Computer Expectations of Today, and a Decade Hence? 864
Luciq asks: "The other day I was cleaning out my closet and started reminiscing about all the good times I had with my 33Mhz 486DX. I got the machine 10 years ago just as the first Pentiums were coming out. With a 33Mhz processor, 212MB hard drive and a whopping 8MB of RAM, I could surf the net at 2400 baud, manipulate photos and even play games with full-screen video like The Seventh Guest. Today I use an Athlon XP 2400, 80GB HD, 512MB [not 512K!] RAM. While I can do some neat things with it, I must say that it's fallen short of the wonderous expectations I had for such a system in 1993 (no immersive VR?, no seamless voice recognition?). What expectations did you have for today's PC, 10 years ago and how does the reality match up? What do you expect from computing, 10 years from now?"
In 10 Years there will be (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In 10 Years there will be (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't they already do that [imdb.com]? In 1985, even, with an 8088 or something?
Re:In 10 Years there will be (Score:5, Funny)
1. Russian Hacker model: She's six feet tall, very thin, black hair, ice-blue eyes, can kick your ass but chooses not to. Wears tight black jeans, a skintight black Linux T-shirt, and a leather jacket (with chains that jingle!). Dirty mind, friendly, but if you make a programming error, she ties you to a chair and mocks you, muttering, "Dahlink, RTFM". Hackable, with a XXX porno mode.
2. Japanese anime model 1 (techie chick): About five feet tall, thin, long black hair, green eyes, modernish hip clothes and weird cat ears. Randomly gets annoyed, produces a 1,000 pound hammer, and pulverizes you. Has no nipples or gonads. Warning to the orally fixated: she has little razor-sharp cat teeth which appear when she's feeling mischevious.
3. Japanese anime model 2 (Hentai model!): Like model 1, but instead of cat ears, teeth, etc, she has a schoolgirl uniform, nipples and gonads. Randomly "accidentally" opens a gate into hell, allowing huge perverted demons into this universe, which subsequently violate her "against her will". Beware: some owners have gotten a little too close to the action, resulting in, well, you know. The lawsuits have been settled.
Re:In 10 Years there will be (Score:3, Funny)
*sigh* Why must there be such Gonads and Strife [threebrain.com]?
Re:In 10 Years there will be (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.medterms.com/ [medterms.com]
The male gonad is the testicle (or testis), located behind the penis in a pouch of skin (the scrotum).
The female gonad, the ovary or "egg sac", is one of a pair of reproductive glands in women.
Re:In 10 Years there will be (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In 10 Years there will be (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In 10 Years there will be (Score:3, Informative)
-uso.
See! (Score:5, Funny)
Even after 10 years, 640K is *STILL* enough for anybody!
i expect perfection (Score:3, Interesting)
and not be asked for a damn windows patch by all my friends every 5 freakin minutes
Re:i expect perfection (Score:5, Funny)
Re:i expect perfection (Score:5, Funny)
Re:i expect perfection (Score:3, Funny)
Even spellcheck?
End of the BSOD (Score:5, Funny)
I got my wish. I installed linux. :)
Re:End of the BSOD (Score:3, Funny)
Re:End of the BSOD (Score:3, Informative)
My expectation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe in the next ten years.
Re:My expectation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Real expectations:
There, you asked.
Re:My expectation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh yeah, add a decent protable long lasting, easily rechargable power source to my list... something like a fuel-cell that can be recharged with butane or gas... whatever, as long as it is light, long lasting, and easily refilled... and prefereably doesn't explode or kill people at will.
Re:My expectation? (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean RAID 1? It's cheap enough (~$2/gig) that I don't see why anyone would not use it if they have even mildly important data on their machines. Cheap and continous. Though not a 100% perfect solution, as it basically only protects against drive failure.
Of course, for any other backup, hard disk drives need to catch up in the speed department f
Re:My expectation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Xybernaut does a so-so job, but that's for strictly limited workplace applications. I want wearable, and I want the power of my deskdop (at a minimum)!
Oh, yeah, and harkening to Fire on the Deep, BANDWIDTH!!! Geez, things are slow. Whether it's DSL, cable, or
Re:My expectation? (Score:3, Interesting)
--It all has to come in a shockproof, G force resistant, waterproof watch. In the early 1980s, I saw a $2000 wristwatch in a store window with had a little black and white TV on the watch face. My dad said, "Son, in 10 years we'll all have these -- and they'll be in COLOR." The liar!
--OK, I would settle for a watch or an earpiece (of course the thing should also run on voice) and a bluetooth link to a p
Re:My expectation? (Score:3, Informative)
Telecoms has become cheaper. Ignoring inflation, it's now cheaper to call the UK than it was for me to make local calls when I lived there 10 years ago. I think peak rate local calls with BT cost GBP0.03/min in about 1995 (it's higher if you adjust for inflation). I call the UK for about CAD$0.07/min (about GBP0.03 or slightly less). I think that is more representative o
two column format (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm. Don't spend much time in restaurants, do we?
Games gotten better? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Games gotten better? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, there are games that are manufacturered purely to capitalize on a market. Such as games based on movies and tv shows (who wants to be a millionaire rings a bell). However, there are games out there that are breath-taking in an eye candy sense and also in a game sense.
For example, Quake III Arena might be remembered for it's graphics but it also brought multi player internet gaming to a whole new level.
Half life may be a similar concept but it has really brought game hacking and modifications forward. Maybe not truely novel concepts (quakeI had internet play and ID was allowing users to hack their games for a while) but they really created their own cult followings and people play those games for hours just as people played the paralax scrolling games of the late 80's early 90's for hours too.
What about GTA and the ever so popular vice city? I think vice city is probably THE perfect game (for me anyway). It combines so many different types of games into one: role playing, fighting, racing, mission based, shoot-em-up, business etc. Plus it brings you into this whole virtual culture and world where every detail from the people on the side walks to the radio stations are considered. Making it more of an interactive movie that sucks you in and keeps you there.
