dive into mark

Looking Back

Fimoculous: 2001 Year in Review. “When I started this “list of 2001 lists,” I assumed that I would reach some conclusions; that once it’s all over, I would have learned something; that I would have something to say. But 200+ links later, I’ve learned nothing from the cacophony.” Yup, 200 links. Hey, it beats Dick Clark.

MP3Wire: Winners and Losers of 2001. Biggest loser: net music industry. Biggest winner: laywers. *sigh*

Google: 2001 Timeline. In convenient horizontal scrolling format. *grr*

Dan Gillmor: The year in tech. The Justice Department and nine of the states prosecuting the Microsoft antitrust case snatched a humiliating defeat from the jaws of victory. And other poignant memories.

PC World: 2001: The Technology in Quotes. The idea that Web services solve all known problems is lunacy…. It’s like an English-speaking person saying, ‘I just called a French-speaking person and I can’t understand a word he is saying,’ and for someone to say, ‘I can solve the problem; why not call them on a cell phone?’ (Larry Ellison)

Inside Mac Games: Mac Games 2001: Year in Review. The road to OS X, however, has been somewhat bumpy.

Washington Post: 2 Steps Forward, 2 Steps Back in 2001. This wasn’t quite the year tech stood still — sometimes it outright retreated.

Low End Mac: Apple Takes It In the Chin in 2001. Almost the entire personal computer industry is taking it on the chin. Apple’s loss of $25 million is actually a pretty good showing in this climate. Still, it’s depressing to see sales drops in three of four categories.

ZDNet: 2001: The year technology shrunk. Wireless started the year being the great hope of the industry, and it’s still in there despite everything.

CNN: Top Technology Stories of 2001 #1: Segway. #2: Code Red.

Washington Post: Dot-Com Toll Above 500 in 2001. 7,000 to 10,000 Internet companies remain in business. That would mean that no more than 10 percent of the sector went out of business during the past two years.

MacFixit: Toolbox Awards 2001. Rewind, Snapz Pro, TinkerTool, and LaunchBar take home top awards.

PCWorld: Was 2001 Microsoft’s Big Year? Crime pays.

Boston.Internet.Com: Badtrans Tops List of 2001 Virus Threats. “CA said its results indicate that more than 90 percent of 2001’s top threats used e-mail as their primary means of propagation.” Thank you, Outlook. Clippy 2002: “It looks like you’re writing a virus, would you like some help?”

MacWorld: 17th Annual Editors’ Choice Awards. ZBrush ($292), Photoshop Elements ($99), MOTU 828 ($795), BBEdit ($119), Final Cut Pro ($999), LightWave 3D ($2495), Digital Elph ($499), RoboLab ($230), Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 ($45), Vector Works 9 ($895), REALBasic ($150), GeForce3 ($499), Formac Gallery 1740 (flat panel monitor, $899), Office X ($499), AccountEdge ($249), Palm m505 ($449), QuicKeys X ($60), BrickHouse ($25), Epson Stylus C80 ($149), Pioneer DVR-A03 (DVD writer that writes DVDs that can play in consumer DVD players, $649), and Wacom’s Cintiq tablet ($1899). Total cost: $11995. Realizing you still only use your Mac for downloading pirated music and surfing free porn: priceless.

Looking Forward

Wireless Factor: One PC Maker Will Rule in 2002. My money’s on Dell.

ZDNet: The Year Ahead: Will It See Linux on the Desktop?. That’s funny, I’m already seeing Linux on my desktop. Incidentally, this is the only Linux story that ZDNet seems to know. Like the old yarn that the press only knows three tech stories: “Apple is dead”, “Microsoft is evil”, and “Java is the future”, and only asks two questions: “Is Apple still dead?” and “Is Microsoft still evil?” Now we can add to that: “Will Linux take over the desktop next year?” No.

LinuxWorld: 10 Linux Predictions in 2002. #2: Linux desktop will appear in public places.

The Nando Times: Scripps Howard Predictions for 2002. Americans will flock to sidewalk cafes and suburban bistros. And use their wireless Internet-enabled Linux laptops, no doubt. (Hey, I can say that, I have one.)

Independent: How to have a PC perfect 2002. Thinking small and personal is the key to the web. … The sex industry, of course, is famously profitable. Hmm, maybe they should have split up those two paragraphs a bit further.

NRO Weekend: The 2002 Forecast. First the bad news: Sorry, but the recession looks here to stay. Thanks for the tip.

Jaharmi’s Irreality: MacWorld San Francisco 2002 Predictions. I really think Apple is going to do something with their server lineup.

The Australian Age: Big Australians head overseas. Australian companies are cashed up and set to aggressively expand overseas in 2002. No, really.

BusinessWeek: In 2002, “Energy Will Be A Surprise” Q: How many of the pundits made accurate predictions for this year? A: None. Hmm.

CNN Money: Tech Investor Predictions for 2002. I didn’t read the article, I just thought the headline was so damn funny. In a personally-I-only-invested-$2000-in-Red-Hat-and-sold-it-for-$95 kind of way. Here’s a hot tip: invest in mattress companies; once people get jobs, that’s where they’ll start stuffing their money.

