Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 19:21:48 +1100 (EST) From: Joel Sutton <jsutton@bbcon.com.au> To: Victorias FreeBSD User Group <general@vicfug.au.freebsd.org> Subject: Unix World Jan 1991 - 10 Predictions for the '90s Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9912291827100.74567-100000@stargate.home>
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Howdy all, I was looking through some old copies of UNIX World and found this which, I hope, will make a few of you laugh ;-). Cheers, Joel... --- [ cut here ] --- Unix World Jan 1991 - by David L. Flack Prediction #1 OS/2 will lose to UNIX on the desktop. This doesn't seem like such a long shot. In the next nine years UNIX outght to be able to get its act together, its kernel shrunk, threaded, and otherwise made acceptable to people who just can't seem to bring themselves to buy SCO's Open Desktop today. In the meantime, the OS/2 development process has been divided between IBM and Microsoft. In UNIX, when a process gets duplicated, we say it's forked. OS/2 is now forked. Prediction #2 OSF will control UNIX. I'm amazed that our AT&T 3B2 is running System V.3 would let me enter this prediction. I guess this is proof that AT&T doesn't have as much control over computers running UNIX as people thought - not even their own. The fact is, AT&T's UNIX System Laboratories is in big trouble as the keeper of the UNIX Holy Grail. Once OSF replaces all of AT&T's UNIX code in OSF/2 and all the members of UI join OSF, it will be over. Sell fast, Mr Kavner, and cut your losses. Prediction #3 50 percent of all PCs will be networked. According to IDC, 97 percent of all UNIX workstations are networked while only 20 percent of PCs are joined in LANs. By the end of the decade most of the "You ain't puttin' no stinkin' Ethernet on my PC" crowd will be out of Corporate America, having been swept out along with the movement to downsize systems. Prediction #4 UNIX end users will start a consortium. Tired of seeing the word 'user' applied to everyone but themselves, the people who use UNIX but who aren't supposed to know it will take control. Their purpose will be to escape from their mouse-ridden GUI environments and flee to the simple beauty of the UNIX shell. Late in the '90s they will discover shell scripts. Prediction #5 An untimely demise of Sun Microsystems. Sun Microsystems will not escape financial ruin at the hands of a Far Eastern copier of Levi's jeans and Gucci watches. Despite the best efforts of U.S. Customs officals, an Asian SPARC cloner will copy the Sun Microsystems logo. The cloner's 100 mips laptop workstations will be sold out of briefcases on street corners in Manhattan, London, Tokyo, and Berlin, thus ending one of the most exciting sagas in computing. Prediction #6 DEC will introduce a symmetric multi-processing system on New Year's Eve, 1999. It will have industry-standard connectors on its serial ports. Prediction #7 SPARC and Intel will be the winners of the microprocessor wars. Microsoft will port PC/MS-DOS to Intel's i860 RISC chip "to improve graphics performance". Prediction #8 DEC will adopt SAA, paying royalities to IBM. Both will claim a victory for open systems. Prediction #9 Unix Today! will go weekly, but not daily. Unix Review will become more worldly. Prediction #10 Most of you will enjoy these predictions more than hearing how wonderful UNIX World will be in 1991. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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