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There is a BookCooperative PostNuke module that does just this. See it in action at the UH IEEE web site (http://www.ieee.uh.edu).

A remarkable number of people that are rated as geniuses have/had dyslexia

examples are:
Leonardo DaVinci
Michael Faraday
Thomas Edison


and more here.
I wonder if they could poke the genius bit on but leave the learning difficulty out, or perhaps the different way of learning that dyslexics have makes a far better connected brain than us normal saps have

Info about the GIFT of dyslexia

I read the dead-tree version of this article last week. The prediction is not just making small gems and computer chips, but huge, pure, industrial quantities soon. Despite anything that De Beers tries to do, if chemically and structurally identical diamonds can be made, natural diamonds will collapse in value. Aluminum certainly didn't retain its value.

As to the price of chips made from diamonds, market forces will determine the fair price (and drive costs inexorably downward.) The major cost of a Silicon-based chip is not the Silicon, but the processing needed to make it function. The same will soon be true of Diamond based chips. Undoubtably there will be a steep learning curve in making diamond chips, so Silicon has at least a decade of safely being number one. Gallium Arsenide is considered superior to Silicon in many ways, but has only unseated Silicon in certain high frequency, low power, telecommunication applications. Diamond-based chips will probably infiltrate niche markets first, where price of fabrication is not a major deterrent.

here's another site that shows you how to do the swap.

Story goes the Thomas Edison proposed to his second wife over morse code. He thought the telegraph was the best way to communicate with his wife, and taught her morse code.

And in more recent related news, in Kuala Lupur, it's possible to get a divroce with a mobile phone text message.

M@

No, this is real-life flashmobbing.

But look at the data. It may be that robots, etc will take over manufacturing kinds of jobs, but socioligist are classifying the current "age" as "post-industrial", and before that it was industrial, and before that agricultural.

A 100 years ago much of the US population were farmers. I've never met a farmer. Then, with industrialization, people moved off of the farms to cities to do manufacturing. Now, something like 16% of the pop does manufacturing. Where we are now is a "service age", where much of the population are doing service jobs. One quick ref for this stuff is here.

People are social animals. There will always be a need for human to human contact. Like with the ATMs not replacing tellers, people (including myself) are more likely to feel better giving a deposit to a teller vs an ATM even though the teller is at least an order of magnitude more likely to make an error.

In fact, look at the importance of human to human contact today in conjunction with technology. We have email, cell phones, wired phones, snail mail, instant messaging. With the exception of snail mail, all of these are very new technologies, and very popular with the average person.

I don't see machines completely replacing ppl any time soon.

"Libel per se describes statements which are widely understood to be harmful to a person's reputation. For example, referring to an individual as an alcoholic or criminal, or any description which would lower the reputation of that individual in the eyes of others. These words are harmful and libelous."
-What is Libel?

Trust me; I just took an entire course on Freedom of Speech, and we spent some time on libel. ;)

Of course, SCO is already guilty of libel AnD slander in regards to IBM, Red Hat, Linus, and others.

You don't need to go at high mach speeds. High mach is expensive and dangerous in closed quarters; vacuum is also expensive. I've thought about this one, in terms of running railrods in America profitably.

All you need to do is have the train cars be dynamically linkable. I mean, you get on a train at the station. It goes out ahead of the main train coming in, and then slows down to link. Each car, then has a destination. The door opens, and you walk back to your destination car [for freight, you'd need standardized packages, and onboard computerized conveyors.]

You sit down, order a meal [which comes with the next car]; each car has its own driver, so for a 5-car train, that means that the most recent addition's driver is driving the train; the others function now as security and wait staff.

Eventually, your car drops off the back of the train, and then delivers you to your destination.

The train, thus, never stops rolling at approximately 60 mph; you make a nonstop trip to your destination; the drag per train car is like a car running at 15 mph; the trains can run regularly, even every hour; and as per Vanderbilt's plan for steam boats, the trip could be extremely cheap or even free [since people are eating their meals on the train].

A while back, MozillaZine ran Mozilla being used at universities.

Houston, MIT, Durham, Cambridge and The Helsinki University of Technology all use Mozilla in one form or another.

As there is no good reason to keep the different grids in sync - they are not in sync. As the fully conncted regions get larger there are more and more problems keeping the whole system "clean" and reliable. Over view of North America Power Grid

Details on the TExas Grid - good info"

IANAL either, but I looked up libel on google.

