Dvorak Looks Back At 'Another Crappy Tech Year'

twitter writes "The Vista Death Watch is PC Magazine's most popular column. That is just one of many items in Dvorak's review of yet another 'disappointing' year in Technology. 'I was not a fan of 2007. It was another crappy tech year--just the latest in a string of bad years dating back to 2000. Let's see some of the highlights and lowlights in no particular order ... The whopper for Intel, though, was its Viiv initiative, which was a dog from the get-go and was dropped--finally. Somewhere along the way, Intel bought into the Silicon Valley crock that CPUs were not important any more. What a laugh. Luckily for the company, it refocused on processor chips and found itself in the driver's seat once again. Of course, Intel will fall off the path again, of that you can be sure.'"

slashdoters

[wwmedia (950346)]

are bored by another dvorak troll article

Re:slashdoters

[timeOday (582209)]

Well, Dvorak is part of the "tech industry," so I guess it would be a paradox if his commentary were fantastic :)

That said, I have to agree that the thrill is largely gone. Even slashdot, the stories all seem to be something I've read before, and so do the comments. The late 90's, they were fantastic. But like the hippies after Woodstock, this is not the low point of a cycle -- it's over. Whatever "it" was, it will only return in a different form, and it will revolve around people other than us.

Happy 2008!!

Re:

[thatskinnyguy (1129515)]

Sure he might be of the tech industry. That doesn't mean that what he has to say is interesting. I read through half of the article before filing it in the "no shit" drawer.

All it will take for an interesting tech year is Duke Nukem Forever to come out. That will fix this whole mess.

Life's good

[Mr. Underbridge (666784)]

That said, I have to agree that the thrill is largely gone. Even slashdot, the stories all seem to be something I've read before, and so do the comments. The late 90's, they were fantastic. But like the hippies after Woodstock, this is not the low point of a cycle -- it's over. Whatever "it" was, it will only return in a different form, and it will revolve around people other than us.

That's a fantastic analogy, Abe Simpson. Let's try not to be so annoyingly self-indulgent as the Baby Boomers. The internet revolution, which the older of us experienced as teenagers, college students, or even adults, was one of the biggest transformations in the exchange of information that we'll ever see. The kiddies talk about how different "2.0" will be, but these little bastards have never used a card catalog system to know how different the internet is that what we had before. Things are good now. We're spoiled.

So expecting the changes of 1995-2000 to keep going would be stupid. But that doesn't mean what we're getting now is actually bad. Device creators are focusing more on UIs now, so that the stuff we have is actually, you know, not a pain in the ass to use. That's good. Online services continue to get better, if not in a "blow your mind" kind of way. That's good.

Re:Life's good

[MasterOfMagic (151058)]

Some of us "little bastards" had teachers and school districts that thought learning was more important than technology. We did have computers in school as kids, but they were for one thing and one thing only - typing up assignments. That was the extent that my elementary and high school educated the school body about computers, and yes, our library had card catalog drawers. I still use them whenever they're present at the libraries I go to.

More on point, I agree with your general conclusion - things are good now and technology only buys you so much. Who cares if you can search an encyclopedia a millisecond faster? When the vast majority of computer time is spent on email and word processing and web browsing, how much computer power do you really need? If a story is compelling, how many pixels do you need to convey this? Can you do it in text and let someone's imagination take over, or do you need 4x anti-aliased 1080p graphics to make it compelling?

The increases in computing power right now buy us UI improvements and make things easier for the user, a field that computer scientists pawned off on human-interaction specialists. What we need is a breakthrough on the computer science side of the fence. The problem here is that genuinely new ideas are hard to synthesize. The low hanging fruit (though I hate to call the last 60 years of computer science that) has been picked. We need a Copernicus, a Galileo, a Da Vinci, and a Isaac Newton to help us go on any further. We need someone to stand on the shoulders of giants. Unfortunately, software patents have stunted our intellectual growth in ways that will probably make our grandchildren shudder.

