
BT's Predictions for the Future 492
Saluton_Mondo writes "BT describes the future as looking "ever more exciting each year"... you won't be surprised if you read their white paper on a timeline of technological development in various aspects of human culture, running up to about 2100. It's a bit out of date, but still pretty funny. Some are reasonable predictions, like the introduction of ID cards in the UK by 2010, or the rise of an American dictator in 2000. Others are just funny, like an orgasm via e-mail in 2010, or a security Barbie which searches for lost offspring. I'll not even mention the emergence of the Borg in 2040... see what you think."
*Yawn* (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, sure, you say that *now*.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh, sure, you say that *now*.. (Score:3, Funny)
ObHomer (Score:3, Funny)
Mmmmm, Soylent Green.
Re:*Yawn* (Score:5, Funny)
Exagerrated Predictions (Score:2, Interesting)
Exagurated usefulness more like. (Score:4, Insightful)
The real problem with flying cars (Score:4, Insightful)
The early adopters would fall under the FAA immediately because safety concerns are so great that flying cars would simply be regulated as private planes.
JACEM
obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
copyright 2002?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:obligatory (Score:2)
And I recently got ADSL in my area, so keep up hope...
hello? (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't that what you just did?
(Hello?)^2 (Score:2)
Re:(Hello?)^2 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:(Hello?)^2 (Score:3, Informative)
I won't mention the fact that there are two perfectly good words for this rhetorical device.
Not only paralepsis, but also apophasis [reference.com].
And the subsequent.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hello? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. Your children are free to pray in school at any time as long as they don't interfere with school activity. What you really want is organized religious activity in school. That's using government to force your religion on others which is unconstitutional. Either deal with it or organize to excise the first amendment from the constitution.
Since Atheism is also a Faith lets outlaw the expressions of statements that support your philosophical position.
Using schools to promote atheism is already outlawed by the first amendment. What you're opposed to is actually called secularism which makes you a religious extremist, alligned with groups such as the Taliban and al Quaida who also oppose secular governments.
The Framers knew what they meant and they practiced what they meant...
The framers were primarily Deists, not Christians.
You're a total extremist, dude. You have severe hardening of the ideologies and need immediate treatment by your psychiatrist.
Re:hello? (Score:2)
Re:hello? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or when I go to a public event and they sing Stupid Deity Bless America. I want to puke. There is nothing more unpatriotic then lifting religious bullshit higher than our great country.
Now, as a responsible American, I accept that I'll have to hear this stupid bullshit at venues like Football games, etc. But, I do not want my children brainwashed by this stupid fucking pledge (slightly
WRT the U.K. ID cards (Score:4, Informative)
Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Question: Why is it that many people in the UK are get so upset about the idea of national ID cards, when nobody seems to mind (or notice) other even more "big brother" things that go on in the UK, such as the national grid of video cameras on every street corner and road?
Re:Question (Score:4, Informative)
As for their complaining, I think that network you describe has been successfully explained away as a method to protect people from crime. I.D. cards on the other hand can't be explained away so easily, which is way people are complaining about them.
The link I gave talks about it in greater detail.
Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet no-one can answer the question: what form of ID will I need in order to get an ID card? eg Will a forged Turkish passport do?
Or more curiously (Score:5, Interesting)
Or more curiously, why did none of the national press seize upon the fact that the London Council's webcams were mysteriously out of action wherever a war protest was taking place, either when the president visted recently or when the whole Iraq war thing started? And no, I'm not wearing a foil hat - check out http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34062.html or http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/29883 .html
Re:Or more curiously (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Question (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually I think the entire ID argument is a little more complicated. We
Re:Question (Score:2)
Orgasm via email (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Orgasm via email (Score:2, Funny)
Although 802.11 doesn't sound like a very good idea, she uses the headache excuse way too much already.
Googled (Score:2)
Re:Googled (Score:5, Informative)
This might be the future (Score:2, Funny)
http://www.unbehagen.com/wifism [unbehagen.com]
The obvious prediction (Score:3, Informative)
google has it in html (Score:5, Informative)
In case of (already occured) slashdotting look here [google.com] (try the 'View as HTML' link).
