Cringely's 2006 Results, 2007 Predictions 148
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.'"
69% is a lot better than most prognosticators (Score:2)
It's only 60% (ish) (Score:2)
Actually, according to TFA it's only 60% (9 out of 15 correct), though he claims that three of the others may also come good in the immediate future.
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Maybe 2007's forecast [gearbits.com] will fare better.
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Consider two examples:
- Stephens wrote plenty about the Red Box Myth (the idea that Apple would bring Wi
Question for 2007: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Question for 2007: (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Question for 2007: (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Question for 2007: (Score:4, Informative)
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the shiatloads of DRM in vista alone are a good reason to downgrade.
Re:Question for 2007: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Question for 2007: (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
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When a company or consumer buys a new PC with Vista preinstalled, part of the purchase price is for the OS. Just because they're not buying a boxed upgrade version doesn't mean they're not buying Vista. This is how Microsoft sold the vast majority of XP, so there's not much of a change here.
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Even a home
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I have to ask...what's the difference between Win2K and Win2K Pro? I've never seen Win2K, only the "Pro" variety. I can only find Windows 2K Pro, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server.
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I have to ask...what's the difference between Win2K and Win2K Pro?
You're right. The lowest level of W2K seems to be professional. Sort of like Olives where the medium sized ones are "Extra Large". Never paid much attemtion since I detest W2K (XP is much better) and we wouldn't have deployed it at work anyway because it offered us no significant advantages and had a lot of problems for us relative to Windows 98.
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True, unless of course they are buying it to run under Boot Camp on a Mac.
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Of course not. If you buy something it's yours to do with as you see fit.
No one has ever truly bought an OS from Microsoft.
Refreshing to see a pundit... (Score:5, Interesting)
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to admit to his lies, quit punditry, and bugger off out of the public eye
for ever.
7/15 tops.
4) More bad news for Sun. That's true.
http://news.com.com/Sun+recoups+server+market+shar e/2100-1010_3-6108453.html
looks like sun's best server market share improvement in about 5 years.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=1y&s=SUNW&l=on&z=m &q=l&c=&c=%5EIXIC
looks like sun shareholders are happy about what's happening too.
So
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http://news.digitaltrends.com/article9178.html [digitaltrends.com]
I like number 10 (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I like number 10 (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
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Anyone in Canada looking to switch ISPs should check out http://www.canadianisp.com/ [canadianisp.com]. They have a list of ISPs in most major cities (82 for me in Toronto) complete with customer reviews.
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The Telcos are full of $hit (Score:2)
number one road block is poor infrastruture, and 90%+ of all fiber in
the ground in most areas is dark fiber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fiber [wikipedia.org]
The capacity is more than there, and eurpoe and japan already have
bi-directional 100Mb connections, and here is the REAL kicker.
The US tax payer already paid to upgrade the internet to the tune of $200 billion,
and it was SQUANDERED !
http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm [newnetworks.com]
http://www.mun [muniwireless.com]
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I heard about the DNS vs OpenDNS buzz; who didnt? googling around for telecom italia dns opendns [google.com] there are thousands of blogs and forums saying that "Telecom Italia" users benefit from using OpenDNS...
At a certain point, even major Italian newspapers (as "Repubblica" here [repubblica.it]) started spreading that info; and OpenDNS even thanked them! [opendns.com]
Well.. here are my 2eurocents:
Easy prediction on DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Easy prediction on DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
The companies that create DRM schemes, of course!
Re:Easy prediction on DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Flawed alternative problem in case 2:
No technological solution exists for a social problem.
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Microsoft's DRM scheme for the original XBOX worked pretty well. Sure, there were mod chips, but most people didn't have the time and energy to use them.
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YA RLY. Microsoft indeed made a lot of mistakes with its DRM scheme for XBOX, but that doesn't mean the DRM scheme didn't largely serve its purpose anyway. This is a testament to the fact that DRM schemes don't always have to be perfect in order to be effective.
Hardware mods for DRM schemes are pretty much always going to be possible. But they're also the least of the problems for the manufacturers, especially due to the DMCA. Using the DMCA, manufacturers can make it difficult to obtain the equipment
Not Sony! (Score:2)
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By which time the company that created the DRM will have received their payment and have already laughed all the way to the bank
Likewise as before, the company will have received their payment, and probably have been hard at work on the next iteration ready for t
All DRM's cracked? (Score:2)
Please point me at a crack for the iTunes 5 AES version of FairPlay. Really, I want to start buying from iTMS again.
The python debugger script for Windows only gets half credit, since it's not a crack but a workaround.