According to this web-site, a plaintiff must prove Actual Malice in order to win a libel case:

Actual Malice is what plaintiffs in the public eye have to prove in order to win a libel case. Actual malice is the act of publishing or broadcasting statements with prior knowledge of the inaccuracy of the statement or a reckless disregard for the truth.

In the case in question, if the statements are indeed true, then guy could not have been publishing them with prior knowledge of their inaccuracy or a reckless disregard for the truth.

Ideally, however; It's not Required

It says:
In The Usage and Abusage Guide Dictionary, Eric Partridge states, "The legitimacy of the prepositional ending in literary English must be uncompromisingly maintained; in respect of elegance or inelegance, every example must be judged not by an arbitrary rule, but on its own merits, according to the impression it makes on the feeling of educated English readers" (Partridge 254). In many cases, not using a preposition at the end of a sentence can lead to worse grammatical errors. According to, The Longmans Guide of Usage, the book suggests that writers should avoid the use of a preposition at the end of a sentence in formal writing, if there is an alternative. However, for less formal usage one may end a sentence with a preposition.

WAAAY off topic, I know, I know...

1. What constitutional power does the President hold that can prevent legislation passed by Congress, like spending packages, so that it doesn't become law?

2. Scroll down to the highlighted text. Which President had only 12% (compared to 65%) of their vetoes overturn, despite the President in question having a majority of the opposing party in Congress, Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton?

3. Look at the reference chart. Of the eight presidencies shown (Johnson - Democrat, Nixon - Republican, Ford - Republican, Carter - Democrat, Reagan - Republican, Bush - Republican, Clinton - Democrat, Bush - Republican), which party has consistently spent more than they were receiving?

4. Fill in the blank, "The US Congress during the 80s was largely controlled by these conservatives who went by the popular name of '______ Democrat'"

   Hint: The word is the same as the last name of the president in office at the time.

5. What US President slashed social programs by more than fifty percent and yet doubled military spending while serving his two terms?

6. Bonus Question: Take a look at this chartWhich political party (as represented by the administration of the time), has consistently cut taxes on corporations while doing nothing about the individual tax payers' tax bill? Now compare this to the spending of each of those administrations.

... was invented about 5500 years ago, and is still going strong, especially in sets of five.

Let other people deploy wireless, or lay their own cable, ala the cable companies.

Yeah, great plan, let all the competitors run their own cable. Then everyplace will look like the left side of this image (which depicts New York, circa 1890).

The Bells are just ridiculous with their greed and hatred of competition. They need to be taught a lesson-- the government should take over their infrastructure and sell equal access to that infrastructure to every telecom company who wants it. The telecommunications system has become essential to everyday life, and no single for-profit company should be allowed to dictate who can or can't make use of it, or how much it will cost them to do so.

Here's the short version. Oprah Winfrey got dragged into a lawsuit over a show she did where she looked into the possibility of people getting Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease from eating Mad Cow Disease-infected beef. In Texas there is a law on the books, colloquially referred to as the "Veggie Libel Law" which makes it a punishable offense to defame the Beef industry. Oprah prevailed, but she had to spend tons of money and temporarily move her show to Texas to answer the lawsuit.

Firstly, Magneto has it wrong, Mutants are humans since they can interbreed with any Homo-sapien on the Marvel earth. They would be better classified as the only other race of Homo-sapiens (NB "races" such as Caucasian, Indian, Hispanic, etc. don't really exist because there isn't enough differences in the genetics for such races to exist within the definition of biology.)

Secondly, you're right, in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter all that much, but it's still something to be upset about. The X-Men, for many people, aren't merely characters in a great piece of fiction, but also a metaphor for those in humanity who have felt the sting of oppression by fellow human beings.

This comic also shows that oppressed people are still human. Being oppressed does not necessarily provide justification for all actions used to break that oppression. The comic shows the complexity of human nature and its affairs, rather than trying to make clear distinctions between good and evil.

I guess. IANAL, of course =)

Exactly my point! :)

Which was really that inventions of the past 85 years (Forbes' time frame) are kind of hard to label revolutionary.

Imagine how long the list of inventions superior to the cellphone would be. IMHO the pager blows it out of the water -- does anyone remember what a sensation those were? and think of the lives that were saved by ruining the dinners of innumerable doctors -- the cellphone was merely a later step.

