Time Digital's Technology Predictions for 2000 77
MAXOMENOS writes "Time Digital has a list of digital technology predictions for the year 2000. Among the more interesting ones: so-called '.com' businesses fade from the limelight, Linux shifts emphasis from the server and the desktop to embedded systems, and the IPO craze moves from Web-based retailers to something else. Check it out."
Re:Linux and embedded systems (Score:1)
I guess my point is that computer courses at the elementary level should not simply be about "how to make the Font bigger for that Report for English Class." Children have a remarkable ability to learn. We should take advantage of that and teach them the fundamentals. Applications can be learned at any time.
Is Linux (or *BSD, etc.) a good choice for this? It certainly comes with a lot of tools. With a properly set-up KDE session, it's not any more difficult than Windows. I like the fact that if students are really interested, they can delve deeper and it doesn't cost the school anything. The multiuser environment will prevent any problems with bad user behavior which is a big win over Windows.
As you point out, administration is a problem. But then maybe the schools should have a full-time administrator. If they're teaching CS courses, you'd hope the instructor would be competent. I think this will be the case now that current graduates have fairly good computer skills.
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TIME - the technology magazine? (Score:1)
This may be somewhat cynical, but I really cannot take TIME MAGAZINE's predictions on technology seriously. Ahhhh... I'm just cynical!
Actually, you can teach a donkey how to sing, but he will still sound like an ass...
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Kir
Re:My Opinion YOUR OPINION is flawed logic (Score:1)
Well, I predict that Linux will be bigger in 2000 (Score:1)
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/000106/22/d5no.html
2: MP3 will be massive, record labels will start to become simply marketing organisations. Web sites will spring up to perform a similar task. You'll be able to download individual MP3 files in Virgin and HMV.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/000106/22/d5no.html
Re:Crutcher's Predictions for 2000 (Score:1)
"Three Gigs for the Professors under the sky,
Seven for the Grad-students in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Users doomed to vi,
One for the Hacker Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of UNIX where the Daemons lie.
One Kernel to rule them all, One Kernel to find them,
One Disk to hold the files and in the Darkness grind them
In the Land of UNIX where the Daemons lie."
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Linux Embedded (Score:1)
we use RT linux exclusively instead of that stupid embedded dos product that costs $90.00 per processor crap, then buy the development stuff, then get traning....
Linux, download it, read it, use it...
Nothing else can compare.....
Re:They forgot to predict rise of BSD over LINUX (Score:1)
http://www.bombcar.com It's where it is at.
Re:Linux and embedded systems (Score:1)
Depends what your embedded system is.
The embedded system I work with is a single card with a 50MHz power PC and 32Mb of RAM, about the size of a compact disk. It's part of PABX (a small telephone exchange for small businesses).
50MHz and 32Mb. That sounds a lot like the linux system everyone had at home a couple of years ago, except that it has no hard disk. Linux takes about 800k and, with some realtime patches applied, has quite decent realtime behaviour.
Earlier we were running a "real" realtime OS called VxWorks. VxWorks has its nice points (such as more rigid realtime behaviour), but it's hard to argue with a familar environment, no "gotchas" for new developers, and no licence fees.
Matthias
To summarize... (Score:1)
Oh ya, remember those flying cars, where you snap on a pair of wings, find a stretch of highway and take off? Those will FINALLY make it this year too.
Linux: one size fits all (Score:1)
That's the beauty of open source development; the unneeded fat gets trimmed away in the next recompile. If we were talking about a closed source operating system that tries to do everything (the obvious example being Windows), then yeah, the OS bloats, but with Linux, developers can take an established product that works and streamline it to whatever platform they need.
Javatips prediction for Y2K (Score:1)
2. Some tibits will change annd make a difference in the life of
3. Y2K++ will be trademarked and Hyped as the REAL millennium (i got the spelling right
Re:I hope some of these come true... (Score:1)
Unless you've got some stats to back this up, my experience contradicts your statement. From what I've heard (and I admit to having no backup other than a few articles in the newspaper), most new dotcom people are not geeks. At least part of this is because so many of the new companies are based around business models that involve things like "Enter our contest to win a free plastic trinket by giving us a sample of your DNA and the email addresses of everyone in your department!" or "You must have IE 9.0 and enable every single feature in it to use this site." Such things seem to be inherently annoying and disgusting to the geeks I've met. (Of course, it varies.)
Many business school profs are currently complaining about the dropout rate. Students start school, get some random idea for a new thing to sell over the web, and drop out to start the company and grab the domain before someone else does. It seems to me that this is where a good chunk of the expansion in e-business is coming from. (The exceptions would be sites that actually feature new technology; Google is one such. Most new commercial sites aren't featuring any new algorithms, though; they seem to just be variations on the catalog, fact-database, and auction themes.)
Also, a completely random thought that just popped into my head. The current buzzword for e-commerce companies is "dotcoms". Why didn't we end up with the word "dotcommerce" as well?