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A bit wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
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... (Score:4, Funny)
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Canada isn't another country? I'm sure they'll be interested to hear that.
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A decent number from Japan, too, so we're on our way to a true World Series, I'd say.
Re:A bit wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
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/me hangs head in shame at poor taste of young Brits
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Under the rock (Score:3, Informative)
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Gnarls Barkley - Crazy won a shitload of awards and was the best selling song of last year. BREAKING NEWS: You live under a rock.
Yeah, but it wasn't Internet-only for more than a week (unless you insist on counting that it was leaked months in advance), and even that was just a promo - a big regular release has been planned from the beginning, and it didn't get awards before that release.
"Still, no Internet-only song wins a Grammy or is even recognized as existing."
11. Intel rebrands self and no one notices (Score:2, Insightful)
Did this happen? Intel changes their campaign up every year,
and they now use "Leap Ahead"...but there's been no
real rebranding as far as i can tell.
I predict Cringley is going to get even more annoying and
no one will even notice.
Re:11. Intel rebrands self and no one notices (Score:4, Informative)
Old Logo [krytyk.pl] and now
Did someone actually care? nope.
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See? [intel.com]
umm 69%? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Oops, my bad. Not Zonk...for once. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oops, my bad. Not Zonk...for once. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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You must be new here.
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MS support? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft supporting another company (Apple)? What an unexpected event.
Really, if this is a prediction, fire Nostradomus.
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Cringly seems to be basing that prediction on the previous prediction... That Cell yields would be a problem. Seeing how IBM just last week announced considerable success with making Cell on a smaller process, I wonder if he wrote
Bruce Willis will save you... (Score:2)
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Bruce made a great hero, but personally I'm betting on the other guys [transformersmovie.com]. :-)
As Martha Stewart would say... (Score:2)
If Cringely is sad, then that's a good reason for the rest of us to be happy.
Tecos and cablecos raped our asses for decades (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Yes, because we all know that executives at large companies pay the ultimate price if they swindle the public. I know I'd be very worried given the punishment given in the highest profile example: Enron.
Enron - The Crime: A group that wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more than $2 billion in pension plans. The Punishment: Lay: No punishmen
Re:Tecos and cablecos raped our asses for decades (Score:5, Informative)
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I wouldn't be bragging about 15 milliBytes a second...
-metric
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Verizon offers 50M/10M. And it really goes that fast. This is in the boonies too, you don't have to live in your parent's closet in an over-crowded suburb.
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Yet Another Internet Crash Prediction (Score:2)
Ah yes, once again someone predicts that the Internet (or major portion thereof) will "collapse" at a certain point! Which would be frightening, except that such predictions have been made on a regular basis for quite some time.
Robert Metcalfe used to regularly predict this, each time moving the target date when it didn't happen on schedule. It appears that Cringely has decided to pick up the ball and keep it going. If I'm counting correctly, the Internet was supposed to have collapsed under the weigh
This guy... try 40%, anyone have to add to this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, wrong. Not to mention that I wrote something about Apple moving in this direction a year and a half ago. This is no "prediction" its writing on the wall.
2) I said OS X would run on generic Intel hardware, though Apple wouldn't support it. This is true in the sense that people have made OS X run on generic Intel hardware, but APPLE hasn't, so the item is wrong.
There are a number of technical reasons that this will likely not happen. Yes, wrong.
3) More products, services, and a stock split for Google. I was right about the first bits but that's like predicting sunset will come. The split didn't happen because I never realized how much cash Google was going to generate -- far more than they can even spend. So the item is wrong.
Yeah, wrong
4) More bad news for Sun. That's true.
I might say that sun really has remained the same. If you use stock price as an indicator of "bad" then they are neither good nor bad. I might disagree with this assesment. Wrong.
5) IBM customers revolt. It is happening slower than makes sense, but yes, they are revolting. True.
Ok, whatever.
6) More Vista delay. I'm going to claim this one because the Vista that's just appearing was delayed twice in 2006 alone and is a shadow of what it was intended to be. True.
Yeah, no. You were wrong. Vista shipped in 06, I've seen the cd's myself.
7) PS3 is in trouble as is Howard Stringer. This is all true. The PS3 was late to market, the blue laser diode shortage has hurt the company, developers aren't amused, and the word inside Sony is that Sir Howard is toast. True.
Right.
8) WiMax will suffer under Sprint Nextel. My feeling here was that merging the two cell companies would be too distracting for them to do very much with their top asset (in my view) -- all those WiMax licenses. Since they didn't roll out much of anything in 2006, I'd say this one is true.