To be fair, I should have picked items from Forbes's 85-year period. I bet there are quite a few superior to the cellphone in the at period -- think of the life-changing advances in medical technology alone -- yet the number that can be called revolutionary is an historical sense is small.

For fun, here is a fun catalog of inventions large and small. Count how many beat "cellphone."

BTW, the cotton gin was kind of a disasterous revolution if you happened to have been an African-American slave. It saved cotton plantations from financial ruin. Nor did Eli make much off of it; the patent was one of the most widely-disregarded in American history, with the states themselves handing out gins. (I can already hear someone making bizarre "fair use" arguments and complaining about the RIAA monopoly on gin technology.)

"Thomas Midgely adds lead to gasoline to stop power-draining knocking."

As if burning fuel wasn't bad enough already add a toxic metal to it to really juice things up. It's already banned in many countries including the USA and UK.

This site has further commentary and also covers his discovery of Freons that later helped damage the ozone layer including how his final invention killed him.

Surely the whole idea of such an article is to choose the inventions with the benefit of hindsight.

Yep, there is money to be made, but not much and not for a long time. I'm particularly grumpy about humans in space, because they cost so much and divert funds from unmanned research probes. A lot of aerospace engineers feel the same.

Columbus was a better investment bet. I don't know how much was invested in the 1492 project (3 used ships and crews?), but I doubt it amounts to much of anything in 2002 dollars. Probably not enough to get a grapefruit into space. (Actually, that would be a cool statistic -- I just dropped an email to a professor who asked the same Q.)

I have never understood the thinking behind changing the 'fire triangle' to the 'fire tetrahedron.' A triangle has three points - coresponding to fuel, oxygen, and heat - while a tetrahedron has four points - with the fire tetrahedron points being fuel, oxygen, heat, and "chemical reaction". BUT "The chemical chain reaction know[sic] as fire occurs when fuel, oxygen and heat are present in the right conditions and amounts." (The Fire Tetrahedron) If you replace "The chemical chain reaction know[sic] as fire" with "Fire", the tetrahedron reverts back to a triangle with "fire occurs when fuel, oxygen and heat are present in the right conditions and amounts."

In other words, if you have fuel, oxygen and heat in correct amounts, AND YOU HAVE FIRE PRESENT (fourth point of the tetrahedron), you will have fire.

Well duh!

As a white male whose excellent test-taking abilities which have saved my grade in a few classes in which I did little else, I may be biased in making a response. Just the same.

That's very strange - surely it's also "discriminatory" to say that women and minorities aren't as good at test taking as white men?

I can't comment upon the basis of the statement since I was merely quoting the linked article, but my guess would be that studies have been done which show females and minorities tend to do worse on written tests. A quick google brings up this article which sites just such statistics for the SAT of 1995. And then there's this article on women and minorities in science with relevant data from 1999.

I've seen otherwise very competent people, both male and female, crumble in tests here at college. Heck, I've watched my sisters and mother have the same problems. Generally, the factor seems to be a matter of believing in one's own ability. People who know what they're doing overlook simple details because they're nervous or are worried that they don't understand a problem when they actually do (Why would they give me this piece of data if I didn't need it?). Myself, I was exposed to tests frequently when young which helped me learn the habit of confidence.

Now, I can't comment on any tendancy of females or minorities to be more timid than males or whites respectively. Statistical studies could quite possibly do that.

And isn't it strange that they could potentially be worse at test-taking, but not worse at job-doing? A well designed test will be statistically well correlated with job ability. If it's not, then we might as well not bother licensing surgeons!

But the thing is that two things are being tested: the ability to know the correct answer and the ability to recall and relay that answer clearly while udne pressure. It is that second matter which some might find causes a statistical discrepancy which could amount to discrimination. Like I said, though, IANAL. I'm not even an engineer, yet.

More info on the Newton / Leibniz battle:
Newton vs Leibniz

But that is not as bad as this, a Professor (a department head no less) calling him Tovard all the time.

No disrespect Dr. Lawrence S. Pinsky! But TOVARD?

I feel kind of bad. He looks like a nice guy. I mean, Mistaking Linus and Linux makes sense to me, they are almost one in the same, Linux being some sort of intellectual shadow of Linus (his house MUST be more disorganized than a pig sty ;p). But to call him Tovard. I mean, is that a new SCSI chip? The AIC-7_TOVARD?

ALARM!

But that is not as bad as this, a Professor (a department head no less) calling him Tovard all the time.

No disrespect Dr. Lawrence S. Pinsky! But TOVARD?