UK ID Cards (Score:2)
Rus
Re:UK ID Cards (Score:2)
Re:UK ID Cards (Score:2)
And hand over control of our monetary policy an d interest rates the unaccountable, undemocratic ECB?
Re:UK ID Cards (Score:2)
My only concern is as a tourist and having to deal will all the different currencies.
A single Europian currency is far better.
Re:UK ID Cards (Score:2)
You presumably think that interest rates of 2% which are what the rest of Europe require, are suitable for the UK, and won't add inflationary pressures on the economy?
power? food? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm hoping for cheap, clean fusion as a solution to the power problem, and soylent green as a solution to the food problem. Ah no. Not genetic engineering either. Population control? Maybe.
Server slashdotted so no, I haven't read the article..
Re:power? food? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're won't be billions and billions of people on the planet if there's not enough food to feed them all.
The same way we do now. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:power? food? (Score:2, Interesting)
When I was a kid I remember people telling me that oil and coal would run out in 50 years. 20 years on, I still hear this 50 year figure being bandied about. Do you think my grandchildren will be told that oil and coal will only last another 50 years too?
We definitely need some form of population control otherwise it will be done for us.
Re:power? food? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:power? food? (Score:5, Interesting)
That question is based on out of date predictions of the population - in most countries the birth rate has declined significantly since the overcrowded earth scenarios became popular. The US is just about replacing its population, in Europe the native populations are decining (the worst case being Italy, where the birth rate has dropped well below replacement levels). Africa and the Middle East have expanding populations, but even there the rate has generally slowed. The last predictions I saw estimated that world population would peak around the middle of the century and then decline.
Re:power? food? (Score:2)
It's not a "prediction." There are "billions and billions" of people on the planet right now -- six billion -- and there will be through the rest of the century, barring total catastrophe. And asking how we're going to feed them all is a pe
Re:power? food? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually we are making great progress on that regard:
Re:Decline of socialism (Score:4, Informative)
Wow, the number of errors in these short sentences is astounding. Ethiopia has never been colonized. It is currently suffering another terrible famine [ifrc.org] that began in 2000. This calamity has less to do with government than with drought, like the famines currently gripping Zambia and Malawi.
Ethiopia did flirt with Marxist-Leninist ideas in the 1980s under the "Workers' Party of Ethiopia," but as I understand it, it was still just the same kind of top-down authoritarian big-man system as it was under Haile Selassie, as it still is today.
There are many better explanations for any African famine than politics: bad land use, bad weather, tribal rivalries, extortionate taxation, short-sighted local planning, and devouring corruption independent of political affiliation. To attribute any African country's troubles to socialism is to miss a really large forest by concentrating on one outlying tree.
Unable to read or write? (Score:5, Insightful)
Y do u h8 me?
Re:Unable to read or write? (Score:2)
Re:Unable to read or write? (Score:5, Insightful)
leet and the various "hacker-speak" dialects are doing nothing but pushing our ability to communicate with each other closer and closer to extinction.
Perhaps instead of making a joke of the current state of affairs, you'd be better off mentoring a child that has problems reading and writing, such as a dyslexic.
Re:Unable to read or write? (Score:2)
If you've read any of the other, non-humour remarks I usually post here (and elsewhere), I rarely write in l33tspeak of any type. It's really up to the person posting whether they want to post in complete english sentences or not, and usually I get the feeling that anyone who *seriously* posts something in l33tspeak is probably making up for the fact that what they're posting proably has little substance to it. That sai
Re:Unable to read or write? (Score:2)
It sez: "How do you think folks like me feel?", and you need the "<"s to make the "K"s.
Re:Unable to read or write? (Score:4, Interesting)
After all, despite you writing it like that any native english speaker would have little trouble understnading what you wrote, even if they had never seen internet shorthand before. People are still able to write effectively, for the most part, otherwise they just use shorthand when on the internet talking socially. Or, outside america, for text messaging. I cannot believe how many people here in europe text each other instead of calling and the dialect if you will that has grown out of this.