How about The Sims? Another novel concept. My wife still plays that game for hours at a time. She's got her own little neighbourhood kicking where she can control everything and build up her characters etc. What do you call that kind of game? Role playing? Simulation? I'm not so sure. I definitely don't remember any games in the 80's and early 90's having a game concept like that.
The fact is that gaming is just like any other business. The people who are there to capitalize on it want to market proven products that aren't so risk based. So you do get a lot of games comming out that just seem to be the same as last month's big eye candy. You see this in movies and music and television too. But don't neglect the games that do bring new concepts forward. They're there, you just have to notice them.
- Garett
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Games gotten better? (Score:3, Insightful)
At the risk of showing my age, the original (mainframe, text based) Adventure game of the 1970s appealed to me in terms of general concept to a greater degree than anything since (with the possible exception of The Sims). Much imitated since, of course, but the graphic
Re:Games gotten better? (Score:3, Insightful)
Amen. I'm also disappointed that as computers get faster, software finds a way to require more cpu cycles to do the same wor
I YAM THE VOICE OF THAA COMP-YEEWWW-TURR! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I YAM THE VOICE OF THAA COMP-YEEWWW-TURR! (Score:2)
Computer speech (Score:3, Informative)
So I grabbed and compiled a copy of VICE [t-online.de], the Commodore 64 emulator. Then I grabbed an abandon-ware copy of SAM [tripod.com], the Software Automatic Mouth. Its text-to-speech was about equivalent to the modern program. Plus, it had the option to type things in phonetic
My computer read me your post (Score:3, Interesting)
I only wish I could capture the days slashdot articles and top 10 +5 comments to mp3 and take them with me jogging.
PLEASE point me to a source forge project that does this!
Oh yeah, and I hate CAPS because my TTS reads each letter instead of the word. At least I can progra
Re:I YAM THE VOICE OF THAA COMP-YEEWWW-TURR! (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/
http://www.research.ibm.com/tts/coredemo.html
I recall (Score:2, Funny)
"who the hell needs more than 266 MHz!!! christ it is so damn fast!!!"
short list (Score:5, Interesting)
- fuel cell batteries that provide power for quite a bit longer
- 64 bit computing (arriving now - wonder what the next step would be - 128 bit?)
- Windows to require 30 terabytes of disk space
I hope somebody invents a better mouse (or whatever it might be called)
I also wonder if we'll still be using hard disks ten years from now.
Computer Head Colds (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh wait, I do that now, thanks Linus...
Where's the fun? (Score:4, Interesting)
But I will say that my expectations for computer hardware at this point was pretty much exceeded. The fact that I now have about 10 times as much Ram as my first computers had harddrive space I am impressed. However, since you mentioned games within the post I'll reply that my expectation for how FUN games would be at this time was sorely underachieved.
Unfortunately, the pixel pushing hogs that are modern computers have left game design to rely on the next brightest nicest looking graphical engine with most games being "unique" like all others on the market.
It's not the technology I feel let down about, its the basic design for games which for the most part has not advance nor drastically changed in 10 years really.
-Bort
512K of RAM? (Score:2, Redundant)
Wow... my cell phone has more RAM than you.
input devices (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:input devices (Score:5, Informative)
It is the keyboard we are for more likely to find ourselves disposing of as voice recognition gets rapidly better and better. Of course, I highly doubt that we will actually get rid of it either as many people find that they think better with the keys than with their voice and because so many programs, including games, have learned to take such advantage of the tremendous variety of input the keyboard offers.
Wow (Score:3, Funny)
-Sean
10 years from now (Score:2, Funny)
Yikes... (Score:4, Funny)
cool stuff for computerz to do (Score:3, Insightful)
Now and Then (Score:4, Interesting)
Today I expect a PC that can play 3D games without hiccuping, display complex text and graphics and manipulate them in real-time, allow me to surf the 'Net at speeds that make my old 14.4 modem pale in comparison. I also, unfortunately, expect a system that is much less stable than what I had ten years ago. I expect the systems of today to require an enormous heat sink and a fan with an alarm and auto-shutdown on overheat function. I never needed this with my older systems.
In the next ten years I expect that the heat issue may still be around, but that the solutions will be quiet and won't require near-constant maintenance. I expect that there will be true 3D displays, along with OSes that utilize all that goes along with them. The "personal" in PC may go the way of Dodo with all the connected world has brought us. Although most of us will certainly have, need, or require local storage of some sort, it will most likely do little or no processing of it's own. I hope that I will have the choice to disconnect at the end of the day, but am not sure this will be so as the government and big business seems to need to know every little thing we do.
My biggest expectation for the future is that I will be surprised. That there will be something I want or need my system to do that I can't even imagine today.
What's a computer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Life will start looking more like it did in the middle of the last century, as computers disappear from sight and banal old devices start containing little bits of a massively distributed system.
I won't miss sitting at a keyboard and staring fixedly at a monitor, that's for sure.
Re:What's a computer? (Score:3, Funny)
And this will all be reported back to the government....err.....I mean Microsoft....err...Microsoft = Government?
Screw it, in 10 years my computer will be made out of tin-foil.
No keyboards (Score:2, Funny)
A Funny Fortune... (Score:5, Interesting)
A decade ago or so, I saw this fortune:
It was funny at the time. Those specs were ridiculous!
Today I've got a 200MHz+ Zaurus with 64MB of RAM builtin, plus about 512MB worth of CF cards. And you can get 1-2GB CF microdrives. And it costs about $300.
