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Michael
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Joined: Mar 22, 2002
Posts: 5144
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  Posted:
Jan 04, 2004 - 10:00 PM |
 
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| Post subject: THE FUTURE IS NOW- Technology Predictions |
THE FUTURE IS NOW
By Charles Arthur
The Independent
December 31, 2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=477004
There's a gleam in technology enthusiasts' eyes when they look forward
to 2004. Since the computer industry started plummeting, around the
beginning of 2001, there has been much innovation yet nobody has been able to persuade consumers or business to buy anything in large enough volumes to turn things around.
That's ready to change. The pace of innovation is still dramatic; but
now people and companies are ready to take it on board. So here's your look forward to what's going to happen, and not happen, in 2004 - followed by my advice on what to do and what not to do. (And if you want to check my predictions for 2003 - which I'd say stand up well - they're online at:
http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=366810
............
My predictions
* Spam will get worse before it gets better, but it should get better
(as in reduce) by the end of the year. Better filtering technologies, allied
to moves by big companies such as Microsoft and AOL to make mail servers more identifiable, will help cut down on the unnecessary amount of body/wallet/sex-life enhancement we're continually and unnecessarily offered.
* The USA's "CAN-SPAM" Act, intended to cut spam, and which comes into
force on 1 January, will actually make the level of spam worse. (See
<http://www.spamhaus. org/position/CAN-SPAM_Act_2003.html> for why.) It will have a short and unhappy life, then get repealed -- as in South Korea, which tried and reversed a similar law a couple of years ago.
* There won't be a huge internet-busting data-destroying worm or virus, because virus writers appear to have moved past that stage of simple, wilful destruction. Any of the viruses which appeared in the past year could have wiped hard disks clean once they'd propagated; they didn't. That suggests that, as in real life, where very few primary infections kill their hosts, the writers of "malware" have realised that destructive programs have shorter lives.
* There will be more viruses and worms that silently exploit holes in Microsoft Windows for criminal motives -- such as passing on credit card details and bank passwords. These are the offspring of virus writers
hired by organised crime.
* There will also be more "phishing" scams to get you to enter your financial and other details into web pages or emails. These too are
from computer experts working for organised crime.
* Legal music downloading stores will arrive properly, spurred by the arrival in Europe in the spring of Apple's iTunes Music Store, which
will galvanise people with iPods (of whom there are a lot). Those people
have ignored existing online stores because their iPod can't play the
Windows Media format used by most operations.
* Some of the music download stores which opened in 2003, and are set
to open in 2004, will "consolidate" -- that is, close or merge, because
it's not a great money-making market.
* The majority of the download stores will keep using Microsoft's
Windows Media Audio format, but Apple won't support that on the iPod.
* At least one other download store will join Apple in using the Dolby
"AAC" encoding format, because that's the only way to reach iPod owners.
* Picture phones will become pervasive; it'll be unusual not to have
one.
* USB "flash memory" sticks (which you plug in to a port on a computer
to provide extra storage space) will become very popular, and applications will be released that can be stored on them to run on any computer without altering its settings. Presently, 256Mb costs ?25; expect that to halve this year. You could soon carry a stripped-down operating system in your pocket to boot any machine to look like yours. In the long term, this could lead to stripped-down computers where the machine holds no important data; it'd all be on the USB stick.
* Digital media players will be released which can store and display gigabytes of photos. Hard disk space and small liquid crystal displays are cheap; and both nature and marketing people abhor a vacuum.
* Neither the Windows Media Center nor tablet PC formats will take off.
Both will grumble along in background sales, but won't ever become
mainstream products, nor even significant in sales terms.
* Apple won't release a tablet computer, or a phone, or a camera. It
may just squeeze its hot G5 chip into a laptop, perhaps using liquid
cooling, by autumn. There won't be a single virus or worm that attacks the Mac OSX operating system.
* Rural areas frustrated by BT's slowness in upgrading exchanges to
ADSL will build on the growing experience of local communities and get third-party wireless broadband installed. This has been helped by the Radiocommunications Agency's licensing in 2003 of a slice of spectrum specifically aimed at long-distance high-speed wireless internet communications.
* 3G phones still won't be a huge hit. By autumn, a few companies will
have launched 3G services, targeted tightly at commercial users. Even these will struggle against the growing availability of public Wi-Fi, which commercial users will prefer.
* "PVRs" -- which store TV programmes on a hard disk -- will become
more widely available at lower prices. They will compete head-on with DVD recorders, which have the advantage of permanence but the disadvantage of the cost of the disks. With hard disk capacity doubling for a given price, it'll be hard for DVD recorders to compete.
* People will keep pushing the idea of "home media servers" that unite
your hi-fi, TV and computer. Having thought this was inevitable for some
years, I'm now starting to think the two are too disparate to be united,
unless you can control everything from your sofa -- which requires a tablet-style controller that you can also type into. Nobody's making that, and the Windows Media Center isn't it, either. Apple might have a chance, but
it has its eyes on other areas.
My advice
* If you're buying a computer in the coming year, don't get one that
uses Windows. It's simply too insecure. (Did you know there's a secret "administrator" account and password on every machine? You didn't? Every hacker does.) Get one with the Linux operating system installed (Evesham does them, for example) or an Apple machine running OSX. Both systems are fast, stable and secure. With Windows XP... well, sometimes two out of three really IS bad.
* Get a laptop. You'll love the freedom if you've not used one before.
* If you're still using Windows, stop using Internet Explorer; instead
try Netscape, Mozilla or Opera. IE has too many security holes for comfort.
* Ditto Outlook Express; try programs such as Eudora or Opera or
Mozilla.
* Invest in a good spam filter such as POPfile
<http://popfile.sourceforge.net/> or PostArmor
<http://www.postarmor.com>.
You'll be glad of it later.
* Get an RSS reader: it's a great way to skim the "news" from blogs and
news sites (see the list at <http://blogspace.com/rss/readers> for suggestions).
* Get a DVD burner, if you haven't got one already: they're getting
cheap and fast -- at the same stage CD burners were five years ago. |
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smurfette
PopStar
Joined: Nov 07, 2003
Posts: 1287
Location: smurf village
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| Posted:
Jan 05, 2004 - 11:09 AM |
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thx for the above information ,
glad to know more and more digital product's price will be cut down , lol
not sure if 3G will still stay low , after all , Wi-Fi couldnt be taking the place of it , they would gradually converge ,
would seriouly consider the spam and security problem , and try the advice raised above ,
it is even better if this is stated together with a prediction of the future economy , 
S |
_________________
statistically significant |
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