The albino ferret featured in my profile is Frederich "Freddie" Heimlich Kunreuther. We saved him five years ago from two ignorant college girls who were trying to set him loose in the woods. He recently passed away after surviving a bad intestinal infection and a bad cold. We'll miss his happy joyful smile, his playfulness, his total acceptance and curiosity of every living creature and the world around him and his French kisses. Accepted by and played with the cats who miss him, too (except Lightning our old fat jealous tuxedo cat - bad ol puddy tat!)

reorganization coming up

IN the next couple of weeks I am going to remove all the current content in this blog and start again and focus what this particular blog should be about.
I'll start another blog for any tech comments or prognostications what to expect
Another blog may have links to crappy videos that somehow many of us seem oddly amused by and have to share.

WIndows API on Apple Macs may happen, yet..

Watch out, Steve Jobs may drop the bomb on Microsoft - the ability to run Windows programs on Macs - without Windows (at least Windows XP). Don't believe Redmond's numbers, Vista sales are far far far worse than expected and the projections are not good - with the announcement of dumping support for XP early next year, many vendors are considering to upgrading - to Linux. Apparently, Service Pack 3 ain't gonna happen, you either buy Vista Basic at the least or choke and die. How about Microsoft's customers/users give Redmond the finger and start switching to Ubuntu, Red Hat and the Lando Calrissian of Linux distros, Novell Suse. And for those who got the cash to get sucked into Apple's hardware snare, from a Mac Mini to MacBook Pro, you'll be able to run virtually anything you want - Mac OS X, another OS using Boot Camp or programs using XP APIs running flawlessly without Windows.

MOre Prognostications '07

1.)By December 2007, many will agree this was the year that Microsoft and the Free Software and Open Source Movements both shot themselves in the foot needlessly warring within and without, while Apple and Google confidently achieved unquestionable dominance in their respective markets. There will be revealed a secret partnership or alliance between the two companies regarding bandwidth.
2.)By December 2009, turnover to Vista will be less than half of what Microsoft projected. Most users have either stuck with Windows XP, moved to Apple or bought a Linux box (as opposed to installing Linux themselves). Microsoft's threat to cutoff support for Windows XP sparks migration away from its products.
3.)Sony buys Be, Inc. intellectual property and employs Magnussoft Zeta OS in new Media devices, from laptops to digital media players, stressing security and ease of use for its consumers. Oddly enough, it takes off because Sony gambles on dropping use of DRM on music and video its download store and making media player seamless and easy to use.
4.)Steve Jobs gets Beatles exclusively on ITMS by negotiating 49% ownership of Northern Songs to Sir Paul McCartney and estate of John Lennon (songs composed by George Harrison transferred to his estate and Harrisongs Publishing, What Goes On split between Northern Songs and Startling Music). Other half still belongs to Sony Music/BMG, 1% belongs to Buena Vista Music Publishing.
5.)2011 - Google puts in a bid for AT&T, AT&T employs Microsoft as a white knight, putting in a hostile takeover of Google, Google employs a poison pill tactic of issuing preferred stock that can be redeemed at a premium after any takeover - the FTC steps in and orders a cooling off period for all parties, orders Microsoft to divide into no less than three separate corporations, allows "merger" of Google and AT&T under certain conditions.
6.)One of the newly created "Baby-Softs", an R&D company, purchases Bell Labs from Alcatel-Lucent.
7.)The real reason George W. Bush wants NASA to go back to the Moon: intel reveals Chinese plans to set up military bases on Moon. The President and the military want to covertly establish US military outposts on The Moon to counter Chinese lunar expansion.