It's like "Unix! I know this!" line from Jurassic Park... reality caught up, and it's not funny anymore. :-( ;-)
Obligatory Moore's Law post (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps with the inevitable introduction of the quantum computer in the near future, we will see the significance of Moore's Law. Image the possibility of an one terra-flop quantum computer doubling to two terra-flops within 18 months. The thought of such a s
In my experience and my (not so humble) opinion... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at those amazing 4K demos [tripod.com] that people did (and stll do) for DOS. People are doing wild stuff here-- things like real-time pseudo-3D rendering, fractals, you name it-- all inside of 4 kilobytes of code. And most of these demos will run just as well on a '286 or (at most) '386 than today's space-heater chips.
Contiki [dunkels.com] is a lovely example of what can be done with efficient coding. In my experience, this sort of efficiency is NEVER achieved today in "commercial" projects or even in OSS/FS code-- people never even come close. The only areas of computing which have seen significant improvements (I don't just mean "more widgets" or "better interfaces" (the latter has nothing to do with hardware improvements, so don't even mention it)) in recent years have been:
* Gaming (perhaps the only area where efficiency is even SOMEWHAT appreciated, as it leads to higher FPS)
* Rendering (ditto)
* Real-time scientific simulations
In 1980, I could flip on an Apple II [old-computers.com] and have a usable prompt inside of a second or two. Nowadays, even with a screamin' P4 or Duron will get you a 30-second startup time-- if you're lucky. That's just to boot up the OS. Wanna start a word processor? That'll take even longer.
If you want to get a sense of what MY expectations were that were shattered, go grab a good Apple II [zophar.net] emulator and some appropriate software [cosmicwolf.com] and fire the emulator up. Make sure that it's running at the full possible speed-- not "compatible" speed (which is 1.02MHz, if I remember correctly). Look at how fast stuff runs... and that's in emulation. Sure, there's no fancy GUI, there's no clippy, whatever you think "modern" OSes have to have... but the point is that even in emulation, old stuff runs REALLY, REALLY FAST. If the same mentality of "efficiency is everything" that was necessary during the days of limited hardware power was voluntarily adopted today... well... imagine Windows XP starting up in one second (and not crashing). Imagine being able to swap cool new games on floppy disks. Imagine most games being distributed on Mini CDs, even those with lots of videos and speech, since a full (650-700MB) CD would be overkill for them.
Then wake up and realize it's time to go buy some more RAM again... ho hum...BillG just raised the bar on hardware requirements. Back to the treadmill we go...
Re:In my experience and my (not so humble) opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say you had a time machine. (Let's say it was built out of a DeLorean, just for fun's sakes.)
So you fire up your DMC chariot, head back to 1965, and pick up some computer scientists.
You then take them back to the present and start showing them things.
After they get past the whole "You elected RONALD REAGAN President!?" bit, they'll probably faint dead away when you tell them about modern computers. "WHAT? The system REQUIRES 64MB of memory to boot!!!??? And 128MB is recommended!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?" At this point, they would probably punch you in the face, and tell you how much of a failure the modern computer world is (by virtue of being the most prodigious waste of perfectly good supercomputing hardware conceivable... short of using all the world's hardware to render an animated video of Britney Spears's assets bouncing... using a renderer written in BASIC, of course.)
Re:In my experience and my (not so humble) opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Or the processors that run at 2 billion cycles per second that cost less than $100. It would blow them away.
You can tell them, "Sure, the thing won't boot with less than 64MB of memory, but who cares when that much memory costs $15?" Oh course they will probably say that's our problem - what incentive do we have to elimate bloat when it's so much cheaper to throw more hardware at a problem?
BTW, be sure to tell them to put all their money into the stock of a small company named "Microsoft" in the early 1980's, and that around 1999 you'll be expecting a nice check in the mail.
Re:In my experience and my (not so humble) opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In my experience and my (not so humble) opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
While this may be true, it's largely done on purpose.
Professional programmers are in the business of making tradeoffs: time versus space, speed of execution versus speed of development, etc.
While it's true that a crack team of assembly programmers could probably rewrite the whole of MS Office for optimum performance, chances are:
1) It would take them years.
2) Users would hardly notice a difference ("Wow, the about box comes up in 100 ms instead of 500!")
3) The code would be impossible to maintain.
Nowadays, professional programmers who are working on performance-critial software tend to write first and optimize second (after they profile the code to determine where 'hotspots' are).
Just look at 'write-once-run-anyware' languages like Java or
Yes, but. (Score:5, Interesting)
While I'm in full agreement that today's programs are much fatter than those of 10 or 20 years ago, and I'll bravely resist the temptation to point fingers at Microsoft, I should point out that larger, slower programs are not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, you could get a prompt in a couple of seconds on an Apple II, Atari 400 (my personal favorite), or whatnot, but you couldn't run multiple programs at once, do filesystem operations with a mouse, etc. It takes more resources to accomplish more things, and technology hasn't necessarily been keeping up with that curve. (Though granted, there is far too much gratuitous bloat around--a minimal Linux system I keep on hand can boot in 2 seconds on a machine that takes 40 seconds to get through the BIOS startup...)
The other thing that should be done with the current level of technology, and regrettably rarely is done, is adding robustness. Array bounds checking, input sanity checking, the works. Except in very specialized cases, we have more than enough CPU power around to actually check all these things and still get done what needs to be done in a reasonable amount of time (as in, less than the user will notice). Instead of assuming that a function's inputs will be within range, check that they are in range, and take some sort of error action if not, rather than blowing away random areas of memory or the like. I get frustrated every time I see people saying "extra checks are inefficient and a waste of resources" (though admittedly I was of the same mind until recently). What else are you going to do with all those spare cycles? Twiddle your thumbs?
Re:In my experience and my (not so humble) opinion (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know what kind of games you were buying, but in the 80s, I was paying 1.99-9.99GBP for Spectrum games (average was probably 4.95-5.95GBP for a long time). During the 90s, Amiga/ST games were typically 20-25. Now, most games are 35-50GBP.
