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Dvorak on "Winners and Duds of the Millennium" 297

Posted by Hemos from the yet-another-roundup dept.
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.
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Dvorak on "Winners and Duds of the Millenium" More

Dvorak on "Winners and Duds of the Millenium"

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  • In the Gregorian calendar, the Third Millennium and the 21st Century begin on 1 Jan 2001. If you are starting the Third Millennium on 1 Jan 2000, you are using something other than the Gregorian calendar. Don't take my word for it, check with the experts:

    the United States Naval Observatory [navy.mil]

    the Royal Greenwich Observatory [nmm.ac.uk]

    It matters because you cannot arbitrarily drop years from centuries or millennia and still have a functional calendar everyone can use. We have thousands of books of history based on each century encompassing years 1-100 inclusive. If you decide the 20th Century ends at the end of 1999, then which past century loses the year? (Only 1999 years have passed in the Gregorian calendar.)

    If you change something like the method that time is measured or counted by, without unilaterally implementing it as a standard, you cause pervasive problems. As far as i am aware, there has been no world-wide agreement or even a Papal Bull from the Vatican (who created the Gregorian calendar) to short the 20th Century one year.

  • Mr. Dvorak thinks that either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs should have been Person of the Year in Time?


    He was being sarcastic.
  • Want to play with some one's head? Switch their KB properties to LEFT-HANDED Dvorak!

    We have over 1500 PCs and servers. Not ONE KB other than straight or MS "wave" qwerty.
    Of 20 IS/IT folks I asked, only one other had even heard of a Dvorak board.
    How did that other Dvorak ever have enough juice to get it in as an option in Win?? or *nix anyway?
  • Every first person shooter is almost the same. Go and shoot everything you see. What fun can there be in that?

    And can someone explain to me the difference between Quake 1 and Quake 3? What more monsters and better hardware acceleration? You pay money for this?

    Ayee. No wonder the gaming industry makes so much money.
  • In this world, you get paid for
    a) time
    b) task
    c) talent

    Time spent is aasy to measure, task-based performance requires some management competence (hah) in defining specifications and quality, and creative talent is more a wild-card in that you can't always predict the outcome.

    Now in a risk adverse commercial environment (despite what capital vultures ... errr ... venturers say, their job is to load up with bear on the best bets), guess which renumeration scheme is favored? Human nature is perverse in that if you make a task look easy (think of an experienced TV repairman coming in, taking one look and replacing the exact part that failed), you tend to underappreciate it. You can see the "effortless" basket scoring or the clever hack but how many people realise the years or decades of training that led to it?

    LL
  • The desktop is considered to be the only viable thing by people who are only aware of the desktop. Anything more complex than the desktop (anything else) is too complicated for them to consider.

    I _am_ in the real world, and the real world runs on servers, not desktops. Desktops are only access points.

    Linux' (and *BSD and Unix in general) success has been on _servers_, it is only because people liek Dvorak are aware of its existence that it is being considered for a clickety-clicky role - the only thing that matters to them.

    Somebody _tried_ to make servers clickety clicky, it was called NT. Instead of making servers easier to manage it made for badly managed servers.

    Maybe it's time for "corporate America" to realise that there is more to computers than desktops. But then again, in "corporate America" the lowest common denominator tends to rule.

    Your response is evidence of this blindness.

    -M
  • Don't forget Hitler _was_ Time's Man of the Year back in '36 (I think that year is right....)

    I agree that innovation isn't the deciding factor in "Man of the Year" - making; rather it's _influence_ on the world. Gates has certainly influenced the world! Good or bad, you decide.
    Hey - how about Alan Greenspan (Fed Chair) for Man of the Decade? Makes sense to me...

    I think Time's selection of Bezos is more of the dot-com millionaire hype, as printed matter tries to assert validity in the Internet age.
  • Sure it doesn't have the marketshare Bill was hoping to get, but for some specific task it is still the only kid in the block. PalmOS is more efficient for basic work (scheduling/notes/etc..) but when you want to make some specific apps or a little color/sound, there's nothing else that a good WinCE thing. Try making a good custom database with pictures on a palm V and its 2 MB of memory.... beside, having a stripped down Win32 API also helps porting.

  • C++ has won the API war (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know a little about java multithreaded servers. I know they run out of memory or the JVM crashes after at most 2 days of straight operation. This in contrast to my C++ multithreaded DB-connected servers that have been running for 6 months straight. I know that java cannot perform asynchronous IO unless you use 2 threads per socket. This forces your Java server to have at most 500 concurrent socket connections. You run out of threads long before the equivalent C++ server that checks IO on thousands of sockets via select() and using a thread pool. I know that java's core classes are needlessly over-synchronized (including String and StringBuffer) which penalizes performance by at least 20%. I know that Java thrashes the shit out of the heap due to the fact that every little object must be heap allocated. I know that a typical Java application needs four times as much in-process memory as an equivalent C++ program. I could keep going. Sure, C++ may take a little discipline and a little longer to write, but in the end you get a more solid and robust server that can run 10X as long in production (if not more). Use your brain - not your heart when talking about the usefulness of a programming language.

  • Re:startups (Score:3)

    by pieguy ( 113993 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @09:25AM (#1439115)
    One of the things that I learned in my Industrial Engineering days is that people who work long hard hours every week are less productive in absolute terms. That is, they accomplish less work than people who put in a productive 40 hours per week. This isn't because they work less as they get tired, it's because more of their work is rework and the productivity of rework is always zero. Think how much programming time is spent fixing bugs that shouldn't have occurred in the first place. Now....I haven't meant a manager yet that believed that. I've always noticed that the hard workers who spend 70 hour weeks fixing the code that they didn't get right the first, second or third time generally have bright futures.
    ------------------------------------
  • Actually I am looking forward to Oni (in fact it's the only game I'm looking forward to). I've been told Halo is cool but it's still an FPS to me. I'm sure it'll be a good one but that's kinda like a good Yugo.

    Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking. [lemuria.org]

  • Most commercial licenses (like NT) explicitly tell you that it isn't designed to work in life-critical areas like managing a nuclear power plant, hospital life support equipment, etc.

