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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.
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
Did you hear about the clairvoyant's convention?
It was cancelled due to unforseen circumstances.
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
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
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.
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. TrollbotCorrected 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.
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.