Technology Predictions for 2006? 344
OffTheLip writes "As 2006 fast approaches it's time for some to gaze into the crystal ball of technology and predict what will be hot, what will make a difference in our lives or make someone rich and famous. The Mercury News takes a shot at predicting the coming year of technology. No great revelations but it nice to see clean technologies make the list. The list is light on pure technology and big on trends. Perhaps killer apps are not as important as they once were thought to be." What would Slashdot users put in their top 10?
finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Nope, it's the year we find out that the Pentagon has been secretly breeding sharks with lasers and the CIA has overthrown the government of Atlantis, to be replaced by a demoracy, while we drill for oil offshore of .. Hold on a second, someone at the door
[NO CARRIER]
Re:finally! (Score:5, Funny)
I Want My Personalized Entertainment (Score:5, Interesting)
Most likely the number one spot will be a-la-carte television and music downloading. Not just to compete with piracy, but just because that's what people want.
Re:I Want My Personalized Entertainment (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Monthly service for radio link servetude: $30
2. Airtime charges to download the news: $10
3. 911 access fee
4. License fee: $7
5. Newspaper subscriptions: $15
6. Knowing you'll be leached to death by yet another inadequate technology: Priceless.
[yes this is a rant about how cell phones cost too much and do so little]
Tom
Check out e-ink (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.e-ink.com/products/matrix/imaging_film
Re:I Want My Personalized Entertainment (Score:2)
Oblig Simpsons quote (Score:5, Funny)
What The Simpsons didn't say is that... (Score:2)
Re:What The Simpsons didn't say is that... (Score:4, Funny)
I think traditional breeding techniques have been woefully underused. Recent breeding experiments with foxes in Russia have shown that a noticeable difference can be produced in a much shorter time than expected. So my suggestions for controlled breeding are as follows:
And that's just off the top of my head right now. I'm sure I could think of much more when I'm sober.
easy (Score:2, Funny)
linux is _almost_ ready for the desktop,
and duke nukem forever will briefly reach beta, only to be pulled
Re:easy (Score:2)
Odd how that works.
I predict (Score:5, Funny)
Because for some reason, everything wonderful always seems to be 20 years away.
20 Years You Nimtard Mod (Score:2)
Trusted people, of course (Score:5, Funny)
Video and all-in-ones (Score:5, Insightful)
The Future is here (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Video and all-in-ones (Score:2)
I've made this point before, but with Apple's control over the market, it makes sense for them to slow "innovation" rather than accelerate it. Recall the gigantic flame wars here back in 2004 when the Apple crowd was parroting Steve Jobs and vehemently insisted that Apple would never, ever, *ever* introduce a Video iPod? Well, of course, Jobs was just stalling on video to maximize the upgrade revenue. So, something like a wide-scr
Re:Video and all-in-ones (Score:2)
I truly thi
Video is coming (Score:2)
Re:Video and all-in-ones (Score:2)
Re:Video and all-in-ones (Score:5, Informative)
If only it were that clean.