I feel kind of bad. He looks like a nice guy. I mean, Mistaking Linus and Linux makes sense to me, they are almost one in the same, Linux being some sort of intellectual shadow of Linus (his house MUST be more disorganized than a pig sty ;p). But to call him Tovard. I mean, is that a new SCSI chip? The AIC-7_TOVARD?

ALARM!

Well, the site got crunched. Here's a text-only mirror:

Click here

ok, i've wiped the tears from my eyes; i'm sure that's not quite what you meant

yes, a lot sf is pretty dumb. i gave up on star trek a *long* time ago as well. But, how did you get that post up -- send a carrier pigeon to michigan?

here, read some of these. They're not science fiction (though, sadly, each is quite short) and may adjust your conception of what is possible.

Gutenberg's second book, after the Bible, was erotic stories.

The streambox vcr client sent the "secret handshake" to a realmedia server, and realmedia sued over this because it was very easy to 'fake out' a streaming server in this way, and then ignore the 'don't save' bit.

http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/cjoyce/copyright/rel ease10/Real.html

24. In order [*11] to gain access to RealMedia content located on a RealServer, the VCR mimics a RealPlayer and circumvents the authentication procedure, or Secret Handshake, that a RealServer requires before it will stream content. In other words, the Streambox VCR is able to convince the RealServer into thinking that the VCR is, in fact, a RealPlayer.

25. Having convinced a RealServer to begin streaming content, the Streambox VCR, like the RealPlayer, acts as a receiver. However, unlike the RealPlayer, the VCR ignores the Copy Switch that tells a RealPlayer whether an end-user is allowed to make a copy of (i.e., download) the RealMedia file as it is being streamed. The VCR thus allows the end-user to download RealMedia files even if the content owner has used the Copy Switch to prohibit end-users from downloading the files.

Didn't Real put Streambox out of market because Streambox had reveng'ed the protocol to allow downloads of streaming media?!

Maybe I'm remembering this wrong, but that would really smell of hypocrisy.

