Worst and Best Predictions on Technology

prostoalex writes "Dow Jones News asked several mahor scientists and technologists about their worst and best predictions of the future. The story, republished at Yahoo! Finance Singapore quotes Lester Thurow, Professor of management and economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management; Nicholas Negroponte, Founder and director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab; Glover Ferguson, Chief scientist, Accenture; Alan Nugent, Chief technology officer, Novell; Peter Cochrane, Director, ConceptLabs; Michael Earl, Dean, Templeton College, University of Oxford. There seems to be a common agreement on having overrated the ability of machines to talk back to users and vice versa."

Comments

naka

[Skiboo]

fp for skib

Slashdot Beatitudes

[Anonymous Coward]

And seeing the multitudes, He went up unto the mountain: and when He was set, his disciples came unto him: And He opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

"Blessed are the poor in threshold: for theirs is the Kingdom of the Page-Lengthening and Page-Widening Posts.

"Blessed are they that mourn the death of *BSD: for they shall be comforted with an ultradense Linux server from VA Linux, now sold by California Digital Corporation.

"Blessed are the posters of smug one-liners: for they shall inherit an Account Capped at 50.

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after The First Post: for they shall have the Third or Fourth Post.

"Blessed are the karma whores: for they shall obtain "Score: 5, Insightful".

"Blessed are those who dismiss out-of-hand: for they shall fail to see the Point of the Original Post.

"Blessed are those who seek to associate themselves with the latest techno-fad: for they shall be called 3L33T for at least Another Half Hour.

"Blessed are they which are persecuted for their own self-righteousness' sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of "Ask Slashdot".

"Blessed are the over-eager, who believe that Open Source is a social movement heralding the rise of a new generation: for they shall not realize that There Are No Sacred Cows.

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for the sake of your Favorite Operating System.

"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in Heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD

Re:Overrated

[GigsVT]

Why do you think style sheets make web pages unreadable? Do you even know what style sheets are?

Stylesheets are overrated as well

[Snaller]

>Why do you think style sheets make web pages unreadable?

You wouldn't be a young fellow with an expensive monitor would you?

>Do you even know what style sheets are?

Of course, how else would i know they are the bane of the WWW today:

Because most webdesigners use absolute font size, which means you can't resize it in browsers. Ie, you are stuck with a font size which is often too small (it is for me most of the time).

Jakob Nielsen (who you should know if you are a regular slashdot reader, if not search the slashdot archives), the man CNN calls "Web usability guru" (ironically they do it wrong as well), will tell you why Stylesheets "reduced readability of an increasing number of websites" - He will also tell you how to do it right. - Basically doing it right is to specify percentage weights so that the stylesheets DO cascade, instead of taking over.
Some sites who do it wrong:

http://www.cnn.com
http://www.microsoft.com
ht tp://www.nvidia.com
http://www.asus.com.tw/
http ://www.wiseeye.com/
http://www.syfyportal.com/

GIBRAN WAS A SAND NIGGER

[Anonymous Coward]

Only kidding. The Prophet was a masterful book, no?