Actually, in one of the other SOPA items on here, someone already flagged the 2011 pedophile bill that's currently under edit where it would fit quite nicely....
The problem I have with SOPA and PIPA is that the core of the law is flawed... the laws are put in place to create a workable mechanism for established US corporations to block global access to foreign internet sites with minimal overhead for the corporations (including judiciary overhead).
The current legislation is so flawed that it doesn't even succeed in doing this, while at the same opening up all sorts of unintended consequences. But I find the intent of the bills just as bad as the current state of the bills.
A better bill would be one that follows the money and ignores the medium of transport altogether. Such a bill would NOT be SOPA/PIPA.
This is actually quite interesting... if you have a piece of legislation you want to pass, and a large group decides to create a day of protest against it... just postpone any work on the legislation a few weeks. By that time the furor will have died down, and likely nobody will care. If they do care, and a second uprising happens, just delay a few more weeks. Rinse and repeat. Eventually, two things will happen: 1) people will start getting annoyed at having this in their face all the time when there's actually nothing happening, and 2) people will start to feel like they're powerless to do anything about the legislation.
End result? when the time is right, finish the markup and vote it in. Time it so that some other political event is going on at the same time to divert attention.
The legislators can then offer up the excuse that they modified the parts that people were complaining about, and everyone will forget about it until after it has become law and there's not much people CAN do about it.
It's done via a JavaScript. If you have scripting disabled, you won't see the blackout. You also won't see it anywhere but en.wikipedia, including the mobilie site.
But in answer to your other part... don't worry. We'll be seeing dupes of the SOPA blackout every day on here for the next week at least....
There's also the point that/. doing a SOPA blackout would serve no purpose, as it's already been thoroughly covered on here, and most who frequent this site already have a stance on it. Maybe requiring a certain number of pledges before showing the main page might have been a good idea, but this is slashdot... people will say anything.
Setting up the links is a case of selecting the text in one pane, selecting link... and selecting it in the other, and linking them. The panes are visible together, and can be resized at-will, including sliding one quickly to full view and then to half-screen view. There are bookmarks and "earmarks" -- the second, you just need to touch the corner of the screen and the page is marked. The mark is referenced by page number and first line of text. Unmarking involves re-touching it. Faster than bending a real page or inserting a sticky note.
Ever used a digital bible reader? They're used for more than just the Christian bible -- they allow multiple "panes" open at the same time, and you can even mark anchor points between texts so that navigating one will automatically move the other one to the same chapter marker, etc. You can even hyperlink between different texts.
eReaders designed for skimming works of fiction shouldn't be used for studying texts. There are already better solutions out there.
As a counterpoint... name the professor who will choose the university press over self-publishing. With this method, a handful of professors and their grad students can cheaply and quickly put out a text that more than rivals anything they could push through the politics of UP for three times the price.
Many real textbooks have information cross linking across the text, with appendices, bibliographies, footnotes, endnotes, sidebars, etc. We may have learned how to navigate them, but they're really very clunky, with much unneeded repetition and referencing.
A properly written e-text would be much nicer, as you could quickly drill down to the information you need, and have a record of what you have and haven't read. You can also set reading plans, check your progress by theme, keyword, chapter, or anything else you want. You can toss notes inline, or just link them to MULTIPLE bits of highlighted text. You can quickly make connections between bits of information provided that the original authors missed or weren't interested in.
You can do all of this with a hard copy too, but you'd need to make extensive use of a photocopier, and would have a mess to manage the next time you went to review the text.
PDF is a display format. Since eReaders tend to mess with all the display parameters, PDF doesn't work all that well.
However, having said that, if you take an ePub file and convert it to PDF, THAT PDF will work just fine in an eBook reader. Reflow works just the same, you can tap to zoom on/read a column of text or to make an image object fit the screen. The PDFs that are a pain are the ones that are basically pages and pages of PNG or JPEG images with OCR'd text hidden behind them. These suck in eBook readers, and never convert to any other format in any meaningful way. This isn't a limitation of PDF, but of the source material.
I stand corrected. I can't imagine why someone would ever want to infect themselves with such a thing, except as a last resort.
You are completely wrong here. Vaccines stopping people from being infected therefore when people move around they are not infected and therefore can not spread the infection. How do you think a vaccine that does not stop infection stops movement?
