Technology Predictions for 2006?

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?

Comments

finally!

[nuttzy]

this is the year we all get flying cars!

Re:finally!

[ackthpt]

2006 will be the year Duke Nukem Forever comes out!

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!

[HardCase]

Ahem. I predict that most predictions will be wrong. Thank you.

I Want My Personalized Entertainment

[moresheth]

I'm anxious to see dynamic (digital) paper, like with newspapers and junk, but I doubt we'll be seeing them this year.

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

[tomstdenis]

Problem with e-paper ...

1. Monthly service for radio link servetude: $30
2. Airtime charges to download the news: $10
3. 911 access fee ... on a piece of paper ... : $1
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

Oblig Simpsons quote

[Anonymous Coward]

The domestication of the dog continues unabated.

I predict

[TubeSteak]

That we will have _____ wonderful technology in 20 years.

Because for some reason, everything wonderful always seems to be 20 years away.

Trusted people, of course

[TheNoxx]

Although Microsoft didn't do so hot with their "trusted computing" initiative, they'll do much better with "trusted people". Check out a future issue of Playboy: "Hottest Places to Have Your RFID Chip Inserted! Please Your Woman and Keep Your Nation Safe at the Same Time!"

Video and all-in-ones

[Diordna]

I think that most innovations will come in video and handheld form. Things will get more consolidated very quickly, and the handheld will become even more central than it is now. I hope to see something like an iPod Video that can store movies at screen sizes creater than 320x240 just so they can be hooked up to TVs and played back anywhere. Also, the outcome of Apple Intel machines should be interesting - one place for OS X, Windows, and Linux to all run at the same time.

Re:Video and all-in-ones

[fyngyrz]

where I come from PAL has a resolution of 720x576, while our neighbors in NTSC land can see 720x480

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

[fyngyrz]

Ok, the 400 vertical resolution fits into the 200x200 (400) vertical resolution of the full frame. Outside of the 400 lines, evenly distributed above and below the active lines, typically would be blanked lines -- so the 400 line vertical distribution is all on-screen, and you can't paint off the top and bottom (unless you fuss with the vertical size of the monitor or television and distort the displayable area.)

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)

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the odds of a new technology coming out of nowhere and becoming popular? Look at 2005 -- just an expansion of existing tech. Torrents become more popular, more bandwidth means people exchange more videos, bird flu will continue to be overrated and containable and there will continue to be few deaths, wifi will be more popular, more telephony, and so on.

It's evolution baby, not revolution, and that's the way I like it :)

GoogleRate

[zymurgy_cat]

Google will come up with GoogleRate, a neat application that will automatically search for, record, archive, and then verify all these claims and predictions that everyone makes.

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.

How about

[BCW2]

Flash drives get priced competitivly with hard drives of the same size?

Re:How about

[ottffssent]

Why?

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

[EvanED]

It's also that hard drives have a high overhead cost. No matter what size the hard drive, you need some controlling stuff, a motor to drive the head, the head itself, and a hermetically sealed container. Compare that to what has to be a very small amount of electronics and a couple cents worth of plastic that goes with your typical flash drive.

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

[matt21811]

"400GB of flash would be bigger, heavier, and probably slower than 400GB of magnetic storage. It would also be less reliable. but even with price parity, why would you want flash with all its drawbacks?"

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?

Predictions...

[Wyatt Earp]

Advancements in artificial limb technology driven by the Iraqi Military Operations
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

Re:Predictions...

[DigiShaman]

How about a Quad core CPU. Two cores of Intel, and two cores of AMD technology all packaged togeather. No matter how your program is written, it will take advantage of the best set of cores for its function.

Ya... I can dream can't I?

Check out e-ink

[castoridae]

E-ink, an MIT Media Lab spinoff, has been working on this since ~1997. They have products to market, although you can't yet get your local paper on it... :-\

http://www.e-ink.com/products/matrix/imaging_film. html

Fusion!

[headkase]

2006 will be the year we finally achieve a sustained controlled fusion reaction! My 1970 copy of the new book of knowledge annual edition says it's just around the corner! Let's hope its not around the corner for another 35 years as we really do need it....

Re:Fusion!

[FooAtWFU]

Actually, I believe that we already have "sustained controlled fusion" reactions. What we'd like are sustained controlled fusion reactions which produce more energy than they consume.

Re:Fusion!

[DigiShaman]

You are correct in that nothing in regards to a single solution will replace the energy needs that we demand from crude oil. However, I suspect it will be a collection of alternative energies ranging from A to Z that will slowly displace our need for oil. This migration will take place naturally through market forces and mankind's lust to capitalize on such solutions.

For 2006, I see a major national plan to diversify our energy grid so that future technologies can be seamlessly integrated for the cooperation of the entire alternative energy industry and to set into motion a set of standards for electrical grid plug-and-play. So far, it's not very accommodating to the private sector willing to sell unused generated energy such as that of solar and wind.

