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Cringely's 2006 Results, 2007 Predictions
Underpants writes "Bob Cringely posts the results of his 2006 predictions (only 69% successful, so Bob is sad). He also lists his calls for 2007; none are particularly shocking, but some are at least interesting. 2007 predictions from the article: '4) No one DRM technology emerges as the winner and the RIAA begins to back off as it loses a few legal cases. Still, no Internet-only song wins a Grammy or is even recognized as existing. 9) Zune 2.0 appears, isn't brown, but still nobody buys it. 10) The year the net crashed (in the USA). Video overwhelms the net and we all learn that the broadband ISPs have been selling us something they can't really deliver.'"
In Italy this is already happening, with the main ISP (Telecom Italia) faking DNS problems to cover up the fact that they just can't deliver all the ADSL they sold. Despite the fact that they shape Bittorrent (and other P2P) traffic...
2007 prediction - "Still, no Internet-only song wins a Grammy or is even recognized as existing."
This already happened in the UK in 2006. Crazy by Gnarls Barkely went to number 1 on the charts without having a single physical copy on sale. It is one of the best songs of 2006. It stayed at nubmer one for nine weeks.
They did rebrand.
... New Logo.
Old Logo and now
Did someone actually care? nope.
Seeing as it's gonna come preinstalled on pretty much every new computer sold in the next year, I doubt it. There's gonna be dozens (if not hundreds) of millions of Vista users by the end of the year. Believe it
Just read here:
p rediction_bob_20060104_000992.html
0 60518_000897.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/predictions/bob/2006/
However, Cringley goes into more overall depth in a previous article.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20
MANY IBM employees DO feel this way, btw. IBM appears to be spending little in the way of future product development (including feature enhancements to current products), other than just outright buying companies and incorporating their products. Stock performance has been mediocre for years.
Sooner or later, that kind of internal attitude starts showing up to your customers.
I'm the submitter, and that figure was my typo
And it's the editors job to find and correct obvious mistakes. Hence the "edit" of editor.
AccountKiller
I have FTTH from Verizon. I live in a suburb of Dallas. 15mB down 2mB up, 300+ TV channels (all digital) and phone service. Its all about $120. I'm very happy with the service.
The Anti-Blog
The fact that there are quite a few posts saying Cringely got that one wrong makes it look like he was in fact right. They dropped the Pentium brand name as their primary line, a name that they had been using for ~13 years. How many times have you looked at a software box and seen "Pentium Required/Recommended" over those last 13 years? The reason no one noticed is because it isn't as big a deal. Yes the Core 1/2 chips offer better power, performance and aren't as hot, but the average computer buyer doesn't look at hardware like that. They look at what software will work on it, Windows? Check. Office? Check. An Intel or AMD sticker only matters to zealots anymore.
No sig for you!!