Personally I can't stand it but I understand why it is done and don't begrudge a person just because they do it. Well unless they do the whole I p0wnz0r j00 fagg0rtz!111 crap .
Re:Unable to read or write? (Score:3, Interesting)
In brief, though, most shorthand systems do not look anything like longhand. They're phonetically based and each stroke generally represents a consonant sound. The consonants are then embellished with vowel digraphs because most words can be constructed w
Predictions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Predictions? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Predictions? (Score:2)
Manager: We need a list of future predictions. Everyone go to your desk and list 10 of them. I will then combine the lists and categorize them.
Most of them have no though to them, and others look like them came out of sci-fi movie plots.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, scientists have discovered that the future is nearer now than ever before.
Highest earning celebrity (Score:5, Insightful)
The way I see it, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Britney Spears are synthetic already.
Re:Highest earning celebrity (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, up to American Life she was making pretty good music, but that's a matter of opinion.
Google cache (mirror) (Score:2, Interesting)
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:OuHNJeCwdWUJ: www.btexact.com/docimages/42270/42270.pdf+introduc tion+of+ID+cards+in+the++site:btexact.com&hl=en&ie =UTF-8 [216.239.57.104]
Orgasm mails? (Score:5, Funny)
Right, and when the spammers get this the productivity of the internet-connected world will drop to zero.
Boss: Any important emails today? ... nope, just spam.
Employee: (checks) AHH! MMH! OOHH! YESSS!
How was it for you? (Score:3, Funny)
Scene 2: Employee sitting smoking cigarette... 'Well, that certainly put inches on me.. now, what's this email from a Reverend Obogdu of Nigeria all about?'
Missed one... (Score:5, Funny)
2004: Slashdot posts 100,000th dupe [slashdot.org]
hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Is that a statement on the development of AI or a statement about 95% of the population?
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
So at some point I set up a few _really_ simple bots.
The first one only responded with the same line over and over again whenever it was msg'd. At least on person kept on messaging it regularly over a period of half an hour, getting more and more upset that it kept on saying the same thing, and after a while getting pissed off that it kept answering even when he asked it to shut up :)
The second one just cycled through 4-5 canned responses and started over. People kept talking to it, and pointing out that it had said the same things before, and started giving details about themselves.
The third one looked for a trigger word in the message it got, and chose a sequence of messages based on that, and then cycled through the sequence. If no trigger word was present, it would choose a random sequence. If a trigger word for a different sequence occured while cycling through a sequence, it would switch sequences.
All in all it had a grand total of 20-25 messages.
The record conversation (based on a run of a couple of days) was one and a half hours... At that point I became disillusioned and dropped the whole thing. I still think that a few weeks of work and I'd easily have a chatterbot capable of picking up real women and getting their phone numbers in droves...
Now, imagine how long people will speak to Eliza or a chatterbot that someone actually make an effort on.
The reason bots fail the Turing test is because the judges know there's a chance they are talking to a machine. In chat rooms, most users are clueless that a bot could be capable of actually engaging them in something that seems like a conversation, and most people make so many mistakes, evade questions, give weird answers, have problems with the language etc., that people are VERY forgiving of the answers they get.
From watching one of the girls I met on IRC years ago chatting, I first realized why that is so: The typical "normal" user often follow conversations very superficially. They switch a lot between different conversations, but often seem not to put any effort in keeping track of the overall flow of a specific conversation. So if your bot get into trouble, it can get itself right out of trouble by simply ignoring "difficult" messages and answering something completely unrelated and randomly changing subjects and a large part of the people it talks to won't react at all, because they do the same thing themselves all the time.
Rise of an American Dictator... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Rise of an American Dictator... (Score:2)
Assuming they didn't get it right the first time and that there actually is a 2004 Presidential election of course.
Re:Rise of an American Dictator... (Score:2)
Re:Rise of an American Dictator... (Score:2)
Personally, this place would better be called \. since it tilts clearly to the left.
