Bruce Sterling spoke at Microsoft last week, and someone was nice enough to transcribe it for him, since by his own admission, Mr. Sterling had no idea what he said.
Tag: tech
I’m not sure if it is really cool, or too geeky and too pricey.
The world’s fastest man has left this earth for the last time. William J. “Pete” Knight became the world’s fastest man on October 3, 1967, while flying the X-15 hypersonic rocket plane. He died of cancer on May 7. His record-breaking Mach 6.7 (nearly seven times the speed of sound) flight remains the highest speed ever attained by a manned aircraft.
Six years after Steve Jobs and Apple declared the floppy disk dead, with the release of the iMac, Bill Gates states the same:
In some ways, I think this is the first time I can say that the floppy disk is dead. You know, we enjoyed the floppy disk, it was nice, it got smaller and smaller, but because of compatibility reasons, it sort of got stuck at the 1.44 megabyte level, and carrying them around, and having that big physical slot in machines, that became a real burden. Today, you get a low-cost USB flash drive, with 64 megabits on it very, very inexpensively. And so we can say the capacity there for something that’s smaller, better connectors, faster, just superior in every way has made that outmoded.
So I suppose now that the tech industry pundits will proclaim Mr. Gates as a tremendous visionary for getting rid of the tiresome floppy disk, when in fact, Mr. Gates’ company is one entity responsible for extending the floppy’s life.
(via RAILhead Design)
Microsoft Watch is reporting that the next verison of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, is going to require a PC that doesn’t yet exist. That’s okay, since Longhorn isn’t due until 2006, plenty of time for Mac OS X to steal market share as the Redmond monopoly struggles to catch up.
Longhorn will purportedly require “a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.”
I’m sure Intel and AMD have 4 GHz CPUs waiting in the wings, but I wonder if we’ll see 6 GHz in 2006. Hard drive sizes are increasing expotentially, to be sure, and I can see a terabyte being available in the next two years, but I’m not sure if it will be available in such quantities as these specifications would assume. Gigabit Ethernet is a reality here and now, especially for Mac owners, as is the 802.11g wireless spec, so those aren’t any big surprises.
In a nutshell, I imagine you will see Microsoft having to blunt Longhorn for lower-end systems than what is currently called for. I simply don’t believe that those systems will be available, in mass quantity, by the time the OS ships.
(via MacMinute)
Declan McCullagh discusses his reservations about Google’s in-private-beta Gmail system. His privacy concerns are well-founded, but I’m sure a lot of people are willing to give up a bit of privacy for something that would have as much perceived value as a free gig of e-mail space.
Should Gmail open to the public as is, I can still see myself signing up for it, though my usage of it would be limited to a certain scope. In other words, I would be my own privacy protection, and that may be the best users can hope for.
w00t!
So perhaps I won’t switch wireless carriers after all. It’s not like I can do anything right now anyway, being unemployed and all…
The beleagured computer maker announced today that it would be closing all 188 of its retail stores, putting 2,500 people out of work.
Boo.
Hoo.
Maybe if Ted Waitt stopped talking to cows and buying rivals that Dell was going to put out of business anyway, he wouldn’t be putting 2,500 people in the unemployment lines.
Lee linked to the Alpine iPod Ready in-dash receivers in a recent post. I must say I am very interested, though I will probably hold off on anything like this until we figure out my vehicle situation later this year.
Still leaning toward the Treo 600 myself, I wholeheartedly agree with Steven Frank’s latest perfect PDA ponderings.