Horizontally speaking, NTSC encodes various components as signal brightness and two color information streams of differing bandwidth. The brightness can change at a rate that is approximately equivalant of 700-ish brightness changes per scan line, with the other 20 or so appearing in the overscan area which is typically hidden by the way television tubes are mounted; your milage may vary a little if you have an LCD, but then again, it may not. Color changes are a function of combining the brightness change with the two color components. These components can change at an average rate of 100 color changes per complete line, however, because one component is slower than the other, not all color changes can be reproduced at that rate. Notice that I described this as a rate; that's because television, real television, is a pure analog signal and although the rate that the brightness and the colors colors can change is limited, the position that a brightnes or color change can occur at is only limied by how recently one already did... if colors haven't changed within 1/100th of a line, then you can have a color change fairly precisely located... at the cost of not having another for a 1/100th. Similarly, a brightness change (or a green amplitude change... some of you will see why when I describe the math, for the rest, it's magic, trust me) can occur at a rate of about 700, but they can start anywhere and so the precision with which either a brightness change or a color change can be located on a scan line is in effect infinite with an analog system. When displayed on a typical color television tube, most of this capability is lost because the display beam only has a finite number of RGB phospher triads it can illuminate, and the analog detail is re-sampled by the "jail-bars" of the phosphor dots or slots. However, this is still true of a black and white set, which has a continuous display surface. Again roughly, greens change the fastest, reds the next fastest, and blues the slowest of all. These color change ratios (to one another) were designed to mimic the ratios exhibited by your eye's sensitivity to similar changes. Unfortunately, while the idea is sound as far as it goes, your eye's ability to deal with those changes, ratios aside, is so much higher than the change rate video provides, that I would argue that the designers kind of screwed the pooch in this area, but that's a different discussion. :)
The math is done like this, again more or less, using the R, G and B (red, green and blue) color components: Brightness = .59 times G plus .3 times R plus .11 times B. That gets you luma, a black and white signal that offers compatability with how the older BW television sets worked. This is also called "Y". The first color component is simply (R-Y), although as I mentioned above, it is bandwidth-limited so that the color changes are encoded in a broad, blurry way. The third component is (B-Y) and it is bandwidth-limited even further... slower and blurrier. The color image is re-created at the display this way: R = (R-Y) + Y, B = (B-Y) + Y, and G = Y - (R + B), keeping in mind the RGB .59, .3 and .11 scaling factors.
As far as vertical resolution goes, this is a bit easier to understand. For both systems (PAL and NTSC) the display is created in two passes. One the first pass, half the lines are painted. On the second pass, the other lines are painted in between the originals. Next time, the others again and so forth. These are referred to as the odd and even fields of a frame. A frame is considered to be definitive of how many lines you see, and it adds up to 400+ (odd=200, even=200) for NTSC, PAL a little more, with the remaining scan lines again typically hidden as a consequ
Re:Video and all-in-ones (Score:4, Informative)
A horizontal scan of 320 is (more or less) naturally derived by cutting a 640 clock in half, where 640 was conveniently available since early days of graphics cards because those engineers knew that the color information came at exactly that rate if video scan frequencies were used, and again when working with video, 320 double-width pixels fits onscreen sans overscan. Again, there are more clocks that don't "have pixels" that extend into the overscan areas at the left and right, and so you can't usually paint past the display edge in a 320 horizontal design.
Now: If you actually meant 300, this can be done as well but would more typically be an RGB resolution, not a video resolution, meaning that it would not be expected to encode quite as easily into a video signal because it can't be presented exactly at the rate that the color information changes. If video is not a consideration, then no resolution is impossible, it more depends on the display having enough phosphor or display elements to reproduce the signal than it depends on the card hardware — it's a lot more difficult to make a display that can show some arbitrary resolution, especially if they're high resolution, than it is to make hardware that emits an appropriately encoded signal.
Another thing that can skew all this is the question of rectangular pixels. Looking back at the Amiga, which was designed from the outset with video in mind, the pixels were not square, and that was done specifically so that the rate that the pixels changed folded perfectly into the rate at which color information can change when those changes are in phase with the color information... you can actually make an illegal NTSC image with a system like that by changing (for instance) from red to blue in one pixel; a video signal can't pull that off when the horizontal rate is 300+, so you get a smeary, nasty result if you actually try to encode it. Good video hardware would wipe the change out (filter it) before trying to encode it, but the net result is the same, it doesn't get to the screen.
One of the things we have in our software is the ability to filter an RGB image or animation into NTSC-compliance by transforming it into video encoding space, filtering it timewise, and transforming it back to the image buffer; this is useful if the video hardware doesn't do the filtering, and also useful if you just want to see what you might get on screen (assuming the video hardware does in fact filter.) This will be less important as we move forward and NTSC video sees less and less use for commercial display. It works on any resolution, such as your 300 example, as long as the presumption that a whole scan line is in the buffer isn't wrong. These are the kind of backflips that are sometimes required to get a good image from production to the viewer; it is particularly a problem when the image is artificial, such as raytrace output, because those images contain ultimately sharp color transitions without any regard for video legality. Video cameras tend to never produce illegal images (though they certainly produce poor ones if fed scenes they can't encode.)