    Of course, they'd probably settle anyway, just to try to avoid the bad press ("NT kills premature babies on incubator!" what a PR nightmare that would be)
  • I used to use my old BBS handle, but figured that I did not need hide my identity. If you feel the need, I really don't care. I don't have anything to prove to you. No one really gives a rats ass if I use a handle or my real name, so I choose the latter.
  • Dvorak rated the internet as a fad not too many years ago. He (and ZDNet in general) ignored Linux until recently (and they STILL don't understand it). He's stated, at one time or another, that everything was dead and that everything was hot.

    Dvorak is the computer world's version of a tabloid psychic. Make a zillion predictions and one or two of them is bound to be on target. Nevermind about the rest; people forget.
  • Dvorak: "Listen to the pundits, and you'd think the world began when the Web arrived. "

    Didn't it? What did I miss?
  • why do people assume that if you're getting rich that you don't have a life?

    The original poster had talked about 16 hour, sleep-under-the-desk start up people. That just doesn't seem like something I'd enjoy. Maybe you do.

    I wasn't trying to talk for everyone, mostly just for me. For me, 16 hours a day, sleep under the desk sounds like pure hell. No time to enjoy anything, just to work.

    Maybe you can have a life and get rich, but not in the context of the original posters question.

  • Exactly the point. It's stupid to try and have exact accuracy on this point. Exact accuracy demands 1997, which no one will accept, so why not go with the round number, which is the most useful definition?

    *sigh* Your exact accuracy is based on the assumption that the Christian religion is correct. Not only that, but also that the more accurate idea of when Christ was born is also correct. For that matter, we shouldn't have the year start in January, but rather closer to April. And what about that whole "Sabbath is the 7th day of the week" thing? Shouldn't we start the week off on Monday then?

    Of course, that's why many scientists tend to use CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before the Common Era), instead of A.D. (Anno Domini) and B.C. (Before Christ) when they use dates. And in that respect, the Common Era began in 1 CE. This is a lot nicer to people of other religions (and there are a lot more non-Christians out there than Christians), providing an arbitrary break in the calendar.

    As for the start of the millennium, I figure Jan. 1, 2000 is a good date. It will certainly be the first day of a millennium. You know, August 12, 1954 was also the start of a millennium. However, the 3rd Millennium (proper noun) will begin on Jan. 1, 2001. (As will the 21st Century, but no one seems to care about that.)

  • startups (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Some of those Silicon Valley startups expect you to work 16 hour days and sleep at work. I know some guys who have beds right above their desks. What do you think? is it worth it?

  • Lots of talk.... (Score:4)

    by Ark ( 7744 ) <(kgarner) (at) (kgarner.com)> on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @07:17AM (#1439134) Homepage
    Linux. Lots of talk. Lots of hype. Lots of hope.


    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.

  • (Remember Beta Vs. VHS? By technology alone Betamax should have won, but do you own a Beta VCR?)

    Still with this urban legend? C'mon people, grow up...

    Beta failed because the tapes were too short. Putting a movie on a beta tape was too expensive compared to VHS, so the market moved to where the software was available.
  • I decided a long time ago that I wasn't going to read Dvorak articles anymore. But I keep coming back and they keep getting worse and worse. He's just another media fraud that doesn't know a thing.

    Chris Hagar
  • I think that the quick turnaround of game technologies was incredible this year. Unreal Tournament and the Q3 demos let us get hooked on the games, and then all of a sudden they were on the shelves, finished. This is not just a great way to develop their software, but a cool marketing thing as well.
  • Mr. Dvorak thinks that either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs should have been Person of the Year in Time? I mean, c'mon, Jeff Beezos (sorry if spelled wrong) isn't worthy, but in all honesty, he's more worthy than either of those two. *puts on asbestos clothing* At least he did something innovative. To my admittedly limited knowledge, Amazon helped kick off the e-commerce revolution. I still don't agree with his being chosen as Person of the Year, but c'mon, John...Bill Gates or Steve Jobs? You've got to be kidding me...
  • Well said.

    We are all too focused on the "whizbang" aspects of new technology and of course, the potential to make obscene amounts of money. What no one seems to notice that there are social implications, often bad ones. The mainstream public is completely uneducated on these issues since they get there news from the mainstream media, which is completely clueless.

    Folks, this is not a good thing. Technology is not going to solve our basic problems. It is not going to make us all rich. It is no substitute for real life interaction and experience.

    I'm so burned out on the hype, that technology has started to bore me. It might be more fun to trash my TV and computer and go live in a log cabin in the middle of the woods. That would be REAL living , much better than an "e-whatever" simulation.
  • Really funny :)

    The fact that this is an ITALIAN company, selling their product in the ITALIAN market, where you can buy their CE phone in the ITALIAN stores is beside the point, right?
  • Agreed, that #5 should be "cutting the cord" re cell phones and palms. Maybe it should be even higher. Back about July, I began noticing Palm Pilots in the hands of individuals I knew to be rather techno-cautious, maybe even techno-phobic. It's one thing to see geeks with a new tech goodie, it's quite another to see Junior League types turning up with Palm Pilots in their purses. Very, very interesting, I thought, as we exchanged business cards in a most enlightened fashion.
  • The November 1999 medium Palo Alto home purchase
    price was $899,000.
  • I was not basing my appraisal of him on his Microsoft or Linux opinions. I was also more speaking about his articles in general, not this particular piece. If anything, this makes him even more of a simple media darling, as Linux is the wonderful media darling of the moment. Besides, all he needs to do is get /. to link to him consistently and he's all set.

    Chris Hagar
  • It has been a slow year for MS, they haven't had any news stories other than getting hauled into
    court.

    And MS has played catch up, and hasn't hit any homeruns with its e-anything policies.

    Now if/when MS gets broken up, that might make it, but otherwise Bill Gates getting richer just isn't newsworthy.

    The average man in the street has heard of, or has been affected in some way by Amazon, or the rest of them.
  • I agree, I'm certainly not insightful, but my little comment was also definitely not redundant. If I remember correctly (which I probably don't), I was the first one to post my drivel. But if they keep giving Dvorak airtime, why not me? ;)

    Chris Hagar
  • actually sun has opened up a lot of java. I forget everything that they did, but I think that they are basically going to manage the standards and let others create implementations of it. I beleive that they also abolished many if not all of their royalty policies so it will open up many opurtunities for some companies.
  • What's the problem with the baggy pants, i use baggy pants and I LIKE TO WEAR BAGGY PANTS and i don't have a reason i just like them
  • What we need is a good list of things that we never want to see in the next year (millennium for those who don't understand numbers :)).