Re:Assumed? No, elected. (Score:2)
Re:Well, since Bush wasn't elected... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More fictions for the 2004 election. (Score:4, Insightful)
OK I know that's a trollish post but it's a common /. sentiment. The key point is that he wasn't actually elected in the last election. Yes, there were numerous 'plausible deniability' reports in the US media about ballots that were confusingly designed, misdirections to the voting place, malfunctioning voting machines, meddled hand-counts, and other kinds of minor confusion all over Florida, but the really big buried story is the database of supposed felons that put around 22,000 (or more) legitimate citizens on a 'no vote' list. Most of those people were africanamerican, and a sure bet of a Gore victory. The database wasn't subject to quality control, came from sources associated with the former Texas governor, and subsequently turned out to be over 90% wrong.
These problems were never rectified or properly acknowledged, and many people were wrongly denied their right to vote. GW took power with less than 600 votes, according to the official count. Please, google this topic, then come back and complain about fictions. Or does the Bush Admin's ideological position justify their means of obtaining power? [Look, I don't think Gore would have been superior, OK? I just think the "we're so democratic" scales need to fall from american eyes.]
Re:Rise of an American Dictator... (Score:3, Insightful)
Apathy towards Gov't. Yep, that's why California had a recall this year with the highest voter turnout in the state's history. Yep, people don't care.
Ignorance. I'll grant you this one; I read your post.
Patriotism. Yep. Saying that it is the US fault that 3000 of its citizens were killed by murdering thugs is a shinin
When hell freezes... (Score:2)
Ancient Chinese Curse Say: (Score:3, Funny)
Who, why? (Score:2, Informative)
More exciting each year!? No thanks (Score:2)
Whatever happened to technology as a tool rather than an end-until-itself? Do you notice how most of the items in BT's list offer little or no "added-value" - they are merely demonstrations of our technological prowess.
[No, I'm not a luddite. I love my toys and have been programming professionally for a quarter of a century now.]
BT? (Score:2)
Silly lefty nerds .... (Score:2)
Some are reasonable predictions, like the introduction of ID cards in the UK by 2010, or the rise of an American dictator in 2000.
Sigh ... repeating something often enough still does not make it true.
You lost. Just deal with it. It was close, but you lost.
"The rise of an American dictator in 2000"? (Score:2)
AI Priests? (Score:2)
But Priest-bots? C'mon. Even as an atheist with Jewish upbringing, I can recognize that the Pope would never allow something not human to represent the intermediary between the flock a
AIDS (Score:5, Interesting)
Um no. Aids deaths this year were 3 million people. Why is this not front page news every day in every country? When SARS killed like 200 people it was front page news for months. 3 frickin million people died last year from AIDS. There is no excuse that this should not be the single most important item on anyones agenda. If terrorists killed 3 million people last year what would the media do? Theyd be apoplectic. Tom Brokaw would have a seizure on screen. People need to get their priorities straight.
Re:AIDS (Score:4, Insightful)
SARS spread quickly and easily and killed a large proportion of its victims within weeks, which is a formula for rapid disaster. AIDS spreads slowly and difficultly and its victims continue living for years, which results in a much slower, calmer disaster. People don't worry about bad things if they take that long to happen.
Re:maglevs and flying cars (Score:3, Informative)
Re:maglevs and flying cars (Score:2)
Maglev [magnetbahn-bayern.de] trains [geocities.com] and Flying Cars [moller.com].
Ok the Moller thing is a stretch, but 500+ kph trains are a reality.
Re:What, no Aliens? (Score:2)
I am grown watching those Phantom 2040 animation.
I waana see those intelligent borgs and those cool virtual reality based gadgets in my life.
Re:rise of an American dictator in 2000 (Score:2)
Re:rise of an American dictator in 2000 (Score:4, Insightful)
"An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the president but is always polite to traffic cops."
Re:BitTorrent?!? (Score:2)
Be warned, linger on that page and music will play. Good music, mind you, but music nonetheless.
Uh, hello? (Score:2)
The date of 2000 AD is just a theoretical minimum; These are specifically things *not* predicted to happen at a set time. RTFA.