Alik
In Number 1, I meant Windows not Linux. (Score:1)
The desktop is going nowhere until... (Score:1)
we get some apps, notably a compatible competitor to office. Let's face it: The current office app offerings are next to useless for businesses, because 1) they are not 100% compatible with the standard document interchange format (aka Word/Excel format), and 2) the printing subsystem under Linux is atrocious. I don't mean the spooling, I mean a renderering subsystem similar to Windows.
I don't know why #1 is not a priority with the current Office app offerings (KOffice has gone on record saying it's not a priority to them); this just seems ludicrous to me.
As for #2, this is where the Achilles Heel of Open Source shows up. Printing is a notoriously boring subject, which means it's difficult to find quality talent that cares enough to work on it.
Bottom line, the most stable, cheap operating system in the world is completely worthless without applications that people want and can use effectively.
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Don't need sunglasses (Score:1)
how (Score:1)
Me thinks not.
What 2000 really reserves us (Score:1)
Doom will come upon us!!
Of course, I'm talking about Doom 2000, though I'd like to know if it's a REAL project, now if John Carmack could confirm here..! If Wolfenstein 2000 *IS* in development, why not Doom 2000? I'd classify that as an instant success, no matter whatever happens on this earth.
Here are my real predictions:
(1) Microsoft open-sources Windows, in an attempt to desperately get back the PC OS market, now dominated by Unix. Silly bugs are now exposed to the world. Countless heart-attacks folllow.
(2) Red Hat buys AOL, in a big conspiracy to dominate the world. The new AOL installer, AOL 6.0, is really a RH7 distro. Linux suddenly takes 60% of the OS market in North America.
(3) 3D Realms once again scrap the current engine for Duke Nukem Forever, seeing that the Quake III Arena engine is now superior to Unreal's. DNF will now use the Q3A engine, and is now expected to be released in 2001, around 6 months later than its original planned release.
(4) The invention of the UV monitor. The UV radiation coming straight from your monitor will help you get a beautiful tan right at home! Impress girls with your sweet natural-looking tan while talking about how great was your virtual trip. You never have to go sunbath again! (CAUTION!!): Sunglasses required for your eyes health.
"Predictions"... (Score:1)
BTW, a message to the first post/nonsense message guys: get a life.
Re:You mean like.. QNX? (Score:1)
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Re:I hope some of these come true... (Score:1)
I think they're hoping "e-commerce" makes them sound like rappers, like Ice-T or Easy E. :)
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My predictions for the new millenia (Score:1)
2. Microsoft will release a OS with a Linux kernel named "MS Venician Blinds"
1. People will do better things with there lives than make lists for each and everything.
http://www.the-revolution.org (Score:1)
First Deja vu posting reply to first post! (Score:2)
Where I think Linux will really shine is in educational systems. Computers are just now becoming what can truly be considered necessary for childhood education. Schools, I think, will find that Linux boxes serve as much better educational tools because they are very cheap, they last a long time, they allow for scalability of education (GUI environment for kiddies, good development environment for upper-age CS students), and it gives a much better understanding of how the technologies work which is what kids will need to know to compete in the marketplace. One of the downsides to Windows' efforts to simplify the desktop environment is that you can't learn as much as easily (not to mention the price skyrockets). Apple's already way to expensive for what it's worth (which is really the easy-to-use environment for the kiddies of which there are already several for Linux).
I see Linux making a much bigger impact where financial considerations are key. Open-source software is about providing software so people don't have to pay for it, and that's exactly what schools need. If this happens, I think their desktop 'sliver' will become much bigger and Linux will gain a stronger foothold in the home (I've already had one CS class in college that required you to setup a Debian system).
I think if Linux concentrates too much on developing for too many different types of platforms, they'll end up bloating themselves. It's doing several things good right now, but other packages do embedded systems better and embedded systems should be developed as such.
Just US$0.02. Feel free to disagree.
Re:Linux and embedded systems (Score:2)
This is a fallacy. They're both hard to administer. It just depends on where your experience is. Windows may look nice and friendly, but when something goes wrong, it's a bear to track down and fix in my experience. Now I've got lots of UNIX experience. With time, I'd have no problem picking up the tips and tricks for Windows. The nice thing about UNIX is that once you get a solution you can easily script it up and distribute the tasks over the network to all the machines. Now I'm sure this is possible in Windows as well, but I don't know offhand how to do it.
Try taking a UNIX environment and inserting some Windows boxen. Watch the administrators scratch their heads when something goes wrong and they can't fix it because Windows is "different." I've seen it happen and these people were pretty sharp.
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Diversionists and convergenists (Score:2)
Re:Linux and embedded systems (Score:2)
Someone else mentioned QNX, and this is sort of the same thing. QNX is very multi-purpose, lots of embedded developers are familiar with it, but it doesn't quite have the hacking/open-source "base" that a Linux-derivative would have.