--
When I were a lad... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what I believed the future could hold for me at the time. Now I'm typing from a gorgeous little Powerbook with built-in DVD writer, which is wirelessly remote desktop-connected to an XP-based 2.4Ghz PC with a DVD rewriter in it, 1 Gig of RAM and a 120Gig hard drive. That's not even considered a top-end system anymore. Peripherals I connect include a firewire video cameras, bluetooth phone, a scanner, an iPod which stores more than supercomputers used to at the time of my C64 dream...all very nice toys. The above systems also have a broadband link out to the internet. Given all the above, I have to say that personal computing (small 'p', small 'c') has surpassed my expectations by a long, long way.
Oh, and the C64? I have the system I wanted, leaving aside the acoustic coupler. Of course, it's an emulated system. I carry it around installed on my phone...
Cheers,
Ian
Turbo Button (Score:5, Funny)
Push it, and you have successfully doubled the speed to 4.8ghz. That's the kind of innovation computer industry needs. Forget complicated overclocking.
PC technology is game-driven? (Score:5, Insightful)
anyone can still type up a letter using an old computer. science/research are adapting to what's currently available, rather than creating the needs, but i might be wrong.
on the other hand, not many game developers are still writing games for the current computers, instead, manufacturers are trying to come out with something so that their consumers can finally play GTA3 smoothly.
so a question to answer your question - what do you expect to see in computer games in the future.
In 10 years (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, one can dream, right? That and I'd like to see those diamond semiconducters with solid state nanostorage. That and Duke Nukem Forever.
Hardware acceleration (Score:3, Interesting)
512K RAM? (Score:2)
Sorry, but I'd rather go with your 33Mhz with 8Mb of ram. At least it may be able to boot DOS
What I hoped for (Score:3, Insightful)
I sit here, typing code on a 2400+ XP, 512Mb RAM and you know, the saddest part is that I'm still the slowest component of the computer. Sure, code compiles faster, but that's only a few moments compared to the hours I spend hitting keys.
It seems that hardware is just keeping up with the software that keeps bogging it down. Sure, my windows desktop is a '32-bit' blue rather than that sad '256 colors' blue. It's still the default color.
I wished that we had truly-emmersive 3D desktops. The kind where you can stack desktops on top of each other and you could control the mouse in 3 dimensions.
I wished that messages from the computer would be synthesized in a super-sexy voice. I wanted a holographic (Max Headroom-ish) interface that I could talk to. I wanted hot-swappable PCI devices.
I remember voice-recognition was just on the verge of becoming commonplace. I think it still is. Perhaps a vapor-ware award is in order...
Geek note: most modems are still at 2400 baud (Score:3, Insightful)
Multiprocessor boards (Score:3, Insightful)
True voice recognition systems?
DRM everywhere.
10 years brought a lot of changes (Score:5, Interesting)
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I would have KILLED for this system ten years ago. Correction, I wouldn't have imagined this much power, speed, and functionality in such a tiny, yet solid system. Ten years ago I was using a big clunky desktop PC, with a 14-inch CRT monitor, Windows 3-something, Prodigy dial-up to get to a kludgy graphical system where you could read about six lines of text on the screen and the amount of information was very limited, everything was wired together to form a basic ethernet network with lots of hoops to jump through to get it to work seamlessly. I think we had available for the entire department some $5K Toshiba laptop that was also clunky, and heavy, and ran the same lame OS with the same lame limitations.
Now I'm using this aluminum wonder to wireless connect to my broadband, always-on, super fast connection, while watching TV in the living room, a Terminal window open to let me do command line stuff in BSD, while using a super fun, super smooth OS X system that makes Windows 3 look like a torture device.
Speed, power, slickness, functionalty...you couldn't pay me to go back to what I was using ten years ago. Personally I can't wait to see what I'll be using ten years from now. Gripe all you want, but I think things have gotten waaaaaaaaay better in the last ten years.
In Ten Years... (Score:5, Interesting)
always seems to be the case, my expectations for 2013 are as follows:
- Computers will be much, much faster
- Operating systems will be much, much more bloated
- Our demands will have gone up
- Mozilla will have become sentient, and will be its own project maintainer
And the end result will be roughly the same. Except that last part, that will be new.
Alpha-blending at the OS-level will be not just standard equipment, but nearly required. Games will be more beautiful, but will come on 3 DVDs and take 3 or 4 minutes to load up, giving about 30-50 FPS on a "fast" machine. (Seriously, load up UT2K3 on a "fast" machine, it looks nice but is very slow...)
The video card will be about the size of the motherboard, and will require more cooling than the CPU. Audio cards will come with fans (if that sounds weird, what if I told you, in 1993, about fans on video cards, water-cooling, or heat-spreaders on RAM modules? Case-mods, LED-fans,
We'll keep hearing about how magnetic media is coming to an end, reaching the end of Moore's law, even while Maxtor is releasing 4.5 TB disk drives, and Seagate (among others) announces a new standard to replace the SATA that we'll have all become quite familiar with.
Video capture/tuner cards will be standard equipment (like audio today), and maybe -- just maybe -- by then we'll have some kind of industry standard on digital broadcast (cable/sattelite). Eh, probably not...
IMO anyway.
portable pcs and other stuff. (Score:3, Insightful)
My main "hope" was that portable pcs would actually become trully useful. I'm really dissapointed about how slow they are - I have a 300mhz pocket pc and it is painfully slow - my palm m105 is roughly as fast and has a better battery life. I know a new generation of pocket pcs is coming out, but my 486 sx33 can open big text documents faster than the 300mhz pocket pc can. Not cool. The newton kicked ass as an idea, but never picked up. Upsetting really, but hey. The tablet pc is going in the right direction I think. A bit bigger, but the screen space doesn't hurt.