I wasn't talking about the effect, but the purpose. Of course a vaccine has to stop infection... but vaccines are not guaranteed to stop infection in an individual, as the vaccine may not "take," or the virus may mutate prior to exposure to the point where the immunity is worthless. It's about statistical probability, and decreasing the pandemic spread of the virus. I admit that I was extremely vague about this on re-reading what I wrote.
What is your idea on what "correctly" is? Vaccinate everyone in an outbreak area? What about people who travel with the virus before the outbreak is recognized? Vaccinate everyone in the world? Not going to happen unless legislated and then money and vaccine supply is an issue. Trace everyone who left an outbreak area and vaccinate everyone they came into contact with? Given air travel this scenario rapidly becomes "vaccinate the world".
"correctly" is based on the projected spreads as analysis by trained virologists indicates. People who are high risk should be vaccinated (children, parents of young children, people working in jobs that have high exposure to changing groups), and move out from there down the risk tail as supply and time allows. Incidentally, live strains should never be given to people in those categories IMO, even if the alternative is no vaccine. Better that people stay home for a day or so if the need arises.
Interestingly, the media start reporting when they see "epidemic" and start handwaving doom and gloom when they see "pandemic" -- but they ignore the issue when they see "endemic".
1. Get the flu from the vaccine even though the virus never reached your area. 2. Force Governments to spend billions of dollars on vaccines that are never used. 3. Avoid people, cancel vacations, etc in hopes of not getting disease even though disease is not present.
My issue with the use of pandemic is that the threshold is so low for it's use but people equating it to to events like the Black Death. Fewer people died from the "Bird Flu Pandemic" a few years ago than normally die each flu season. Most people equate pandemic with mass death and that is just not always the case. Pandemic is mainly defined by mutation and spread and not virilance and mortality.
um... item 1 is pretty much impossible. Flu vaccines don't contain influenza... they only contain inactive culture (it would be like saying that this rabbit skin in my hand is suddenly going to cause the area to be overrun with rabbits). Furthermore, vaccines aren't used to stop people from getting infected; they're used to stop the movement of a virus from one location to another. The entire idea is that if the vaccine is used correctly, THE VIRUS WILL NEVER REACH YOUR AREA. If it does, the vaccine failed to do its job.
I find no problem with 3.... as long as 1 and 2 are also being done and 3 is not legislated. People tend to be too incautious with sanitary procedures at the best of times.
I just wonder why someone would be willing to live in a place that is by all measures a risky place to establish a life. Why? When I think of the polar bear, the weather, the isolation and so on, I fail to see the reason why I would want to live there. Man is surely intriguing.
Indeed... we all still live here on this planet, while the risk to establish a life increases.
I'm sure that compared to the streets of Mumbai or Detroit, Nome is paradise.
Which is to say both "completely implausible and illogical" and "we wouldn't want to meet them anyway."
I agree 100%.
Regular ol' biochemical life like what we have most likely has a much higher chance of forming than anything not like us. There are a lot of cards stacked in our favour!
Considering we have a sample size of 1 (planet/solar system), I think that's a lot of assuming. Our solar system could be part of some lifeform, and we'd never know, not having the right perspective. Hydrocarbon-based biochemical life has been proven to exist, and to contain lifeforms some of whom consider themselves the pinnacle of existence and intelligence. Beyond that, we have certain theorems and hypotheses that appear to hold together based on our observations.
If the observation that we are only able to observe roughly 20% of all matter in our universe holds true, who knows what's happening in the other 80%?
Think of it this way. Assume, billions and billions of years ago, there was a sea sponge on some planet that wanted to better itself. Eventually, the planet evolved hydrocarbon-based humanoid beings very similar to us. Surprisingly, these beings did not destroy their environment.
Then what?
Do you expect them to stay like us forever, for billions of years? They could discover all sorts of things about our universe that would aid them in becoming "better" or at least "different".
Just think of how much language has changed in the last 4,000 years for human beings. We have ways of expressing things that didn't exist, and a person's world-view and outlook is significantly different now than it would have been then -- this despite the fact that we're a single species existing in a 4,000 year period.
Now fast forward several magnitudes of order into the future. Past the point where we've shed our mortal coils as a species. Past the point at which we depend upon energy from a single galactic object to survive.
If the cards are stacked so well in our favour, you'd expect this to happen at least once; those cards wouldn't be stacked to doom us all to destruction and waves of repetition, would they?
