Cringely's 2006 Results, 2007 Predictions

Underpants writes "Bob Cringely posts the results of his 2006 predictions (only 69% successful, so Bob is sad). He also lists his calls for 2007; none are particularly shocking, but some are at least interesting. 2007 predictions from the article: '4) No one DRM technology emerges as the winner and the RIAA begins to back off as it loses a few legal cases. Still, no Internet-only song wins a Grammy or is even recognized as existing. 9) Zune 2.0 appears, isn't brown, but still nobody buys it. 10) The year the net crashed (in the USA). Video overwhelms the net and we all learn that the broadband ISPs have been selling us something they can't really deliver.'"

Question for 2007:

[Futurepower(R) (558542)]

Will Vista be the Zune of operating systems?

Re:Question for 2007:

[Rosco P. Coltrane (209368)]

Why? because it's brown [microsoft.com] or because it's expensive?

Re:Question for 2007:

[Ucklak (755284)]

The bare bones Xbox360 costs just as much as the OS for Ultimate Vista. You can do more with $400 on an Xbox than a media with a paid-for key with Vista.

Re:Question for 2007:

[gkhan1 (886823)]

Seeing as it's gonna come preinstalled on pretty much every new computer sold in the next year, I doubt it. There's gonna be dozens (if not hundreds) of millions of Vista users by the end of the year. Believe it

Re:Question for 2007:

[gkhan1 (886823)]

It's an idiotic comparison. ME was an in-between, a sideshow to keep the customers happy (and look how well that went) while the real OS was being developed. Vista is one of the largest investments microsoft has ever made. They're gonna push it hard. And virtually everyone who buys it (certainly corporations) won't care one iota about all the DRM stuff. "Look at all that pretty glass!" is going to be way, way more important.

Re:Question for 2007:

[unother (712929)]

I don't think anyone is going to "buy" Vista. At least, not in a fundamental sense. Certainly, corporations won't... most large companies are just moving from 2000 to XP, and that's only because Microsoft has pulled the support rug from under them. For the average company there is not one compelling reason to move forward quickly.

It's not like this is rocket science. Large companies were still running Windows 3.1 until 1997, and then moved to Windows NT 4. The move from that to 2000 was about five years ago. The move from Windows 3.1 to NT was obviously needed due to sheer obsolescence; the move from NT to 2000 was the same, albeit to a smaller degree (USB support, AD support).

Vista is really an OS for consumers and to ensure Microsoft has a new product as promised. I see nothing good coming from Vista in the end. In many ways, it is the new ME: a stop-gap OS...

Refreshing to see a pundit...

[Dobeln (853794)]

...going through their predictions list for once. Also, he played the umpire quite well - that's some pretty harsh judgements. (Wrong on iPhone/iTV - heh.)

I like number 10

[Jack Malmostoso (899729)]

In Italy this is already happening, with the main ISP (Telecom Italia) faking DNS problems to cover up the fact that they just can't deliver all the ADSL they sold. Despite the fact that they shape Bittorrent (and other P2P) traffic...

Re:I like number 10

[SpectralDesign (921309)]

Curious!

I'm on Rogers HighSpeed in Canada, and lately they've been shaping BT traffic, and the past few months having intermittent connectivity issues -- just a couple or few days ago the service wasn't working, but the lights on the modem all appeared fine... Needless to say, I didn't want to call customer support to be on hold for an hour or more and finally be told that they were working on the problem and to try it again the next day (useless!) so after a few hours and several resets of the modem I decided to try a ping from my router and lo and behold, it worked...

I punched in the IP for a DNS server that I knew of, and used that to get the numbers for OpenDNS and now have my router issuing those with DHCP requests instead of the Rogers DNS servers. Funny -- everything has been working just fine since I made that change.

Is Telecom Itialia also owned by Ted Turner?!? At any rate, it seems they went to the same "We've Oversubscribed, What Can We Do Now?" convention as each other.... Bastards!

Easy prediction on DRM

[Rosco P. Coltrane (209368)]

No DRM emerges as a winner? of course not, nobody wins with DRM, not even the record companies or the artists, as consumers hate it and it drives sales away...

Re:Easy prediction on DRM

[Dogers (446369)]

Oh, somebody always wins with DRM.

The companies that create DRM schemes, of course!

Re:Easy prediction on DRM

[StringBlade (557322)]

Not really, because their DRM scheme either becomes a publicity nightmare (like Sony's rootkit) or it gets cracked very shortly after it's released and all those months (or years) of research and development are for naught, forcing them to start over again from scratch.

I view DRM scheme creators in a similar light to anti-virus software makers: their task is never-ending because they are attacking the symptoms of a problem, not the problem itself and it's a very thankless job.

