards the RIAA. A lot of people are saying it's a bad-blood campaign of greedy music execs who have an outdated business model and can't adapt to the future. From a purely business perspective, it's a huge mistake.

" 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. "

Usually the idea of a business is to make money, not become some quasi-vigilante prosecuting organzation. How about they concentrate on increasing sales and adapting to new media instead of suing their customers? (I know the RIAA isn't a business itself, but it does claim to represent the indusry). Again, if you knew that the RIAA were going to continue to pursue this foolhardy strategy, you have a line to the Fates that few others have.

I would like to hear your vague, common-sense predictions for 2006.

Re:Might as well be a Palm Reader

[lawpoop]

Let me make an addendum. I don't think Cringely's predictions are vague. They are black-and-white -- either "Status Quo" or "Change". In the examples you listed, Cringely correctly predicted "Status Quo" for both Intel/AMD competition and the RIAA suing people. (Sure, you can make this predictions by flipping a coin, but if Cringely gave reasons for why he thought the status quo would continue, it shows he understands what's actually going on, instead of happening to be right by chance. )

If this predictions are so easy to make because they are based on common sense, I would like to see your predictions for the future. Pick out two or three issues or events going on today, and choose either "Status Quo" or "Change". Also give the reasons why you made your choice -- then next year we will know if you won or lost by chance or your understanding of the situation. If you are feeling extra common-sensical, you could predict exactly what the change would be in the case that you predict change.

Or, perhaps you are arguing that predicting "Status Quo" is a safe, common-sensical prediction, because people are creatures of habit and avoid change at all costs. That would be common-sensical ;)

If that's the case, it's no big deal if Cringely correctly predicted "Status Quo". That's a common sense, safe bet. If we really want to see how good Cringely is, we should look at where he predicted change, and how close his prediction was to what the world actually changed to.

If you predict change for any human or group-driven project, such as a company, you are essentially saying that the decision makers will apprehend the future as being so bad that they will decide to change their paradigm for moving forward and take a risk on a new plan. It's a pretty bold prediction to make.

Oh yeah?

[sparkydevil]

Did you hear about the clairvoyant's convention?

It was cancelled due to unforseen circumstances.

One prediction I hope he gets right...

[tktk]

"My final score was 10 correct and five incorrect, for a dismal 66 percent -- my worst showing EVER. Could my job be in danger?"

We can only hope.

One wrong, at least.

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Don't bet on Apple loosening their grip...

[Valdrax]

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.

One Laptop per Child

[bstadil]

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.

Re:One Laptop per Child

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Ok, let me do it.

I hope that the MIT laptop will succeed, and that I'll be able to buy one in Germany, but I think, or fear, that it will fail horribly. If it doesn't fail at production and marketing (and selling it to those people who want to buy one for a fair price), it will at least fail in bringing any education to poorer countries.

Those countries don't need computers and universities. They need food, stable currencies, no war, a fair legal system, and less state, taxes, regulations, and corruption. Then they'll find out how much education they'll need, and they'll be able to build that education themselves in a way that fits their needs.

Re:One Laptop per Child

[Anonymous Coward]

Those countries don't need computers and universities. They need food, stable currencies, no war, a fair legal system, and less state, taxes, regulations, and corruption. Then they'll find out how much education they'll need, and they'll be able to build that education themselves in a way that fits their needs.

Poor and uneducated people need access to information and education before they can realize more effective food production, stable currencies, peace through trade, a fair legal system, and reduced government corruption. Those things are not going to come before education, but rather are a product of education.

Re:One Laptop per Child

[grcumb]

"Those countries don't need computers and universities. They need food, stable currencies, no war, a fair legal system, and less state, taxes, regulations, and corruption."

[Sorry, I'm normally a lot more restrained than this, but I'm just sick of responding to this same stupid point time after time. Mod me down if you must.]

What is this, the latest Fox news fabulum? I'm going to go crazy if I have to answer this stupid, binary logic many more times. There is absolutely nothing insightful or informative about this half-formed ignorance.

Look, every time someone suggests computers might be useful in the developing world, some pontificator comes out with the observation that they need some shopping list of 'more pragmatic' things, like food, housing etc. But how the fuck, I would like to know, is that ever going to happen if the country doesn't have an educated populace and a decent communications infrastructure? And how the fuck are they going to do that in the modern age without ubiquitous computer technology?

It makes me sick to see people who don't seem to know jack shit about life in the developing world spouting these inane opinions. It makes me sicker when these same rationalisations actually get used to block the progress that some of us are trying to make in this regard. Do you know what it's like to sit down with the head of a national foreign aid program and to see him react with surprise when I suggested that development here might be made easier if they put some effort into improving education and communications capacity?

