8 Can't Miss Predictions... for 1998

alphadogg-nw writes "Tired of being wrong too often, a Network World pundit applies 20-20 hindsight to this list of prognostications for 1998, which if he's right will turn out to be quite a year. Among the forecasts: The U.S. Department of Justice will go medieval on Microsoft, Compaq will buy what's left of DEC, AOL likewise Netscape, Apple will introduce something said to look like an Easter egg ... and then there's the deafening buzz about this new search engine called Google."

Comments

Bad headline

[MSTCrow5429]

The headline is misleading. These aren't predictions for 1998, they're written by a guy in 2008 as if they were written in 1998. That's what the "hindsight" part means.

My prediction for 2008: Major worldwide recession, due to the massive inflationary bubble bursting, an inability of the central banks to continue using inflation to create a false sense of prosperity, and stagflation.

Re:Bad headline

[$RANDOMLUSER]

If it occurs after the fact, it's not a prediction.

Re:Bad headline

[sm62704]

My predictions for 2008, all will happen (balls of crystal, I tell ya)

• the earth will not be hit by an extinction-causing assteroid
  
• Someone will invent something. The invention may actually be useful
  
• Somebody will launch something or someone into outer space.
  
• Someone will post "FIRST POST! with the comment "frosty piss" and be modded "offtopic"
  
• Someone will say something about the USSR, Natalie Portmen, a Beowolf cluster, or CowboyNeal and be modded "+5 funny"
  
• I will continue to write slashdot journals about prostitutes
  
• I will get at least one haircut this year. Maybe this afternoon.
  
• CmdrTaco won't command her "taco"
  
• Google [whatever] will remain in beta
  
• Microsoft will keep pissing everyone off
  
• 2008 will not see Linux overtake Windows
  
• I'll be turned down and stood up
  
• CowboyNeal won't get laid

-mcgrew

Re:Bad headline

[red_dragon]

In Soviet Russia, Natalie Portman uses a Beowulf cluster built by CowboyNeal to submit a first post with the comment "frosty piss".

There you go, you can scratch one off of your list. You're welcome.

Altavista

[hey!]

Y'know, I liked Altavista a great deal. It was a rare case of a great product getting its block knocked off by an even better one. Still, for some time I found Altavista's more bells-and-whistley approach useful for triangulatin Google results, at least until Google engineers seemingly perfected their MROIPP (Mind Reading Over Internet Protocols Protocol) technology.

Re:Altavista

[Ours]

It's Spanish:
Alta = something high
Vista = view
Translated to "high-view" and from my understanding it's some place in California.

Re:Altavista

[Vellmont]

Y'know, I liked Altavista a great deal. It was a rare case of a great product getting its block knocked off by an even better one.

I liked Altavista too, and had a similar reaction about it being better than Google until about 2000.

The only quibble I have is that AltaVista died because they started thinking they were a portal like Yahoo, and not a search engine. They didn't figure out targeted ads, turned their site into a Yahoo clone, and did a "me too!" with email. If they'd done what Google did, focus on the search technology, give away better email than Yahoo was giving away at the time, and stop trying to beat Yahoo at being Yahoo, I think Google would still mean "a really big number".

Re:Altavista

[SharpFang]

Unfortunately, no, by the end, not.

I stayed with Altavista quite long. I tried Google once, soon after it emerged, didn't feel impressed and went back to Altavista. And for the time, It Was Good.

I kept using it for another 2 or 3 years and saw it go down the drain.

First, they fell victim to spammers. People figured out how to position their sites with it, and any somewhat common keyword yielded many pages of commercial junk before you could get to content, and first 10 or so positions for mostly -any- keyword were occupied by spam links.

Then they started adding ads. Sponsored links replacing first search results, some obnoxious popups, really bad junk. Remember these were times before Adblock. It was utter junk.

Then it stopped keeping up with progress. Sites took months to get indexed, and 404s even more to get removed. The results were a total junk.

I gave Google another chance and was hugely impressed. It was still before people figured out most of pagerank tricks and Google was almost totally spam-free. I had my results within first 3-4 links, not after 3-4 pages!

Red Queen was right: "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."

Wow! That was easy.

[morgan_greywolf]

My predictions for 1988:

10. MS-DOS 4.0 will ship, finally, by mid-year. It will be so buggy and crash so much that Microsoft will be forced to release an update, MS-DOS 4.01, by year's end.
9. Liquid crystal will be discovered by Frederick Reintzer.
8. Someone will introduce a simple network management protocol, probably called SNMP. Nobody will care.
7. An alternative bus to IBM's Micro Channel Architecture will be introduced. Expect it to be called something like EISA -- Extended Industry Standard Architecture.
6. An Internet Relay Chat system called IRC will be developed.
5. A company called Creative Labs will introduce a sound card called the SoundBlaster, which will establish defacto standards for years to come.
4. People obsessed with clocks will introduce the Network Time Protocol, which will allow computers to sync their clocks over the Internet.
3. The first T-1 backbone will be added to ARPANET.
2. Motorola will release a new processor, the 88000. No one will care.
1. Apple will sue Microsoft over the trash can icon.