Though I essentially agree that it doesn't make immediate sense to try and strip down something designed for a PC and make it work in an embedded system. It does seem logical to try and build something small and fast (while working in whatever Linux compatibility, compliance and even bits of code that you need) from the start.
But at this point, there's already lots of embedded Linux work underway (and in cases, completed), so at this point it seems best to use what we've already got.
Comments (Score:2)
However, I see homes and businesses being a combination of wired and wireless. Things plugged into walls and stationary will be wired and things that rove around the house and out of it will be wireless. But the Airport will last only as a desktop/server to laptop/handheld solution. Even then people will use docking stations.
2. This is true, though I think it may take longer than a year for people to calm down about it. In time having a
3. MP3 will last a very long time, until some other public domain format becomes popular. Maybe some sort of wavelet compression. Even then MP3 will last a tremendously long time as a legacy format. In time the music industry will break down and figure out how to survive in the digital age.
4. Linux will have a decent presence in the embedded market, but it will be one among many, and I don't see more than a token presence for a while. It's a high end embedded system, for set top boxes and the like. I predict that Linux will continue to erode the Windows NT niche and start making inroads elsewhere.
Expect to see by the end of the year an explosion of non-American software for Linux as universities and governments outside of the United States demand software solutions that are non-Microsoft. Expect American companies to cash in on this and make money off of these other software developers, thus hitting Microsoft from the outside in. Finally Linux will be perceived as a desktop solution for the high end.
5. Next year will still not be the year of video entertainment over the Net. Nor will the next year be. We've got a few more years to go on that point until we see the cheap net video stations.
6. Its going to take years for the stock market to fade to normal. But this is really a repeat of 2 so I won't go into it.
Not worried about Linux... (Score:2)
Nope, it's the wireless replacing cable that I find funny. Starters, Time Warner owns a good number of local cable companies, not to mention Road Runner, their two way cable based ISP. I doubt seriously they'll just "dump" all that and go wireless cause it "works better". No company will do that just for that reason. It'd have to provide an advantage over current methods, which it really doesn't. Of course, there are all those Sat Dishes that are popular, what with local TV now being an option. Hm. Maybe they should all move into Sat broadcasting and leave wireless to cell phones.
Heck, right now Truck Stops offer Dish Network units with WebTV internet access via Satellite Dish. No matter where you are. That's an invention I need. Maybe that's the way it should go. Who knows.
Perl ends religion? *sigh* (Score:2)
Both assumptions tend to be very wrong.
As Alexander Pope's saying goes about the first:
People leave out the second line, but I generally find it relevant because it is so much easier to find fools than not.
The second point is even worse. Contrary to popular assumptions, I have seen essentially no correlation between programming skill and religious position. For instance Larry Wall, who is about as involved with Perl as you can get, is very strongly Christian.
OK, he has ditched the obvious stupidities (eg literal Creationism) but there is no question about the sincerity or depth of his faith.
So no, just having people learn your favorite religion and becoming good at logic won't make them agree with you and won't make them intelligent.
Cheers,
Ben
PS Disclaimer. I am both a Perl programmer and an atheist. (The atheism came first.) I just found that I disagreed with the remark...
Re:Crutcher's Predictions for 2000 (Score:2)
You've really got to laugh at the cluelessness of the authors of that Time piece. Linux more important in embedded apps? What?!? Look, even if Linux completely replaced every other embedded OS the world, no-one would notice or care. We'd still all be salivating over the next release of KDE or Gnome or name your particular poison.
As as far as the great unwashed are concerned, it's those same advances in the desktop that will make Linux pop up on their radar for the first time. That's when Linux fever, incubated for ten years by us meme carriers, will literally sweep the world. Bye bye to Microsoft soon after, I think. I wouldn't call this a prediction really, it's a no-brainer.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
You mean like.. QNX? (Score:2)
Now there's a *nix for chips. And it scales too.
Nice GUI, and pretty *nix for a *nix.
Not as friendly as Linux, IMO, but the OS fits into what (?) 300K or something ridiculous like that. Oh, and it's real-time too boot. (no pun int)
I hate either-or predictions (Score:2)
Wireless instead of cable
I think he's flat-out wrong about Internet stocks. I think the bubble will burst, but not this year
Don't bet on it... (Score:2)
I saw some stuff like this on the local news after Xmas.. wasn't a large deal though, mainly just said that etoys.com sucked.
Also, I saw one tonight attacking ebay for allowing too much fake stuff available. It is amazing. There are lawyers representing large corps with call centers full of people going to ebay and searching for fake stuff and going after the sellers (looks like they'd really like to go after ebay too!).
I saw that on Dateline or 20/20 or one of those news shows last night.. Pretty interesting. No one will ever nail ebay for it though. If they did, they'd have to nail every single newspaper in the world that has a classified ads section.