Are you really saying that there is just one means for life to generate in the universe, that that is doomed to a predefined cycle, there's no way to break it, and that it ends with Homo Sapiens Sapiens? In that case, we're due for destruction or a cycle repeat (back to single celled biology) any day now.
This way other medical providers, not just patients, could have access to ANY patients' chart without having to get a signed release from the patient
Um, this is what HIPAA, among other bits of legislation, is designed to prevent.
How would you like it if your insurer's doctor in residence was able to access your chart without having to get a signed release? How about your employer's doctor? How about some guy in Brazil, who sells this data to the highest bidder by the MB?
Since medical providers only hold your data for a limited amount of time, I'd LOVE to be able to have an easily readable backup of everything a MP has ever written/logged/recorded about me, in one place, where I could create my own profile. But I would NEVER want this data to be able to go to anyone else without first going through me or with the express release of either me or my executor. And I don't even have any medical issues worth noting.
Indeed... I'm sure that both my online persona and my real persona are on Facebook, based on the way it works. I've never created a FB account, but I can't guarantee that nobody else has, and I'm sure that the people I know have mentioned me time and time again. I'm also sure there are pictures of me on Facebook. I'm sure the company could autogenerate an account for me just based on the information happily provided by others.
As an added benefit, this service could also track what was done with the information you provided and what you did with the information you received, and flag any potential infringements. Just to keep everyone honest.
Wouldn't it be great if people actually read EULAs?
I did, and vowed I'd never touch Facebook.
If everyone actually read EULAs and only signed up for things they actually agreed to, we'd end up with EULAs and privacy policies we COULD actually agree to... because any company that didn't have policies in line with what people actually agreed with would get no business. This doesn't just go for social media sites; it goes for software, movies, music, and anything else that can be digitized.
Personally, I'd love it if I could create an "avatar" for myself that had a defined EULA "whitelist" and a defined EULA "blacklist" and flagged up anything that didn't fit one of these categories. Then, whenever I went to sign up for something or buy a product or service, only those that fit my list would show up at the top of the list. I'd get a secondary section with "questionable" flagged items, and a third section with "almost matches" where I could decide to change my UNIVERSAL white/blacklist.
Still not perfect, but if such a thing existed and everyone used it, we'd likely have slightly more expensive goods and services that actually delivered what we expected. And anyone who abused the system would be in serious trouble.
Retrospectively, - in the eighties AIDS was said to be cured by 2000
Is that all so far from the truth? The outlook at that time was a global pandemic across all people, spread thru hospital blood transfusions, medical and dental treatments, maybe swimming pool water... Looking at the stats, now its sort of a chronic lifestyle disease of certain subcultures, like smoking, sorta.
From my personal perspective, in my social subculture, its basically cured by lack of transmission, and is not relevant for fearmongering or FUD.
Its probably going to end up "controlled" like malaria or TB rather than apparent utter eradication like smallpox, but for all practical purposes, its no longer a threat.
I take it you live in the USA?
In Africa, HIV is a part of life -- everyone knows people who have it, and everyone knows people who've died from it. While HIV/AIDS hasn't become a global pandemic, it has definitely destroyed large parts of Africa.
However, I do agree with the "controlled" like malaria or TB comment. Antibiotic-resistant TB strains are increasing throughout the world, and TB is slowly becoming less controlled. Similarly, malaria is keeping pace with global warming; each year, the affected mosquitoes are moving further towards the poles. I expect something like this will happen with AIDS as well.
However, unlike Malaria and TB, I expect us to find a solution that keeps HIV in remission sometime in the next 100 years.
I also expect that the malnutrition in the North American diet will run its course by then, and that desalination technology will be extremely advanced, since the great US aquifers will be almost totally drained.
The problem with predictions is that most long-range advances are due to people by necessity attacking problems that haven't surfaced yet, and finding novel solutions. Who knows? Maybe will find the cure to lawyers and investment brokers by then too....
I actually did mean like observing it... there may be beings out there that depend on being able to be in multiple states... and by observing them we limit them to a single state.
Of course, it's more likely they're like the Dr. Who Angels:D
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, in one of the other SOPA items on here, someone already flagged the 2011 pedophile bill that's currently under edit where it would fit quite nicely....
The problem I have with SOPA and PIPA is that the core of the law is flawed... the laws are put in place to create a workable mechanism for established US corporations to block global access to foreign internet sites with minimal overhead for the corporations (including judiciary overhead).
