Frater 219's Journal: Predictions for 2004 [Updated Dec. 31 2004]

Update: I made a set of predictions New Year's Day 2004. It's now the end of the year. Some of them have come to pass. Others have been disproven. Here's how it goes:

1. SCO will lose, or drop its case and go out of business. However, no SCO principals will be brought to justice for abuse of legal process. Microsoft will pretend never to have been involved.
   • The trial shows no sign of going away soon. Sigh.
2. The U.S. dollar will continue to sink versus the euro and versus gold. Lack of confidence in the U.S. economy will be largely due to failures of corporate accountability and the continuing costs of the Iraq occupation.
   • Gold has risen from $415 in January to $438 as of December. The euro has risen from $1.15 to $1.36 in the same time frame. Not bad.
3. Microsoft and its allies will release increasingly tightly controlled end-user systems. They will be increasingly inappropriate for enterprise reliability and control needs.
   • Microsoft has been pretty quiet on the technical-control front, instead continuing legal "licensing" threats and FUD.
4. During the first quarter of 2004, a European nation will demand extradition of a ROKSO-level spammer from the United States.
   • Didn't happen. We did see the prosecution, conviction, and sentencing in the U.S. of Jeremy Jaynes, aka Gaven Stubberfield. Jaynes was the ROKSO-level spammer responsible for the "horse porn" zoophilia spam that my users are so glad to be rid of.
5. Red Hat's market share in the United States will decline somewhat as Novell's SuSE takeover yields a manageable enterprise Linux. As with the old SuSE, this will not be 100% Open Source. Red Hat will remain profitable.
   • Red Hat is still profitable. Novell has made SuSE more, not less, open source; and has released instead a desktop Linux system.
6. Armed conflict will continue in Iraq throughout 2004. A major new front will emerge between Turkey and the Kurds of northern Iraq, possibly including violence targeting civilians on either side.
   • Turkey and the Kurds seem to be a non-issue. The word "quagmire" came and went -- right now, it seems ''worse'' than just a quagmire. Perhaps a fireswamp.
7. The current Debian testing will be released as Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 by mid-year.
   • Didn't happen, and they're calling it 3.1 anyhow. Instead, more and more people seem to be treating testing as stable right now, including using it on servers.
8. At least two worm outbreaks of similar scale to Code Red, Slammer, and Welchia will attack Windows systems worldwide. The Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X platforms will remain free of widespread viruses and worms, despite rising popularity.
   • Not so far. Spammer viruses spread by email continue to be a big pest on Windows -- using social engineering and Microsoft vulnerabilities to propagate. Alternative platforms have gained in popularity but still not seen a widespread virus or worm.
9. A majority of the captives held at Guantànamo Bay will be released without charges.
   • Many have been released. Not most.
10. European and other non-United-States government agencies will increasingly migrate IT operations to Linux and other Free Software systems.
    • Several have, yes.
11. Electronic voting will be a debacle, and its current advocates in government will distance themselves from it.
    • It has been a debacle this year, although not as much as the general lack of transparency and accountability, with "national security" frauds kicking media observers out of vote counts in Ohio. The discrepancy between exit polls and reported election results remains unexplained.
12. John Ashcroft will leave office.
    • And there was much rejoicing. (Yaay.)

In the year 2000...

[Feztaa]

I read that whole thing thinking of Conan O'Brien's "In The Year 2000" skit [nbc.com] :)

Happy New year!