dominik@schnitzer.at, mozparty-at-subscribe@relax.ath.cx, dominik@schnitzer.at, david_markvica@web.de, johannes_richter@gmx.net, kairo@kairo.at, rossi@chello.at, markush@world-direct.com, cbiesinger@web.de, jenskager@gmx.net, jo-at-mt@gmx.net, johann.petrak@gmx.at, dviper01@gmx.net, simon@simonschwaighofer.net, dreckskerl@glump.at, wt-lists@trexler.at, dusty@strike.wu-wien.ac.at, kasparhauserjr@hotmail.com, b.schallar@gmx.net, mutato@libero.it, phil@goli.at, diddalick@gmx.net, studio@paw8.com, croco@utanet.at, petru@paler.net, jlemmerer@node.at, bigkub@time2change.at, patrick@seher-it.at, ronald@hartwig.at, mozilla_party@webterminate.com, stefan@kleinhans.it, horst.jens@gmx.at, jjan@gibts.net, mjahn@agency.at, gpoul@gnu.org, green@eggs.ham, gerhard.hipfinger@openforce.at, mailto:moz@moz.org>, florianweinwurm@yahoo.com, christian@precht-jensen.dk, Bill_Gates@microsoft.com, Tux_the_penguin@linux.rules.microsoft.sux.open.sou rce.is.the.way.to.go.net, domi@schnitzer.at, 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rfmobile@swbell.net, kevin@unif.com trident5@bigfoot.com Erik_Osterholm@ieee.org, tmunson@houston.rr.com, alessi_brand@hotmail.com, rballa1@lsu.edu, wasted@kewlhair.com, jofficer@martinapparatus.com, idiot@mylinuxisp.com, j0sh01@ev1.net faust@wintermarket.org bouncer@hotmonkeyporn.com tk-mozparty_@perljam.net janisch@students.zcu.cz, aha@pinknet.cz kuzi@atlas.cz scat@reboot.cz, petr@dousa.cz, ruzicka@core.cz, roman@management.cz, hojan@students.zcu.cz, tille@soti.org, cas.tuyn@hetnet.nl, aeon@pandora.be, sensi_millia2000@yahoo.com, crypto@shiftat.com, jan.fabry@vsknet.be, monkeyboy@fruru.com, adulau@foo.be, johan@linux.be, karu@pobox.com, soggie@soti.org nick@tomkinet.com, why_are_you_too_lazy_to_drive_1_hour_to_toronto@yo u_lazy.com try_grammer_class_a_while@get_a_life.com john@interlynx.ca asharp@axo.cc, unionstation@ryder.ca, prade@hotmail.com, 2600@hamilton2600.ca, chris.lozano@myrealbox.com, dantrevino@wrevolution.org, jksteinhauer@netscape.net, i_love_junk_email@yahoo.com, 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thefl74@netscape.net, elbardo@libero.it, clem131@libero.it, t-i-e@bigfoot.com, gng74@libero.it, moz.party.20.gnes@spamgourmet.com, ema.cerqui@libero.it, ubertob@tin.it, mozparty.20.anagoor@spamgourmet.com, gianpaolo@preciso.net, ian@deepsky.com, marco@porciletto.org, planetx2100@hotmail.com, billabong@tiscalinet.it, piofree@libero.it, skunkyboy@tiscalinet.it, vincenzo@mondopiccolo.net, macmatteo@interfree.it, contreras@jce.it, hereandnow@libero.it, pza@students.cs.mu.oz.au, caedwa@students.cs.mu.oz.au, mgi@students.cs.mu.oz.au, bah@humbug.net, mfp@cs.mu.oz.au, nospamplease@indevelopment.org, peter@simplyit.screaming,net, pmj@users.sf.net, xanni@sericyb.com.au, agh@kalcium-is.com, felicityconsult@ozemail.com.au, lucas@lucaschan.com, andrewg@nopninjas.com, andym@abnormal.com, ts@meme.com.au, jasonpell@hotmail.com, syngin@gimp.org, mhammond@skippinet.com.au, szutshi@devraj.org, rmoonen@bigpond.net.au, fawad@fawad.net, ufs@softhome.net, kotrade@yahoo.com, ben@benscorp.com, stevesmith@columbus.rr.com, kkimmelosu@yahoo.com, neal.lindsay@peaofohio.com, pat@linuxcolumbus.com, chrisbaker@iname.com, hiroki2c@yahoo.com, seth@remor.com, jsohn@columbus.rr.com, ross@nanonet.net, mark@cushman.net, swinghammer.2@osu.edu, roberto.12@osu.edu, farhat@hotmail.com, pgunn@dachte.org, jwagner@gcfn.org, bp@osc.edu, joepletch@postmark.net, dsherman@iwaynet.net, glenn@uniqsys.com, bernstein.46@osu.edu, trent_reznor@nothing.com, erikniklas@bobanddoug.com, walters@gnu.org, timo@bolverk.net, annek25@aol.com, jlamb@leader.com, bart@osc.edu, jason@mcvetta.org

For every famous scientist like Netwon there must be one or more fellows like Leibniz.

A friend who works at the University of Houston has said that Microsoft is going to be selling select software for $7.00 each. That's right - $7.00 a pop this coming fall season. I'm not holding my breath over this but it does sound rather interesting.

Anybody care to tell him or call him at (713)743-3621 (office)?

And, if you don't believe them ask Alex Ignatiev who is on the Technical Team.

Actually, Ptolemy’s estimate of the Earth’s size, made 300 years later, came out 28 percent low. Successive measurements throughout Hellenic and Roman times, not being “in the know,” must have had them side with the Eratosthenetic projection. Columbus was actually following the Ptolemaic projection, if he were following anything but his own dumb fantasies.

Human effects on bridges is hardly a surprise. Recall in 1981 when the Kansas City Hyatt's skywalk collapsed, killing 114, because the pedestrians were dancing (and the design was altered to ease construction). You'd think that would have been enough of a wake up call to the millenium designers to consider human motion. more info

Armys break cadence when marching across bridges, at least as far back as Napoleon's time. Presumably they learned that the hard way.

On a more personal note, I have participated in the unintentional destruction of a gymnasium. 80 or so people crowded together in the middle, bouncing up and down, and then "down and down". We fractured the engineered wooden joists. Fortunately it failed gracefully. Just sagged down about 4 feet in the middle.

What I'm trying to say, not particularly directly, is "don't give the designers of the bridge a pass because this new phenomenon struct their bridge". Chastise them for risking people's lives and wasting resources by neglecting the loads placed on bridges.

Realnetworks, Inc. v. Streambox, Inc.