Re:Life's good

[Schemat1c (464768)]

We need a Copernicus, a Galileo, a Da Vinci, and a Isaac Newton to help us go on any further.

Or just legalize psychedelics again, the dirty little secret of the scientific community.

Re:

[Targon (17348)]

The problem goes back to the number of people who are willing to start a new tech company. Back in 2000(before the stock market version of the tech crash), we were seeing a peak in the number of companies with some interesting ideas that attempted to come out with new products. In many cases, people NEED that venture money to develop the product they have in mind since they can't make it themselves, so with venture money being harder to come by after the crash of 2000, these ideas just don't get develop

Re:slashdoters

[cgenman (325138)]

Great bits of technology this year:

Consoles finally hit their strides. This was the best year for videogames in a very, very long time.

The iPhone was released. Even if this particular phone has issues, suddenly everyone is talking about phone interfaces and features that aren't mired in 1993.

VOIP is really taking off. Sure, people are shutting it down, but it is doing well.

Amazon MP3 sales.

THUS

[Ibiwan (763664)]

I propose another topic of discussion, specifically a question raised by my dad after I read him several of the current comments:

What individual piece of tech do you use that you've used for the longest period of time?

For reference, he's got a computer he's happy has lasted 6 years, and some woodworking tools he's hoping will last 50.

Re:

[utopianfiat (774016)]

Well, here's the thing: the article completely did a 180 on my expectations. First I see the words "Tech", "Dvorak", and "posted by Zonk" and I doubt I even need to look at this thing in the first place- but I honestly don't know, maybe it was a new-years' fluke or something but I actually read the column and it makes a lot of points that, given, have already been made, but matter a lot in the scope of the year-in-review.
Given it's relatively unsubstantial and still from a Dvorak point of view, but Vista, B

Re:

[tm2b (42473)]

It is a little bit notable that he's trolling Microsoft fanboys now instead of keeping it to Mac fanboys.

Slashdotters, life is good.

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

another dvorak troll article

Only a self-centered fathead like Dvorak could see 2007 as a "crappy tech year". You know who's having a "crappy tech year"? 8 year old kids in Sudan, that's who. Anyone who lives in the shamefully wealthy West who doesn't see the fabulous panoply of possibilities that have come to us because of ever-less expensive technology has a bigger problem than not being able to unlock their iPhone.

Personally, I spent several hours this afternoon using a relatively low-cost computer, with 4 gig of RAM and four CPU cores, gigabit ether and Firewire connections to audio hardware capable of 24-bit, 192khz sampling and software that allows me to create 80 tracks of sound and MIDI goodness to make music that gives me great joy. When I finished a rough mix, I was able to sync that music to video in a program that lets me manipulate SMPTE time code as easily as tapping my foot, editing that video using special effects and image synthesis that would have cost a quarter-million when George Bush became president. Oh, and when I was at my mother-in-law's house for dinner last night, my Slingbox was serving my viewing needs from 45 miles away.

A crappy year is one when there's violence in my town that means my kids can't go to school and I can't make a living and there's nothing to eat. I guarantee that Mr. Dvorak has not missed any meals recently.

Sometimes, when I encounter the kind of lack of self-knowledge like Dvorak shows by having the temerity to complain about tech when a sizable portion of the world is unable to grow crops because of climate change, or when our own government is using a technology that is capable of making broad improvement in the lives of billions in the service of gathering information in order to limit our freedom, it really makes me think that there are certain overfed, overbred shitheads that don't deserve our attention and that Dvorak is high on that list.

OK, enough of the rant, now where's my drink?

Re:

[DECS (891519)]

Dvorak looks back at another crappy career year.

On the fault behind Vista's problems:
Ten Fake Apple Scandals: 7 - Apple's Hardware and Dvorak's Microsoft Branded PC [roughlydrafted.com]
"Microsoft, in the end, gets blamed for all the flaws while watching Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and other ungrateful recipients of its goodwill to make fortunes off the Windows platform." April 2007

PE U: The Mac OS X Leopard Windows API Myth [roughlydrafted.com]
Dvorak's great Mac Intel prediction in 2003 was that Apple would migrate to Itanium by the end of 2004.

