Berst Names Young/Torvalds 2 of 7 People to Watch

De writes "Jesse Berst of ZDNet has named Linus Torvalds and Bob Young as two of his seven people to watch in the next decade. In a gratifying side note, Bill Gates was named as one of the people to leave behind. *grin* " Linus was named as the person in hardware to watch, while Young was named the person in operating system.

Comments

Hardware and OS choices misleading...

[xinit]

Personally I'm confused about his thought process on the selections for both OS and Hardware.

Given, Bob's done some interesting things towards making a business model based around open source, but I'm not sure if Operating Systems is the right category for this. I use RH, but I don't see IT as an Operating System - but then again, I may be overly pedantic.

And Linus is the Linux guy, but he isn't the Transmeta guy - he's likely the only person there that also has an OS named after him, but the chip isn't a one person show. Honestly, Jesse.

polarized pundits

[banky]

Has anyone noticed that of the general body of computer pundits, they all seem to have abandoned that "wait and see" stance from about a year ago, and now they are all taking a stance on Linux? I have wondered why the pro-Win2k guys have started their FUD (it was released to manufacturing - I guess that means it stable and full-featured, real world results be damned) and others (Berst, et al) have now decided that Linux is OK.

Conspiracy theory: Since we all know ZDNet is owned by MS anyway, BillG has ordered that they take a positive stance on Linux, so as to show that MS has plenty of competition.
Business Case Theory: With the billion-dollar market cap of Red Hat and VA Linux, they want advertising dollars, and they know both companies want more space in mainstream market publications (I mean, really, did you buy a VA Linux server because of the ad in Linux Journal? No, you already knkew who they were, but Joe Sixpack doesn't). The corollary is that the "Linux will be crushed" guys are doing it because if Win2k tanks, they won't be able to refocus their business (maybe).
Misanthrope Theory: People are morons.

From one extreme to the other...

[sugarman]

While Mr. Berst does seem to be on the right track with his "who to watch", I don't think it would be wise to give up on Mr. Gates just yet.

Not that I'm a fan or anything. Just that I have a feeling that " a cornered animal fights fiercest" (or something along those lines).

Also, Mr. Berst's reason for counting out Microsoft may not be valid either. He states that the new start-ups may not be talking about M$. However, he doesn't state that they're talking about the competition either.

A lot of these new net players may, whether you like or not, simply consider M$ a given in the situation, which is why they don't stand out. M$ has made gains in getting a large amount of the web to run off their products (I don't know about you, but I;m seeing more and more .asp webpages all the time), and their market share isn't going to evaporate overnight, especially with Win2K on the horizon.

No M$ love here, but if we're going to succeed, we have to remember the wise words of Gold Leader "Stay on target. Stay on target."

Re:From one extreme to the other...

[TimeWaste]

It's clear that Jesse lives in a world of Silicon Valley startups, not the "real worlds" or either corporate computing or home computing. Microsoft is the number one player in those areas, by a long margin.

Besides the good reasons you mentioned, the other reason to keep an eye on Microsoft is their huge investments in core technologies that are going to continue to be hot throughout the next decade: $1B investment in AT&T that will result in Microsoft software in AT&T cable set top boxes, WirelessKnowledge, a joint venture with Qualcomm (yes, the one with the meteoric stock increase) that will bring email to cell phone users via Microsoft back-end servers, and the list goes on and on. These investments are one of the major reasons that analysts and fund managers love Microsoft stock: Microsoft doesn't just rely on one market, like most of the startups in Jesse's world.

Losers -- US...

[MicroBerto]

The second page reports this about the losers (which include Steve Jobs and Billy Goates):

WORLD LEADER: BILL CLINTON, THE UNITED STATES

Sad but true. Under his watch, U.S. companies have turned from entrepreneurs to spoiled children. While we bicker about wireless standards and broadband access and revel in our stock options, nations like China and Finland will usurp our lead

I have to begin to agree with the fact that our technology sector is going to lose it if we do not get proper regulation from people who KNOW what's going on. You can't have 80 year old men regulate something they don't know what their talking about. The same goes for anything, you can't let idiots control the economy if they don't understand economics. I think that the tech industry is going to be spun into a ditch if we aren't allowed more freedom.


- Mike Roberto
-- roberto@apk.net
--- AOL IM: MicroBerto

It's funny you mention this ...

[martin-k]

It's funny you mention this cause Slashdot rejected a story proposal of mine just two days ago regarding this Jesse Berst quote:

"Betting $5 on a 100-to-1 underdog can be fun. Betting $50,000 would be foolish. Yet some PC users are making similarly outrageous wagers on Linux, the underdog in the operating-system wars."

Exactly _how many_ Jesse Bersts are out there?

here's the link...

Oh, look, Apple-bashing.

[Myoot]

I'd like to see Berst write one article in which he doesn't go out of his way to bash Apple. "The new Intel chip is fast, and Apple sucks." "The economy is great, and Apple sucks." "I make a living spotting trends, and Apple sucks." It's annoying.

Why Linus?

[gengee]

If I remember correctly - and I could be very wrong here - Linus was hired simply as an average-joe employee at Transmeta, was he not? If so, why then would Berst chose him as the man in hardware to watch?
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