Wow!

[Otter]

In a first-of-its-kind case, a California jury will convict a U.C.-Irvine dropout, Richard Machado, of sending threatening and hateful e-mail to students of Asian dissent.

Between the timeliness of this story, his spelling, and his belief that Bill Gates is facing criminal charges, Paul McNamara sounds like he'd fit in well here as an editor.

Re:Wow!

[MightyYar]

About the only things you can give credit to the iMac for are re-animating Apple and popularizing USB.

Re:Wow!

[egomaniac]

I thought USB was popular prior to the iMac. If I remember correctly, it was Firewire that they helped bring to the forefront.

Nope, it was USB. Everybody on the Windows side of things was still using the legacy ports, it was hard to find USB peripherals and they were buggy. The iMac's popularity forced manufacturers to add decent USB support to their devices. Printers went parallel + USB, mice switched over to USB w/ PS/2 adapters, etc. Plus everything was available in your choice of five translucent colors.

And the damned legacy adapters still won't die over on the PC side of things. Most KVM switches, for example, still only support PS/2 connectors, and I had to buy a USB-to-DB9 connector to be able to program my universal remote control. Love Apple or hate 'em, you've got to admit that they're good at getting people to drop the old broken standards and move forward. We need to put them in charge of getting the US over to metric.

Re:Digg?

[AstrumPreliator]

Slashdot has a much more focused story selection, the front page isn't rife with spelling errors, grammatical errors, and poor headlines, and finally the moderated comments on Slashdot are usually pretty good and I enjoy reading them. If I want to see some funny picture from 2001 complete with a terrible headline and mind numbingly stupid comments I'll go to digg. I'm not trying to bash digg too hard since I do visit it about as frequently as slashdot, but slashdot is definitely easier to read and the comments are really what makes slashdot special to me.

oooooh

[LiquidCoooled]

6. Prediction: Congress to pass Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The skinny: Congress will approve the DMCA by a unanimous vote and President Clinton will sign it into law, because, well, everyone favors copyright protection.

Long-term outlook: The only possible trouble with this one that I can foresee would be if someone were to launch a Web site that allowed anyone and everyone to post video clips of whatever they pleased. That might get sticky.


I thought pornotube was stickier than youtube, but I suppose both are up to their necks.

Mod parent up

[elrous0]

And tell Taco to RTFA too.

Re:Mod parent up

[Pharmboy]

No reason to RTFA, its lame, and it appears it is a very slow news day and they needed something on the front page for this hour. I hate being so negative, but if you do REFA, you will see that this is really weak.

Re:Wow! That was easy.

[root_42]

> My predictions for 1988: ...
> 9. Liquid crystal will be discovered by Frederick Reintzer.

According to Wikipedia [1] that happened in 1888.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystals#History

Predicting the past?

[Per Abrahamsen]

Eh, I guess I miss something, what is the point of predicting the past? Poorly?

A question -

[banda]

What exactly are "students of Asian dissent"?

Would that include anyone who took a 20th century history class? Why be mad at them?

Re:A question -

[Grandiloquence]

"Students of Asian dissent" would include anyone who studies people who claim not to be Asian, obviously.

Re:Digg?

[cHiphead]

I "switched" to digg for about 2 months before it got excessively annoying. Ever since the interface change I've been 99% slashdot for comments, no more wasting my time on digg comments system, their useless trolls are nowhere near as entertaining as /.'s.

Cheers.

Re:Digg?

[sm62704]

the front page isn't rife with spelling errors, grammatical errors, and poor headlines

Um WHAT? You're talking about slashdot? THIS slashdot?

-mcgrew

Re:Digg?

[dbolger]

I believe he was trying to keep his post on-topic.

Clearly he is referring to the Slashdot of 1998 ;)

Re:Predictions for 2008

[wertarbyte]

Add to that: $7/gallon gasoline in the USA

Oh boy, stop crying: 7 (U.S. dollars / US gallon) = 1.2587328 Euros / liter

We are way past that in europe (approaching 1.5 EUR here in germany) for some time now. And guess what? Civilisation is not collapsing.

Re:Predictions for 2008

[Abreu]

But please remember that most europeans have access to decent public transportation... Poor gringos have to drive everywhere...