Thou

Of course

[Idiot with a gun (1081749)]

It's another bad year, Dvorak is still writing.

He seems conflicted

[slyn (1111419)]

He writes about how it's such a miserable year, but half the stuff he writes about is about companies being uber-successful. Google, Apple and the Wii come to mind.

Honestly, why does Dvorak still have a job?

Re:

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

Slashdot effect, probably. It makes them think we still like him.

Re:

[9mm Censor (705379)]

Because people read his work (look it gets /.ed all the time).

Re:He seems conflicted

[Ckwop (707653)]

Honestly, why does Dvorak still have a job?

His job is not to write decent well researched articles on the state of the industry. His job is to get visitors to the site to keep the ad revenues healthy. He's laughing at us, he knows he's stupid. He's counting on your love of pointing it out to make him money. If you view Dvorak through this light, he is a very talented individual.

This raises the question as to why Slashdot continues to post his articles? Well, they're part of the gravy-train too. You see, Dvorak stories usually have a lot of comments on them because there a loads of posts from people who love to point out his deliberate stupidity. Slashdot is supported by ads too, so it makes sense for them to post stories that generate the most controversy. More page views equals more viewed advertisements which leads to increased revenues.

As such, the only way to stop these poor quality stories is not to react to the flame-bait. Don't go to the linked article, don't post against the article, don't even read the thread and mod down the stories in the fire hose.

Simon

Re:He seems conflicted

[hedwards (940851)]

Honestly, there's a huge amount of really interesting technology and science out there, more so even than I was a kid in the 80s. It's just that you've got to focus where the developments are happening. The OS world is largely dead in terms of innovation. What we do get from them is pretty consistent bloat, very little of which is actually new, and none of which is more useful than what we had.

Medical technology has made amazing strides in the last 10 years or so. Cryosurgery, Sequencing a human Genome, stem cell results, bacteriophage treatments for infections, using said treatment to limit the amount of e. coli on beef in the US, the ability to operate within a human heart without having to open up the chest, the continued rise of digital X-rays in hospitals, the realization that sleep is primarily regulated by 1 single molecule and the discovery of a method for converting all blood donations into 0- from whatever they were previously.

And that really isn't everything. Any one of those things is of more significance than the moon landing was. Even the space research that we have NASA scientists do is far more important than the moon ever was, the only reason why we think of the moon at all, was that we beat the Russians at the race from the earth to the moon, and key to it, back home safely. Apart from that, it really didn't contribute that much to scientific research in general.

Re:He seems conflicted

[TheLink (130905)]

1) Bacteriophage treatment was used in the Soviet Union for a long long long time.
2) Why should e-coli be on the beef in the first place if you are butchering the cow properly? i.e. What's shit (cow or other) doing on your beef?

The advance I'm waiting for is a far more reliable and safe way of attaching devices to brains. Then the blind would be able to see etc.

Of course the **AA and the DMCA might cause problems with that.

Re:

[hedwards (940851)]

1) Bacteriophage treatment was used in the Soviet Union for a long long long time.

Yes, that's true, but how many of those treatments were conducted in the US or even on Americans? The science behind it is fairly straightforward, but the ability of the treatment to get enough approval for a human experiment in the US is significant. There are many treatments that don't ever get there. I think we all know that the Russians during the communist era were willing to experiment on their people in a way that would be completely unthinkable in the US.

You could have the most effective treatment

Re:

[hotsauce (514237)]

You could have the most effective treatment of all time, but if nobody has access to it, it's the most worthless thing ever to exist.

Because, of course, the rest of the world doesn't count. It's only worthwhile when it finally makes it to America and becomes known to you.

Wake up. The rest of the world is passing you by.

Re:

[7-Vodka (195504)]

You seem to be confused. One could easily slaughter a great many cows in the US and keep their excrement out of the product. It would just cost more.