Apple's new phone and media devices and a Google laptop in every home everywhere

Okay, the Apple "iPhone" will be rebranded not The Apple Phone because Cisco has been lapse and shoddy and sneaky with this trademark. There will be a deal. Not that it matters. In fact this first iteration of this device will be a noble failure like the Power Mac G4 Cube. It will be superseded by a new more versatile unbridled unhumbled device, an incredible device (a hint of what Disney characters will be enlisted to shill the device). It will be called the iLife Phone or iLife Device, but definitely, everyone will call it an iLife for short. The ad campaign writes itself, (iLife is your life). And gee, doesn't Apple own that brand name already? How convenient! This device will be labelled a media device, not a phone , not a music player, not a PDA because it will do everything for you communications and media wise. In less than three years after its introduction, say goodbye to the iPods except the Shuffles. The iLife will do it all - it will scare the shit out of Palm, Microsoft, Sony, Nokia and Motorola. Not to mention Dell and H-P as well. The iMac will become less and less a personal computer, as we know and use it, and really turn into an invisible media center/hub. Apple will still make computers that do creative heavy lifting, but the personal consumer Mac will finally be supplanted by a ubiquitous home electronic appliance that will work in concert with the iLife device. All those extra things added on to personal computers to make them attractive to use will be the domain of the media center. Personal computers will revert to being "computers" again.
While Apple will be eating a lot of peoples lunch, breakfast and dinner, a zillion OLPC devices will be finding their way into everyone's home as a cheap intuitive Internet device that goes anywhere. No matter if you live in the Third World or Main Street, USA, the OLPC will be the "other" ubiquitous computing device of the twenty first century. And Google will be the final piece of the puzzle that makes it happen, especially in the West. Once OLPCs start proliferating outside the Third World, Google will start distributing a Google brand OLPC that will be chock full of Google products that will generate loads of Google Ad Dollars and eat MSN and Yahoo's lunch. USD100 for a laptop? How about free? Google will make back the cost from Ad Dollars many times over. Google'll sell 'em first for about USD49.99, then cut back to USD39.99 , then USD19.99 , after that it's free as that AOL subscription disc you're using as a coaster or part of your kid's art project or if you are feeling generous and want assuage your guilt - hey, it works for public television - after you pick up your OLPC, you can log on, register the device and you can donate money to the cause to help illiterate kids in Africa. Then you can surf the net, click on the Google ads that appeal to you and everyone 's happy.
Will this bother Apple? Not in the slightest. It's not in the ad business, it's selling Porsches, Mercedes and Lamborghinis. Steve Jobs knows what business he is in and what he's selling and to who, which gives him that edge over Dell, H-P, Sony and Microsoft.

New Year's Prognostications (some forcasts longer in range than others)

1)Disney, through machinations of chief shareholder Steve Jobs, will acquire and streamline and re-purpose Sony. This will happen in more than a year, probably by Summer '08.

2)SonyMusic/BMG management and labor force will be purged from top to bottom. Fewer releases are on discs of any kind. Most back catalogue, remasters and re-releases will be available as digital download only - expect by Christmas '07)

3)SCO will finally implode but who cares?

4)Steve Ballmer and many others at Microsoft will be purged by new thoughtful purposeful focused yet ruthless regime - motto:subdivide and conquer.

5)The new AT&T and other telecoms will be attacked by clueless muttonheads in press for totally legal but ethical abuses of power regarding distribution of bandwidth - meanwhile Google is silently building it's own mirror of the Internet that runs on speeds that is like comparing the old pipes of current system to straws while Google's internet pipes are like twenty eight lane highways

6)OpenOffice, not Microsoft Office, will be seriously challeged by Google's online apps, which will include a simple but effective slideshow by end of Summer 07.

7)Ubuntu's Shuttleworth and Novell will each drop serious cash on Madison Avenue for campaigns promoting each brand's flavor of Linux desktop. Ironically, desktop OS'es will mean less and less as the network becomes the new OS.

8)More OLPCs turn up in developed world than in Third World - eventually sold for a profit at USD199.99 - becomes vehicle disrupting Microsoft's dominance of desktop in the Western world.

9)IBM and Red Hat sues Microsoft in a foot dragging trial that paralells the SCO vs IBM case.

10)Red Hat and Novell scoop up remains of SCO.

11.)There won't be a second generation Zune. This is not one of those items that Microsoft will get right in three tries.

12.)Sears Holding, not Apple Computers, comes out of nowhere to appear to rescue Blockbuster, only it's to snatch the real estate, dump management and employees and sell off the inventory at fire sale prices to Walmart.

13.)In the next three to five years, I can imagine a couple of hundred million OLPCs spread over the globe, a quarter to a half of that number will ironically be in Canada, the United States and Mexico and Europe, you can't beat the price and the performance. They'll sell like Commodore 64s and TRS-80 Color Computers, but have a longer shelf life and children will not be the primary users,though that childlike intuitive interface will undoubtedly, rest assured, be copied by Microsoft and Apple. China will be stamping out buckets of it's own OLPC versions. If internet connectivity truly becomes universally ubiquitous, this worldwide distribution of OLPC would be the single most revolutionary event of the first quarter of the twenty first century. After that, the next life shattering event we would have to prepare or pray for protection against would be an unscheduled EMP event, from either a series of overhead nuclear explosions or an asteroid or a extremely large meteor impact, or an unexpectantly large solar flare, now that we have a weakened ozone layer (human civilisation has only been on the electric grid for barely over a hundred years, now, it is not even remotely unlikely this type of EMP event will happen). The loss of data, communications and services from such an event will undoubtedly be universally traumatic, the great humbling, the universe rewards human hubris; afterwards, people may divide in two camps, those who continue to pursue communications and services via electronic and digital technologies, and those spooked enough by the first great EMP event to rely on earlier, slower but less ethereal technologies, those not adversely affected by electromagnetic impulses. How long that Amish approach could last is anybody's guess, for digital technology and its fruits are infectious and irresistable.

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