1. Midget formerly known as Symbol to have Christmas No. 2 hit single
and world's most popular MP3 with '1999', where voices originally
intended to be heard together in harmony are heard separately.
2. Spice Girls to have another Christmas No. 1 hit single with cover
of '1999', where entirely separate voices are apparently intended
to be heard together in harmony.
3. AOL and mozilla.org don't actually ship any browser product.
Internet Explorer 5 dominates world. World doesn't notice.
jwz@aol.com writes sarcastic emails about Netscape and mozilla in
disgust, comparing last few years to the lucid xemacs effort.
4. Web consortium suffers internal rebellion, divides into fractions,
produces no useful standards adopted by anyone. TimBL writes edict
about it all in disgust lamenting lack of physicists' involvement,
contrasting last few years with the original CERN effort.
5. IETF/ICANN suffers more internal arguments, divides into even more
fractions, produces no useful standards adopted by anyone. Cerf
writes book about it all in disgust lamenting lack of development
of Interplanetary Internet, real quality of service, etc.,
contrasting last few years with halcyon days of DARPA funding.
6. Microsoft legally divided into fractions, produces no useful
standards adopted by anyone with a clue. Internal email
arguments leaked. Gates adds short chapter covering events to
another edition of 'The Road Ahead', fixes prime number 'typo',
retitles it 'The Millennium Ahead', bundles it with Windows so that
people will read it. Astrologers and their publishers protest,
citing various recent legal rulings. Astrology entry vanishes from
Encarta, replaced by rather longer entry on Apple.
7. Mac games industry finally collapses with launch of Connectix
Playstation emulator. Apple consumer portable fails in market
because:
a) it's too small to contain a CD-ROM drive to run those
Playstation games and supplant the Colour GameBoy.
b) it's not Palm-compatible.
c) No themes. No Microsoft Office. Newton.
8. 'Open Source hardware' effort begins from scratch. Reinvents fire;
begins work on wheel, with aim of working upwards to full
open-source computer powered by open-source electricity, initially
from open-source treadmills.
9. Human genome is completely sequenced and patented, preventing
Open Source Hardware effort beginning from scratch as the
instigators are not themselves open-source. OSH instigators begin
genetic engineering; plan to fork genome using DNA from Raymond,
Stallman and Dyson, ask Linus to donate his kids to the cause,
begin search for open-source educational material, open-source
diapers, and open-source baby food and vaccines.
10.Y2K bug considered extremely passe and boring, gets no
coverage. 'Y2K: the movie' less popular than, longer than 'The
Avengers: the director's cut', but with less plot.
L.
posting like it's 1999.
<L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk>PGP<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/>