Also, there are treatments that kill 100% of e.coli, like radiation for example. The reason they are not allowed is not safety but because the beef industry would just use it as an excuses to get away with even cheaper methods of slaughter which leave even more excrement in your beef since even pure excrement can be consumed if properly irradiated.

It's a toug

Re:

[pushing-robot (1037830)]

Why should e-coli be on the beef in the first place if you are butchering the cow properly? i.e. What's shit (cow or other) doing on your beef?

Well, there's shit, egg, sausage, and shit; that's not got much shit in it.

Re:He seems conflicted

[smilindog2000 (907665)]

Oh, come on, now. It's been a good year. The iPhone brought multi-touch displays into the mainstream. Google started the Android project. Hybrids made huge gains [a123systems.com] with new battery technology. VoIP? How about Skype and the new Asterisk appliance, or even the Free Telephony Project [rowetel.com]? I see the same list, but somehow I see it in a more positive light, but heck, I'm an optimist. I saw the moon landing, too. I also witnessed the birth of the personal computer, cell phones, and the Internet. Computing power increased a mind boggling amount, memory went from $1M for 64K bytes to $50 for a gigabyte, and of course disk storage went nuts.

As for real revolutions, I don't believe in them. From airplanes to telephones, when I dig into the story of innovation, I find instead a series of incremental improvements. All we've really been missing lately is those OMG moments like a moon landing. I'm jaded too... when a 5-year-old boy gets to see the first moon landing, he expects amazing things for the rest of his life. At 44, I'm still waiting for a comparable moment. When I think about it, I feel let down. The trick is to step back and realize that the revolution has been happening every day, little by little, just without the OMG moments.

Re:

[drsquare (530038)]

The iPhone brought multi-touch displays into the mainstream

Far be it for me to dare to question the iPhone, but if touching a screen in a slightly different way counts as a technological breakthrough, then it has been a crappy year.

Re:He seems conflicted

[Kreigaffe (765218)]

Nothing that came out this year was really innovative, though.

the iPhone? Uh, ok. Mainstream. That just means someone took an already existing idea and slapped a lot of marketing and PR behind it... but the actual IDEA behind the iPhone is at least a decade old.
Hybrids are a wash through and through. They're neat.. and nothing special.
and VoIP? Uhm. 11 years ago there were several popular free internet telephone services.. OK, so you had to connect to the internet to use them, and OK, back in that day and age most everybody connected via modem, BUT.. it was there. As a teenager I was able to talk to many people all across the country with no long distance charges. THAT was cool. VoIP now? Merely an extention of that, made easier due to the proliferation of cable/dsl, and oh now you have to pay for it but hey you can use your regular phone now so I guess that's OK.

Honestly the only really innovative and new thing I can bring to mind is the Wii -- a successful console, wildly successful, that uses a non-traditional control mechanism? Now that's a miracle.

Read the Dvorak in your best "Andy Rooney" voice.

[Jeremiah Cornelius (137)]

"What is all this Windows Vista stuff we're hearing about? After so many years, it seems like Microsoft finally discovered that Windows are clear. You can see through 'em. Isn't that nice? But what if you are trying to read something in those Windows? My 4-year-old grandson writes on he windows all the time, and gets a good spanking for smudging the glass. Which reminds me: It seems like Microsoft has entered the Windex business - something they used to leave to real technology companies, like Symantec and Johnson Wax. Speaking of which, why doesn't Microsoft just start learning from Dow Corning, if they want us all to have clear windows in Vista?

Welcome to maturity

[G4from128k (686170)]

It had to happen eventually. IT has become middle-aged, mass-market, everyday stuff. Everybody and his mother (and grandmother) are using computers so the majority of the industry is driven toward low-cost, lowest-common-denominator products.

Yet, that doesn't mean that there can't be excitement at the margins of technology (e.g., RFID, GPU processing, ubiquitous mesh networks, MIMO wireless, GPS-everything, or cloud computing). Fun stuff is happening even if the core of the technology has settled down into a workaday existence.

sigh

[Foobar of Borg (690622)]

Another Dvorak article posted by Zonk. The only way this could suck more would be if it were posted by Roland.