Predictions

[ackthpt]

• 1. Someone will challenge Moore's Law as not being true any longer.
• 2. Cell phone batteries will need longer life as people listen to music and watch video on them.
• 3. Nano physics will be all the rage, but nobody will still have made anything practical with them.
• 4. RIAA will continue to hound people who really don't affect their bottom line, then blame the loss of music sales for the expense.
• 5. Howard Stern will not have the new customer draw Sirius is betting on.
• 6. Red Wine will be found not to actually have any real impact on reducing heart disease when they find a bunch of drunken italian doctors made it all up.
• 7. Video Games will continue to be ballyhooed as more realistic than ever, but movement will still look terribly wooden.
• 8. New processors, mother boards, video cards will all come out and amazingly the top of the line will cost what the top of the line has cost for the past ten years.
• 9. Moore's Law will be reaffirmed.
• 10. Cheezy Poofs and Coke will be declared heart-healthy by firms in Plano, TX and Atlanta, GA, and the media will not question it one bit.

Re:Predictions

[slashname3]

2. Cell phone batteries will need longer life as people listen to music and watch video on them.

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

[equallyunequal]

Howard Stern is definitely drawing new customers to Sirius radio. I work at Radioshack and my entire district is sold out of all Sirius recievers and we have waiting lists. 75% of the customers say they are buying because they wanted Howard Stern.

Re:Predictions

[pfhlick]

Stern is being replaced with David Lee Roth, at least in Boston. I bet that would drive some people to Sirius.

On second thought, though, maybe not.

Show me a boy @ seven and I shall show you the Man

[Leontes]

Wikipedia will continue to grow, and content will continue to become more refined and generally better. Facebook will grow, and options for adding non-school connected individuals will be introduced before the end of the year. Myspace, Friendster and Liverjournal usership will decline. The television shows available on itunes will increase ten fold, some regular free television program downloads will become available by march. Political Speeches will become regularly podcast. A c-span like service will become reasonable popular on itunes podcasting service. Macintosh computers will sell more computers in this year than in the last two, combined.

Number 7

[rolfwind]

7. Even small start-ups go global

Three major forces are driving the rise of the mini-multinational -- start-ups that are launched from the get-go as global operations.

First, there's the promise of lucrative foreign markets, which are growing more quickly than in the United States. Some overseas opportunities are now even bigger than here, such as cell-phone sales in China.

Second, U.S. companies can lower their costs and boost profits more quickly by outsourcing work to places like China and India, where labor is cheaper.

Finally, the Silicon Valley model of nurturing start-ups has spread to other regions around the world. Venture capitalists are opening offices in those countries and are getting more comfortable with helping to nurture companies in those foreign markets.

Many companies, seeded by Silicon Valley venture capital firms, set up headquarters in the valley, where they employ high-end engineers, marketing professionals and senior management.

But they have major operations in Bangalore, India, or Shanghai, China, and increasingly elsewhere.

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.

What I really wish

[selil]

1. The DMCA is overturned entirely when all the chief justices get threatening letters from RIAA for watching jib/jab videos. 2. The Patriot Act is declared dead in the water when it is found that undeclared wiretaps were actually against the FISA judges. 3. Video on demand systems requiring no physical media and available on multiple formats cause independent media moguls to become instant zillion-aires and they buy up studios by the dozens converting them to creative commons. 4. The really cool ultra slim portable gadgets found in Japan and Europe are actually released to North America versus gray market. 5. The hottest TV show involves high geek factor when a three guys, and a kid are marooned on a haunted island being bombed by the Pentagon, while a forgotten civilization forges forward trying to find a lost city in another galaxy with wierd looking zombie dudes who eat flesh play pool on the island with the guys and kid. 6. Video game ESPN sports takes on a new twist when they electrify the chairs with 100,000 volts. 7. Windows XP SP4 is released when nobody upgrades to the "late" Vista when no OEM produces a machine with a terabyte of disk space, and a 20Ghz processor required to do anything but load the OS. Bill Gates bursts into flames when demo-ing Vista from a microwave leaking processor. 8. Open Source Advocates actuall publish an agreed upon coding standard for all languages and it is ignored by all. 9. NASA launches a man to the moon sans rocket as it is determined that no rocket is safe therefore they get rid of the rocket and use a giant sling shot. 10. The Cubs win the world series.

Painkillers

[TubeSteak]

I agree with the need for more/better pain killers

One of the main problems with the current meds is their massive potential for abuse.

I predict this will take off in 2006

To counter abuse, drug makers are developing ways to reformulate prescription painkillers. Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Conn., which makes OxyContin, is thinking of adding a second drug, called an opiate antagonist, that neutralizes the effects of the opiate.

The antagonist would be walled off using polymers or some other sequestering technique, said Dr. David Haddox, the company's vice president of health policy.

A patient who swallowed the drug would get full pain relief, as intended. But if someone tampered with the pills, the antagonist would be released.
...
A second approach is to mix in a chemical irritant like capsaicin, the main ingredient of hot chili peppers, said Dr. Woolf, who has a patent on the idea.