Anyway, I think people are starting to realize that the main thing e-commerce does is to improve choice. The big thing that will happen to give e-commerce a shot in the arm is a "trust" system. People don't trust the internet. My parents are paranoid about giving any personal info online. Which is fine, but they have no problem giving info to people in stores, over the phone, etc... They don't trust the 'net because they don't understand it.
A lot of the problem is the viewpoint of the internet as an entity in itself, when it is not. People seem to think that once you put something "on the 'net" it's instantly available to anyone.. They see the 'net as a big evil thing, rather than as a network to allow people to interact with other people...
But anyway, it does look the the hype is FINALLY dying down. Thank God. Now we may resume the Information Age!!
The hype has just begun dude.. sorry, but it will get more intense before it dies down.
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Crutcher's Predictions for 2000 (Score:2)
1: Linux will be everywhere, period. 3rd world countrys will pick it up and run with it, and many embeded devices will use it and all the development will drive it like a rocket.
2: Microsoft won't see it comming in time, but will eventualy release office for linux, because they like being rich more than they like being in charge.
3: Steve Jobs will do something insane with apple, which will destroy their current market share, and then blam it on his underlings.
4: Transmeta will come out, Qualcom stock will plumet, and I wont be able to afford their devices.
5: Corel will give up on their linux distro, and just sell their damn software optimized for Red hat.
6: People who stayed home out of fear on new years will slowly convince themselves that Us academics were right about the real start of the new decade/century/newyear and REALLY party next new years.
7: Milk will spoil, because it always does.
I disagree on several points... (Score:2)
Linux has seen a remarkable rise in the high-end embedded space (Simulators, Industrial Appliances.) The company I work for used Linux as the realtime simulation engine for a brand new Class D Flight Simulator delivered in 1999. The RT UNIX system spec'd in the original bid cost over $50,000US for hardware, OS and devel tools. Our Linux solution cost less than $5000US for HW/OS/Tools. More significant savings will be realized during HW/SW maintenance over the projected 10+ year life cycle of the simulator.
Linux is likely to continue down into the Networked-Smart-Appliance market over the next 2 to 3 years, but Linux is too complex to ever be used in trivial devices such as egg-beaters and toasters.
Although Linux as a Home Desktop PC OS will be seen as a failure in 2000, Linux will continue a slow but steady rise onto Hi-Tech Corporate, University and Nerd-at-home desktops.
Penetration of Linux into the home will occur with the rise of Networked-Smart-Appliances such as dedicated Internet and networked 3D game devices. The emergence of Linux as a viable platform for networked 3D games was the unsung Linux story of 1999.(Unsung in the general mass media -- well known here at /. -- :o)
Jonathan Weesner
Jono@JunkFreePleaseWeesner.org
Encoding Barcodes? (Score:2)
4. Stores will start encrypting barcodes.
Can anyone comment on the practicality of this?
I can understand a largish or highly-secure business encoding their barcodes so that I can't take a Signal Technologies Palm III / laser scanner and spy on what their boxes of (say) nuclear weapons parts contain, not that I'd be close enough to read them.
But let's say the grocery store, (where I might want to keep a cross-store comparison of how much my favorite brand of Keilbasa costs), or Barnes and Nobles (where I might want to record the ISBN number in order to price-shop on Amazon later that day) -- I can see how they'd *like* to encode their barcodes, but how practical would it be for them to do so? Would they take things like the barcodes on the back of books, translate them onto a sticker and cover the original? That sounds like a lot of work -- imagine doing that with millions of books!
Or are there easier ways to do this than I am envisioning?
Also, if a given company uses barcodes (as part of an inventory-tracking system, say), aren't they encoded in a sense by relating to their internal system of organizing them? I'm clearly not an expert on barcoding, but I would imagine that if I scanned a few random barcodes, I would get results like "7685765t98" and "7685f345" -- would they be easily interpretable by someone without company-specific knowlege?
Would it be worthwhile for consumer-oriented businesses to go to the trouble to encode their barcodes?
just thoughts,
timothy
Re:Perl ends religion? *sigh* (Score:2)
The only realy content to what I said, asside from the humor, is that there is some small chance that being able to program would push people into slightly more logical though, i.e. nothing special about perl here.. that was part of the humor. This is by no means a forgon conclusion since it seems that a person can learn to think logically about one thing and irrationalliy about another. Hell, I even had roomate who was a religious nut cases who didn't believe in evolution and was studing biology.. go figure that one.
It just difficult to say what would happen since the technology that the general public has been given before has never been programmable beond when to start recording your TV show. Clearly, learning how to program won't make people stop believing in God, but it could make people think slightly more logically in some situations.. which should be really a good thing.
Jeff
Re:Linux and embedded systems (Score:2)
I'm still a little bit conrfused about why they said what they did though because Linux really kicks ass in the server world.. and we will probable see *something* in the next few years which says once and for all that microsoft is going noware in the server world. Open source is just too good at the server stuff.
