New Year's Wish List

[mdlbear]

Here's a list of things that are not predictions -- I don't really expect any of them to happen. It would just be nice if they did.

1. Linux tablet computers: Tablet computer manufacturers figure out that the reason they're not selling is that Microsoft's Windows XP for tablets is even more expensive than XP Home. They switch to Linux, drop their price $500, and tablets take off, especially the ones that ship with a Windows version of VNC so you can use them to remotely access your legacy box.
2. SCO implodes: SCO's lawsuit against IBM implodes, their stock price tanks, and their leaders and lawyers are thrown to the wolves prosecutors. IBM and RedHat pick up the pieces for free in settlement of their suits against SCO, and put Unix firmly under a BSD license.
3. Microsoft starts to slide: After a year of declining market share and accounting rules that make the fact harder to hide, Microsoft's stock starts to decline. It declines even faster as stockholders notice that the engineers, their stock options far underwater, are starting to abandon ship in droves.
4. The WiFi Grid: Widely-available, open-source software turns any 802.11-equipped computer into a node in a free, ubiquitous, ad-hoc network. WiFi-equipped cell phones add to the fun.
5. P2P triumphs: Now that Bollywood is selling movies for $2.99 via Kazaa, the MPAA's and RIAA's case against peer-to-peer filesharing collapses, forcing them to find other ways to make money.
6. Democrats win back the White House: ...and the Senate, as long as we're wishing.

And here's the list of things I fervently hope don't happen:

1. The April 15th virus: A stealth virus that grabs social security numbers, bank accounts and passwords from popular tax and bookkeeping software starts its dirty work late on April 16th. That being a Friday, the havoc isn't discovered until the following Monday, by which time trillions of dollars have been siphoned off to Nigeria.
2. Major terrorist attack: While governments pretend that making air travel less convenient will make it more secure, the terrorists do something awful that we didn't expect at all.
3. Wagging the Dog: When it becomes clear that no weapons of mass destruction will be found, and with the polls are running solidly against him, Bush drops the bomb on North Korea, declares a state of emergency, and suspends elections. Anyone who protests is declared an enemy combatant and thrown in jail; this includes four out of the nine justices of the Supreme Court.

A pessimist is someone who prefers pleasant surprises.

Comments

Urban areas versus wired links...

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

How would the availability of this type of technology changed the Seattle WTO demonstrations/"riots"? If Seattle had been wirelessed up, would the information have actually gotten to the newspaper editors and the TV stations? Would they have actually cared?

Would it have made it to the wired Internet without incident? Would the wired Internet been able to stamp the knowledge out? (I don't know the answers, I'm just asking -- would like to discuss it?)

Re: Urban areas versus wired links...

[mdlbear]

Not clear how things would have changed, but we're already seeing the effects of cell phones on "smart mobs", and I expect that instant messaging and real-time blogging would enhance these effects even more.

As for the news media, some reporters and columnists actually read the web: look at the effect Groklaw is having on reporting about SCO-vs.-everybody.

Would the wired internet have been able to stamp the knowledge out? Unlikely. Once a piece of information is out there and mirrored in a few dozen places, it's pretty hard to suppress. Once it hits Freenet it's essentially impossible. Something like Freenet would work pretty well for bouncing information around a wireless grid until it eventually got connected.