As sort of an addendum to my first post, we sometimes see framebuffers with much higher horizontal resolutions than 700-ish; this is a nod to the idea that since you can only get a rate of change of 700, but if things aren't changing now, you can start to change anywhere. If the horizontal resolution is, for instance, up in the 1400 range, then the precision with which an edge can be placed doubles if no change preceeded the new one by more than 1 pixel. You can go higher, too. The framebuffer can be correctly loaded by software that ensures that the changes aren't illegally encoded.
Nothing new under the sun (this year) (Score:5, Insightful)
It's evolution baby, not revolution, and that's the way I like it :)
Re:Nothing new under the sun (this year) (Score:3, Funny)
the year of... (Score:2)
GoogleRate (Score:5, Funny)
People will then be able to quickly find out how accurate companies, newspapers, etc. have been in the past when they now say that X will be popular this year or that the nano-wireless-widget market will grow from $2M to $100 billion over the next 5 years.
Re:GoogleRate (Score:2)
Re:GoogleRate (Score:2)
You're probably joking, but back in September Google mentioned [blogspot.com] that they've set up a prediction market system to use within their company, for the purpose of forecasting things like product launch dates and "many other things of strategic importance". I wouldn't be surprised if this is a lead-in to creating a publically-open predict
flying cars? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:flying cars? (Score:2)
How about (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How about (Score:5, Insightful)
400GB of flash would be bigger, heavier, and probably slower than 400GB of magnetic storage. It would also be less reliable. You might be able to get decent performance in a lower-power, quieter device, but even with price parity, why would you want flash with all its drawbacks?
The winchester hard drive really deserves some sort of award. Second only to the microchip, the hard drive has been the most successful technology product of the past 20 years, I would say. Consider that its evolution in terms of capacity has far outstripped that of the CPU, while its price has remained low. The same basic principles have scaled from the largest several-hundred-pound devices of old to the 19 gram Seagate ST1, and from the early 1MB drives to current half-terabyte drives. These devices can be found in all but the smallest of consumer electronics and in the largest of mainframes. Only the integrated circuit has shown similar technical improvements and wider applicability, yet the hard drive gets little respect, even within the computer industry. Sad.
Re:How about (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that a 32 GB SD flash card is likely to be available very shortly, that it only takes 13 of these cards to reach past 400GB, and that a pile 13 SD cards is still a tiny fraction of the size and weight of 3.5 inch disk drive, I think your size and weight assumption needs rethinking.
As to reliability, I have no idea what you are talking about. I can drop and SD card from shoulder height onto conrcete and it will almost certainly keep working. Hard disks rarely pass the same test. If you are talking about the write limit of flash memory. A simple comparison with a hard disk of today shows this misconception to be just that. Taking a the example of a flash drive of 200GB with a write speed of 40 Megabytes per second (similar to a modern hard disk) and doing some basic calculations shows that it could be written to continuously for just over 15 years before every block passed the 100 000 write mark. The equivalent of todays 200GB drive some 15 years ago was the 210MB disk. There are not many machines running today with 210MB hard drives, let alone dong the kind of work that requires continuous writing to the disk. And 100 000 writes is often considered a minimum. The secret is wear leveling algorithms.
So to sum up, given that you might be able to get decent performance in a lower-power, quieter, lighter, smaller, tougher device, with price parity, why would you not want to use the flash drive?
Re:How about (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/flashvsharddis k
They didn't just make up the 11 year figure either. The prediction is based on price trends from the last few years.
The article also explains why performance and maximum write issues will not be an problem by then.