18. Streambox also argues that the VCR does not violate the DMCA because the Copy Switch that avoids does not "effectively protect" against the unauthorized copying of 12 copyrighted works as required by S 1201(a)(3)(B). Streambox claims this "effective protection is lacking because an enterprising end-user could potentially use other means to record streaming audio content as it is played by the end-user's computer speakers. This argument fails because the Copy Switch, in the ordinary course of its operation when it is on, restricts and limits the ability of people to make perfect digital copies of a copyrighted work. The Copy Switch therefore constitutes a technological measure that effectively protects a copyright owner's rights under section 1201(a)(3)(B).

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

They quickly learned, however, that Mims was an supporter of so-called Scientific Creationism, a movement that attempts to include the creation story of Genesis in biology curricula as a scientifically viable account of human origins.

This is actually a pretty sad story. Mims's treatment at the hands of Scientific American is an atrocity on par with anything the medieval Catholics could have come up with, at least without resorting to pitchforks and thumbscrews. They certainly guaranteed that at least one agnostic (myself) will never burden their subscription department with correspondence.

This is old hat to anyone who has bothered to read beyond the precusory level(s) of chinese history. Try http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1028.htm for a quick introduction. Sadly the journey(s) only serve to underscore the xenophobia rife throughout China's history. On a lighter note researching the itinerant buddhist monk who supposedly recorded the journey provides good entertainment. Fusang has long been worth a book by a wannabe historian/archeologist. Now that the main stream media has the bit in its mouth hollywood might go along for the ride. Do I see a vessel for the rebirth of the careers of Cheech and Chong sailing over the horizon.

• Picture of an MRE pack
• Picture of an MRE's contents

• Picture of an MRE pack
• Picture of an MRE's contents

Dr. Ignatiev at the University of Houston is in charge of a NASA-funded effort to develop "Space Vacuum Epitaxy", where researchers try to take advantage of the vacuum of space as a growth environment. The problem is, near-earth space simply isn't low enough pressure to work well, meaning that the researchers need to have their experiments behind a "wake-shield" - basically a big metal plate that pushes unwanted gas molecules out of the way.

The upshot is that space vacuum epitaxy is hugely expensive. Better and more controlled vacuums may be achieved on earth at a tiny fraction of the cost of a single shuttle launch. While I'm glad NASA funds research efforts like this, many such projects, even while producing cool results, often end up with the conclusion that doing the work in space is neither necessary nor desirable.

Off topic but interesting:

The one of the largest contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary was locked away in an asylum.

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1358.htm

We actually have (at least) two usefull technologies for cleaning up space: tethers and wake shields. I don't know if the SVEC folks have considered building a wake shield specifically for NEO cleanup, though.

Since reading and doing an undergrad seminar on Symmetry in Chaos by Marty Golubitsky and Mike Field several years ago, I've been quite interested in this topic.

A more serious alternative to Emergence might be The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature.

Since reading and doing an undergrad seminar on Symmetry in Chaos by Marty Golubitsky and Mike Field several years ago, I've been quite interested in this topic.

A more serious alternative to Emergence might be The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature.

For example, by the time Friday was released, in 1984, as I recall, publically available computer terminals were in existence, BBSes were how you got on-line (except for the fortunate few how knew about and had access to Usenet) and networked BBSes were about to be invented.

My own personal favorite example of an SF prediction is in Bellamy's Looking Backward which, among other things, talked about how the broadcasting of music (live performances over telephone lines as neither audio recording nor radio had been invented or conceived of when the book was written) had become common. I also seem to recall that it had some bit in there about how that led to fewer people being able to play the piano, but that may be my subsequent experiences leaking over as it's been 20+ years since I read that book.

However, it seems to me that the question is not about predictions in SF that come true, but about how SF has driven invention. If, as I say I believe above, SF is a reflection of the culture it's written in, then there can be no direct link. However, I also believe that invention is also a product of the culture it is in, so it is certainly fair to say that, if a work doesn't have a direct effect on invention, then it will necessarily reflect the environment in which the invention is made. Rarely is this made more clear than in "The Man Who Sold the Moon" where Delos D. Harriman talks about what it was like to grow up in the early part of the 20th century.

Further, if one wishes to look at that aspect more closes, I think that one could do worse than looking at the work of Dr. Lienhard of the University of Houston (not his son, who is a professor at MIT) who has a 5-minute daily radio program (and book derived therein) called "The Engines of our Ingenuity" which discusses the whole process of invention and covers quite well the methods by which people derive inspiration. The URL to reach the radio show's transcripts is http://www.uh.edu/engines