Here's my take:
(1) People power will come to life.

Hmmm, most people who use a PC or tablet (unless they're playing a game) tend to sit quietly at location for hours on end. There's not a lot of opportunity to harness power. Now it might be possible for such harnessing to power cell phones and iPods, but unless cell phones use significantly less power, this is a no-go.

(2) You will never need a password again. Biometrics will.....

Yes, immediately after voice recognition and AI take over. Biometrics might take over for informal use, but it's too flawed (either too many false negatives or false positives) for widespread use. It's much more likely that a personal SKEY-type personal RFID might become available.

(3) Mind reading is no longer science fiction.

It's no longer science fiction today, but even if it is cheap enough, our minds are too scattered to have this as the primary mode of input.

(4) The digital divide will cease to exist. Mobile phones will make....

May parts of the world live on less than one dollar a year, virtually no infrastructure, and have virtually no need for technology that doesn't directly contribute to the bottom line (i.e. surviving). The digital divide will be around for years to come.

(5) Junk mail will become priority mail.

This might be come true, but it would be priority mail for mail services who want to gain extra income, not users.

Okay, let's assume that all people play by the rules of using this smart feature (and that there's enough gold at the end of the rainbow to end world hunger).

Smart junk mail is the modern equivalent of Microsoft Clippy. Yes Clippy tried to be helpful, and often did provide users with valuable information, but it was still hated precisely because it was unsolicited.

This is not to say that junk mail can't be made valuable. If mail could be pulled into three bands by mail providers, "Regular Mail", "Smart Mail", and "Junk mail". It has to be something that depends on the mail providers, not solely the mail publishers since we can't trust them. For most people, smart mail would be ignored unless you were looking for a deal. You could then call on it as a supplementary knowledge base.

> Einstein didn't even believe them. They were ultimately proven
> true as technology advanced to the point that the relevant
> experiments became possible.

True, but until Einstein's theories were tested, they were just one mathematical model among many.

I think one problem many people have is the assumption that a model has anything to do with reality. They don't necessarily. There are plenty of weird models that work out but are not realistic. For instance, Nonstandard analysis has shown than using infinitesimals and infinities is valid for solving real physical problems, even though infinitesimals and infinities do not exist (see Heisenberg and Cosmology).

Similarly quantum theory doesn't necessarily posit that light is both a wave and a particle. It simply posits that light is, it does not correspond to our real world understandings of either waves or particles. Both are merely approximations that our feeble brains grasp onto for intuition's sake.

True, but it's the nature of the problem.

Before the periodic table, the elements were grouped by non-essential properties like boiling points, conductivity, colour, etc. The problem with such groupings is that different people group things differently. With such groupings, some kind of voting or fiat declaration is the only way to define the things.

When the periodic table was created, there was finally a grouping based on essential properties, so no such voting is required.

If you want to avoid this problem, you have to come up with a similar non-arbitrary measure. For instance, the difference between a black hole and a really heavy star is pretty clear and depends only on a universal constant (speed of light). The difference between a Planet and Dwarf Planet is not (i.e. it's possible to turn a Planet into a Dwarf planet by adding debris in the path of the orbit). A better definition for a planet would be it is massive enough to have a stable satellite (whether or not such a satellite actually exists) and a dwarf planet doesn't.

With the galaxy, we need to do something similar. I don't know enough to propose such a definition, but if we don't come up with a real definition, we'll end up with the Pluto situation where a different vote will cause a lot more fuss than makes sense.

I think what the author of the article has a vague idea that the interface and use will be scalable.

Essentially, the tablet should function on its own, but if you wanted to, you could hook in a real physical keyboard (as some models currently allow) and possibly an external monitor (as nearly all laptops allow).

If you think about it, there's little need to have several devices when one will do. A decade and a half ago, IBM demoed a device (I believe it was called "the cube") which took this to the extreme. The idea was that all your data was located in a memory stick in a common format. If you plugged in the stick into a PDA, the PDA would work as if this were the main device memory. If attached to a laptop, the memory stick would be the main hard drive, and ditto for a desktop. As long as the PDA, laptop, and desktop organized the memory stick and its metadata in a compatible way, the transition should be seamless. The concept failed because this seamlessness is hard to achieve when Windows is in the picture. Power constraints is also a factor (PDAs need low power memory. Desktops need fast memory).