Re:How about (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, I think it will be a LONG TIME before you see solid state parts be priced competitively with hard drives. Looking at Pricewatch, a 2 gig flash card is a little over $100. From Circuit City, there's a 2 gig one for $99.99 after $30 savings and $70 rebate. I paid only a bit more than that (maybe $120?) for a 250 gig Segate a couple weeks ago when my older hard drive decided to go meet the great head of light entertainment in the sky. That means that even if hard drives make no priceing improvements over the following year, flash would have to drop about 50 times in price. Given that about 14 months ago I got a 120 GB hard drive for about the same price (btw, this isn't the one that went kaput), that means that hard drives are a little less than doubling in size for any given price every year. If this trend continues, that means that flash must drop in price 100 times -- that's two orders of magnitude! Do you *really* think that's going to happen?
Secondly, what would you do if flash DID? You couldn't replace your hard drive with it; flash has a much lower life span for writes. With a typical file system, you'd probably see failures much sooner than a typical hard drive failure. At the very least you'd have to find one that's meant for flash drives so you don't burn out frequently written-to areas. (E.g. inode blocks, journal areas. It seems a log-structured file system might be called for here.)
Re:How about (Score:2)
I take this back, perhaps. Drives can do what's called wear leveling automagically under the file system's nose (and transparently) and even out where the writes fall, so you wouldn't nece
Predictions... (Score:5, Interesting)
Advancements in stripping the psychotropic effects of drugs like Ketamine and X for use as pain killers, driven by the Iraqi Military Operations
A video card that cracks the $1000 US price point
More hybrid and bio diesel technology from the big Automakers
F/A-22, Eurofighter Typhoon purchases get cut, F/A-22 or the F-35 programs might get totally eliminated by the US DoD
Quad core AMD and Intel server chips
US program to put GPS in all cars becomes a political hot issue
UK program to track all cars does not become a political hot issue
Painkillers (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the main problems with the current meds is their massive potential for abuse.
I predict this [opioids.com] will take off in 2006It doesn't really advance the effectiveness of painkillers, but it'll be a very very effective stopgap measure to basically kill the street trade in these meds.
Doctors will also be able to perscribe powerful painkillers to the patients who need them w/out constantly worrying the DEA will investigate them for possibly overperscribing pain meds.
BTW - the second method (with capsaicin) is really fucking evil. The Dr. describes the pain of snorting/injecting it here [blogspot.com]
Re:Painkillers (Score:2)
What about people with involuntary acid reflux, or vomiting? If the capsaicin is released in the stomach, this could have horrible consequences even for those who take the pill as intended. I think the opiate antagonist is a MUCH better idea.
Re:Painkillers (Score:2)
As for adding capsicum, it would stop snorting/injection, but they could pulverize the pill and put it in a gelatin capsule to get it past the mouth, and they would still get a rush since it would still hit in one big shot instead of being time-released.
Re:Painkillers (Score:5, Insightful)
The real technological advance would be a free society, not newer and better ways to fuck up people's days.
Re:Painkillers (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, no. The gov't will hammer you simply for using, having, or selling the drugs, no need to commit any further crime at all... and most people don't.
Just so we're clear. It's a mommy law. It has no reasonable basis in ethics, legitimate protection of the citizen, or the citizen's economy at large (
Re:Painkillers (Score:5, Insightful)
Adding an opioid antagonist like nalaxone doesn't do anything when you snort it, only when you inject it. If you add enough of it that it has any effect when you take it orally or when you snort it, then you're blocking off just as much of its analgesic effects. Same with trying to remove the psychotropic effects of ecstasy--its the psychotropic effects that also make ecstasy theraputic (it's not really a pain killer).
Our drugs laws are just dumb. People are always going to take opiates and other drugs recreationally because it's fun. It's like trying to prohibit the recreational consumption of alcohol (a societally accepted recreational drug which we have a double standard for) just because there are alcoholics. The funny thing is, before opiate dependence was made a crime, it was seen by Americans as less of a nuisance to society than alcoholism--people could also support their opiate habit on pennies a day and still be functional members of society. In fact, you'd be suprised at how many well known people in history used opiates such as opium/heroin/morphine regularly.