Not sprints fault. The standard hasn't really been ratified. There are only a few makers of the silicon necessary to drive the antennas. This has nothing to do with sprint and everything to do with the hardware. I'd say this is wrong.
9) Media Center PCs still won't take off as they try to compete with cheaper embedded devices. True.
Yeah, about right.
10) TiVo will be bought. Obviously wrong, though I still don't see the company surviving as an independent. Wrong.
No purchase, wrong.
11) Intel will rebrand itself and nobody will notice. Intel did, we didn't -- true.
Intel did not rebrand. They launched two new TV ads a few product logos - but they have the same "feel" of the last 15 years of advertising. I wouldn't really call that a "rebranding" effort. So, wrong.
12) No desktop OS or PC from Google. People (not me) were absolutely convinced this time last year that Google was going head-to- head against Windows. Nope. It didn't happen, and won't. I was correct.
Ok, right.
13) Skype won't make much, if any, money for eBay in 2006 (or 2007). Skype got a lot of press and moved a long way toward building a better service that makes more business sense, but the company is still at least a year away from making money. True.
Ok. Right
14) Yahoo will surprise us. Wrong. Yahoo is in a crisis from which the company may not recover with current management. Sigh.
Ok. Right.
15) Apple will license technology from Burst. They should have by now but the companies are still fighting in court. For those following the fight, a hearing on February 8th will lead to a decision less than a month later that will tightly define this patent battle in a way that will make one
Re:This guy... try 40%, anyone have to add to this (Score:2)
Concerning WiMax and Sprint: Just because it's not Sprint
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With sprint he says: "WiMax will suffer under Sprint Nextel. My feeling here was that merging the two cell companies would be too distracting for them to do very much with their top asset (in my view) -- all those WiMax licenses. "
Sprint can't in good concience ship cards to consumers let alone do a wide spread deployment of hardware knowing that the silicon i
Intel DID rebrand (Score:4, Informative)
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The other missed prediction (Score:2)
Nerd TV [pbs.org]
An overstatement, but probably yes (Score:2)
I don't think that the net is going to crash. Or even slow down for everyone. I do think, however, that cable ISPs might have big problems administering networks. The local cable ISP where I live sends me flyers in the mail every week, at least, explaining how I can get my entire home entertainment needs packaged up. They seem to be doing a gigantic sale to a wide market, and I have for a long time suspected that they are not putting as much work into the technical side
Imminent collapse of the Net predicted, news at 11 (Score:2)
If something could have killed the Net, it's P2P. Yet, it is still humming along just fine. A single dedicated file sharer can easily consume the equivalent in bandwidth of an entire neighborhood worth of crappy pixelated YouTube video viewing, and there are many dedicated file sharer already. My guess is that Akamai and Google's servers a
What in God's name is he babbling about? (Score:2)
What does how much cash a company generates have to do with a stock split? Nothing (well, generating lots of cash makes a split slightly more, rather than less, likely.)
Does he think that a stock split somehow raises capital
emerge cringely (Score:2)
my predictions (Score:2)
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Vista will receive a cold welcome from the
user market, due to intrusive DRM
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half of my 2007 preditions will be wrong
Hey, I think I will get at least 50% predictions correct!Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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You're talking crap. Several years ago, I tried encoding 320kbps MP3s of Dark Side of the Moon into 320kbps OGGs. One frequent cymbal sound was VERY noticeably changed. Go ahead, try it for yourself. Re-encoding with a different algorithm tends to yield terrible results.
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Perhaps with that particular recording, but in general most people wouldn't notice. See the reply above. Something like Dark Side of the Moon is a bit different than the low-dynamic-range recordings we typically get today in popular music.
Not true -- look closer: (Score:2)
6) isn't a no-brainer. After all, Sony needs to be in a situation where its current supply of PS3s is insufficient for demand. That may not happen, in which case IBM's current rate of Cell production is just fine.
7) is not a prediction. It's a "contrary-to-fact" statement ("I would, if there were" -- but there aren't so he doesn't) and a present-tensed declaration: "business is, Microsoft is... I am not making this up".
So, no, he ain't making solid predictions, so we can go back to rea
IBM's Customers will Revolt (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/predictions/bob/2006/
However, Cringley goes into more overall depth in a previous article.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20
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.
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While there may be some case for arguing that IBM's outsourcing business is failing to deliver on expectations, that part of the IBM organization is far from being the top contributor to IBM's revenues, and even less to profits. That honour goes to the IBM software business, which is in fact going from strength to strength on the back of its
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os x is only runnable on specific mac-branded intel platforms.