The current legislation is so flawed that it doesn't even succeed in doing this, while at the same opening up all sorts of unintended consequences. But I find the intent of the bills just as bad as the current state of the bills.
A better bill would be one that follows the money and ignores the medium of transport altogether. Such a bill would NOT be SOPA/PIPA.
This is actually quite interesting... if you have a piece of legislation you want to pass, and a large group decides to create a day of protest against it... just postpone any work on the legislation a few weeks. By that time the furor will have died down, and likely nobody will care. If they do care, and a second uprising happens, just delay a few more weeks. Rinse and repeat. Eventually, two things will happen: 1) people will start getting annoyed at having this in their face all the time when there's actually nothing happening, and 2) people will start to feel like they're powerless to do anything about the legislation.
End result? when the time is right, finish the markup and vote it in. Time it so that some other political event is going on at the same time to divert attention.
The legislators can then offer up the excuse that they modified the parts that people were complaining about, and everyone will forget about it until after it has become law and there's not much people CAN do about it.
It's done via a JavaScript. If you have scripting disabled, you won't see the blackout. You also won't see it anywhere but en.wikipedia, including the mobilie site.
Slashdot's logo has a line through it today.
But in answer to your other part... don't worry. We'll be seeing dupes of the SOPA blackout every day on here for the next week at least....
There's also the point that /. doing a SOPA blackout would serve no purpose, as it's already been thoroughly covered on here, and most who frequent this site already have a stance on it. Maybe requiring a certain number of pledges before showing the main page might have been a good idea, but this is slashdot... people will say anything.
Setting up the links is a case of selecting the text in one pane, selecting link... and selecting it in the other, and linking them. The panes are visible together, and can be resized at-will, including sliding one quickly to full view and then to half-screen view. There are bookmarks and "earmarks" -- the second, you just need to touch the corner of the screen and the page is marked. The mark is referenced by page number and first line of text. Unmarking involves re-touching it. Faster than bending a real page or inserting a sticky note.
Ever used a digital bible reader? They're used for more than just the Christian bible -- they allow multiple "panes" open at the same time, and you can even mark anchor points between texts so that navigating one will automatically move the other one to the same chapter marker, etc. You can even hyperlink between different texts.
eReaders designed for skimming works of fiction shouldn't be used for studying texts. There are already better solutions out there.
As a counterpoint... name the professor who will choose the university press over self-publishing. With this method, a handful of professors and their grad students can cheaply and quickly put out a text that more than rivals anything they could push through the politics of UP for three times the price.
Many real textbooks have information cross linking across the text, with appendices, bibliographies, footnotes, endnotes, sidebars, etc. We may have learned how to navigate them, but they're really very clunky, with much unneeded repetition and referencing.
A properly written e-text would be much nicer, as you could quickly drill down to the information you need, and have a record of what you have and haven't read. You can also set reading plans, check your progress by theme, keyword, chapter, or anything else you want. You can toss notes inline, or just link them to MULTIPLE bits of highlighted text. You can quickly make connections between bits of information provided that the original authors missed or weren't interested in.
You can do all of this with a hard copy too, but you'd need to make extensive use of a photocopier, and would have a mess to manage the next time you went to review the text.
PDF is a display format. Since eReaders tend to mess with all the display parameters, PDF doesn't work all that well.
However, having said that, if you take an ePub file and convert it to PDF, THAT PDF will work just fine in an eBook reader. Reflow works just the same, you can tap to zoom on/read a column of text or to make an image object fit the screen. The PDFs that are a pain are the ones that are basically pages and pages of PNG or JPEG images with OCR'd text hidden behind them. These suck in eBook readers, and never convert to any other format in any meaningful way. This isn't a limitation of PDF, but of the source material.
You make a good point... someone needs to make an eBook reader that can read TeX files. This would solve the reflow AND the markup issues.
There are live flu vaccines.
I stand corrected. I can't imagine why someone would ever want to infect themselves with such a thing, except as a last resort.
You are completely wrong here. Vaccines stopping people from being infected therefore when people move around they are not infected and therefore can not spread the infection. How do you think a vaccine that does not stop infection stops movement?