    • Looking at the original ZDNet article, I sure as hell wish these media sites wouldn't put their crap in 50 character wide columns, spread out over 130 pages with more utter crap in columns along the sides. The meat of any web page should be the actual story, not every other stupid feature of the web site. Leave that stuff on the main front page, not every damn page therein.
    • While I'm bitching about the media, don't take every damn story as if you'll get a Pulizer out of it. Every local channel here, for their little blurb on what's to come at the evening news, phrase it like if you don't watch, you'll die. One had, "Find the 10 ways your children could die from items around your house. Story at 10". I just prayed my kids didn't die before the 10 o'clock news. I don't watch much CNN and such, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did it too. Then there's the JFK/Di fiascos. Do we really need 24 hour coverage of "No new news yet?"
    • Next on the list, basing your web page on some plugin like Flash. Most of you focused on the OS detect bit there, but the last thing I want to look at is words flashing all around like crazy. Nothing gets a message through to me like good old fashioned text. As an aside, Netscape, don't compile in the plugin finder util for the Linux version of the browser. I haven't found a single plugin it could find. ;)
    • Stupid catch phrases like, "You go girl," and "Talk to the hand." It's cute once or twice, after that it's overdone.
    • Gap commercials. First the singing, now the dancing. Ack. Please no more!!

    I'll leave out the obvious things like users learning/reading something a little before calling tech support or ask on IRC/Usenet, the media doing actual journalism, blaming everything on global warming, or AC dumb posts becasue those will never go away. :)

    Feel free to add more. It's therapeutic to let it all out before we all die in a blaze of nuclear weapons and script kiddies...
  • actually sun has opened up a lot of java. I forget everything that they did, but I think that they are basically going to manage the standards and let others create implementations of it. I beleive that they also abolished many if not all of their royalty policies so it will open up many oportunities for some companies.
  • Could everyone please just shut the hell up about this? We understand. Honestly. Continually spouting this crap is a lot like telling everyone that the apparent motion of the sun is actually due to the rotation of the earth every time someone mentions sunrises or sunsets.

    I'm telling you now, on behalf of everyone on the planet bright enough to spell "Millennium", we get it. Let it go.

    • (P.S.: this goes for everyone else, too. Enough already.)
  • IEEE-1394 is FireWire AND iLink. Those names are just marketing blather from Apple and Sony, respectively. The license fee for all parties is only $.25 per system.

    The 6-pin and 4-pin ends of a 1394 cable are part of the same spec. The 6-pin ended cables are capable of running bus-powered devices using the 12VDC supplied by the port on the host system, while the 4-pin ended ones are data only. If you use a 6-pin to 4-pin cable, the bus power is ignored. A Sony DV camera w/iLink works great with a G4 or iMac w/FireWire, BTW.

    Hope this clears some things up,
    Marc
  • I didn't say NT was crap. I said its "clickety-click" approach to server management made for badly managed servers.

    If your sysadmins aren't draftees from the desktop helpdesk, then NT can indeed be run well and crash much less than NT run by recycled end-users.

    As for the tired old "can't sue Linux" BS, go read your commercial license agreement. You can't sue MS or Sun or HP or any other vendor if you lose your data. Maybe you can sue a VAR but you can't sue the big guys, they have protected themeselves from product liability suits in their product licenses.

    What's the matter, can't you read?

    > That, in a nutshell, is why Linux is not making headway into the corporate market.

    My God it amazes me how out of touch some people are!

    -M

  • Q: If everyone decides that the word "gay" means homosexual, but you refuse to accept it, and continue to believe it only means "happy" is it did originally, are you wrong?

    A: Yes. Language is a non-static, evolving entity. Words mean what society decides they mean. If Century/Millennium means "00", then that's what they mean. Note that there is nothing wrong with this; definitions generally change because they become more useful. In this case, "00" is a more useful definition, and thus it has been adopted.


    ---

  • > If you decide the 20th Century ends at the end of 1999, then which past century loses the year?

    it would obviously have to be this century, because the end of the 19th century was celebrated on dec 31st of the year 1900. 1901 was therefore officially recognized as the beginning of the 20th century. of course now that we've decided that the 20th century gets the shaft, we have to pick which decade of the 20th century only has 9 years....
  • Why be crammed in a city anymore?
    It's a good way get experience. Once I've done that I would like to move to somewhere like Nevada (while retaining roughly the same salary).

    I also have to pay off my student loan so raw $ is important for that.

    BTW I hear 2/3 neighbor's toilets flushing.
  • Well yes and no -- just because it's written in the license, doesn't mean that it's rock-solid. If I ran a hospital, I might have a patient's life depending on a device that ran embedded NT (God forbid). If that machine were to crash and the person were to die, *and* I were able to prove (by reconstructing the circumstances) that it was NT that was at fault, I could easily sue and win a wrongful-death suit against MS. It doesn't matter what their license says

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Human nature is perverse in that if you make a task look easy (think of an experienced TV repairman coming in, taking one look and replacing the exact part that failed), you tend to underappreciate it. You can see the "effortless" basket scoring or the clever hack but how many people realise the years or decades of training that led to it?

    This reminds me of the story about the retired engineer:

    There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines.

    They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past.

    The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, "This is where your problem is."

    The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.

    The engineer responded briefly:

    • One chalk mark $1
    • Knowing where to put it $49,999

    It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.

  • Some of those Silicon Valley startups expect you to work 16 hour days and sleep at work. know some guys who have beds right above their desks. What do you think? is it worth it?

    Well, I certainly can't say whether joining a hot Silicon Valley start up and working 16 hours a day for stock options is worth it. I think that really depends on what you want in life. What I can say is that starting one's own company in a place that costs less to live in (Massachusetts), and being one's own boss (and still working 16 hour days) is way worth it. I probably will never be a paper millionaire, but I will have spent time trying to build my own vision. Can't beat that.