What we need to do is just reform our drug policies and most of the societal problems related to drug abuse will simply go away--like people ODing on "ecstasy" because it was cut with more dangerous substances, or the prohibition style crime-wave which has sweeped the nation, etc.
But why are they illegal? (Score:3, Interesting)
You made a lot of good points, but I think some additional information would be useful. Most people don't know why certain drugs are outlawed in the US.
Opium was outlawed because Chinese immigrants in California were making a fortune selling it to Americans. Political elites were terrified by the idea of Chinese immigrants getting rich and having political clout, so it was outlawed. Keep in mind this was during the 1800s, and the very idea of white men and women hanging out with Chinamen just disturbed co
More hybrid and bio diesel technology... (Score:2)
More hybrid and bio diesel technology from the big Automakers
This is a scary one. The UK can produce enough biodiesel in an environmentally friendly manner (waste cooking oil) to supply 1/380 of its road transport fuel. After that, the most common form of biodiesel supply is oil palms. And this supply is an environmental disaster [guardian.co.uk] in itself - huge forests felled and burned to create space for the trees, peat bogs dried out.
God knows what kind of destruction will take place if this "environmentally friend
Re:More hybrid and bio diesel technology... (Score:2)
If you've ever seen the middle of the United States you would swear it was made completely of corn [google.com], a prime biodiesel source. In the US we grow so much of it due to subsidies [ewg.org] that it's in most [csmonitor.com] of what we eat. Here, that's pretty much what biodiesel equates to: Nebraska... er... Corn.
Not that this makes it any better of solution for the UK, but it's been a huge part of the US energy debate since the 70s.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Fusion! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fusion! (Score:3, Insightful)
But seriously, I'd predict better photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, and fuel cells. None of this will power anything bigger than a lawn-mower, but it will look great in the lab.
On the other hand, what won't look better will be designer bioweapons. Not that they'll be released, just the capability will give us one more thing to worry about.
Someone will realize that with Google's increasing suite of information organizing technology, that th
Re:Fusion! (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Predictions (Score:5, Interesting)
Which will result in cell phones the size they were back in the 80's, satchels weighing about 8 pounds.
This will also result in a record number of car wrecks as more people are found watching their cell phones while driving which leads to several states banning the use of cell phones in cars.
There will be a large number of complaints by cell phone users that even with 200 channels available there is nothing worth watching.
There will also be a project started to port mythtv to these new video capable cell phones.
Re:Predictions (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Predictions (Score:3, Insightful)
On second thought, though, maybe not.
Show me a boy @ seven and I shall show you the Man (Score:4, Interesting)
Hot tub high-tech. (Score:2)
3D iPod (Score:2)
Number 7 (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought it was easier - the herds who wants to make a fast buck in the stock market now jump on any tech stock hoping it will be the next eBay or Google. In short, there's a lot of demand for investments, but good ones are in short supply That might explain why so many stocks are so overpriced now (according to Buffett). But it should also be pointed out that most newcomers have a poor business plan and eventually are going to fail.
2006 Predictions Here Too (Score:2)
What I really wish (Score:4, Funny)
100% accurate predictions (Score:2)
Prediction: economic colapse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prediction: economic colapse (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Prediction: economic colapse (Score:2)
Well, laugh in my face all you want, but it won't change the fact that I made an absolute killing in gold stocks this last two quarters. Well, I guess google did pretty well too, but if you want to cling to a technology stock with that high of a P/E - then good luck, you'll need it.
BTW, everyone already knows that the dollar is going to get trashed ... the only question nowdays is can the derivatives market withstand the shock?
Re:Prediction: economic colapse (Score:3, Insightful)
The must anoying thing about making predictions are those guys that come saying " ... bla bla bla ... the sky is FALLING!". So, the sky really falls, and they shut up. But a week later, you make another prediction, and they say the same thing again.