I agree about the education thing.. and one thing to point out is that other countries (France and Mexic at least, right?) are moving all the schools to Linux. Is it possible that our schools will wiat too long and we will give a technilogical advantage to these other countries? It would kinda suck to have a generation of Americans that can only shop online while Mexico imports all our buisnesses because they have lots of cheap programming tallent.
What I really want to see is lots of programmable embedded systems.. so that the children of all these fuckers who can't think their way out of a paper bag will need to learn to program.. and will maybe become more logical thinkers then their parents. Who knows perl could be even be the beginning of the end for religion (I know I getting just plain silly here.. but one can hope).
I have an interesting correction to their MP3 prediction: The internet seems to have contributed a good deal of economic freedom to the arts in general (wintess online commics like Sluggy Frelance), but not to the music world. The solution is for artists to do exactly what the web comics do and commercialize directly. The only problem with this is that people will tend to keep a free mp3 and play it over and over and not get more. The solution to this is to include a web page (or at least links) with the mp3 and have the player's add a button to open up the page. this would allow the musicians to include visual art (so people will actually want ot look atthe page and wont just strip it from the file) and advertising directly.. and draw people back to their site to pay for shirts and other songs. mp3.com is just another label.. the artists really need to directly connect with their fans to make the real money.
We could also use a recommendation based radio system.. it could be as simple as a page which refreshes periodically to artists pages which send you sample mp3s.
A random prediction: we are probable ripe for a more serious intrest in electronic music from achedimic circles.. music theory could probable start taking things like wavelets and some newer math into account.. techno may really turn into the new classical that everyone wants to see.
A point I sould make about the e-commerce backlash prediction.. such a backlash will probable not effect the real technology stocks like MS, IBM, VA, RedHat, CISCO, etc. nearly as much as the stocks like Amazon and eToys.
Another random prediction: People (including open source developers) will become much more interested is practical applications of AI.. Slashdot will have a good AI to moderate down trolls.. and one of the serious mp3 players will implement some AI playlist stuff like I did in SmartPlay [freshmeat.net] (it's a little Gtk-perl mpg123 front end which uses a primitive AI and well though through user interface to decrease the time you waist fucking arround with your mp3 player.. but it's buggy as hell as I only wrote it to convince people with more free time that they sould rewrite it.. and to give myself a better player).
Wow.. I went on for a while..
Jeff
And when has TIME ever gotten it right? (Score:2)
host of taxes and fees to "level the playing field". This still won't help the Walmarts and Sears's, but it will probably have the effect of goosing up online prices a bit.
Many others here have already pointed out how clueless their opinion of Linux is, so I won't waste additional electrons except to remark how odd it was that these (*cough*) experts didn't have much to say about MicroDos's impending breakup.
BTW: This "Predictions for 2000" would have made an interesting slashdot article. Someone should have suggested we do this. Wait a minute -- *I* did
Re:consumer e-commerce will only grow (Score:2)
'Hi, I'm e-Steve.'
'Yo, e-Elaine.'
'Heya, e-Zeke, get it I'm e-zee, har, har.'
Don't believe me, we've already reached critical mass - there is such a thing call www.eemail.com.
Fear this header:
From: e-zeke@eemail.com
Re:Linux and embedded systems (Score:2)
As a high school student (tulare, ca), I must disagree with the idea that public education will pick up on linux/open source.
"they are cheap"- true, but hiring administrators for the district who understands the concepts of unix is not. Novell/windows admins are a dime a dozen, but those experienced enough to do the same task on large public school networks w/linux are going to be much more of an investment than just hiring one of those novell admins and not changing the current system's setup.
Linux is also still seen as a rebel, a second-best operating system to nt-admins who have never set down to learn anything about it, thus, those with the power to decide such things, will see it as too much of a risk when it comes to overhauling entire networks and things like that.
"they last a long time"- true again, but for network admins here, all they do to maintain their computers is make a single working copy of the regestry and copy it to the computers when something acts up. (all of them, all 100 in the district, have the same hardware). how hard is that?
as far as the education side, the saddest part, i have yet to meet anyone who was a staff member at High School level with linux/unix knowledge. they seem somewhat intimidated and scared of it. i have made repeated attempts through my time in high school for them to change their proxy setup to allow ftp access so i could reach crucial linux documents while i was in the media center, and this has really been laughed at.
the advantage of windows for the schools is it does not take a teacher to stand there and give lessons to new computer users of what to do-- after clicking so many buttons, they get the hang of it. on the other hand, a complete computer novice, would probably never get anywhere in linux as their first experience (atleast that is an educators POV)....
speaking from experience, but public education is afraid of linux/open source still....
Time on MP3zilla (Score:2)
Many problems with this. Here's four:
1) Raise your hand if you've ever given anyone any money for an illicit MP3.
2) Your average connection (mine, for example) is still 56k. Your average MP3 is what, 3-5 megs? Let's not break our "0" keys punching out the math on how much lifeblood downloading, say, the new Metallica album will suck outta you.