  • When I read comments like the ones Dvorak made on Java I really have to wonder about his accuracy in other areas. He seems to equate Javas obvious failures with the failure of Java itself. Applets, while they have some niche applications, were a flop. JavaOS and the Java based NC were also flops. Why? Because the idea was to force a technology into an area where it really did not fit very well. What does this have to do with Java itself failing? Very little really.

    Java is very good for some things and its use is exploding in those areas. The reason most people seem to think it has failed is that these areas fall into an end user blind spot. People could see applets (and later the lack thereof), but the areas where Java is now primarily being used are not nearly as visible to your average person. Java is now being used for middleware. It lives on the server side these days in the form of servlets and beans. Just because you don't see it does not mean it is not there. The number of Java programmers and the use of Java in development is swiftly growing.

    As for Jini, it is still relatively new and its fate has yet to be determined. For my part I suspect it will catch on, but not in its incarnation as an interface to hardware devices (despite the hype, this is not its only use).

    Ultimately I think it would be far more accurate to say that Sun was a flop this year. The technology they created is prospering, the companies standing in the industry is not.

    As an aside, if you are a Java programmer and are looking for work (in NYC), the company I work for is now hiring. If you're interested send me a resume at: jkeck@finansys.com


  • I am in the middle of getting my BS (a little over it I think) in CS (that little play on acronyms was not intentional) and work for a foriegn owned yet independent american company (I am a CS major so I have no real idea what that means but I am sure it has something to do with taxes) and I make a damn good salary as a UN*X and Linux admin. I am not uncommon (despite what I try to tell myself), I started out in electronics, got into UN*X and here I am. Granted, I spent some time doing some really low paying work, but I have never worked at any place for less than 2 years, I have always paid the bills and I have always liked my job. If one person can do it (especially a joe like me) anyone can do it.

    Do I think busting my balls in SV is worth it? NO. I would prefer to settle into a scenario - gee exactly like the one I have now - where I do support as an admin and spend spare time working cool UN*X stuff I like. Makes more sense to someone like me. As time goes on I will most likely examine changing fields, but always managing to get job A that you like so you can twiddle your thumbs looking for job B is very important. I think that SV is far too volatile for most people and agree that talent is being both exploited and wasted (to a degree) in the green rush.

  • I'm under NDA, so I can't comment on specific sites I've worked on, but anyone using ATG Dynamo (Kodak, BMG I think) is running Java to generate their site. IBM WebSphere is moving to act as a JSP engine. And I thought I heard that BroadVision was moving to a Java model, although I could be wrong. Most B2B solutions are also Java applications (WebSphere, Extricity). I guess none of this would be end to end since there is always something in the pipeline that isn't Java, but the vast majority of these solutions utilize a mostly Java architecture.
  • Uh, no. The Ce phone was announced in February, manufactured during the summer and in the stores by October.

    It's December, now. That is, two months AFTER October...
  • If you think gaming is in a rut, it's because you're looking in the wrong place. id has been making obscene amounts of money from their Quake series, so other game companies look to id as the example of how games should be made. But they haven't done anything new recenly, have they? In fact, when was the last time they've done anything besides a FPS?

    If you're looking for innovation in gaming, you might try Bungie. [bungie.com] They're the guys who wrote Myth and Myth II, which basically did something nobody's done before. Ditto for their upcoming projects, Oni [bungie.com] and Halo [bungie.com]. Cool things there, you might want to check them out and see if they fit your profile of a "new" game.

  • Re: Netslaves (Score:3)

    by paul.dunne ( 5922 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @10:14AM (#1439196)
    SON OF KATZ!! Just when you thought it was safe to go back on slashdot... (hmm, anyone remember any other Jaws II promo lines?)

    Really, come on, what is this drivel? Workers are exploited, period. Most "geeks", as you call them (and by which I suppose you to mean young introverted males (becuase it is mostly guys, isn't it?) with an interest in technology, particularly computers, bordering on the obssessive) work in well-paid hi-tech jobs, and are a hell of a lot better of than, say, a Uranium miner in South Africa or a textile worker in the Philipines. Yes, they are exploited; of course they are; but have a bit of perspective.

  • Is that slashdot keeps giving this fool airtime! I am not one to normally criticize slashdot's choices of articles to link to, but links to this guy's idiocy show up here on a fairly regular basis. I've yet to see any content in a single Dvorak column to justify this, particularly in light of slashdot's open-source emphesis.

    Well, I certainly very often disagree with him, and there are times when he is just plain wrong or misinformed, but the truth is, that many people "out there" listen to him, and I get the impression that many people agree with him. So, knowing what he has to say, and getting a feeling for what people are thinking is worth it. Does it make a big difference that /. is giving him airtime? I think it's OK. Besides, I'm not sure there is such a thing as an intelligent anti-open source antagonist.

  • http://www.atg.com/c ustomers/driven_by_dynamo/driven_main.html [atg.com]

    Dynamo is just an app server, so you can say that the database and the web server is not Java. However, all page generation is done by the product using JavaBeans and JSP. A partial list of their customers is linked above, and it includes BMG, AT&T Customer Service, JCrew, and Sony Online Entertainment.

    This is just one product that allows Java to be used for page generation -- take a look around, and you'll find that there are literally dozens. And before you say you meant a custom solution utilizing Java, no major company that I know of wants to build their own app server -- the investment would be huge with no real benefit. Yes, Yahoo and eBay do use custom solutions, but eBay is having all kinds of problems and many of Yahoo's services are now delivered via packaged solutions.
  • Where are we supposed to discuss an article like this, that already has it's own discussion forum?

    On Slashdot?

    On Zdnet?

    I guess it all just ends up on who you want your audience to be (or what your audience's OS is..)
  • of course, it is always easy to put down some one who has more money than you do.

    although it must be also admitted that an education focused purely into high tech might find such nicities as "The Lays of Ancient Rome" as unimportant, or ignorantly read into it a suggestive title where nothing of the sort exists.

    Cluelessness has many guises, and it is probably a wise person who knows their blind spots.

  • Okay, I'll grant that it's slower to make it to consumer devices than many predicted. I'll even grant that for quite a few applications it's overkill.

