15 years ago, I would have thought it completely laughable that I could get a cell phone with a 10Mbps Internet connection (or even a home connection at that speed). Or that my cell phone would have a processor running at 1GHz, and a 800x480 high-color resolution.

I don't remember what I thought about future tech in 1995. I do know that in 1999 other people didn't believe me when I told them that the internet would become the television of the future. The unveiling of Google-TV this week reminded me of that. If you had told me back in 1980 that vinyl records would be obsolete in ten years I would not have believed you. In 1980 if you had told me that in 25 years I would be able to take my entire record collection with me everywhere I went and that the device allowing me to do so would be smaller than a hand held calculator, I would have totally laughed at you and probably ridiculed you as some kind of insane pinko commie.

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Original post by LessBread I don't remember what I thought about future tech in 1995. I do know that in 1999 other people didn't believe me when I told them that the internet would become the television of the future. The unveiling of Google-TV this week reminded me of that. If you had told me back in 1980 that vinyl records would be obsolete in ten years I would not have believed you. In 1980 if you had told me that in 25 years I would be able to take my entire record collection with me everywhere I went and that the device allowing me to do so would be smaller than a hand held calculator, I would have totally laughed at you and probably ridiculed you as some kind of insane pinko commie.

Dude. I'm watching realtime DVD quality movies in Argentina through some shitty web-site. I could have speculated about it 15 years ago, but it really looked unplausible at the time. Many of us still connected to the internet through a 56k telephone-modem. And we used Netscape!

It's odd how everyone seems to be impressed by minimization - how the microchip has shrunk - and the new technology it has enabled. 512GB SSD's are cool enough, but these aren't really a new technology from 15 years ago (flash memory is still a form of EEPROM, dating all the way back to 1978 - it's just become smaller and more efficient).

What I was really looking forward to was the emergence of brand new technologies - you know, sci-fi stuff like invisibility or abovementioned fusion (Oberon - thanks for the cool links - I hadn't heard about those! But the idea of a man-made fusion reaction is obtaining an energy surplus, not self-sustaining the reactor :) ). Zero point energy from the Higgs field would also be nice - something that would put contemporary science in a new breed of ocean.

I wonder if - seeing as we've maxed out the clock speed and increased parallelism isn't really feasible for household solutions - the next step up might be an increase in hardware-specific bit count, eg from binary to some more multi-state architecture. It wouldn't be feasible right now, but it something like that will most certainly be necessary to keep the industry evolving.

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Original post by LessBread I do know that in 1999 other people didn't believe me when I told them that the internet would become the television of the future.

Academia has proven in 2008 that video on demand over internet is not possible (pdf) (section 6).

That was around the time Youtube (and others) started offering HD streaming.

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Original post by Antheus Quote: Original post by LessBread I do know that in 1999 other people didn't believe me when I told them that the internet would become the television of the future. Academia has proven in 2008 that video on demand over internet is not possible (pdf) (section 6). That was around the time Youtube (and others) started offering HD streaming.

If by Section 6 you mean the Conclusion, then that's not what the thesis says. To quote:

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... there is still much work to do in order to provide a VoD service where movies are delivered to distributed users with low delay and free interactivity.

Generally speaking I'd say he's right - it's rare to be able to watch a HD video on Youtube with no hang-ups regardless of your local bandwidth. Doesn't mean it's impossible.

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Original post by ChurchSkiz Yeah you conveniently left out the second half of that sentence "even if they were slim and exercised regularly" They studied 17,000 people: deaths per 10k people for sitting during their workday: almost none of the time, one fourth of the time, half of the time, three fourths of the time, almost all of the time physically inactive:87, 86, 105, 130, 161 physically active :75, 69, 76, 98, 105 Means that a person who is physically active who sits 3/4 of only his workday is more likely to die then a lard-ass who sits at his desk only 1/4 of his workday. This is the first study ever done on something like this. Imagine what they'll find in 10 years. Some medical scientists are already hypothesizing that irregardless of posture, the position of sitting puts a strain on your heart.

I think it was your choice of wording. It made it sound like exercise was harmful. Instead, what the numbers show is that exercise is better than no exercise. However, it also supports the common suggestion that continuous, moderate activity is better than exercise. (Also, maybe the study covered it, but these numbers, as presented, are more like "not accounting for whether or not they were overweight" than "even if they were slim")

Maybe the most intriguing feature is the dip at sitting for 1/4 of the workday. If this is statistically significant, then it suggests that some amount of just sitting around is actually beneficial. If not, then there's apparently a plateau for sitting around for less than 1/2 of the workday for physically inactive individuals and for less than 3/4 of the workday for otherwise physically active individuals.

There may be a comfort aspect, too. I saw a statue in China that had the English title "Squatting Considered Preferable to Sitting". Granted, it was part of a somewhat humorous series, but it did say in the explanation how, for example, it doesn't put pressure on the base of the spine. I can't manage it with my feet flat, though.

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Original post by irreversible Generally speaking I'd say he's right - it's rare to be able to watch a HD video on Youtube with no hang-ups regardless of your local bandwidth. Doesn't mean it's impossible.

Maybe we're using different YT. Or have different bandwidth. I've been watching nothing but 720p for a year now, obviously, if available.

Also, try changing DNS server, perhaps to one of Google's. Rate at which their servers stream depend on which server the DNS resolves.

The past 15 years have brought us computers and the internet, and for the rest nothing ever resembling revolutionary; seeing as how I grew up right in the middle of these, it never really awed me that much. Ever since I first played doom over a modem, I assumed I would be streaming movies in a few years. Ever since I have seen storage media, I have assumed they would become more dense. All that I expect that would happen pretty much did, and all of the stuff I knew wouldnt, didnt (robots, AI or biotech of any real world significance, or an energy revolution).

Fear my prophetic powers!

To prove my godlike powers, here are some more predictions for you: computers are not going to follow moores law; discounting parralelism, they have stopped doing so long ago, and parralelism has limited applications.

Communication will continue to get more tightly integrated with our lives. Carrying a bluetooth earpiece or equivalent will become the norm.

Twenty or even fifty years from now, you will still not have fusion power, or disruptive biotech or AI. While the theoretical possibilities are endless, if you know any people working in these fields, you might have a clue as to how slow these things move. To say they move at all is generous for fusion and AI. Out of these things, the first that will materialize are designer-single-cell organisms, which are going to be pretty cool for the processing industry, but not much else, unless its going to help us make biofuel algea work (the notion that we are going to figure out something that billions of flue virus mutations per second havnt been able to is ridiculous, for instance).

String theory will still be a mathematicians toy, and the higgs boson will not have been found. Another slew of predictions as to at which energy at might be found will have been proven wrong, and that will not stop anyone from conjecturing higher numbers with a straight face.

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Original post by Antheus Quote: Original post by LessBread I do know that in 1999 other people didn't believe me when I told them that the internet would become the television of the future. Academia has proven in 2008 that video on demand over internet is not possible (pdf) (section 6). That was around the time Youtube (and others) started offering HD streaming.

haha amazing. they even talk about youtube serving 100ts of millions of videos each day and such. which IS Video on Demand.

could be a fun read on a boring evening :)