[KLUG Advocacy] Cringley's predictions for 2003

[Adam Williams]

On Thu, 2003-01-02 at 21:18, Bruce Smith wrote:
> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030102.html
> 
> I sure hope he's right about #9!!!
> 
> #10 is a no-brainer.  I personally doubt #7 will happen.
> 
> I also hope he's wrong about HP & Sun.  I hate to see that happen to any
> computer company (except maybe M$) but I'm not going to bet against Bob.
> 

1. HP/Compaq will continue its long slide to oblivion.

I hate Compaq with a foam at the mouth passion so the brain stem will be
gibbering with glee if this happens.  But the frontal lobes realize this
is a bad thing in the long run.

2. Dell gets bigger and bigger. 

Gee, about the only PC company I hate more than Compaq.  Their equipment
is crap, their support is worse, the support of Linux is very
dubious...  But they've got hordes of drooling sycophants wandering the
landscape muttering "I got a Dell!" and smiling about it.

3. At the same time, we'll see Microsoft's leadership 

I think he's probably right on this one.  At least in foreign markets M$
seems to be running scared.

4. If Linux is giving Microsoft fits, it is doing far worse to Sun
Microsystems

What UNIX guy doesn't have a fondness in his heart for Sun, and a secret
fantasy of replacing the furnace in his basement with one of their
Starfire servers...  But I think he's right.  Other than support
services it is less and less clear what concrete technology Sun can
bring to the table. But "Why buy a $100,000 Sun server when a $10,000
Linux cluster is comparable in every way?" I don't buy.  Silly man,
clusters suck at lots of things and are no way equivalent to one big box
(even when in fact that big box is really a cluster in a box, the 1000
jillabit switching fabric pretty much negates the clusterness).

5. Meanwhile, China, which will 

Beats the heck out of me.

6. And as I said last week, Microsoft will force Intel to Adopt AMD's

Nah.

7. In the meantime, Apple will announce a line of comput

Duh.

8. The V.92 modem standard still w

Modem? Whats a modem?

9. Microsoft's Palladium security initiative will bec

Six months ago I would have thought he was crazy, and there was no
hope.  But everything I've read recently makes me think - he's probably
right.  I'm not exactly certain what happened.

10. Still, security will be a bigger thing than e

Whatever.  I don't care about Virii or SPAM.

11. I wish it wasn't so, but by the end of 2003

Right on.  Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels,  when even
religion doesn't want them around anymore.

12. Hollywood will come up with another new cop

This is like predicting sun rise.

13. 802.11a loses out to 802.11g. 

Ok.

14. I'm sorry to be mysterious about this o

Yawn.  The status quo is so detached and deluded it is beyond dismay,
and "terrorism" is now anything I don't like done by people I am
uncomfortable with.

15. And finally, with the continued (and to me totally inexplicable)
rise of web logs,

Searching web logs? Why?  He implies there is something in them we care
about.  Dreadfully dull crap, thats what 99.999999% of web logs are. 
People!  Go outside, lie down in front of a bulldozer in protest, see a
movie, have sex - do something, but please don't think your helping
society by posting any more dribble to your web log.