    That's not the point. FireWire is a high-speed high-bandwidth data transfer technology and it's doing quite well exactly where it was originally aimed: digital content capture/creation. There's a reason the iMacDV has FireWire: content users demanded it. I'm less clear on why they're using iMacs, but what the hey, I'm sure they know what they need better than I do. He's not slamming USB for the time it took to take off, and it's much more consumer oriented and had a much greater push for adoption from MS. Bit of a double standard, that.

  • Perhaps the only good reason to keep Firewire off Linux is that it is too easy to use. Plug in a drive and it is automaticaly mounted, self powered and terminated?

    No "real" Linux machine could ever suffer the indignity of such a device! :-)

  • Re:startups (Score:3)

    by um... Lucas ( 13147 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @07:22AM (#1439215) Journal
    If they don't think it's worth it and complain, then they're just dumb... IF you don't want to deal with that sort of work atmosphere, get a different job and forget about the stock options... IF you do want to do that, then you are entitled to the big payoff - should it arrive....

    It's all about what you value most - enjoying your time as it happens, or throwing away a period of your life in hopes that a later era will be much different.
  • although it must be also admitted that an education focused purely into high tech might find such nicities as "The Lays of Ancient Rome" as unimportant, or ignorantly read into it a suggestive title where nothing of the sort exists.

    Now now, you shouldn't stereotype high tech educations. I recently came out of a 4-year (*laugh*) university with an engineering degree, and one of the requirements for the degree was a full year of humanities. I spent mine on classical literature.

  • Compaqs are coming with IEE 1394 ports. Don't forget the iLink ports on all those Sony PCs.

    Dvorak is dogging Firewire because Intel is pushing that USB 2.0, and we all know that big D doesn't want to torque off Chipzilla.

    Now that we are talking about Firewire, I want to remind everyone that Linus said about the same thing a few monthes back. I don't want to get flamed, but that seems like a bad case of Not Intented Here. Linux needs to lead the way and jump on the IEE 1394 bandwagon.

    Firewire Hard Drives...like the VSTs are simply dreamy.

    lamz is right, Dvorak needs to give credit where it's due. The iMac is the machine that gave USB life. It was a dead technology until August of 1998.

  • Re:startups (Score:5)

    by Ark ( 7744 ) <(kgarner) (at) (kgarner.com)> on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @07:24AM (#1439223) Homepage
    What do you think? is it worth it?


    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.

  • In the video world, Firewire is available in almost every cool DV camcorders, including the Sony VX-1000 [sony.com], the most used DV camcorder for broadcast uses (interviewing people living in trees, or for use in Kosovo without sticking out like a BetaCam would).
  • The benchmarks I have seen comparing Java Servlets with mod_perl show a similar results - Perl faster at some things and Java faster others - depending on the platform and task.

    What more important for myself and my customers is program productivity. As an illustration:

    Hello world in Java:

    import java.io.*;
    import java.util.*;

    import javax.servlet.*;
    import javax.servlet.http.*;

    public class HelloWorld extends HttpServlet {

    public void doGet (
    HttpServletRequest request, // form variables, etc.
    HttpServletResponse response ) // methods for providing output
    throws ServletException, IOException {
    // set content type of HTTP header
    response.setContentType ( "text/html" );

    // create an output object and send our response
    PrintWriter out = response.getWriter ();
    out.println ( "Hello World\n" +
    "Hello World!" );
    out.close ();
    }
    }


    Hello world in Perl

    #!/usr/local/bin/perl
    print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

    print "Hello World\n";
    print "Hello World!";



    In practice I use html templates with Perl such as:

    #!/usr/local/bin/perl

    $title = "Hello World";
    $body_str = "Hello World!";

    process_template("hello_world_blue.html");

    where the function process_template reads in the argument file and replaces the embedded strings "$title$" and "$body_str$" with the values of the variables. This way the code is seperate from the presentation and a single code base can be used to call several different sets of templates and provide a different look and feel per template set.
  • Time Magazine is owned by Time-Warner, the same company that owns CNN.

    Apple is owned by Apple Computers Inc. Steve Jobs has way closer ties to Disney through Pixar than he does Time-Warner.
  • I actually enjoy his and the Register's commentary on things more than anyone else, specifically because they aren't out to make friends... just to report news and include their own insights. Dvoraks been reporting on this industry for maybe 20 years now... If he really knew/knows nothing, he'd have lost his job and audience years ago...

    Just because he's not pro-linux is not a good enough reason to say he knows nothing...
  • The millennium ends this year. No question about it. You are absolutely wrong. Jan 1, 2000 is the beginning of the 3rd millennium.

    Sure. Every day is the beginning of a new millenium. Come to think of it, every day is the end of one too. Ain't that a bitch?

    However, if you say that Jan 1, 2000 is the beginning of the 3rd millenium since Jan 1, 1 AD, then you are in fact wrong.

    More importantly, everyone damn well knows it. It been in the press and the news so much that everyone understands it. It's a simple concept.

    Even more importantly, it's not going to interfere with the party. I'm not celebrating a new millenium, I'm gonna be there for the party, man... Time to kick back and drink myself stupid. I sure won't let the fact that the next millenium is a year later screw up my buzz, that's for sure.

    Oh, and the 1997 thing: Who cares? The majority of the world doesn't believe in Christ, so piss off already.

    Just my $2E-2...

    ---

  • I nominate this inanimate carbon rod! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    He makes a good point that all of these millenial retrospect top-x lists only focus on the past 100 years -- I was shocked to learn that history of mankind (humankind, sorry PCs) started on Jan 1, 1900.

    According to Dvorak, "Linux: Lots of hype. Lots of hope" ...of I see. So this desktop that I'm typing this message in here doesn't exist? This GNOME desktop I configured is all vaporware? Who that's impressive. I must be running some kind of background process that makes me think I'm connected to the Internet all day since this Linux stuff I thought I was using really doesn't exist. Wow I'm suprised.

    Bill Gates should be Time's Person of the Year? Well, yeah if you believe Microsoft's PR machine that mascot Bill has anything to do with what goes on at Microsoft. You may as well nominate this inanimate carbon rod for being repsonsible for nuclear power.

  • You forgot one: Lots of distributions. If we look what distributions rose from the ground this year, we see that almost all companies want a piece of the Linux pie.

