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These are the three most critical things for the future of personal computing. Why? Because the next thing coming down the pipe is massive, massive processing power. Which is great! We can keep bending Moore's Law over all day long, and make humongous irons available in people's living rooms and offices. We can do all kinds of great calculations... but what are we going to do with all this calculating power?

People will tell you that the possibilities are limitless - with huge data sets, you'll be able to figure out amazing things and make predictions and perform calculations previously only available to giant enterprise computing teams. But here's the root problem: you can crunch data all day long, but where are you going to get the data from? Well, unfortunately, you're going to spend all day downloading that data from the "wonderful" intarweb0rs. Bandwidth is going to become a huge problem; you're going to have this awesome computing monster at your feet, but have nothing to feed it!

People are going to want to keep massive databases locally so they can do cool computing tasks - so storage is a key thing, but thankfully terabytes aren't that expensive any more. I'm sure we'll see 1TB drives as standard shipping options by next year, if not the end of this year. And the advent of solid state storage will also make accessing data faster, so that's awesome too. The only piece missing from this equation is faster networks! Sadly, the computer network infrastructure of the U.S.A. is pretty pathetic when compared internationally. If our country has any hope of competing, we need to get on the stick and dismantle the network monopolies, institute real competition, and get innovating!
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I need to live to see this Winter. Spore is being released on September 7th!!
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Summer 2002 - Department of Justice offices

MS rep: "Look, this case is just bad news for everyone, and all I'm saying is I think we can work out a way to make everyone happy."

DOJ rep: "I don't see what you could possibly offer the U.S. government in exchange for a settlement."

MS rep: "I think that you're thinking what I'm thinking. I think that we have something that you want very badly."

DOJ rep: "And what might that be?"

MS rep: "You want a backdoor into every PC running Windows."

DOJ rep: "It would be a great boon to law enforcement to be able to protect national security in that manner."

MS rep: "We'll just keep that part of the settlement between us though, of course."

DOJ rep: "Of course."


I guess we'll never know the truth.
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So, for those not aware - Big Blue turned 30 on 9/10/2002. I took it upon myself to help him celebrate his birthday in grand style, and we had a day of delight throughout the city of Boston this past Friday.

Tom showed up at my place a little after Noon; after I downed my lunch, we set off for Waltham and hit Danger Planet, a rather nice little game store off Moody Street. Tom dropped off his car, and we carpooled into Beantown.

After parking near a Mormon church off Brattle Street, we made our way towards the Adrenaline Zone, a PC arcade establishment. MickD caught up with us a little while after we arrived, and the three of us got to blow each other up a lot a lot. Much fun... Tom got to snipe my head into little bits, and I got to blow him and a lot of bots into a bunch of luscious gibs.

Moving on, we found ourselves at the L.A. Burdick's cafe right up the street. The sign advertised "Iced Chocolate", so we stepped up to the counter and ordered two of those, and two slices of chocolate mousse cake. We were served, and Tom sampled his sweets... and declared that he no longer needed women in his life, as long as he had his precious, precious mousse cake. The drinks and cakes were exceedingly scrumptious (but maybe not quite that scrumptious).

Our next stop was The Garage in Harvard Square, where we hit Pandemonium and Tokyo Kid, as well as another new Japanese toy store and the "All Your Game" retro video game mini-store in the stairwell. At this point, our good buddy Jski hooked up with us, and we continued onward.

We walked to the extreme end of Harvard all the way down to The Games People Play (are you seeing a theme yet?) and chatted with Joseph, one of the merchants, about various games and their pros and cons. Jski bought 1870, and I bought Humping Humping Hedgehogs! Okay, that's not really the name, but I can't remember the name because it's a German game. On the way back, we hit the Harvard Coop bookstore and Wordsworth... and at wordsworth, I bought Tom his own copy of "I'm Just Here For The Food", Alton Brown's (host of Good Eats) new book. Tom has trouble boiling water - but I believe Alton's book will be Tom's introduction to the wonderful and exciting world of food preparation.

We next went by car out to Copely Square and hit The Compleat Strategist. On the way, Jski ran into one of the three people he knows in Boston - Agthorr's sister. She's a real cutie, a very sweet girl... but she sadly couldn't come along, as she had frozen chicken and ice cream in her shopping bags. At the game store, Jski and I bought Tom a bunch of game books he really wanted. We next went by T to dinner...

Which was had at the wonderful Sunset Grill & Tap. I ran into Jen Johnson as we entered; she was just leaving with some co-workers, but we got a quick hug in before we parted ways.

That evening, the Sunset had 112 beers on tap... but the clear winner at our table was the Kopparberg Pear Cider, a Product of Sweden. Tom's got a taste for sweet drinks, and the Kopparberg was his own find - but Jski and I both loved it, and when Drak and Lee joined us later at night, they too found themselves ensorceled by the bodacious brew. Drak ended up drinking a yard of beer, and I had a couple of nice Beertails (chocolate covered cherry and fruit cocktail). Dinner was awesome... Tom and Jski hadn't eaten much all day, between the three of us, we packed away a full basket of sour cream and chive fries and fried calamari; I had a delicious tuna melt, Tom had a salmon dinner, and Jski had a mondo half pound burger (Drak and Lee had their own food when they joined later, but I can only remember that Lee got the Mahi Mahi).

All in all, a very exhausting day out on the town. But we had a very happy Tom at the end of it all! 30 years down - and many, many more to go, huzzah!

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