Voice recognition also blows - I'd rather type. I type faster than speak to the computer and have it understand me. This tech is still a pat pat"That's nice dear" technology. I just can't take it seriously. I'm sure people who can't type find it useful, but I don't really.
Removable storage. When I got my first zip drive with my 200mb hard drive, it was very "WOW". A dvd does hold 4.7GB, but just doesn't have the same "wow, this is half my hard drive" effect. Tape drives and tapes have remained hellishly expensive for the home users. And why the hell are floppies still used, someone, please kill the floppy - the usb "keychain" is a great replacement, especially with regards to price per mb now.
Where the hell are the touchscreens? The technology is cheap, but nobody has implemented it. Another reason I think the tablet pc is a good idea.
The "quality" of lcds. I have 486 laptops with no dead pixels, my friend bought a new laptop and it came with 3 dead ones - WTF?
I have a lot of gripes, but what has surpassed my expectations:
- 3d rendering, lightwave and the like. Sure, what I can do in lightwave might look as good as something for Babylon 5 in its first couple seasons, but I do this on my own box and it doesn't take too long at all. I set up all my boxes to be render nodes for one project, but
Of course, I'm a nUb with lightwave compared to others, but just the fact this technology is available to the masses.
- photoshop - a-friggin-mazing. What it can do today was inconceivable in '93
- Games / on the fly rendering. Also really good, I'm not jumping in glee, but it definately has improved.
-Cheap old server hardware still surviving - perhaps this is a testament to how computers used to be built (at least servers, workstations began to suck for longevity after 386s came along ) Anyways, there is so much of this great equipment still around, working and available for cheap, it is really cool. Nothing is wrong with a quad xeon system with a raid array for $400 (proliant 6500s, great boxes).
As for the future? feh, work on getting my flying car goddamnit
Keyboards (Score:3, Interesting)
Go Model M!!!
What would have surprised me... (Score:3, Interesting)
TUNES (Score:3, Interesting)
No idea about the hardware though, hopefully something that can play Doom 3
I never had high expectations . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Things have gotten bigger, but not necessarily better. Now instead of well-thought out games, there's a ton of 3d animation and filler. Instead of the fun conversations on IRC and BBS's, there's spam filled usenet and E-Mail.
Ease of use hasn't drastically occurred -- because face it, nerds (who develop software) always turned their noses up at "the easy way" of doing things. Which is why the kids with Macs and Amigas got made fun of. The real thing the nerds were hating in the GUI was the inability to get under the hood.
10 years ago I couldn't have imagined downloading full music files and movies so easily, or creating your own with a few hundred dollars worth of equipment. Even getting your own home network going is insanely cheap nowadays.
I don't know about everyone else, but I'm pretty happy with how things have gone. What I didn't anticipate was how much Microsoft would totally dominate, and ruin computing. If I could have seen that then, maybe I would have bought a Mac in 1993, not another PC. Apple has flaws, but I just can't see them contaminating the Internet the same way Windows users and Microsoft has.
I'm happy to see the open source movement making waves, and 10 years ago I wouldn't have imagined a free OS could provide so many options. Nowadays your average cable modem provides the kind of bandwidth many universities had . . . I never would've imagined that 10 years ago.
Of course, the things I was doing in 1993 (using IRC to chat, looking at web pages, sending E-Mails), I'm still doing now. Except, with IE's non-compliance to standards and Windows viruses, it's actually worse than it was 10 years ago.
Saying all that, I love what Linux and BSDs offer for free alternatives -- a few of my computers are running Linux right now. As far as being completely satisfied though, OS X is exactly what I wanted in a computer 10 years ago. It's easy enough to deal with, stable, and I can get tinker with UNIX whenever I need to. I really became disinterested in computers from 95-98 or so; OS X is what made me buy a few programming books and get back into things though.
What sucks in 2003 is Microsoft and people not following standards on the web. DRM applies here too. A lot of really great things have happened in 10 years, what's held them back is MS dominance.
my wishlist (Score:5, Insightful)
grib.
My dream list: (Score:3, Insightful)
Heads up display glasses that don't cost a thousand bucks, with built in nightvision and thermal vision (to see today's REAL version, which isn't *that* unwieldy, check out www.tekgear.com, and look for the "spectre").
Mapping software for the computer described above. Also, some kind of VR overlay, so you can use it while you walk.
Game consoles that are *even better* than today's. Fully cinema-quality 3D immersion, usable with a HUD to really draw you in, and controls that strap on like gloves.
Hydrogen-powered everything! It's the future, you know...
Memories (Score:3, Interesting)
Future tech/apps/social (Score:5, Interesting)
and no bloody cables (Score:3, Interesting)
No network cables, no peripheral connector cables, no power cables, no voltage converters or powerboards...
And I will have a reliable power supply, probably provided by my own equipment. Hmm I'd like to fast internet out somewhere rural like
Hardware gets better, softeware gets worse (Score:3, Insightful)
Moore's PC (Score:5, Funny)
10 years / 18 months ~= 6.666
2^6.666~=60
So, as a rough rule of thumb, expect things to be about 50-60 times as powerful as they are today:
Given my 2GHz, 1Gb ram, 128mb video ram, 100Gb hard drive system today, a kind of typical PC, I should be running, by then:
120 GHz, 60 Gb ram, 7.5Gb video ram and a 6 terrabyte hard drive.
However, the following will also be true:
1) Windows 2013 will still be as slow as hell (probably clogging that fast 120 GHz processor with all of the things it securely prevents me from doing).
2) My wife will have finally killed me for all the money I've spent, especially as I swore that last year's 80Ghz processor would see me through for a couple of years.
3) According to Nick's newly coined law - every eighteen months my PC will give off roughly double the heat energy - I have just single handedly caused the ice caps to melt.