    My question: Do you run Debian, RedHat, Slackware or Suse (and others), or do we still run Linux? If M$ wants a piece of the pie in the future: do we still accept it as Linux?

    Answer: too many distributions?

  • 3. FireWire. This technology will be the fiasco of the decade if it doesn't appear soon on something other than a Macintosh and a camcorder.

    You mean like the playstation two, or my high-end Dell? Or maybe something like a computer belonging to someone who wants really neato toys? SCSI didn't die either, and that wasn't for lack of competition. Good lord, man, how long do you need to work in an industry to learn that standards that cost an end-user more than a buck fifty american don't spring up overnight?

    BTW, that that camcorder supports FireWire is one of my main reasons for considering buying it. If I can use a FireWire hard drive and camcorder to connect to my PlayStation, which has more than enough graphic horsepower to do realtime video editing, I think I might just be a fairly happy man. 'Specially since I can then just pump it out through S-Video to my S-Video capable VCR, and tape something right cleanly.

    This, of course, after I have enough money to buy myself a disposable razor, but that's another story.

  • I'm on Dvorak's side on this one. There have to be a dozen guys in the computer arena that are more deserving of man of the year status than Bezos is and Gates and Jobs are two of them.

    There is nothing unique about Amazon, it just has better PR than other e-commerce companies. There are other e-commerce companies out there that are as old as Amazon, even if they are not as big. Note that I didn't say successful. Amazon has yet to turn a profit, so it can't really be considered successful. Bezos has also done his part to harm e-commerce by jumping on the stupid patent, stupid lawsuit [slashdot.org] bandwagon.

    Like him or not, Gates managed to turn an operating system into a deadly weapon. This is real influence, even if it is bad. The DoJ lawsuit against Microsoft alone could potentially affect the way we use computers for years to come. (If so, would this make Judge Jackson a man of the year candidate?).

    Jobs took a company that had spent a decade bent on committing corporate suicide and made it stop slashing its wrists long enough to start putting out fast, useful computers.
  • Why didnt someone tell me that DIVX died? :)
    mitemouse

    :)
  • He's complaining that Steve "look at my turtleneck" Jobs wasn't picked as Man of the Year, completely ignoring the fact that his smarmy mug has already graced(?) the cover of Time magazine once three months ago, and we were also treated to a lengthy article about Apple's resurrection back in April or thereabouts. I, quite frankly, have had enough of the man, and am beginning to wonder if Time isn't owned at least in some small part by Apple Computer. They seem to have enough ads peppered throughout each and every issue...

    Ohwell.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • Do Slashdot editors ever _read_ the stories? (Score:3)

    by Zico ( 14255 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @07:27AM (#1439243)

    Dvorak didn't say that Windows CE was a flop, he said that Windows CE handheld computers were a flop. That's a huge difference, as anyone who read the Slashdot article "386 Based Linux Powered Telephone" [slashdot.org] can tell you. You know, the one where Slashdot told us of this wonderful phone that supposedly ran Linux, when everyone who actually looked at the company's site could see that it ran Windows CE and that Linux wasn't even mentioned. (Needless to say, another black eye for Slashdot reporting.)

    But hey, don't let simple fact-checking and journalistic integrity get in the way of your anti-Microsoft zealotry, right?

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Depends on what you are doing and how much you stand to gain. I know some people who will definately be rich if they pull off what they are working on, and the only way they will get it done before the competition is to live under their desk. I just can't help but think it would be cool to be able to crash any time of day, though. Remember the Seinfeld episode when George was living under his desk after he had it renovated into a really cool little room? That would be cool.
  • Dvorak rules, I can type over 1000 words per minute on it, I just need to see if I can make a beuwulf cluster of them. Oh.. you mean the other Dvorak... sorry. :)
  • I dare you the following: I have a Sony VAIO C1X with the famous FireWire (i.Link / whatever). Does anyone actually find a purpose for it - besides it being to to show off your cool new camera?
  • ...is an idiot.

    Before you respond, "Takes one to know one," I suggest you read my sig line. :-)

    Zontar The Mindless,

  • Since you're proud of your accomplishment why don't give the url and list those of your alleged competition.

    Then let an unbiased opinion draw conclusions.

    In other words don't make empty claims...
  • I was tempted to make it into the "Lays of Ancient Rome Tour"; using it as some sort of basis for a LART, but it got too convoluted.

    but seriously, most high school grads would only see the suggestive interpretation, and make light of it, instead of understanding one of the better bits of writing in the english language.

    and then there are the in-duh-viduals in management or sales.

    :)

  • Re:Lots of talk.... (Score:3)

    by KaosDG ( 85348 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @07:38AM (#1439266) Homepage
    Yup... I found that amusing...
    I guess JCD's just another person who hasn't heard of linux until all the IPO's...
    BTW: My favorite talkback comment:

    Name: Bob Carmody
    Location: Washington DC
    Occupation:
    Linux is in the wrong list! Doesn't linux feel like DOS except with even longer more obscure switches? And it's Unix all over again. Dvorak noted that himself in a column earlier this year.
    Desqview for Linux is right around the corner, I can feel it.

    It's hard enough to get an OS out the door of Microsoft or Apple with a team in one town. How on earth can anything get done with the entire world working on a project?

    This is just too ludicrous to comment on right now.
  • 3. FireWire. This technology will be the fiasco of the decade if it doesn't appear soon on something other than a Macintosh and a camcorder.

    Compaq had it on their machines as an option in summer of '98, if I recall correctly. Sony has it standard on the Vaio line, and last time I checked Compaq and Sony didn't make Macs.

    This is just another example of Dvorak bashing something because of platform prejuidce and letting the facts fend for themselves. I am surprised he didn't say USB2 is one of the greatest successes of the past 1,000 years.

  • Science is missing (Score:3)

    by Dandre ( 90053 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @07:44AM (#1439272) Homepage
    It strikes me that Dvorak missed many of the most important events and/or people of the year by ignoring the advances in technology and science that took place this year. By focusing nearly entirely on the 'biz' side of things, he has a myopic view, especially for importance. Although I'll be the first to admit that the business side of a company is critical, when one looks at the past and attempts to judge importance, inventions and discoveries seem to rank right up there with savvy business dealings.