But we are getting to the stage when this vision is possible, except that memory and monitor will be the common device. I would be very surprised if in 5-10 years this wasn't the default.

It might not even by psychosomatic. It might simply have to do with disciplined awareness.

For instance, you're forced to take the pills before eating. Since you're aware that you're going to eat, you subtlety change your eating habits (perhaps eating more conscientiously rather than wolfing it down or not overeating or avoiding foods you you you shouldn't eat) such that you ease our condition. Such easing might not be immediate, but over a period of time it could add up.

A good way to test this hypothesis would simply have three groups, "control 1" which does nothing, "control 2" which is asked to record what the person is going to eat before eating it, and the test group which eats the sugar pills.

If the sugar pills still have an effect distinguishable from the control groups, then perhaps sugar *is* an active ingredient and we just don't know it.

Microsoft 12-10? Sure it will released on time. I'll be called:
      Quixotic Quail.

Here's a preview:
http://www.mslinux.org/ :-)

Shrug. What value is there in knowing that 20% of the population is composed of Jedi Knights and the ethnicity of 30% of the people "Tan" since they're a mix of two or more "officially recognized ethnicity"?

The log form census has many questions that are either ill defined or none of the of the government's business or can be more accurately gathered from other sources (e.g. several questions ask you about information that you would have filled out in your income tax or birth/citizenship certificate). If you don't fill out all the questions, you'll go to jail so you have to fill it out, even if you fill it out with junk data.

How reliable is this? Why not use actually reliable data for once?

What is being proposed by the government is simple, make the long form census *optional* (i.e. you won't go to jail for not filling out pointless questions), removing questions that can be gathered from other sources (e.g. the income tax ones), and if necessary, moving important questions that used to be on the long form census to the short form (e.g. what is your primary language). The short form census is still mandatory.

What's wrong about that? Europeans and Americans already do this without suffering from any data loss.

Curse words really have no purpose.

There are two common uses of curse words:
(1) An expression of spontaneous bad emotion.
(2) As way of hurting someone else without really thinking.

The first purpose already has an international language. If someone in any culture hits their hand with a hammer, they all use the same sounds whether or not they ultimately say a curse word. Curse words add no value.

The second usage is just plain laziness. If you really want to put someone down, you should put some thought into it. For examples, take a look at all the Winston Churchill or Mark Twain put downs. They could insult you using your own opinions in such a way that you're defenseless, or make an insult sound like a complement that everyone except the person listening would understand.

Actually, the Christian God isn't anything in the universe. He's the creator of the Universe.

A good analogy is that God is the programmer of a video game. Humans would be character in the Game. If you're a Christian, you believe that God assumed the persona of one of the video game characters.

> I've loved the idea of Religion and Aliens. :-)
> Who knows, maybe Angels/spirits/demons are aliens.

You might like C.S. Lewis' space trilogy. He handles demons as Aliens/Angels along with alien Original Sin, etc.

Actually, that's a Alpha version. The production version is demonstrated here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUFkb0d1kbU

Agreed. IMO, it's almost as useful as the world changing invention of Ballerina Tutu Dresses for chihuahuas and an order of magnitude more useful as the internet itself.

Very true.

Here's an authoritative in depth article on how mice hatred has been critical to human development:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/worlds-scientists-admit-they-just-dont-like-mice,1256/

Where did the mean that idealism means poverty come from?

This isn't a conflict between profit and idealism. It's a conflict between near term and long term profits.

In the near term, if Google compromises it'll profit now. But if Google compromises, they'll ultimately lose profit.

If you have a reputation for not compromising, governments won't even try. Once you have one exception for one government, it's impossible to justify not having other exceptions for all governments. And if you're compromising all over the place, compromising to quasi-government bodies like the RIAA is inevitable.

Google holds *a lot* of personal data, so if that personal data is essentially public, people will not trust Google with their personal data. Google's loss of trust means loss of customers, and ultimately a loss of profit.

One down, four more to go:
http://www.pidjin.net/2010/01/25/iwish/