Re:Moore's PC (Score:3, Funny)
expect things to be about 50-60 times as powerful as they are today.
Actually storage capacities are doubling each year [acmqueue.org], not each 18 months, and have been doubling annually since about 1989. So in 10 years your 100G hard drive will be 100 terabytes. Unfortunately, access speeds are only improving by about 10%/year, so searching for a file on your 100T drive will take about a week....
Cheap cheap cheap. (Score:3, Insightful)
My random guess:
I hope that systems become cheap enough for computing to become even more ubiquitous. Go to a resturant, there's a cheap, elegant system, completely display, as the menu. If it needs replaced, it's only $30, most of that for the custom software for the menu display itself. Want to watch TV?
Walk up to the wall with the special wallpaper, drag your finger as a rectangle forms to the size you want, select TV from the menu, then grab the remote. The special wallpaper cost $175 a roll last year, now it costs $120.
Computers themselves will become more lego-like as they grow smaller. Because the components are so small, sensitive, and solid state, they will have to be contained in a protective case. Because of this, you won't have to have the computer intelf in a case, you just have to put the parts together somehow, have some connection to your outputs, to your inputs, to power, and to your network. As interconnection standards between parts becomes more robust and tolerant, computer parts will become more than ever, completely interchangeable along with software. Eventually, even average grandparents will be able to intuitively put together a system based on what they need to do with it, and the parts will be everywhere from checkout lanes to garden supply stores.
Ryan Fenton
Step into the time machine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not step into the ol' time machine, aka Google Groups' Usenet archive? The thread What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have? [google.com] is a fascinating read (really -- I recommend reading every post).
I noticed a few common thoughts throught the thread that didn't pan out: Multiprocessor desktops becoming commonplace. The demise of X86. Also on a whole people's estimates on HD space were very conservative. People predicted ridiculous resolutions for video.
Some people were right on the money though: 1GHz processors, 512MB RAM, and permanent connections to the 'net.
This is one of the best finds I've come across on ye olde Usenet.
And here's why you NEVER make predictions (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh. I find it fascinating that every year, we're 'starting to approach fundamental limitations of the current hardware approach'. Wonder what this chap would have thought of 3 Ghz processors.
Reall
But so far,no talk about the rise of laptops... (Score:3, Interesting)
If I hadn't invested in a nice monitor, I'd certainly have bought a laptop instead of a new desktop this time around, and I still want a better laptop than I have.
Jon Acheson
Things I could not have imagined that did happen (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather than being dissapointed by what didn't happen, here is what I'm pleased about that did happen, that I didn't expect.
- T1 download speeds into my house. My cable modem does 1.5Mbits down and 256Kbits up. That never occurred to me.
- Back then my machine could play back video from CD. Now I can do it in real-time off the Internet.
- Back then my computer chirped. Bill Clinton's voice coming from the White House web page in 1996 was scratchy. Now my entire music collection is on it.
- I can make my own CDs. Data, music or both.
- My machine serves as a digital darkroom.
- My machine lets me communicate with other people through email. (More of a social change than a technological change - back then I had email, but nobody to write to!) IM, IRC, etc. are also common now.
- Home networking.
- A powerful version of Unix in my house, free, with a lot of great applications. (Including MYSQL, which I'm toying with now.)
- Wireless capability so I can work where I want to, not where the computer is.
We've come a long way in 10 years
Manditory DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
That and more networked monitoring devices to ensure that we can live in a terrorism free society worldwide and enjoy the elimination of even the most petty crime.
Also we can look forward to that "paperless society" we've been promised, which will not only reduce the demands on our forests, but will eliminate the horrible firehazards known as libraries. Eliminating print media will do wonders for reducing littering, as well as ensuring that the news stories correspond well with the (electronically) published hiostory. Getting rid of all of those mouldy books will do wonders for public health and safety.
So all in all, it seems we've got much to look forward to, and as long as we leave the future of technology in the capable hands of our legislators and those corporations that have served our interests so well for so long, we just may get to see all of that come true!
You got more than what you asked for... (Score:5, Funny)
Bet you didn't think you'd get a space heater out of your computer!
The ignorant masses (Score:5, Insightful)
These billion-transistor CPU's that people use every day go unnoticed. Do you know how much genious was poured into it's creation?
And you go on to ask for voice recognition and perfect speech generation? Why not perfect AI while you're at it?
Be greatful and don't ask for much... until you go out and contribute to the development of this technology you ask for then you have not right to complain when you don't get it.
Surely not! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cold War II: The Race between Digital Rights and Hackers.
Some good news, some bad news... (Score:3, Insightful)
I generally see less and less interest in formal methods, formal design, disciplined approaches to software construction (by which I am referring to the use and adherence to serious models, not just fodder for coffeehouse discussions). Small, proven O/S kernels, supertight code, and emphasis on requirements analysis as the sorts of things that make for well-built and defined systems are costly, and just don't sell well in a commercial market which demands and receives revenue and, increasingly, waivers from liability for bad software products. Increasing "offshoring" of software development projects won't help keeping the gap between systems-as-intended and systems-as-developed issues from arising.
Organizations will lean on, and people will continue to accept descriptions of software quality where software testing is emphasized, before software development methodology or rigor.
Many more large and complex systems will be developed. Their sizes (and complexity of interactions) will outpace the ability of the implementation of their development models to support final code products that meet the required security needs of the public, or of customers. Security problems will get worse before they get better.
And in the small...
The good news? Consumer appliances.
You will be able to carry on a thumbnail chip (or, probably, through a more convenient mechanism, access to your personal material of interest. Wifi-type-access back through VPNs to your data should be readily available. This isn't too far from available now...within some limits...) all the music, photos, and items of personal interest that you would collect and store. I would like to have some confidence that this won't be ruined by digital rights management implementation and supporting legislation, but time will tell. I suspect workarounds will exist to circumvent most DRM systems that will come along. Oh yea, store any of that on a server owned by someone else, and you may end up giving up copyrights and more...Privacy rights and related issues over information you store on anyone else's system will get worse before it gets better.