    What about the first realization of a quantum computer (here) [stanford.edu]? Or IBM's advances in chip technology? Or any of a number of similar advances that are almost certainly important for the future direction of technology?

    For that matter, I think leaving out the continued successful rise and development of cellular phones and the like is quite a mistake. When he puts network PCs and ubiquitous computing on the 'flop' list, he misses the most successful of the network ed appliances, the cell phone. The important future of cell phones (which I already had some good ideas about) was made utterly clear to me when, on Christmas this year, I ordered a book from Amazon on my new Sanyo-4000 using the mini-browser on the phone. Took about 4 minutes (including searching for a few things), and was amazingly easy.

    Cheers,

    David Andre
  • And some of us have the balls to use our real names. Should I be ashamed that I have a system I built primarially for gaming? No. Why? Because I like to take a break from productive work and kick back from time to time. That, and I am still a student, which would allude to the fact that I like to goof off. Your not playing any new games should change my perspective? Why? I work with a lot of people every day, and allmost all of them are casual gamers. Even the slashdot folks like to put their own hints for new releases and personal experiences into their articles about loki and game releases. E-mail me and we can talk.

  • Coincidentally, he's also right. Don't take it as a slam on linux, it's not. What it is is a very short way of saying that linux doesn't have a GUI comparable to windows, that it is still too abrasive to neophyte computer users. I'll also take a personal stab at what linux needs - a decent filesystem. ext2 is slow on file deletions, and when mounted in it's default async mode can cause massive filesystem damage if the system crashes. This is not exactly clearly documented anywhere.

    So he's right - there is lots of talk and lots of hype - just look at ZDNet and the mainstream press. Witness the VA Linux and Redhat IPOs. There's lots of hope too - Enlightenment and Gnome / KDE desktops are rapidly evolving. ReiserFS, Ext3, and SGI's fs (whose name escapes me at the moment) are all very fast filesystems.

  • Dvorak is the Rush Limgaugh of tech rags. He turns out a monthly one-page rant that can't even come close to Pournell (I'd gladly wade through references to "Lucille, my Compaq Presario...") for the little insight Pournell gives compared to Rush^WDvorak's "future of technology" type articles. Blech!
  • I would say is this entire year. The so-called revolutions in e-commerce and communication have only lead to breakdowns in our social contacts with one another. I'm not necessarily a Luddite but I think before everyone jumps on the bandwagon of "oh how technology enriches our lives" they ought to take a logical look at how that technology affects them. E-commerce is nice and for the most part quick, but it has many inherent problems. If I'm sitting on my ass ordering WidgetPluses from ewidget.com I may be saving a dollar or two on gas but the ass I'm sitting on is also getting fatter because I never walk anywhere. Woe is to me if I dared think about returned my e-purchase not to mention woe is to me when I get my credit card statement. I'd really rather go to a discount store, outlet mall, or swap meat to find the big deal. I'm exercising, haggling on the price, and paying cash. Another biggie of this year which didn't make Dvorak's list were the mass media website outlet superstore commercial clusterfucks. The Go network is a great example, people are enticed to surf these huge mego-sites because they offer a ton of content, a ton of commercials and a big brand name. It's a matter of choice I suppose but it adds way too much of a commercial presence in a place that a handful of years ago was just for fun. Another point that made this year a giant flop was blatant journalistic sensationalism (big words, wow). Every tiny story was blown way out of preportion, especially when it had to do with schools and any kind of violence. Here in California it's been so bad I can't watch the news anymore. Everything seems to be a tool of the devil in the eyes of the media, they go around acting like evangelical patriots rooting the evil out of every story. No one tells you what happened anymore, no it's all commentary on how good or bad you ought to feel about a particular event. KCAL news I don't think I need to be told when something is "indeed a tragedy". Look at the hubub surrounding Y2K if you're skeptical of this. Back to the point of social contacts breaking down, it seems every business in the world wants to turn everyone into an overweight couch potato. You're sposed to start an e-business, buy everything through e-commerce, enjoy e-entertainment, and when that all gets boring plan an e-vacation by looking at some e-tropical island photos on someone's e-vacation website. Being able to communicate with the rest of the world is great, I get to rant on /. and e-mail my friends I don't get to see every day. But when I start staying home to do some low down e-living please jumpkick me in the face. This year was a flop because everyone seems to be caught up in the digital revolution the same way the Frenchies got caught up in their revolution in the 18th century, they ran around screaming things no one could understand and cut off anyone's heads who got in the way.

  • What kills me ... (Score:3)

    by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @07:49AM (#1439288)
    Is that slashdot keeps giving this fool airtime! I am not one to normally criticize slashdot's choices of articles to link to, but links to this guy's idiocy show up here on a fairly regular basis. I've yet to see any content in a single Dvorak column to justify this, particularly in light of slashdot's open-source emphesis.

    If slashdot feels the need to have an anti-opensource antagonist, they should at least find an intelligent one to link to (if there is such a thing). The last thing an open-source forum should be doing is encouraging this sort of vapid tripe by increasing its undeserved readership even further by giving it broader exposure.

  • Re:Java and Jini (Score:3)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @07:52AM (#1439291) Homepage Journal
    Applets are dead?

    I think not.

    They're just off the hypesters radar-screen.

    First of all, a lot of things that people used java for were just plain stupid. The problem is like a lot of "hot" technologies, people use them because they're hot, not because they accomplish anything. A lot of web sites are entirely composed of slow loading fluff. The early fervor days were horrible -- people loading a half dozen animated gif and ticker tape applets per page over a 14.4KBaud modem link -- no wonder people hate java! And these stupid applications are better done these days with javascript and animated gifs.

    But, there are terrific applications for applets, so long as you are reasonable about keeping them slim. My favorite is the VNC (the open source remote control utility); you may not know it, but VNC servers also respond to http requests, returning an HTML page with a complete java VNC client (pretty fast load time for something so cool, too). I added this to the open source freethreads discussion forum and voila! shared whiteboard. I put another java applet and voila -- a private chat room. Both these pages load very quickly at 56K.

    Applets for the Internet drive by customer will make a comeback, as high bandwidth consumer connections become more common.



  • In the words of the tshirt worn by the ne'er-do-well irish geezer on Brookside (a british soap) -- "A new millennium starts every second".