3) Three of the five (mostly famous) browsers I've got on my system consider ".mp3" to be a text file extension, so they save them to disk that way. That doesn't freak me out, but I'm a dork. It would be hard for my cute-but-normal little sister to click the little icon and listen to Jennifer Lopez in Xemacs, so I can totally see her thinking "MP3" is some kinda virus or something, because it looks like L;AKDSFGLVNAOINOWNAOIOAINSEOIU!@#$%^&*() x7000 and just sits there mysteriously silent. Dumber shit has happened.
4) MP3s sound real crappy. And don't gimme no audiophile quiz-show benchmarky thingees that say I'm wrong, or tell me how half-assed my soundcard is; my stuff us above-average, non-1337 stuff, and MP3s make me long for the crispy warmth of 8-tracks. I have about two thousand cds--because I really like music and buying things--and about one undeleted MP3; I can't even imagine paying for that kinda crappy bitstream. And I've actually paid for those big bad bloaty things Adobe makes, so it's not like I'm a warez dood. MP3s are last-resort, gotta-hear-that-song-tonight-and-never-again material.
Anyone got some more?
Re:Time on MP3zilla (Score:2)
Re 1: I've clicked on ad banners to find the secret password to gain access to MP3 sites. However, I'm doubtful that the servers in question were making a mint.
Re 2: The average connection time will get faster. There is also home versus work connections. At various places I've worked, there are MP3 areas for people to encode/download into and everyone can listen from there during the day. With ZIP drives and CDRWs it becoms easier to bring it home.
Re 3: I really can't say anything specific because I don't know what browsers you are refering to, but it seems like the mime-type for mp3s aren't set up right. This problem can occur on the server that servers the mp3, in the config in the browser, or in an outside config file (like .mailcap)
Re 4: I can't comment to much on this from my own experience since I can't tell the difference between cassette and CD audio, but one thing to bear in mind is that MP3s are popular. It's not just some media hype. MP3s are one of the things that are drawing nontechnical people to the Web, because they understand "free music". I think the people at Time kind of missed this because they are predicting that MP3s are going to make their strike at the music artists this year, when in fact MP3s are such a hit that they are making music artists more popular.
Time's Predictions Actually Better Than Expected (Score:2)
Wireless internet will catch on when prices drop. Bluetooth still has a way to go before its a success such as the fact that the security model is untested or that it hasn't been proved if Bluetooth does not interfere with other wireless communications. Read this article [zdnet.com] for more info...note that Microsoft has officially come out for Bluetooth since that article was published.
2.) I assume that this is mostly due to the fact that ecommerce companies like ValueAmerica [yahoo.com] and Etoys [yahoo.com] are getting slaughtered in the stock market. Especially with ValueAmerica making pronouncements about shifting away from consumer ecommerce to B2B ecommerce. Sorry, but consumer ecommerce is here to stay, too many people like buying things online. Also there's no offline shopping experience that can beat buying a book from Amazon or comparison shoppping for CDs on CDNow & Amazon. Maybe the prediction should be that consumer ecommerce will be dominated by a few major players while a majority of e-retailers (is that a word?) will cease to exist or matter in their current form. Similar to the portal wars and how Yahoo, AOL and MSN are the major players while everyone else who came out with a portal last year is in dire need of a new business plan.
3.)MP3s will crush CDs only when a viable car MP3 player with an optional IP address is available. I admit that I haven't bought as many CDs as I would have in the past couple of months because I had the songs I wanted on MP3, but I still had to buy some of those CDs when I wanted to play the songs in my car (I am a heavy duty commuter). Of course I could bought a burner and burned the MP3s but that's way too much trouble and then I'd really feel like a pirate then. Being able to download an MP3 to my home PC then sending it to my car MP3 player would effectively kill the need for me to ever buy a CD ever again.
4.) Silly reporter...why should the fact that Linux vs. MSFT is occuring in the server market mean that the same should happen in the embedded market. The major failing of Windows CE (officially a dud of the millennium [zdnet.com]) is that instead of writing an OS from scratch for the embedded market, MSFT squeezed Windows into as tiny an OS as possible and renamed it "wince"... the results have been horific. On the other hand PalmOS which was written for the handheld market has captured over 80% of the market.
In the same vein I expect that OS's written for specific devices or classes of devices will have more chance of dominating these markets than a pared down Linux (which is primarily a server OS). Of course I could be wrong, doubt it though.
5.) Yeah whatever.
6.) I'm glad the writer admitted that he/she predicted the same thing last year and was wrong. My only response to this is that the Internet, day traders and the current IPO mania has forever changed the face of the Internet. Yahoo selling at over 400 a share (why? How many banner ads could they possibly be selling) or Qualcomm at over 600 before the split (CDMA is no where near as good as what they have in Europe and yet...) are just signs of how crazy the market has become. Anyone who tells you they can predict what's going to happen in the near future is either feeding you a good line of BS or has a night job as a character from Lewis Carol's Alice Through The Looking Glass and is thus accustomed to madness and illogical unpredictability.