Anyway, some thoughts...
Sam Nitzberg
http://www.iamsam.com
divergence, specialization - now and in the future (Score:4, Insightful)
So where's "here"? My summary of where we are today consists of a several things. First, I think there's a bigger divergence between the computing experience of a mainstream user vs. the computing experience of a power user (probably most of
While I always enjoy reading about Microsoft's latest fumble, I think they've been *trying* to make computers more specialized so that the user doesn't have to be. All of their Auto Correct features, assistant paper clip thingies, fully retarded (and grossly insecure) scriptability of every goddam product, and various other "features" that end up annoying the hell out of most of us are in fact a solid attempt to make the experience of using a computer more enjoyable for somebody like my mother. In fact, most of our mothers (and fathers) could probably do well to have a helluva lot of assistance using a computer, while most of us probably disable all of that in favor of more direct control. Keep in mind the population spread - there are way more baby boomers using computers than there are
So for the future, while I would *like* to see all kinds of cool things that would appeal to our geekiness, I'm predicting a slow, plodding future of more of the same - increased divergence between the computing experiences of regular and power users, and way more AutoBullshit and assistance features for the average home user.
You think innovation stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
Innovation is a funny thing. There's only so much of it that can happen at any one time. That's because there are two finite resources required for it to happen: attention and money. In other words, someone needs to care enough about something to spend time thinking about ways to do it better, and then someone needs to care enough about those new ideas to pay to turn them into realities.
The reason there has been practically no innovation on the desktop in the last ten years has been because that span of time -- ten years -- coincides precisely with the span of time the Internet has been in the public consciousness. Ever since Mosaic hit in '93 the vast majority of money and attention that's available in the world has been focused on the Net -- making it better, faster, more reliable and able to support more complex applications. That hasn't left a lot of those resources to support innovations on the desktop -- and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The first computer I ever connected to the Net, I connected in 1993. It was a 486SX/25 with 8MB of RAM and a whopping 200MB (yes, MB) hard drive. It ran Windows (version 3.1), Office, and some games.
Today I have a Duron 1200 with 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. It runs Windows (2000), Office, and some games... and a whole boatload of applications (Web browser, graphical IMAP mail client, IM programs, P2P, etc.) that I could not even have imagined in 1992. And, generally speaking, I'm happy with that -- those things are more useful to me than all the things we thought were going to be huge back in 1993 (immersive VR, CD-ROM encyclopedias, etc.) would have been.
So, in short, there's been plenty of innovation -- it's just been in a different direction than you (or I) were expecting.
The biggest disappointment for me... (Score:4, Insightful)
obligatory HAL reference (Score:3, Insightful)
1983, 1993, 2003, 2013 (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM PC, 8088, 4.77Hz, 256K+ RAM, $10,000. Language of choice is BASIC. Video is CGA, but only if you can afford the card, MDA otherwise. Removable storage is the 5-1/2" floppy holding 320K. Some people get wise and punch their floppies to make them double sided.
The OS was PC-DOS, and fit on part of a floppy. Small, fast and feature-less.
Game I remember distinctly was "Gato" (came out about 1985 I think), a submarine hunt game. It fit on a floppy, and was awesome fun!
All PC software had to fit on (and run from) a single floppy.
Networking? Not on the PC! Of course, the PC makes an excellent (but expensive) terminal for a UNIX system, from which you can access the ARPAnet.
Packard Smell, i486, 66MHz, 2Mb RAM, $3,000. Language of choice was Turbo C, although some Turbo Pascal diehards (myself) still lingered. Video is VGA and a smattering of SVGA, XVGA cards. Removable storage of choice was the 1.44Mb 3-1/2" floppy. Some people have CDROMS, but not many. Harddrives are the norm, and their typical sizes are about 100 to 500 Megs.
The OS for most people was still DOS, now version 5.0. People are running this cheesy environment called Windows 3.1 on top of it. I rebel and use OS/2. I need 8M RAM to use it, but it had a UI that GNOME and KDE are barely approaching ten years later.
My games of choice were Civilization and SimCity. They came on floppies, but a lot of other games are starting to come out on CDROMS, which pisses me off since I can't afford one. They also tend to use more RAM and Video than I can afford either.
Software in general is bloating. Stuff that takes up 5 to 10 Megs of disk is common. But I'm not bitching much, since they're adding a lot of features, not counting the GUI.
Networking has arrived! 14.4K modems are becoming standard. If you live in the right area, you can get an internet account. Otherwise AOL and Prodigy are somewhat suitable substitutes.
Home Built, P4, 2.8GHz, 1Gig RAM, $1,000. Language of choice is C++, although several dozen other major languages are common. There are no video standards anymore, but the minimum resolution anyone can put up with is 32-bit 1024x768. GPUs are more expensive and have bigger fans than CPUs. Removable media of choice is the CD-R, with USB memory sticks becoming popular. But the 1.44M floppy is still king. It will probably remain standard equipment until the typical BIOS can boot from USB devices (guesstimate of one year).
The common operating environment is still Windows, but fortunately, the current incarnation runs on top of NT instead of DOS. WinXP recommends 512M RAM. UNIX is making strong headway into the desktop market. Even the most basic Linux distro requires a minimum of 16M RAM, with most recommending 64M.
I haven't bought any games in a couple of years. The last one was Civilization III. (My how things change!) The game market has become dull. My prediction from ten years earlier, that game developers would start scaling back and produce games that would run on systems that the public actually owned, proved false. Instead, the public eagerly upgrades their RAM and GPU's every six months. I see that the many new blockbuster games require video cards that haven't been on the market more than six months.