Salon: 2001 Nothing Personal Readers’ Choice Awards. The celebrity most likely to suffer a Mariah-esque meltdown in the coming year: Winona Ryder. Runner-up: Britney Spears. Justin dumps her for Christina Aguilera. Then she’ll get busted for shoplifting. Finally, in a last-ditch effort to save her flagging career, she’ll do a Playboy spread, head for Vegas and marry a blackjack dealer named Spike. All I heard was “blah blah Britney blah blah Playboy spread blah blah blah.”

Cory Doctorow: 2002: The Carpetbaggers Go Home Blogs are about 95 percent of the way to being full-fledged news-sources, and the difference between the bloggers of the world and CNN is a couple of percentiles and several billion dollars.

Hack in the box: Gadget predictions for 2002. Personally, I’d like to see wireless broadband or in fact any sort of broadband become more affordable here in Malaysia. Personally, I’d like to see Malaysia.

Dr. Dobbs Journal: Next Year’s News. As a service to our readers who have better things to do than to read the stupid news every day, we present the stupid highlights of next year’s Macintosh news.

Spudsilo: Ten Predictions for 2002. #1: The ‘Hunt for Osama’ will die out as a news story by late January. Early spring will bring some new, unrelated event that will monopolize the nation’s attention. Resistance is futile, you will be assim…mmm, donuts.

InfoWorld: Stand by for more nasty web attacks in 2002. Because devices like the Microsoft Corp. Pocket PC 2002 and Nokia Communicator can be plugged into a desktop computer to download information, they are susceptible to some of the same computer viruses and worms that infect PCs.

CNN Tech: 20 factors that will change PCs in 2002. Your desktop PC in 2004: Two years from now, your desktop system will be slimmer and trimmer. Flat-panel screens will replace bulky CRTs, and rewritable-DVD drives and fast graphics subsystems will turn your PC into a movie lover’s dream. CPU and RAM: 4- to 5-GHz microprocessor with 512MB of DDR memory and a 600-MHz system bus. Hard disk: From 300GB to 400GB on a Serial ATA bus. Removable storage: Rewritable DVD and — yes — the unsinkable 1.44MB floppy. Internet connection: Cable or DSL broadband if you’re lucky; 56-kbps modem if not. Video: 3D graphics card with 128MB of video RAM. Display: 18- to 21-inch flat-panel LCD screen capable of 1600 by 1200 resolution. Ports: USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394. Input devices: Wireless (Bluetooth) mouse and keyboard. Operating system: Some version of Windows (you expected Linux, perhaps?) Other: An 802.11b wireless network designed for users with more than one PC. Price: $1,500 to $2,000. You know, my Apple //e originally cost about $2000.

MacWorld: Readers Offer Their Predictions for 2002. A Power Mac G5, a redesigned iMac, and a Mac with a 1GHz processor topped the 2002 wish list.

Year-End Open Source Thoughts

Daemon News: FreeBSD Foundation Announces Java License for FreeBSD. Specifically, the JDK and JRE will now be included “out of the box”, which was previously impossible because binary distributions require a license from Sun.

Tim O’Reilly: What’s Next for Linux and Open Source? [via Zimran Ahmed] Right now, many of these applications are Web-based and consumed through the browser, but with the rise of what are now being called Web Services, we are starting to think of Internet sites as if they were large-scale software components. One of the biggest challenges facing the open source community is to create a next-generation operating system for the Internet that defines open and interoperable rules for creating and using such components.

John Robb: After a day or two of reflection on the open source debate…

Doc Searls: I’ve heard that ‘you pay for what you get’ argument so many times … if the YPFWYG principle applied to everything, the best spouses would be high-priced prostitutes and gigolos.

Julian Bond: Open Source: The Non-Debate. Note that there are no links in this blog entry. I refuse to add to UserLand’s success at this by contributing to the Blogdex, Daypop and Google ratings.

Daniel Abrams: Every software user hates the idea that the software they depend upon will become obsolete in some manner. The company may stop listening to its users, the product may be sold to another company, the company may close, management may change, the product may be end of lifed, changed for the worse, targeted towards a different market, taken in new directions, the terms of use may be changed in ways the user finds unacceptable, etc. When this happens in the commercial world, there is little that can be done. In the open source world, if any of these things happen, and the software is well regarded, with an active user base, it is very likely that some other individual or company will continue to maintain and improve the software.

Note that the basic problem here (software obsolescence) is not specific to closed source software. Open source software can fall into disuse through lack of interest. But closed source software can fall into disuse even when there is plenty of interest, because users can not become developers.

I leave you this year with this question: if Userland goes out of business, what happens to Frontier? Manila? Scripting wizards like Eric Soroos? What happens to hosting companies like Weblogger.com if Frontier is susceptible to the next-generation Code Red, or has some other security hole? I’d love to have an official statement ensuring that these wonderful products will live on as open source, even if Userland goes under. (This is not to claim that Userland is going under. AFAIK, they’re doing great, and I wish them the best of luck in 2002 and beyond. we’d certainly all miss them terribly if they were gone. Well, maybe Julian wouldn’t. But I would.)

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