I wasn't talking about the effect, but the purpose. Of course a vaccine has to stop infection... but vaccines are not guaranteed to stop infection in an individual, as the vaccine may not "take," or the virus may mutate prior to exposure to the point where the immunity is worthless. It's about statistical probability, and decreasing the pandemic spread of the virus. I admit that I was extremely vague about this on re-reading what I wrote.
What is your idea on what "correctly" is? Vaccinate everyone in an outbreak area? What about people who travel with the virus before the outbreak is recognized? Vaccinate everyone in the world? Not going to happen unless legislated and then money and vaccine supply is an issue. Trace everyone who left an outbreak area and vaccinate everyone they came into contact with? Given air travel this scenario rapidly becomes "vaccinate the world".
"correctly" is based on the projected spreads as analysis by trained virologists indicates. People who are high risk should be vaccinated (children, parents of young children, people working in jobs that have high exposure to changing groups), and move out from there down the risk tail as supply and time allows. Incidentally, live strains should never be given to people in those categories IMO, even if the alternative is no vaccine. Better that people stay home for a day or so if the need arises.
Interestingly, the media start reporting when they see "epidemic" and start handwaving doom and gloom when they see "pandemic" -- but they ignore the issue when they see "endemic".
There is a few "risk factors" that are missed.
1. Get the flu from the vaccine even though the virus never reached your area.
2. Force Governments to spend billions of dollars on vaccines that are never used.
3. Avoid people, cancel vacations, etc in hopes of not getting disease even though disease is not present.
My issue with the use of pandemic is that the threshold is so low for it's use but people equating it to to events like the Black Death. Fewer people died from the "Bird Flu Pandemic" a few years ago than normally die each flu season. Most people equate pandemic with mass death and that is just not always the case. Pandemic is mainly defined by mutation and spread and not virilance and mortality.
um... item 1 is pretty much impossible. Flu vaccines don't contain influenza... they only contain inactive culture (it would be like saying that this rabbit skin in my hand is suddenly going to cause the area to be overrun with rabbits). Furthermore, vaccines aren't used to stop people from getting infected; they're used to stop the movement of a virus from one location to another. The entire idea is that if the vaccine is used correctly, THE VIRUS WILL NEVER REACH YOUR AREA. If it does, the vaccine failed to do its job.
I find no problem with 3.... as long as 1 and 2 are also being done and 3 is not legislated. People tend to be too incautious with sanitary procedures at the best of times.
Google partnerka :) The answer is "all of the above" -- sometimes even among the same gangs at the same time.
I just wonder why someone would be willing to live in a place that is by all measures a risky place to establish a life. Why? When I think of the polar bear, the weather, the isolation and so on, I fail to see the reason why I would want to live there. Man is surely intriguing.
Indeed... we all still live here on this planet, while the risk to establish a life increases.
I'm sure that compared to the streets of Mumbai or Detroit, Nome is paradise.
-noun- don't -verb- people. People -verb- people.
some people -adverb-ly -verb- people with -noun-s, even. Especially -adjective- -noun-s.
Which is to say both "completely implausible and illogical" and "we wouldn't want to meet them anyway."
I agree 100%.
Regular ol' biochemical life like what we have most likely has a much higher chance of forming than anything not like us. There are a lot of cards stacked in our favour!
Considering we have a sample size of 1 (planet/solar system), I think that's a lot of assuming. Our solar system could be part of some lifeform, and we'd never know, not having the right perspective. Hydrocarbon-based biochemical life has been proven to exist, and to contain lifeforms some of whom consider themselves the pinnacle of existence and intelligence. Beyond that, we have certain theorems and hypotheses that appear to hold together based on our observations.
If the observation that we are only able to observe roughly 20% of all matter in our universe holds true, who knows what's happening in the other 80%?
Think of it this way. Assume, billions and billions of years ago, there was a sea sponge on some planet that wanted to better itself. Eventually, the planet evolved hydrocarbon-based humanoid beings very similar to us. Surprisingly, these beings did not destroy their environment.
Then what?
Do you expect them to stay like us forever, for billions of years? They could discover all sorts of things about our universe that would aid them in becoming "better" or at least "different".
Just think of how much language has changed in the last 4,000 years for human beings. We have ways of expressing things that didn't exist, and a person's world-view and outlook is significantly different now than it would have been then -- this despite the fact that we're a single species existing in a 4,000 year period.
Now fast forward several magnitudes of order into the future. Past the point where we've shed our mortal coils as a species. Past the point at which we depend upon energy from a single galactic object to survive.