Software in general has long since passed the bloat stage, and has become quivering mounds of fat reminiscent of dead whales washed up on the beach. This isn't limited to the Windows world. I don't see much increased functionality with OpenOffice versus the Lotus SmartSuite of ten years earlier.
Highspeed internet connections are considered a human right in some regions. You hide your head in shame if you're still using a dialup modem or ISDN.
Okay, now time for 2013 predictions:
Sun Home Workstation, 128-bit i986 class, 1
It's the year 2003... (Score:4, Funny)
(Sorry, I just couldn't resist)
What I expect from computing, 10 years from now (Score:3, Interesting)
Since this appears to have sent all the geeks into nostalgia-land, I think I'll answer the last bit instead.
For one, I think most people will have broadband (yeah yeah I know a lot of us geeks have it today, but I mean the average mp3-downloading grad student today will want broadband after they graduate.) Piracy even more rampant as the primary showstopper have been time and bandwidth, not morals or anti-piracy protections.
I think we'll finally see the distancing from a traditional "PC" towards a central headless "house" hub (noisy, hot, "large") somewhere out of the way, run by wireless communications (or alternately by a Gigabit cable if one has higher requirements). One or more "smart terminal" instead of the traditional desktop (I'm guessing one per family member if you can afford to...), which has the graphics card, a slim DVD-burner (which also does CDs, one slot), probably all built into the LCD monitor foot, preferably all passively cooled. All the heavy computation made server-side.
The really high-end PCs wouldn't change much those. They'll be a solid space heater, make noise like a small plane, including the GPU fan, but it'll outperform the stuff above and probably fit better in a student's dorm room. However, for families the above is something people will have in their living room, the "PC" has been relegated to really hardcore gamers/performance freaks.
In combination with that, you'll have a host of appliances, something like slimMp3 running on wireless, and a video player/PVR running of the same (kinda like Kiss DP-500 does today over Ethernet.) In terms of innovativeness I think Apple will lead the way (classy stuff for those that can afford it), followed by Linux imitations (does the same but not nearly as polished) with Microsoft trailing.
On the OS side, I think it'll be quite a bit the same. Apple will still be there in their niche, not dying but not taking over the market either. Microsoft will try to stamp out piracy, and still be holding onto the considerable quantities of less computer-savvy users, while the big question is where the reasonably tech savvy people are (those that could dance circles around MS' XP/SP1 activation, not that all do). In ten years, many more will have grown up with computers making this group considerably bigger. There is no doubt in my mind that the number of Linux users will increase, the question is by how much. I don't think Linux will manage to cease the market, but I'm guessing 25%, also helped by many businesses running Linux to lower costs.
When it comes to applications, I don't think too much will change. Features sell, not bugfixed. People will still complain about their system being buggy, but will buy the latest flashy version anyway, even if the code quality is more "mass market beta testing" than "production quality". I think the "core" set of applications will stabilize though, such as office tools and common internet tools.
I don't think we'll make any great improvements in interfacing with computers (as a computer), I believe it'll still usually be a screen/keyboard/mouse setup. I do however think we'll integrate the computer into more systems (stereo/radio/TV/cell phone) all working with one central hub though, and using a remote (or the switches on the set) it might not seem as if we're interfacing with the computer at all, it happens "behind the scenes".
Kjella
Think about twenty years (Score:4, Interesting)
Twenty years ago I was using a Xerox 1108 Dandelion. It had a megapixel display (admittedly monochrome only, but for more money you could get an 1132 Dorado which had 24bit colour), an optical three button mouse, ethernet, a WIMP interface, WYSIWYG word-processing, spreadsheet, bitmap and vector graphics editors all as software components so that you could drop a vector graphic into a word-processing document and vice versa. It had a distributed hypertext system, technically similar to the Web. And it had a software development environment which makes today's IDEs look primitive.
The system box was about 10% bigger all round than a modern mid-tower case. The monitor was very big and heavy, but it was twenty-one inch. Sometimes the machine was infuriatingly slow, but then we were running very compute-intensive software, which would still be slow on today's boxes.
So what progress have we actually made in twenty years?
Boxes of this class are now cheaper - much cheaper. Ordinary people can now have them. The Dandelion, in those days, cost about two years of my salary, whereas I can earn the price of my current machine in a couple of weeks. And that ignores the fact that my Dandelion had only 4 megabytes of RAM and 80Megabytes of disk (but against that, the LISP system, criticised in those days for being wasteful of memory, was actually a lot more efficient of memory than modern systems).
And processers are faster. How much faster in real user terms I don't know. I remember when I switched to an Acorn Archimedes - the first ARM based machine - how much more responsive it felt. The Dandelion was capable of around two DEC MIPs. My present box does over six thousand 'bogomips'. How close a bogomip is to a 'DEC MIP' I don't know, but in terms of user experience this machine is certainly not three thousand times faster than the Dandelion - ten times, maybe.
So what I'm saying is that actually we've made frighteningly little progress in the last twenty years. In software terms, we've acutally gone backwards. The reasons are very simple
So what are the achievements of the last twenty years? Well, the hardware boys have achieved a lot. Kudos to them. On the software side I think the best and most creative thing that's been achieved is the GNU General Public License. It's about the only real software advance I've seen in my working life.
The next twenty years
So what does this imply for the next twenty years? I think we have to face the fact that the hardware boys will continue to leave us behind. We will see smaller, lighter, lower power devices. We may see usable speach input. The 'desktop box', as we know it, may die, leaving only servers and portables.
Processors growing faster is always good but in a sense this is academic. For most purposes a good user experience can be provided on machines a thousand times slower than our present machines, or, to put it differently, bad programming can eat up every ounce of speed the hardware boys can give us for no discernable improvement in user experience. What I hope to see in twenty years is my six thousand bogomips of processor in a package that draws curre