Google Apps is a fad

[alen (225700)]

and along the way MS bought into the nonsense of software as a service. Google Apps might be OK for some small business where it's too much to buy a few servers, but not for any place that needs backups and the reliability of always being up. locally installed apps always work. my Outlook offline folder always has the latest copy of my mailbox in case the network goes down. if someone deletes something, we have backups in 2 places. and no one wants to write up a spreadsheet with advertising on the side

Googl

Re:Google Apps is a fad

[plover (150551)]

MS bought into the nonsense of software as a service.

How can you say such a thing? Services are reliable! Everything is reliable these days. The network never goes down, the servers never go down, the drives never crash, the equipment's never taken offline for maintenance, the certificates never expire, the DNS hosts never get redirected, the security policies are never changed in the middle of the freakin' day (oh, that's a fun one!), the databases always replicate, the bandwidth is never saturated, latency is always zero, and the application software itself is flawless.

Hang on just a sec, there's a unicorn taking a leak on the rainbow on the next cloud over. "Get off my damn cloud, you freaks!"

Re:

[TimTheFoolMan (656432)]

Yup... I would use those Google apps more if Google could figure out "the reliability of always being up."

Oh wait...

Nostalgia

[4D6963 (933028)]

just the latest in a string of bad years dating back to 2000.

Translation : "I hate the 2000's, take me back to the late 90's! At least back then we were closer to the release of Duke Nukem Forever than we are now, somehow!"

I wish for...

[rampant mac (561036)]

"The Dvorak Death Watch is Slashdot's most popular column. That is just one of many items in Slashdot's review of yet another 'disappointing' year in Dvorak articles. 'We are not fans of 2007. It was another crappy Dvorak year--just the latest in a string of bad years dating back to... when he started writing. Let's see some of the highlights and lowlights in no particular order ... The whopper for Dvorak, though, was his article on how the computer mouse would never catch on, which was a dog from the get-go and was dropped--finally. Somewhere along the way, Dvorak bought into the Vista Hype that Microsoft was capable of releasing a better Windows product. What a laugh. Luckily for Dvorak, he refocused on flaming the Apple fanboys and found himself in the driver's seat once again. Of course, Dvorak will fall off the wagon soon, of that you can be sure.'"

Somehow, that makes more sense.

In other news...

[Wuhao (471511)]

The tech industry looks back at another crappy Dvorak year.

Troll indeed

[motorsabbath (243336)]

"I'm certainly not going to be a happy camper if I have to switch to a Mac or Linux system full-time, yet that is exactly where this scatterbrained company seems to be sending me."

Why would that be so bad? As someone who uses all 3 operating systems daily (XP, not Vista), this new iMac way outshines the rest. What a dork. If MS is that bad than stop using it.

Moan, moan, moan

[Jerf (17166)]

It astonishes me how people are capable about bitching about every single year, and never notice the contradiction of every year being crappy, while this year is better than the one several years ago.

IT and tech is the worst. Oh, piss piss, moan moan, life sucks... except for the surprisingly affordable HDTVs, the free fall of per-gigabyte hard drive costs, the near-inability to buy non-dual-core CPUs, $200 laptops that do really useful things, the "gigabyte" being the new standard measurement of a RAM stick and the $10 bill being the new standard increment of its pricing, entire hardware categories like "MP3 players" that didn't exist a few years ago and in another couple of years will be given away free in cereal boxes, and on it goes.

Crappy year after crappy year after crappy year... yet somehow, here we are and you'd have to drag me kicking and screaming back to the year 2000's technology. Somehow, the "crappy year" math doesn't add up.

(This applies in other domains too, but that is left as an exercise to the reader to avoid topic drift. Note that only tech has the exponential improvement, though.)

Re:

[demachina (71715)]

I think Dvorak's problem is he is a Microsoft fan boy and since Vista was a resounding failure that colors his entire outlook on the world.

He obviously glosses over the Wii which was a huge success and changed the demographics of the game industry. I read recently retirement homes are buying Wii's in increasing numbers because it offers games seniors enjoy playing, encourages modest amounts of exercise and social interaction.

