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BT's Predictions for the Future
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 It's a bit out of date, but still pretty funny.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."
Do they say how we're going to power all this new technology when the oil and gas runs out in fifty years or so? Or how we're going to feed the billions and billions of people on this planet?
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..
Whole generation unable to effectively read, write, think, and work ... 2050
Y do u h8 me?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
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?
Highest earning celebrity is synthetic ... 2010
The way I see it, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Britney Spears are synthetic already.
It's ironic that the tagline at the bottom of ./ was
"An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the president but is always polite to traffic cops."
Sanity is a majority vote.
The 'rise of an American dictator in 2000' is a reasonable prediction??? This is the first time I've seen a submission that was in itself flamebait...
Or also exagurate the usefulness of the items predicted - not this list specifically, but in general. Take flying cars, for example. The first person - or the first few early adoptors - to get a flying car would have fun for a while, then they'd end up being regulated, traffic lanes would be created, and it'd be like The Fifth Element.
I don't think these people have a huge impact. Very popular science fiction authors, on the other hand, have a huge impact. Their imagined toys move deeper into the geek conciousness and are more likely to be realized.
"Some are reasonable predictions, like the introduction of ID cards in the UK by 2010, or the rise of an American dictator in 2000"
Give me a break. What a bunch of leftist, sour grapes. Bush won legitimately. There is no conspiracy. Get over it.
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.
"No, it's just the continued beating of a political dead horse. Why don't they just say that he "assumed" power since he "wasn't legally elected anyway"."
Except, he was elected the same way all other Presidents were.
The sore losers just can't let go, so they make things up. Sore right-wing losers impeached Clinton. Sore left-wing losers decide to ignore the Constitutional election process of the United States if their guy loses.
I can't wait to see what people like you are going to say when he is clearly elected President next time with no margin for error ... the economy is rocking ... and Iraq has been turned back over to a democratic form of government led by their own people. I'm sure you'll come up with some other BS to bash Bush on, but at least it will be known that the last 4 years of your spewing was a waste.
Watch me get modded down while the others get modded up. It's an interesting phenomena here on /.
*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.
How about those of us who are GASP! non-religious? Doesn't this nation under stupid deity bullshit make anyone else sick?
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 offtopic for the thread, but the same). And I don't want them pressured into putting their hands together (or whatever) and saying or thinking witch-doctor incontations (sp?) because their freinds' superstitious parents (and country for that matter) do. There will come a time when they can decide for themselves, but not in school non-religious people (like me) pay for too. I can't tell their kids what to do in school, so it's only logical to pursue the least offensive option, which is
"KEEP YOUR FUCKING SUPERSTITIONS TO YOURSELF".
I think our wacko president needs to heed that too.
Mostly because you can get SARS, and then die from it, simply from having been in the same room as someone who's infected. (Or at least can be transmitted through nothing more than casual contact; the popular image is that it takes practically nothing to hop from one person to another.) With AIDS, on the other hand, you have to actually share certain bodily fluids with someone who's infected. In other words, you can remain celibate and lead an otherwise normal life, and modulo infected blood or needles, you have no chance of contracting AIDS. And, of course, since the most AIDS cases happen because of consensual sex or drugs, lots of people have the attitude that it's their own damned fault.
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.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
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.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Is that after you have an accident, stalls or run out of gas the vehicle still has to land on something. It will bring a whole new meaning to the phrase multi car pile up. Air travel is very restrictive about where one can and cannot fly for a reason.
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
DOC Disinformation Obfuscation and Confusion
The carrot to FUD's stick
US Medica controls the minds of the US. Yep. That's why 90% of press coverage in Iraq is critical of Bush's handling of the situation and 70% of Americans approve of Bush's handling of same.
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 shining example of pure and noble dissent. See my observation on ignorance.
Special Interest Groups - PACs and other interests groups ARE the voice of the people. Jefferson called them factions and considered them essential to a healthy government. See my reference to ignorance above.
It is not the Republicans or Conservatives who have made the Orwellian phrase: It depends on what is is, their ideological motto, and it won't be from those ranks that an American dictator rises.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
"But... but... but... that nice Mr. Blair said:"
Maybe he is well-intentioned. However, the government always wants you to think it is acting in your best interest.
"Next you'll be saying he lied about weapons of mass destruction"
He didn't. On the Iraq issue, he showed himself as a true leader.
No, it's not the election they're complaining about, it's the removal of the right to a fair trial and the declarations of war on trumped up charges (the only thing left against Saddam was that he was an evil bastard. Well, he was an evil bastard when the US sold him WMDs. Are those responsible for that act going to face trial?). It's the two dead soldiers a day and unknown numbers of civilians for no apparent improvement in safety (and, if you ask the Brits or the Turks right now, it appears to have made things worse).
That's what they're complaining about. Winning an election doesn't justify every act afterwards.
That would not do one thing to stop the terrorists. Osama and his henchman have been rather rich and could afford this on their own.
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 poor. They join the terrorist organizations because they are poor and they don't have a lot of oppertunities in their own country. If you started to eliminate poverty in the terrorist countries they would loose a large percentage of the recruiting base.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
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.]
Damn those pesky terrorists