Next time someone trots out this stale old chestnut, please consider that it is, occasionally, possible to walk and chew bubble-gum, at thew same time. Hunger reduction, human rights, housing etc. can actually be accompanied - and saints preserve us, improved - with better education and communications.

Re:One Laptop per Child

[grcumb]

"Sorry, but I don't see the point in creating a charity that will give out *computers*."

Fair enough. I'll take a few moments to explain what I'm doing. Perhaps that will help.

I work in a Least Developed Country in the South Pacific. Unemployment is about 70% and the average monthly income runs around USD 50. There are 87 inhabited islands in this country, most of them volcanic and mountainous, spread over about 1000 miles of ocean. As a result of the lack of economic capacity and the incredibly difficult geography, communications are extremely poor.

This lack of communications has a really powerful knock-on effect. Among the most glaring examples is the way members of parliament get elected. They travel over very small areas, saturating the constituents with gifts and promises. Once elected, they remove themselves to the capital, where they're seduced or coerced by the major power blocks and they largely neglect rural development. As a result, we have an unstable, fragmented and corrupt government that is largely ineffective in running, let alone improving, the nation.

So how does a conscientious voter in the village become aware of what's going on, and how do they call their prodigal MP to account? Newspapers can take weeks to reach the outer islands, but more often than not they never do. Radio is unavailable on all but three of the islands, and telephone charges run about USD 0.40 per minute. A single phone call can take up a week's income. When you can find a working telephone, that is.

There are any number of other examples that I could offer, like the need to determine a fair price for produce when it goes onto the ship, the need to stay in touch with family, disaster preparedness, emergency health services etc. etc. Every aspect of the nation's business is hindered by poor communications.

The People First Network is addressing the communication needs of people in the nearby Solomon islands using HF radios connected to refurbished laptop computers. We in Vanuatu are participating in that project and doing a little more. We're designing a 'next-generation' implementation that uses more robust devices, lower-power solutions, and wireless mesh networks to build 'islands' of connectivity. This allows us to reduce the costs per person to a level that's expensive but manageable for the average individual.

Having low-cost laptops available that don't require expensive batteries, that are robust and resistant to shock, heat and humidity would make this task immeasurably easier. The fact that they auto-configure into mesh networks makes them very desirable as well. In one scenario, a person could walk around a circuit of several villages, each hidden from the others by mountains, and each time the person comes into contact with another laptop, they could be configured to automatically exchange email using a UUCP-like approach. It wouldn't be instantaneous, but it would be a darn sight more efficient than anything else that's currently available, and it would work.

Computers have reached a level of capacity where consumer-grade products can actually provide decent basic services to people without any workable alternative. The folks at MIT have grasped this, and decided to go one step further. As someone who's spent the last few years working at cracking exactly the same nut, I welcome and congratulate them. What they want to do is ambitious, but it's acheivable, and when and if it works, it will certainly make life more liveable for people in places like Vanuatu.

P.S. One other objection I frequently see to computers is that people should receive books, which are cheaper and more durable. The answer to that one is that they are neither. They cost huge amounts of money to ship, and paper rots at a tremendous rate in the tropics. Also, there are seldom any decent places to house the books. A really durable laptop can store an entire library inside it, and because it's so small, it's easy to store safely and securely.

Dangerous predictions?

[Mr. Flibble]

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!

No and Don't Know

[Quirk]

I was wrong when I saw significant progress for desktop Linux, which was wishful thinking.

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. :)

the score card 1 year early

[ministerofsickeningr]

This one is easy: Apple will eventually announce all the products they were supposed to have announced at this week's MacWorld show, but didn't, including a bunch of media content deals, a huge expansion of .Mac to one TERABYTE per month of download capacity per user, a new version of the Front Row DVR application, and two new Intel Macs with huge plasma displays, but with keyboards and mice as options -- literally big-screen TVs that just happen to be computers, too.

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

Did anyone else read this as...

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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!

Re:Can we get a Cringely Topic?

[sketerpot]

You could try, you know, ignoring them.

Re:ACRONYMANIA

[jeremyp]

Is that because

a) you are surprised he knows enough about anything to actually do something right

b) you are impressed that he knows how to spell RADAR properly

c) you think he is wrong and he shouldn't have used all-caps?

Technically RADAR stands for RAdio Direction And Ranging and should be in all caps, but it's so commonly used nowadays that maybe it's considered a normal word.

it's probably been said a million times...

[rebug]

Robert X. Cringely (Mark Stephens) is a complete and utter fraud .

Why his every bowel movement makes the front page is anyone's guess.

For 2006

[LesPaul75]

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.