-Chris
Re:The submission is flamebait (Score:2)
Yes. And I think you have some very valid points. Please know that some of us patriotic Americans actually see the problem. We're not all jingoistic idiots. We see.
Re:The submission IS flamebait. so are you. (Score:5, Insightful)
*cough* Innocent until proven guilty *cough... *cough* fair trial *cough* *cough*...
They could have been holding people responsible for genocide and the treatment would still not be justified.
While Bush may not make use of it, through the laws passed after 9/11 combined with the legal precendent that Guantanamo Bay is not subject to US law, he has effectively created a situation where government agencies can seize anyone they want, prevent them access to lawyers, and move them to a location where they have no rights and no legal protection whatsoever.
Bush might not make full use of them, but having established the situation, a future president, or even lower level government officials can, giving a very strong incentive for people with aspirations to power for seeking out the "right" positions.
If not fascist by itself, it's certainly a gift package to anyone who wish to further limit peoples freedom.
Protection for gorillas in Gitmo (Score:3, Funny)
I don't know about the terrorists, but the gorillas are protected by the Endangered Species Act.
`What does the Geneva Convention say about this?`
General Urko and Dr. Zaius refused to be signators to this part of the convention.
Re:The submission IS flamebait. so are you. (Score:4, Interesting)
*cough* [guardian.co.uk]
Re:The submission IS flamebait. so are you. (Score:4, Interesting)
Consider this: As a Canadian, I have grown up never being out of reach of the American Media. Ever. Even when we only got 5 channels, 4 of them were American. I know quite a bit about the US and her culture (stop laughing Europeans). I have many friends and relatives in the US. I really feel I understand your country, being so close. Now, if, despite all of that, I can form a negative opinion about the conduct of the US government (as a large number of your own citizens have, by the looks of the news and this thread), imagine what kind of opinion a poor kid in a Palestinian refugee camp, or one that lived in a poor part of Africa or Malaysia would form. They don't know your country at all. While I can draw the difference between the American poeple and the American government, those people cannot (since most don't live under democratic regimes where the government can change on a regular basis). Thus, they hate all Americans.
They are very leery when the US speaks. Often because they espouse "freedom" and "democracy" on one hand, but support brutal dicators (remember Saddam in the 80's was our friend. Donald Rumsfeld thought so) or lock up people arbitrarily (as at Gitmo - an if they are all terrorists, shouldn't that be proven in a court of law?). So when you grow up with this and try to get out of your miserable life by joining a radical Islamic organization or the Shining Path or similar. Now, are you going to blame for all your troubles? Who's office buildings are you going to be willing to fly airplanes into?
If the US government REALLY wanted to win the war on terror, spend 1/10 of it's war budget in Iraq on medicine to wipe out polio around the world, or tb or any one of the hundreds of preventable, curable child hood diseases that our children never get anymore but kill millions in the rest of the world every year (yes, Bono's idea and I agree). Balance and consider the interests of everyone, not just your own.
Forgive loans to countries that the IMF ruined in the 80's with their "all-strings-attached" loans.
These people are more likely to admire and respect a country and a government that saves their lives with medicines and jobs rather than destroys their homes and infrastructures with bullets and bombs.
And if you want to go after Al-Queda, go after Al-Queda. Find OBL. Find Saddam. Finish the job. Don't do anyhting else until its done.
But don't pretend the war in Iraq has anything to do with freedom and democracy or weapons of mass destruction or support for terrorists. Nobody beleives it anymore. Come clean and move on.
I tried not to be preachy (I know, didn't work) but I genuinely care. The US has some great people and wonderful qualities that the rest of the world should know about. Right now they just see the only superpower running around acting like a bully, then getting upset when someone strikes back or dares question why.
See my sig:
Re:You're still a troll :) (Score:3, Insightful)
But can he afford to do both? If Osama is spending his money killing people and we spend our money helping people the world wide opinion of the US is going to get better.
This would also do nothing, as the terrorists are rich (aside from the fact that the IMF had nothing to do with ruining economies).
The terrorist leaders are rich, but the ones doing the grunt work are