You know... There are people out there who really know what they are talking about. Those persons are capable of making a real diagnosis of the situation, and you'd better folowing their advice.
Specificaly for this th
Re:best in the thread (Score:2, Interesting)
So, judging by historical parallels, they will need a diversionary tactic, and it's invariably always been a larger general war. It's always been the last gasp of failing empires....
Yeah. I've been trying to figure out what that's going to be though. I don't think it will be the war on terrorisim, no, that reminds me of the war on indians that was fought - then paused while the US went thru a civil war - then resumed after the civil was was over. Also, this time all the conflicts seem to center ar
In Bizarro World (Score:3, Interesting)
- PalmOne resurges as the owner of the cell/MP3/Palmtop space by incorporating WiMax and Sun microprocessors.
- Apple's move to Intel chips causes the biggest brand loyalty seachange in modern history as disgurntled users throw their WinTel boxes off of buildings.
- Lawsuits will be brought against cities offering WiMax by local users who are hacked over their unsecured connection.
- AOL manages to rebirth itself as a dominant Internet player by selling residential access to Internet2.
- Dell actually "gets off the pot" and begins to sell AMD desktop/laptop systems.
- Elliot Spizer raids the home of Bill Gates, finds a Linux machine running the automated home features, along with the full archive of goatse images as framed art in a hallway.
- Europe splits off from the Internet As We Know It, China joins in, and most left-wing American political websites go strangely quiet on what comes to be known as "Internet Classic".
- The DMCA is overturned by a housewife in New York state appealing a fight with the RIAA all the way to the Supreme Court. Her arguments before the justices become required reading at most major law schools.
- The "Third-World Laptop" will be widely used....to grind grain. See also, "The Gods Must Be Crazy".
killer apps still needed (Score:2)
1. visio replacement (dia is not quite there yet) 2. Income tax software (non-web based turbotax) 3. group calendar system 4. DVD/video editing packages 5. better wireless driver support
Re:killer apps still needed (Score:2)
Bring the hardware, software will follow.
Of course this would require the hardware manufacturers to
a) open up their interface with documentation
or
b) write a GPL driver and give it out.
But they won't because they're stupid and they think knowing how to make a wifi device send a frame in memory is "leaking how th design was implemented". Like knowing the encoding for the MUL instruction tells you how an AMD64 processor works
SPEW!!!!
Tom
mIRC might finally get upnp (Score:2)
Apple (Score:2, Funny)
Simple. (Score:5, Funny)
OpenOffice.org media campaign speeds adoption, achives 30% penetration.
Britney Spears remarries.
AJAX becomes even more popular making the internet kinda suck.
UPnP applications become almost universal.
Firefox penetration hits 25% before IE7 comes out and knocks it down to 15%, even though IE7 sucks.
Pope Benedict XVI dies.
Democrats take the house, gain in Senate.
US troops remain in Iraq throughout the year.
Bush's approval rating reaches 30%.
2006 Hurricane Season exausts name list again.
Somebody creates an effective non-website based bittorrent network.
Pi proven to be normal.
3 new higher prime numbers found.
Bird Flu kills about a dozen people and is stopped completely.
"The third man of the fire will empower the forces of the blue prince." - Deemed to be quite vague but fits several situations that occur.
South fails to rise again.
Majority of scientists backslide on existence of dark matter halos.
RIAA/MPAA go even more apesh!t.
The latest advance from Diebold (Score:5, Funny)
The Bad News (Score:4, Interesting)
2. Lethal drone aircraft the size of insects.
Only one thing is certain (Score:4, Funny)
OK, maybe two things. Thrones will also be chairs.
Some predictions (Score:3, Funny)
Satellite radio will boom... (Score:2, Funny)
Predictions huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) At least on major country or trading block will attempt large scale taxation of the Internet and Internet commerce. This will be used as a cover for the removal of the last vestiges of anonymity, with the sop of removing spam in the same breadth. The approach will spread worldwide as governments find it a no brainer.