Re:Here's an idea:

[AutopsyReport]

Slashdot improves it's editing.

I thought we were talking about predictions, not miracles? :)

"Network Appliance"

[Cr0w T. Trollbot]

The next big consumer market will be a network computing appliance.

My prediction of three things we'll see before "network computing" being the next big consumer computer market:

1. Practical Cold Fusion on your desktop.
2. Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore co-hosting a telethon for gay dyslexic evengelical gun-owning welfare cheats.
3. Monkeys flying out of Robert X. Cringley's butt.

Crow T. Trollbot

My take : Bob is taking too many gimmes!

[gone.fishing]

1) This one is easy: Apple will eventually announce all the products they were supposed to have announced at this week's MacWorld show, but didn't, including a bunch of media content deals, a huge expansion of .Mac to one TERABYTE per month of download capacity per user, a new version of the Front Row DVR application, and two new Intel Macs with huge plasma displays, but with keyboards and mice as options -- literally big-screen TVs that just happen to be computers, too.

Agree 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

I have 3 Predictions....

[Cutting_Crew]

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.

Loyalty, word of mouth and ease of switching

[Savantissimo]

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.

That will not happen

[James_Aguilar]

2006 does have the potential to be a great year for the linux desktop, assuming that a big hardware company gives it a chance.

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.

Still sticking with my predictions

[argoff]

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

Re:Still sticking with my predictions

[richdun]

Maybe, but one thing bothers me about the current state of the US economy, most specifically the stock market. Post-9/11, there was a huge drop which took close to a year to recover from as fears of terrorism subsided only to meet fears of corporate corruption. Since then, though, unless there is a real commodity movement (especially oil), the market seems to be ignoring the usual political and economic indicators. The market has generally ignored the war in Iraq, and wouldn't have cared about Hurricanes Katrina or Rita if they hadn't hit oil production directly (when Hurricane Wilma moved toward Florida, the market stopped caring about it), even though Katrina especially will incur a huge extra debt on the US government. Earnings problems are affecting individual stocks, but unemployment, GDP growth, etc., don't see to be, at least not as widely or as much as one might expect. It seems like the usual predictors for investor irrationality just aren't working any more - the market exists almost oblivious to or even in spite of world events.

Re:Still sticking with my predictions

[argoff]

I think there are two reasons for this, the first is that housing is crashing - so that means that all that money that was going into houses is now looking a lot more seriously at stocks, the second is that the Fed has special team called the PPT - an internal operation designed to buy huge amounts of equities in the event of emergency ( like say the collapse of refco which makes enron look like a saint ). With 270 trillion with a T derivatives on the line, you can better believe that they won't hesitate to buy stocks as needed. Anyhow, be very carefull about stocks, be it housing or PPT, it's a false market and there is a high probability of being shot down no matter how smart you are. My guess is that whatever the market goes up, gold will go up doubble. If you must play the market, try a pool of precious metal mining stocks like PD, NEM, PAAS, SSRI, GG - for higher risk and profit try ones like TRE and RGLD. ( there is also a gold ETF, GLD - but some experts don't trust it) I think most commodities are in for the long term, but in the event of a large economic meltdown all immediate bets other than precious metals are off.

Re:Still sticking with my predictions

[richdun]

You definitely have something there with housing. Here (Chicago) housing has been running away like there's money everywhere to be plunked down for moderately nice housing in moderately poor neighborhoods - redevelopment or not, new neighborhoods are going to be hard to fill with mid-luxury ($1 million+ single family homes, or $500k condos). While like precious metals and unlike stocks, housing will always be there, I can definitely see a drop in pricing coming very quickly and very hard. The worst part about this, though, isn't some direct effect, but the way it decimates the worth and spending ability of the middle to lower-upper class, groups that seem to have really bought into the housing boom. When condo owners everywhere suddenly have much larger interest payments and no one to take the condo they bought instead of rented off their hands, the ripple effect could be big.

Of course, we could always say that no big meltdown will ever happen again now that various protections are in place, but hey, if we knew the causes of all "surprise" disasters and had protections, there would never be disasters. There are never any safe bets in my book, just safer ones. The further along we go without a giant correction, I agree, precious metals are definitely safer.

Re:Can we get a Cringely Topic?

[revscat]

Oh for crying out loud get over yourself. Cringely is intelligent, interesting, and knows the industry better than most. If you don't like it when /. posts links to his columns then freaking hit the scroll wheel and quit your whining.

CHRIST people are babies around here sometimes. +5 Informative my ass.

Re:Here's an idea:

[Jaxoreth]

Slashdot improves it's editing.

You mean Slashdot improves its editing. :-)