A bit wrong...

[Karganeth (1017580)]

2007 prediction - "Still, no Internet-only song wins a Grammy or is even recognized as existing."

This already happened in the UK in 2006. Crazy by Gnarls Barkely went to number 1 on the charts without having a single physical copy on sale. It is one of the best songs of 2006. It stayed at nubmer one for nine weeks.

Re:A bit wrong...

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

That's the UK, Bro. It's not real if it don't happen Stateside.

Re:A bit wrong...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya (195424)]

Isn't the UK the market where a Celphone ringtone hit the pop charts?

umm 69%?

[atari2600 (545988)]

From the article:

That is my worst performance EVER. I got nine of 15 predictions correct for a 60 percent average. In my defense I'll point out that just because I am wrong now doesn't mean I'll still be wrong in another week. Three years ago I predicted Intel would support AMD's 64-bit instruction extensions, but they took 53 weeks to do so, making me off by seven days. I think that by the end of February, 2-3 of these predictions could still swing the other direction.

Editors: Please RTFA? Thanks.

Re:Oops, my bad. Not Zonk...for once.

[Vellmont (569020)]

I'm the submitter, and that figure was my typo

And it's the editors job to find and correct obvious mistakes. Hence the "edit" of editor.

MS support?

[headpushslap (583517)]

"Microsoft is discussing internally how to help Sony from going under, since that would create a raft of antitrust problems for Redmond. I am not making this up."

Microsoft supporting another company (Apple)? What an unexpected event.

Really, if this is a prediction, fire Nostradomus.

Tecos and cablecos raped our asses for decades

[crovira (10242)]

We were supposed to have FTTH (fiber to the home) 20 years ago.

We've been paying surcharges to get FTTH for 20 years.

To date the Telcos and cablecos have delivered 0 inches of FTTH. Not an inch of fiber has been laid.

And now America is quantitatively and qualitatively behind, in an area where we were the leaders, only to get surpassed by anybody who's actually laid in some FTTH.

The difference of having bandwidth as opposed to starving for it is, well just imagine yourself back before the internet. Imagine yourself having to use carbon paper. Life was a lot slower then.

Now with uTube and MoviesOnDemand, VideosOnDemand and the thirst for all kinds of streaming media, the demand for band is going to collapse the copper infrastructure. It wont melt the wire down as much as it will vaporize it in a coronal flare.

If you work in management for a telco or a cableco, look for Federal indictments to come to your office before the decade is out.

Re:Tecos and cablecos raped our asses for decades

[Christianfreak (100697)]

I have FTTH from Verizon. I live in a suburb of Dallas. 15mB down 2mB up, 300+ TV channels (all digital) and phone service. Its all about $120. I'm very happy with the service.

Re:

[kfg (145172)]

Why don't they (the RIAA) just lossy-encode and decode all songs before releasing them on CD?

Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just use a tin can on a string for a microphone?

KFG

Re:Help for the RIAA

[dangitman (862676)]

Because recompressed files are perfectly acceptable to most people, who wouldn't even notice the difference. Only a miniscule number of people would find it "unacceptable." And most of them probably couldn't hear the difference anyway - it's all ego like those "Monster Cables" and other shit that appeals to "audiophiles."

Re:11. Intel rebrands self and no one notices

[by Anonymous Coward]

They did rebrand.

Old Logo [krytyk.pl] and now ... New Logo [krytyk.pl].

Did someone actually care? nope.

IBM's Customers will Revolt

[Mr Pippin (659094)]

Just read here:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/predictions/bob/2006/p rediction_bob_20060104_000992.html [pbs.org]

However, Cringley goes into more overall depth in a previous article.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_200 60518_000897.html [pbs.org]

MANY IBM employees DO feel this way, btw. IBM appears to be spending little in the way of future product development (including feature enhancements to current products), other than just outright buying companies and incorporating their products. Stock performance has been mediocre for years.

Sooner or later, that kind of internal attitude starts showing up to your customers.

Intel DID rebrand

[aztektum (170569)]

The fact that there are quite a few posts saying Cringely got that one wrong makes it look like he was in fact right. They dropped the Pentium brand name as their primary line, a name that they had been using for ~13 years. How many times have you looked at a software box and seen "Pentium Required/Recommended" over those last 13 years? The reason no one noticed is because it isn't as big a deal. Yes the Core 1/2 chips offer better power, performance and aren't as hot, but the average computer buyer doesn't look at hardware like that. They look at what software will work on it, Windows? Check. Office? Check. An Intel or AMD sticker only matters to zealots anymore.