2) Parallelisation will continue as not only to all normal machines become SMP boxes, but the flexibility grows to combine and split apart all the computer power you possess. The PDA/mobile phone won't be a separate item, it will become only a part of the wider entity that you can carry with you. Increasingly accessing and synchronising with the whole entity will become as norm.
3) Wireless will go long range as mobile phone companies attempt to get over the still birth of 3G with WiMAX like services.
4) TV will go Internet, and very quickly both transmission and country borders will look quaint.
5) DRM will be added to everything, and just as quickly broken. Lies will be told and individuals will be taken to court.
and finally, but not least
6) Bird flu will hit home, preceding by a dry run of the first wave of infection. All those that have been playing down its impact will point to the first wave and ignore the second. They will die and the world that emerges from 2006 will look very different than the one we have now. The double wammy of the shock of peak oil will send the world into an introspective spiral that will shatter certain expectations.
This Will be the Year... (Score:2)
Heh heh OK, maybe not. What I'd REALLY like to see is for the Heliodisplay [io2technology.com] people ramp up production. Depending on how well it works, that technology has incredible potential and a lot of applications suggest themselves as soon as you look at it. I hope it pans out...
A look at last year's predications (Score:3, Interesting)
Robert X. Cringelys 2005 predictions [pbs.org]:
Vista won't (Score:2)
except for this one, Vista won't:
"make a difference in our lives"
hey, surely yet another Windows won't.
"make someone rich and famous"
Bill Gates is already very rich and famous.
Predictions for 2006 (Score:5, Insightful)
4/1 (Score:2, Funny)
My (decreasingly) reasonable predictions (Score:5, Funny)
2. AMD motherboards with DDR2 will finally show up. I finally upgrade from an obsolete 32-bit system. My applications rejoice.
3. Sony PlayStation 3 will be released. It will be sold out. Then more will be released. Then more will be sold out. Then more will be released. Then the price will drop a little. Then I'll buy one. Then it will be hacked by various groups for various purposes. Sony pouts. I rejoice.
4. A new flavour of Cola: Chocolate! (Eww) Oops, not technological, sorry.
5. Opera finally releases a stable, good, browser for PocketPCs. I rejoice.
6. Enlightenment 17 [enlightenment.org] is finally released. I try it, don't like it, go back to XFCE.
7. XFCE [xfce.org] 4.4 is finally released. I upgrade. I rejoice.
8. Microsoft releases Vista. Only thing new from XP: Aero and 9 versions of the same thing with 9 different price tags. (The cheaper version users are stuck with an inferior plastic paperclip.)
9. Apple releases their new line of Intel PowerBook laptops. No one notices -- attention diverted by the release of 4 and 8 gig iPod Nanos with FM radio. I consider buying one until I realize, again, that it's a waste of money. iPod lovers' collection of iPods grows to 9 units per person. Apple rejoices.
10. I go to sleep. You rejoice.
- shazow
Not quite 10, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Technologies that WONT make it in 2006 (Score:4, Interesting)
1.Flying cars. Not because the technology isnt up to par but because of the difficulty of dealing with the huge regluatory hurdles.
Right now, there are laws limiting where VTOL vehicles (which would include flying cars and also includes helicoptors) can take off and land. If flying cars were introduced, you would need to completly re-write the rulebook when it comes to aviation, flight paths, places you are allowed to take off and land from etc.
2.Video downloading services offering content you can watch on your TV. (as opposed to content you can watch on a mobile phone or video ipod etc)
Firstly, the TV operators (pay and Free-To-Air) do not want competition from "Internet Television" (be it true IPTV running as an actual stream you download or be it something you buy and watch later) and will pressure the content providers (a number of who have investments in cable/satelite/FTA TV) not to expand in this area (just look at what the TV networks did when ABC offered its shows on the iTunes store). Remember that several cable companies are starting to offer video-on-demand and would see internet downloading as a direct competitor to that.