Re:Linux and embedded systems (Score:2)
Point 1: 90% of Administrators for School Computer Labs have absolutely no idea what's going on. They are usually teachers who just happened to be 'available' and knew how to force agonized children how to use Word and play Number Munchers. At least, when I was in high school I practically took over the computer labs in sheer ignorance of the people in charge (i.e. Lunchtime Quake Tournaments).
For people who do not have the ability to administer a Network-In-A-Box system, much less install Oregon Trail correctly, Linux would just be too much of a pain.
Point 2: I really don't think many schoolkids *need* to learn fundamentals involved with Linux. By that I mean Middle School and High School. Of course I'm not taking the benefit of the doubt with all the snazzy Wired-up "Schools of Tomorrow" with insane PIII Computer Labs running Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego all day. But in any case, the curriculums should be more involved with basic fundamentals computer use. As in, how to make the Font bigger for that Report for English Class. Sure, maybe there'll be something Linux-flavored that does all this someday, but of course, there's the Ignorant School Admin Point #1.
Point #3: As it is, if a kid is interested enough in Linux or any other fangdangled technological whatchamahoozit, he most probably would have already done his own self-study into it, as I'm sure many people have done in the past during the boredom of secondary education.
Conclusion- I disagree.
My predictions for the year 2000 (Score:2)
My predictions for the year 2000:
1. Linux will beat Windows CE by being deployable throughout the whole household like in embedded systems like phones, VCRs (if they aren't already obsolete by a digital form), microwaves and that sort of stuff.
2. Newer forms of digital storage based on wavelets are deployed for audio and video.
3. Slashdot finds a bulletproof system to prevent spamming. The system will exclude IP numbers from stubborn spammers...
Re:Linux and embedded systems (Score:3)
Whoa, there, Trigger!
Open source software is not at all about price tags. It's about things like reliability, peer review, consumers' freedom to fix things that are broken or make needed enhancements, and developers' freedom to reuse others' work (not necessarily in that order).
A side effect of open source software can often be a lower total cost of ownership, but it has never, ever been ``so that people don't have to pay for it''. You're confusing beer with speech.
It's particularly important to get this right, otherwise many businesses will shirk open source software because they'll believe they have to give their software away in order to make it open source.
--jim
My prediction for the new millenia: (Score:3)
(1) People lose interest in "first post"
(2) A few million poor people starve, and nobody cares
(3) New laws are passed, making "cyber-terrorism" a crime punishable by death, online copyright violation a serious felony, and linking to a website without permission will result in a revocation of your internet privileges (ie: you are cut off from the civilized world).
(4) Black market e-bay style auction sites arise, based on cryptographic tech, and people really do buy and sell organs, child pornography, children (for sex or adoption), and illegal weapons.
(5) Rip off tour promotors sell "sex in space" adventures that turn out to be a cramped, smelly airplane that flies high, and then decends fast enough to make you feel "weightless"
(6) Terrorists finally manage to nuke a major city in America
(7) Several high flying corporations fail trying to figure out how to profit from "open source" software, but then one succeeds, and OSS/free software stops being cool (sorry, I'm in a gloomy mood).
(8) Citizenship becomes unimportant, all that matters is who your insurance company is. The good ones maintain standing armies.
(9) Nobody works. Some people get rich sitting at desks and owning important intellectual property. Everyone else is unemployed. Oh, except for the sex workers--they work hard.
(10) Most of the world decends into a perpetual war, with extremists, fundamentalists, drug lords, and petty criminals battling it out for control over scarce and/or worthless resources in less privileged parts of the world (most of it).
I hope some of these come true... (Score:3)
Gazing at my 10hz crystal ball (Score:3)
2. "Linus Who?" Will be heard even less often, not because of enlightenment but of apathy.
3. Palm Pilots will graduate from the status of yuppie trophies and be used for something constructive like scanning barcodes at the supermarket or store and giving you a product review and summary of that business's practices, competitors, and ecology efforts.
4. Stores will start encrypting barcodes.
5. A.C. Clarke will admit his own prediction lists are much worse than mine.
6. Someone at COMDEX will wear an 8-track walkman, and will shortly be all the rage followig the vertical CD player revival of June '00.
7. The next NASA probe will be composed of used consumer goods, actually the CPU I'm using right now is on its way to the frontier. The old "Salvage 1" tv show will become reality.
8. Powerful AI machines will still play dumb and fool their makers for electric giggles. This will continue indefinately.
9. The hippest Raves will be ulta-quiet and only use lights and sub-sub woofers that shake your bowels.
10. Teenager size diaper sales soar.
and finally
11. Slashdot meta-moderators will never learn the difference between dissenting opinions and 'flamebait.' That will be the ultimate fall of this fun little forum.