If the cards are stacked so well in our favour, you'd expect this to happen at least once; those cards wouldn't be stacked to doom us all to destruction and waves of repetition, would they?
Are you really saying that there is just one means for life to generate in the universe, that that is doomed to a predefined cycle, there's no way to break it, and that it ends with Homo Sapiens Sapiens? In that case, we're due for destruction or a cycle repeat (back to single celled biology) any day now.
This way other medical providers, not just patients, could have access to ANY patients' chart without having to get a signed release from the patient
Um, this is what HIPAA, among other bits of legislation, is designed to prevent.
How would you like it if your insurer's doctor in residence was able to access your chart without having to get a signed release? How about your employer's doctor? How about some guy in Brazil, who sells this data to the highest bidder by the MB?
Since medical providers only hold your data for a limited amount of time, I'd LOVE to be able to have an easily readable backup of everything a MP has ever written/logged/recorded about me, in one place, where I could create my own profile. But I would NEVER want this data to be able to go to anyone else without first going through me or with the express release of either me or my executor. And I don't even have any medical issues worth noting.
Indeed... I'm sure that both my online persona and my real persona are on Facebook, based on the way it works. I've never created a FB account, but I can't guarantee that nobody else has, and I'm sure that the people I know have mentioned me time and time again. I'm also sure there are pictures of me on Facebook. I'm sure the company could autogenerate an account for me just based on the information happily provided by others.
As an added benefit, this service could also track what was done with the information you provided and what you did with the information you received, and flag any potential infringements. Just to keep everyone honest.
Wouldn't it be great if people actually read EULAs?
I did, and vowed I'd never touch Facebook.
If everyone actually read EULAs and only signed up for things they actually agreed to, we'd end up with EULAs and privacy policies we COULD actually agree to... because any company that didn't have policies in line with what people actually agreed with would get no business. This doesn't just go for social media sites; it goes for software, movies, music, and anything else that can be digitized.
Personally, I'd love it if I could create an "avatar" for myself that had a defined EULA "whitelist" and a defined EULA "blacklist" and flagged up anything that didn't fit one of these categories. Then, whenever I went to sign up for something or buy a product or service, only those that fit my list would show up at the top of the list. I'd get a secondary section with "questionable" flagged items, and a third section with "almost matches" where I could decide to change my UNIVERSAL white/blacklist.
Still not perfect, but if such a thing existed and everyone used it, we'd likely have slightly more expensive goods and services that actually delivered what we expected. And anyone who abused the system would be in serious trouble.
Are you assuming that most slashdotters are human and have valid reasoning ablities? Or are you just stating that the slashbots have no imagination?
Retrospectively,
- in the eighties AIDS was said to be cured by 2000
Is that all so far from the truth? The outlook at that time was a global pandemic across all people, spread thru hospital blood transfusions, medical and dental treatments, maybe swimming pool water... Looking at the stats, now its sort of a chronic lifestyle disease of certain subcultures, like smoking, sorta.
From my personal perspective, in my social subculture, its basically cured by lack of transmission, and is not relevant for fearmongering or FUD.
Its probably going to end up "controlled" like malaria or TB rather than apparent utter eradication like smallpox, but for all practical purposes, its no longer a threat.
I take it you live in the USA?
In Africa, HIV is a part of life -- everyone knows people who have it, and everyone knows people who've died from it. While HIV/AIDS hasn't become a global pandemic, it has definitely destroyed large parts of Africa.
However, I do agree with the "controlled" like malaria or TB comment. Antibiotic-resistant TB strains are increasing throughout the world, and TB is slowly becoming less controlled. Similarly, malaria is keeping pace with global warming; each year, the affected mosquitoes are moving further towards the poles. I expect something like this will happen with AIDS as well.
However, unlike Malaria and TB, I expect us to find a solution that keeps HIV in remission sometime in the next 100 years.
I also expect that the malnutrition in the North American diet will run its course by then, and that desalination technology will be extremely advanced, since the great US aquifers will be almost totally drained.
The problem with predictions is that most long-range advances are due to people by necessity attacking problems that haven't surfaced yet, and finding novel solutions. Who knows? Maybe will find the cure to lawyers and investment brokers by then too....
I actually did mean like observing it... there may be beings out there that depend on being able to be in multiple states... and by observing them we limit them to a single state.
Of course, it's more likely they're like the Dr. Who Angels :D