And secondly, the bandwidth required to download full-size movies and TV shows is huge (especially if compressed at a rate that doesnt sacrifice the quality too much and makes them worth spending the $$$ on vs buying the DVD) so many (normal) people (especially people on ISP plans that limit their monthly transfer allowance) are not going to want to download large files like that.
The other problem is how to get the content from the PC where it was purchased and downloaded into something you can watch on your TV. Burning to DVD is not an option (not everyone has the time, skills or gear to burn a DVD and in any case, there is no copy protection method that can be applied to burnt DVDs AFAIK) and the other option (having your computer send the video to a box connected to your TV) is out too because the boxes just arent available (and there is no standards between boxes that do exist as far as what formats they accept or what, if any, copy protection they support)
3.Stem Cells and related technology. (including such things as cloning body parts) There are too many people opposed to this sort of technology (including, I believe, George W Bush to some extent) and too many people worried about the negative effects (e.g. cloned babies) for this to advance out of the lab anytime soon.
4.Online & home delivered groceries. There is some movement towards this idea but no-one has been able to make it work yet. In the vision of the future, you would just scan the barcode on something you want and it would record the item. Then, this combined with other items (items you dont have to scan or items that dont have barcodes like fruit etc) would be placed online and the items would be delivered directly to you.
I am sure there is a big market out there from people wanting to be able to buy all their food etc online.
Even better would be if the online supermarkets could combine with a store like K-Mart, Target or Big W (here in australia, Coles Myer owns K-Mart, Target and Coles Supermarkets and Woolworths owns Woolworths supermarkets and Big W) so you could have all sorts of variety goods delivered in the same order. Also, combine this with the alcohol sales too and you have a perfect item. (both Coles Myer and Woolworths own bottle shop chains)
But even where you can buy online, the range and price dont compare favorably to the bricks & mortar stores and its only available to a limited area. (I have no idea if other parts of the world like europe and america are any better).
As to why I dont think we will see any forward movement with this in 2006, I think it is because in order for this to really take off, the interface has to be dead simple to use.
And it needs to be accessable where the food is
Slashdot upgrade? (Score:3, Funny)
Nevermind, I predict flying cars will come first.
No mention of RFID? I thought RFID was the BFD? (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't this supposed to the year that Linux *really* takes off?
A very singular 2006 (Score:3, Funny)
2. Google will contract Dalai Lama.
3. Many people will see Argentina winning FIFA World Cup 2006 on Internet.
4. Nicholas Negroponte will design an iPod clone for 20 dollars.
5. GNU Hurd will run on more machines.
6. Blogs will have recursive references.
7. New AJAX interfaces on your watch.
8. Linux penguin will be married.
9. XBOX Patched.
10. Amazon will read books to childrens while parents watch TV.
Re:Prediction: Slashdot Will Have Even More Dupes! (Score:2)
And if it happens then I hope they will not try to patent it, 'cuz i thought of that shit first.
Re:Prediction: Slashdot Will Have Even More Dupes! (Score:2)
Tom
Re:Prediction: Slashdot Will Have Even More Dupes! (Score:2)
And after ThumbDrives are 10G with buikt-in WiFi, you will understand.
Re:Prediction: Slashdot Will Have Even More Dupes! (Score:2)
Yes; speed, resistance and cost would play a minor cost, It would be nothing in even the short/medium range and everything in the long range.
Heres an invention (Score:2)
Slashdotter: DAMmit, This is a Dupe. Slashdot why do you always do this to me!
Machine: Negative! That comment is a dupe of the following members' comments: #21345, #21346, #21347...... #755000,#755001. Detecting date..... December 26. Happy Festivus!
Re:Duke Nukem (Score:2, Funny)
What Happen?
Somebody release Duke Nukem Forever.
What!
Re:The better battery? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I Call BS on All These Predictions (Score:2)