The iPhone is a bit overhyped but it certainly did cause tremors in the mobile spa

Slashdot loves to feed 'em!

[Nanite (220404)]

Stop posting Dvorak's crap here and stop going to his website and we can finally pick this leach off of the computer world's underbelly. He only exists to stir up shit for web hits. If we stop giving a damn he'll have to go somewhere else for food!

BSD???

[dreyergustav (1013913)]

With all this talk about the imminent death of Vista I'm beginning to believe that Microsoft based it on BSD.

Re:BSD???

[Torvaun (1040898)]

With all this talk about the imminent death of Vista I'm beginning to believe that Microsoft based it on BSoD.

Fixed that for you.

good that the first word of the title is Dvorak...

[wikinerd (809585)]

...so I can skip reading without remorse.

He sounds bitter...

[kaiwai (765866)]

But can you honestly blame him? unless you're one of those energy drink sipping geek who bounces around the office like some sort of hyped up 8 year old who has just been given a new toy - I've yet to have a single year when I've looked back and thought, "wow, that was one hell of year" then look at awe over all the great products released that year.

1) The iPhone delivered only to the US and using GSM 2G - and people are hyping it? I'm looking around New Zealand; at the bottom of the world, sitting at the crevice of the ass crack when it comes to technology availability, and yet, I'm seeing far superior smart phones being delivered, CDMA and 3G GSM.

2) The PS3 - Sony just don't get it. They didn't get it with BetaMax, they didn't get it with MiniDisc, and now they're repeating the same mistake with BluRay - apart from the mouth frothing PS3 zealots/fanboys - PS3 and BluRay have been a resounding failure.

3) Windows Vista has only made inroads because of it being the default installation on new computers; the better view is this; look at the rate at which Apple's Mac sales are growing compared to the rest of the industry. If Windows Vista was such a resounding success, Apple's market share should be staying static of shrinking. Neither have happened.

I could go on and on, but you get the basic idea; nothing to do with 'maturity' - just people willing to tolerate technology thats 'good enough' rather than expecting the 'fuck thats awesome!' factor.

Minidisc?

[soilheart (1081051)]

they didn't get it with MiniDisc

What's wrong with MiniDisc? Before the advent of mp3-players MiniDisc was the way to to for either the ones with style (who didn't want to run around with a large "portable" CD-player) or the amateur artists (easy digital recording options).
All the siblings in my family (from my 9 year older sister down to me) have had a minidisc (and my sister still uses it for easy piano recording).

The thing that actually killed MiniDisc was the late adoption of native mp3 playback on Hi-MD's though... A great mista

Not exactly news

[unoengborg (209251)]

Nobody is surprised that Vista isn't a success (perhaps with the exception of one or two Microsoft employees).
XP did/do the job for most people. So, why upgrade? The only time Vista is worth to consider is if you buy a
new machine. But even then, Vista makes you machine more expensive, both in terms of hardware and software. Then
there is the question if it will work well with your old existing network of XP or even win2k boxes.

Microsoft had the same problem to get people to upgrade from win2k to XP, but XP didn't look like such a total
failure. The reason for that was that there were a lot of win9x users that left that platform for XP. Unlike the win2k users these customers actually got good value for their money, so it was not so hard to make them upgrade.

Another factor is that the competition is much harder now than when they released XP. Apple is starting to get
back in the game, and Linux looks better and better and evolving fast.

The reason for all the bad tech years has 4 letter

[plasmacutter (901737)]

It was another crappy tech year--just the latest in a string of bad years dating back to 200

lets see, what law was passed in 1998, then used as a cudgel as the internet matured into 2000?

lets see.. duuuh... D... uuuuh M.... errrr C.... what was that last letter what was it.. oh yeah.. A.

and as long as that law allows hollywood to dictate the design of all tech, it will continue to be a crappy year for tech year after year.

for once I agree with DVORAK.. kinda..