Because the esophagus and stomach do not have many receptors for hot peppers, patients could take the pills as prescribed and find relief, he said. But the lining of the nose and cheeks are loaded with pepper receptors, and anyone who ground up such a pill would get a burning feeling in the chest, face, rectum and extremities, as well as paroxysmal coughing.

It 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

Re:Painkillers

[NixLuver]

I can't believe that this thread is treating this stupidity as if it were a good thing. The piles of red tape and bullshit that people have to go through to buy scheduled drugs are not because of the abusers, it's because of the War On Drugs. How can someone consider themself free if they don't have basic sovereignty over their own body? Good god, people, the only difference between abuse and use is whether or not a Doctor wrote you a prescription. As long as you don't get stupid, there are a million doctors who will prescribe basically whatever you're smart enough to request and provide basic, rudimentary symptom support and insurance for.

The real technological advance would be a free society, not newer and better ways to fuck up people's days.

Re:Painkillers

[lysergic.acid]

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.

Prediction: economic colapse

[argoff]

My prediction is that technology predictions will be cut short because the US economy is getting ready to fall off hyperinflationary debt cliff. A rare condition where costs and prices become orders of magnitude larger while at the same time pay and employment become orders of magnitude lower. With over leveraged housing debt on a housing market that is getting ready to fall, too much credit card debt, too much corporate debt, too much trade debt, too much municipal debt, too much state debt, too much federal debt - and 270 TRILLION with a T in derivatives contracts that must settle wether thru default or thru printing up money. It wouldn't take too much in the modern efficient US economy for things to snowball and between the FED and a potential panic out of foriegn dollar reserves - it could really be a very very ugly global colapse. IMHO, people should really consider gold in their portfolios this year, there is a reason why it has been going up for the last 5 years, and recently those reasons have become a lot more immenent.

Simple.

[Tatarize]

Wimax becomes huge.
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

[Belseth]

Voterless voting machines. No longer will the average american be burdened with the inconvience or respnosibility of voting. Simply register and you're done. Diebold will even see that you get to have a say in elections after you're dead. Field tested last year in Ohio the system is now ready for widespread use just in time for congrssional elections next year. Sit at home in comfort and watch the results to see who you voted for election night.

The Bad News

[Lucas Membrane]

1. Radar range beam weapons for crowd control. Not lethal but completely inhumane.

2. Lethal drone aircraft the size of insects.

Only one thing is certain

[dangitman]

Chairs will be thrown.

OK, maybe two things. Thrones will also be chairs.

Re:The better battery?

[superpulpsicle]

Speaking of PSP, this is the year sony handheld division must deliver or die. I don't see it sticking around for the sake of playing DVDs if they can't make some great games. FF7 advent children might drive some sales, but ultimately this is where the road split.

Predictions for 2006

[Animats]

1. Saudi Arabia finally admits the Gawar field has peaked. Oil passes $70 per barrel.
2. US interest rate spike. "Homeowners" with adjustable-rate interest-only loans default and are foreclosed.
3. Housing prices crash as foreclosures glut market.
4. Congress finally starts investigating some activities of the Bush administration.
5. No real change in Iraq. Neither side can force a decision, so both sides keep bleeding.
6. China announces major progress in their space program.
7. Micropayments flop, again. Goodbye, Bitpass.
8. A Cat 4 or 5 hurricane wipes out another southern US city, or New Orleans floods again.
9. One of the big three US car manufacturers goes bankrupt.
10. Total number of active blogs decreases.

My (decreasingly) reasonable predictions

[Shazow]

1. A dozen of new web-based RSS feed readers will be announced, all featuring tags and various intricate social features. Eventually one or two will be considered the "norm" (as Blogger, Livejournal, etc are considered the norm for blogging, despite all the imitators). My bookmarks folder rejoices.

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 is finally released. I try it, don't like it, go back to XFCE.

7. XFCE 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

Re:What The Simpsons didn't say is that...

[h4rm0ny]

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:

• Dogs should be bred for intelligence. Never mind making them big / small / whatever... selectively test and breed only those dogs that show exceptional intelligence. If we'd been doing that for as long we've been turning wolves into poodles and pugs, we'd have super-intelligent dogs by now.
• Rabbits should be bred for size. Right now, rabbits are cute and make great housepets. But think how much cuter they would be if you bred them bigger! You could have a retriever-sized dutch lop hopping around your house. That would be so adorable and cuddly.
• Bears should also be bred for both size and temperament. In addition to breeding really really big bears for security work and Japanese gameshows, you could breed really little friendly ones. They'd be even better than dogs because their body shape is squatter and more huggable. If they were bred without the claws, then you'd have great pets for young children. Very comforting for kids at night - I know I'd buy one for my children.

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 one

[houghi]

2006 will be the year of the Linux Desktop.

Technologies that WONT make it in 2006

[jonwil]

Here are 4 technologies that are always seen as "just around the corner" but which I predict wont make much progress in 2006.
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

A very singular 2006

[nektra]

1. Steve Ballmer will have his own TV show.
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.