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Dvorak on "Winners and Duds of the Millennium"
erikaaboe wrote to us with yet-another-end-of-year round-up. This time around
Dvorak has taken a look at the past year. Winners include Linux, dot-com millionaires, while WinCE and DIVX are flops. Interesting commentary on the dot-com millionaries though.
Hmm....I think he forgot "lots more users, lots more production servers, a few more paper millionaries, lots more code" and a bunch of other things. Dvorak has never been a friend of Linux, but his spin on this makes it look like Linux was just vaporware instead of something people are using all the time in production, at home, and at play.
If anything, I'd say the Dot-com millionaires is more hype then anything else.
He hit the nail on the head with DIVX though.
If I'm really into what I'm doing, it might be worth it. But I see so many people (and many of my friends) working their ass off for what could happen "if we go public and people like us." If they become new paper millionaires, I suppose its worth it, but it seems like a lot of time wasted they could be using to live/enjoy life.
I work for a company that may or may not go public one day, but its been around for 20 some years. Its not a high glamor job, but I use cool technology, I work about 40-45 hours a week, I get paid well enough to get the toys I need. IMHO, this is more worth it. I'm enjoying my life NOW instead of hoping I enjoy it a few years down the line. I could die in a car accident tomorrow, then where would I be?
I may be hedonistic here, but carpe diem is pretty much what I live. Life's too short to waste it on something that might not pay off. Maybe this attitude will never make me rich monetarily, but I lead a full life and I'm a happy man.
And I've got all this wisdom at 24....wonder what the next 80 years will teach me.
First of all, I do think that Dvorak blows smoke way too often, but he's interesting even when he's been using the ol' crack pipe. At least he has real opinions that were formulated by actual experience, unlike the average smarmy .com reporter who parrots the "corporate line". If ZD had more Dvoraks I'd respect them more.
.com millionaires have made that much of a splash (other than in a few ZIP codes). Yes, we're conscious of them, but more in the general sense of "hey! People are getting rich selling nothing!" than in the "CmdrTaco is a media mogul" sense. I don't think they were really that significant for the most part - just a side effect of the "Rise Of The Internet".
That said, I'm right with him on his first four picks for the big events (Linux may be proven to us, but most of the world seems to see it as "the latest Microsoft challenger", and Apple's return from the grave helps ensure that there will always be a "Pepsi" to Microsoft's Coke - regardless of Linux's future), but I don't think
No, I think number 5 should have been called "cutting the cord". The explosion of cellular phones, laptop computers, beepers, and Palm handhelds (and the coming 2-way pager boom) has been enormous this past year - cell phones and Palms are everywhere and people have accepted them as a normal part of society. Have any of you Palm people noticed that people don't look at you funny any more when you whip a Palm III out in the middle of a meeting and start taking notes? They're just part of the landscape now, along with the requisite micro-phone from Nokia, Motorola, or Qualcomm. Cellular, and digital/PCS cellular in particular, finally has the size, battery life, and pricing to be everywhere. So much so that the backlash has already started. The coming "no cell phone" railroad cars and restaurants are indicating that cellular is no longer for the so-called "elite" but for everyone.
As for the flops list - the jury's still out on Firewire. I think 2000 will be the "make or break" year for the technology, at least in the mass-market consumer end of the business. But the new digital camcorders are so cool and so cheap that I think Firewire will be just fine. But it's a niche technology until Intel puts it into PC chipsets. Firewire as standard on Macs, Sonys, and a few other small brands (PC-wise) just isn't enough.
Java is rapidly becoming "just another language", mainly because of Sun's incompetent stewardship. Soon it'll be thought of as "C++ with garbage collection" unless Sun loosens up the death grip. Stick a fork in Larry Ellison - he's done and doesn't know it yet. Microsoft's going to kill him on the low end and IBM will kill him on the high-end. CE was a dead man walking when it first shipped - as son as it became clear that a CE device would have the battery life of a bad laptop. Give up a hard drive for that? I don't think so. The fundamental crappiness of the Windows interface in a handleld form factor just made it worse.
And as for DIVX? I've forgotten it already. Although now that DVD's won, they're trying to get the horse back in the barn...
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."