[Lumpy (12016)]

I do agree that 2007 was a crappy tech year, but not for his reasons.

thereason that 2007 sucked for tech and 2008-2010 will suck is because of laws. Honestly we have the technology right now to do some amazing things with media. But the old business models refuse to adapt so they instead make everything illegal. I have an incredibly illegal (as far as the law is concerned) system in my home that makes everyone that sees it gasp in awe. I have every DVD i own on my own On demand system in every room, I also have all recordings from TV available in every room as well. Music, Video, News, media.. we have the technology RIGHT NOW to make the "star trek" universe as far as media is concerned. I should be able to from my bedroom TV call up a copy of last nights 11:00pm newscast FROM that station over the internet. but no, they believe that that newscast is more valuable than 90 pounds of platinum and i'm going to share it with 20,000,000,000 people and make it so nobody will watch the news.. So they put DRM on it and make it useless to me.

Media needs to be in open NON DRM formats and via RSS feeds so I can automatically collect what I want. I SHOULD be able to buy a download of a movie and play it on MY HDTV using whatever system I desire to play it.

Information, Video, Audio, news, all of it should be on-demand at any TV I have and it is not because of the silly delusion that this media is incredibly valuable. When in reality it is not.

And that is not even covering the incredibly retarded IP laws that stifle innovation.

Well, what did we get?

[Animats (122034)]

• In hardware, the real action is in memory. Cost per bit for flash memory and disk drives continued to drop rapidly.
• In CPUs, we have two futures - shared memory multiprocessors, and GPU-like massively parallel machines. The GPU-like devices have turned out to be more useful than expected. Non-shared-memory multiprocessors with small memories, like the Cell, weren't too useful. This isn't surprising; that idea was a dud in supercomputers, where it was tried about ten times over the last 20 years.
• The big screen problem has finally been solved. It took fifty years, but the TV you can hang on the wall is finally the standard product at an easily affordable price.
• The Blu-Ray vs. HD controversy has stalemated. Both are losing. Something better than both may come along before either achieves significant market penetration.
• Batteries improved a little in energy density, but they're blowing up more. We may be reaching a limit there, as weight reduction reduces the safety margins. Fuel cell products remained vaporware.
• Networking is somewhat stable; most consumers have enough bandwidth right now. This may change as the demand to download HDTV-sized content increases. There's more action in the phone side of networking, as video to the phone becomes widespread.
• Desktop computing didn't really change much in 2007.

Not such a bad year for F/OSS

[walterbyrd (182728)]

1) OLPC starts shipping; sales under G1G1 program exceed 150,000 units (number does not include sales to governments).

2) Dell ships Ubuntu loaded PCs.

3) Other computer manufacturers follow Dell's lead in preinstalling Linux on inexpensive laptops; Wal-Mart sells out of the 10,000 units of the model they carry in less than two weeks

4) Samba/Microsoft agreement defangs Microsoft's patent FUD

5) MS-Vista bombs. After years of delays, MS-Vista finally debuts. Even those kind to Microsoft admit that Vista is bloated and buggy. Adoption is slow.The public demanded XP be installed by default. This is the first time there was such a major backlash against a major Microsoft release.

6) Even after shameless bribing and ballot stuffing, Microsoft loses the first round in the OOXML approval process.

7) GPLv3 approved. This should have put an end to the Microsoft/Novell scam. But it didn't, the Microsoft/Novell scam was "grandfathered" in.

8) Patent troll Acacia sues Redhat, just two days after two top Microsoft executives leave to join Acacia.

9) After more than four years, Federal Judge Dale Kimball *finally* rules that The SCO Group does not own UNIX. The plain language of TSG's contract with Novell made it perfectly obvious that TSG did not own UNIX, and Kimball could have ruled on this years earlier. Considering that The SCO Group never had any evidence what-so-ever, no standing, and no prima-facia case, the length of time required for this ruling is, in my opinion, inexcusable. This ruling has not stopped The SCO Group from claiming they own UNIX - maybe in another four years. Still, this is some progress.

10)ASUS eee PC.