    Can't we celebrate new year 2001, though -- when all this y2k problem nonsense is ovre with?

    Ta.

    --
  • I like the article... it was amusing. But I'm scratching my head here. Why was the Yahoo! version of this story linked instead of the original ZDNN version?

  • Do Slashdot posters ever read the stories? (Score:3)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @07:59AM (#1439305) Homepage Journal
    Dude, you weren't paying attention!

    The new, yet-to-be-released 486 uberphone runs WinCE

    The phone they do produce, based on a 386, runs Linux.

  • 4. Microsoft Windows CE hand-held computers. When will Microsoft and its friends learn that building a lot of little computers around a portable OS that results in incompatibility from machine to machine for various reasons is not the road to success?


    Sounds pretty anti-Microsoft to me. Hemos's take on this statement seems pretty accurate to me.


    The fact is that Microsoft CE is not a good operating system for handheld devices. While the hardware also has problems (like short battery life because most WinCE machines, IMHO, try to do too much (256 Colors, MP3 playing, etc.)), the Windows GUI is just completely out of place in a handheld.

  • The solution is... uh, don't do it. Revolt against what? Are they chaining you to your desk? It's not as if it isn't a pro-worker environment right now.

    I can just see you during the Great Depression, with your sign out saying, "Hey! I just got out of college! Where's my $70K/year job? Where are my stock options? I thought I was supposed to be a millionaire in my twenties!"

    This perspective brought to you by the Clue Stick. Workers today are so incredibly spoiled.


    ---

  • Everyone is discussing their "winners of 1999", so I thought I'd add my two cents worth. I know that the focus tends to be on technological advancements that make us all go oooh and ahhh, but here's something for us to keep in mind: WE are the real winners in 1999. Thanks to Linux going even more "mainstream" than before, the Linux gurus that were until recently looked at as wasting their time on an OS that would never go anywhere are suddenly a marketable commodity. People are starting to joing the Linux bandwagon in droves, bringing with them media attention and a newfound focus on Linux from some fairly big name companies. The added support, more applications, increased interest, and sudden desire to find people with Linux skills to work fo r you helps make everyone associated with Linux, from the kernel hackers to vocal and written advocates the real winners of this year, and hopefully it will carry over to the next as well

  • USB ... had a much greater push for adoption from MS.

    Don't forget to give credit where credit is due. How many USB peripherals exist because the iMac was designed with USB as it's only I/O port? Answer: However many iMac coloured USB peripherals you can count on the store shelf.

    Also, I think it's funny that Dvorak's main problem with FireWire is that it only appears on Macs, iMacs, PowerBooks and CamCorders. That's really not a problem for owners of those devices! How can great equipment owned by other people be perceived as a downside for him? This sort of thinking points to why people like to dis Linux--it makes their own system look bad. And isn't his real problem with FireWire the lack of implementation by companies that he supports? Shouldn't he be chastizing Dell/HP/etc for not including great tech like FireWire?


    Mike van Lammeren
  • Since some people are willing to put up with the conditions you describe, it clearly is worth it to them. Maybe they genuinely enjoy what they do, or maybe in their opinion the chance of becoming insanely rich is worth the short-term sacrifice. Whatever their reasons, don't assume they're wrong because you don't agree. There are plenty of jobs out there (like mine) that pay well and don't require 70-hour weeks. But then I won't be making millions in an IPO anytime soon. It's all about tradeoffs.

  • Dvorak has some good points here (Score:4)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Tuesday December 28, 1999 @08:12AM (#1439328) Homepage Journal
    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.

    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 .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".

    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
  • I'm sorry, but just because Windows 98 has poor support for IEEE-1394 doesn't say spit about whether the technology's good or not. I've used a VST Firewire hard drive at my office and I must say that is is the sweetest thing to come along in a long time. I plug it in and voila! The hard drive is automatically installed with no SCSI-ID crap to fiddle with, no extra power cable, no nothing. I can copy stuff from my computer to the Firewire HDD and if I pull out the cable while it's copying, it pauses and tells me to please reconnect the drive. I even played a Quicktime movie off the Firewire HDD and it did the same thing when I disconnected it. Plug it back in and it picks up where it left off.

    Sony makes iLink/Firewire CDRW drives, which would probably be nice because as a rule of thumb they say to keep your source drive and your CDRW on separate chains. There's other stuff like printers and speakers that use Firewire, so it's not all just video cameras... although I must say that video editing with Firewire and MiniDV is sweet too.
  • Almost All the 51xx and the 52xx presarios have Firewire (all the PIII and K6-3's do), and some of them have 4 USB ports 2 in the back and 2 in the front.
  • >He's just another media fraud that doesn't know a thing.

    I suppose this posting is flame bait, but this comment has already been moderated UP so I felt like defending Dvorak...

    Do you have any objective facts to back up your statement? Granted, Dvorak is an opinionated bastard who has been wrong a lot, but he's also one of the first to admit that. I've been reading his columns on and off for years, and one thing I've noticed is that he's a guy who has a sense of everything that's going on around him. He doesn't want to tell you what everyone else is saying, he wants to put himself on the line and say what he thinks -- isn't that the kind of attitude that Slashdot normally defends or am I missing something?

    Granted, Dvorak is an inflammatory, highly opinionated, and highly visible target, but" a media fraud who doesn't know a thing"? Is Linux not full of hype right now? Is it not the current hope to knock down Microsoft? What is untrue there? He could have also said that it's a solid OS with great potential, but that's not his style. If you want to attack him, fine, but don't take the easy route of throwing assertions with no backing at him.

    My two cents...
  • He's just another media fraud that doesn't know a thing

    Actually, I think he did a good job of being well-rounded in this case, and was spot on with every item listed. Even rabid slashdotters shouldn't be upset with him: he trashed Microsoft twice, gave good mention to two underdogs (Linux and Apple), and spit on the grave of DIVX. Are you upset just because his comments about Linux we somewhat reserved? You shouldn't be; Linux is still getting to where it needs to be.
  • Yahoo uses Java servlets extensively for some portions of the site. Sun site is completely Java and servlets.
    --

    BluetoothCentral.com [bluetoothcentral.com]
    A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.

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