Right. As computing devices with a user-facing operating system become more and more ubiquitous(at least in the short term), Linux will win from the bottom-up. The price of a device will be inversely correlated with the manufacturer's willingness to shell out the money for a Windows license, and the price of computing is continuing to fall (obviously)
In the same way that humans are the only technological civilization on the earth, we're likely the only technological civilization in the universe as well. The time scale of evolution pales versus the time scale of intelligently-directed technology, so as soon as one group develops technology it will near-instantly spread and conquer ever-larger areas of space. In the same way that we've come across other intelligent but non-technological species (primates, whales/dolphins, birds), we'll likely come across other intelligent and non-intelligent species as we conquer the universe in the relatively near future. Maybe even technological civilizations inferior to ours (there's still a small window of opportunity for another civilization to beat us to the punch and take over earth), but we can predict the general shape of those encounters by looking at the history of such encounters on earth (the first being the destruction of neanderthals)
What's funny is this is practically just a restatement of a fermi paradox, except instead of asking "why aren't they here", it takes into account what would likely happen if they were here - we'd be gone
Pretty good combat the horror of life advice. OTOH, DFW killed himself this year, so maybe that's not a ringing endorsement
Does anyone think the web per-se will still exist 25 years from now, much less 100? Clearly to some extent all the major players(Mozilla, Google, MS, Apple) want to push the web in a variety of directions. Can Mozilla give us a vision of what sort of Mozilla product we'd be using say 15 years from now to browse the "web"
That's not sarcasm, I'm genuinely curious. 15 years ago Mosaic had just been released. Today people can message each other online using a wireless network that didn't exist back then, on a tiny iPhone that's an order of magnitude more powerful than desktop computers from 1993. Can Mozilla really write a business plan that looks even 15 years into the future and tells what it's place will be?
As a kid I remember watching shows such as Land of the Lost. Recently I saw part of the Dinotopia mini-series, and needless to say special effects have come a long way since I was a kid. The effects in Dinotopia were passable, but pale in comparison to movies like Jurassic Park. The effects of Land of the Lost certainly wouldn't
New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you. - David Letterman