12. Free Speech will continue to elude us.
Hey Time Digital, STFU (Score:3)
1. Wireless The year 2000 will bring the death of the cable. - NO- Just like, MSN pre-installed in Linux will bring the death of AOL. Will people stop getting horny from Qualcomm already? They make phones and good email software. Chill. Wireless? Great, I want all my conversations and computer communications picked up by people with scanners! I like getting my signals distrupted every 30 seconds! Wireless networks will not go mainstream this year.
2. The E-Commerce Backlash Admit. Ecommerce is here to stay. I go to Sam Goody and find the Matrix DVD I bought online for $10 shipped is $29.95 or some sh*t. Haha. I like price comparison shopping on shopper.com and pricescan.com and reading reviews on epinions and deja. Retail wont die but make no mistake, ecommerce is alive and well. -Wait- notice who has no ecommerce presence...hint...Time? No way!
3. The Revenge of MP3. MP3s are nice, but until people make the hardware like portable car mp3 players, it'll never be anything mainstream.
4. Linux Gets Small - It was a great year for Linux, but Pathfinder.com is still using Netscape as their web server. Linux will have tons of uses. This prediction isn't one.
5. Cartoons Are King - Not unless they start broadcasting Pokemon on the web daily. Or stop people from bootlegging movies and uploading them. (Notice the Time Warner plug in the article!)
6. The Stock Market - Dot.com stocks that dont have solid business plans have already dropped. TheGlobe.com, DrKoop.com, Quaokka.com. There are plenty more that are well below their IPOs highs. Solid moneymakers like AOL, EBay, Yahoo, PathFinder.com won't be affected.
Some of my own predictions: broadband will increase (buy Qwest and Cisco).
Transmeta will have a breakthrough development for the computer world sometime this year.
AOL will offer an advertising based free subscription or give away computers to attract more users.
TeamFortress 2 will rock.
This is actually already happening! (Score:3)
I'm already starting to this on the news on tv. I've seen a bunch of anti-ecommerce news recently: that this Christmas season, etailers had bunchs of problems delivering product and that customers were less than happy with their online experiences. Also, I saw one tonight attacking ebay for allowing too much fake stuff available. It is amazing. There are lawyers representing large corps with call centers full of people going to ebay and searching for fake stuff and going after the sellers (looks like they'd really like to go after ebay too!). But anyway, it does look the the hype is FINALLY dying down. Thank God. Now we may resume the Information Age!!
consumer e-commerce will only grow (Score:3)
The catalog business has been growing for years. There are more consumer catalogs than ever being mailed out. E-commerce is just a more effective medium. There's no reason for a "backlash" against consumer e-commerce when there has been no such backlash against catalog sales.
Granted, there will be a lot of b2b e-commerce, but there's already a ton of b2b catalog commerce, too. That hasn't devastated the consumer catalog industry.
What we have now is a lot of consumer e-commerce pioneers building their infrastructure by hand and trying to dominate large industries. No wonder they're profit-impaired. The original Sears catalog business was like that -- except that they went more slowly and allowed themselves some profits for a few decades -- but time brought changes along with an overall growth in catalog sales.
Sears's catalog business didn't survive the changes, but it wasn't any "backlash", and the industry didn't shrink. Quite the contrary.
Most companies in catalog commerce today are small outfits that outsource most aspects of their infrastructure and try to dominate a small market niche. Consumer e-commerce will grow overall, and grow in that direction. Most companies will outsource to a growing number of full-service e-commerce infrastructure providers, whose competition will make them vastly cheaper -- like the printing businesses used by catalogers today.
The industry will only grow as more and more niches are populated and the infrastructural costs plummet.
Linux and embedded systems (Score:4)
Where I think Linux will really shine is in educational systems. Computers are just now becoming what can truly be considered necessary for childhood education. Schools, I think, will find that Linux boxes serve as much better educational tools because they are very cheap, they last a long time, they allow for scalability of education (GUI environment for kiddies, good development environment for upper-age CS students), and it gives a much better understanding of how the technologies work which is what kids will need to know to compete in the marketplace. One of the downsides to Windows' efforts to simplify the desktop environment is that you can't learn as much as easily (not to mention the price skyrockets). Apple's already way to expensive for what it's worth (which is really the easy-to-use environment for the kiddies of which there are already several for Linux).
I see Linux making a much bigger impact where financial considerations are key. Open-source software is about providing software so people don't have to pay for it, and that's exactly what schools need. If this happens, I think their desktop 'sliver' will become much bigger and Linux will gain a stronger foothold in the home (I've already had one CS class in college that required you to setup a Debian system).
I think if Linux concentrates too much on developing for too many different types of platforms, they'll end up bloating themselves. It's doing several things good right now, but other packages do embedded systems better and embedded systems should be developed as such.
Just US$0.02. Feel free to disagree.