> We have an unusual requirement when it comes to developing the BBC website – it carries advertising internationally but not in the UK, and we have to build and design for both these situations simultaneously. The site carries advertising internationally so that UK licence fee payers don’t cover international costs.
So essentially the reason that we cannot view the page is because we would see adverts when we have already paid for the content. What a Kafkaesque situation.
Given that they can already determine the country of origin by the IP quite effectively, I don't see why they don't just hide the adverts for UK viewers. This is a good example of well-intentioned insanity.
I disagree on "quite effectively"; they don't let me see quite a lot of content from work because they think I'm not in the UK, even though I physically am a licence payer in London.
To add to the insanity though, I can't see this article either.
I'd like to see their budgetary proof that not a penny of license-payer money was used on this. What about overheads (Light, Heat, Power, Rent)? Do they partition those out? I doubt it.
Although the list is nice I thinks it's a pity there isn't much out-of-the-box thinking in there. And maybe that's because it will be totally different from what we ever could imagine.
My grandma is 93 years old. I don't think anyone could ever imagine a wireless-telephone-phonograph-motionpicture-talktoeveryone-device around the time she was born.
Sure they could. What they perhaps missed is that this magic device would be used to look at funny cat pictures and share what you had for breakfast with the world. And that people would tune in to that.
33/1 in the 2060s for "first cloned human" seems conservative, unless it's merely because of current laws. There was a failed attempt in 2004 with a cloned embryo but it doesn't seem as if the process and technology is particularly beyond reach. I'd be more surprised if we don't have Star Trek-style transporters by the 2060s.
Similarly conservative, I think, is that it will be the year 2150 before a human lives to 150. Considering the pace of advancement in the fields of genetics, pharmaceuticals, and organ-replacement, I would expect this much sooner.
Maybe the thinking there is someone who's 150 in 2150 would have been born in 2000 and even with advances in genetics, maybe it's only likely to work if the technology reaches someone currently in the prime of life.
(That is, if we have the means in 2050, it might simply not work on a then 100 year old.)
I agree. It's ethics, not science, that will stop us from cloning people. If society and government actually wanted to clone people there wouldn't be many barriers in the way.
When will I be able to get on a supersonic flight and fly at twice the speed of sound from NYC to Tokyo ? How about a 300mph maglev from SF to LA? I'd like to commute from LA to SF every day.
Moore's law is great but we really seem to have stalled with moving people and goods from point A to point B.
Where is the mention of millions of drones being used to watch the people by every police force around the world?
In the USA this will happen by 2020 guaranteed.
These predictions are way too "everything is going to be great".
They are also missing the listing for "there is now an anniversary of a mass murder by guns for every day of the year in the USA" which is far more likely in about a decade.
Also missing a marker for when 1% of the world population has more wealth than the remaining 99%.
My biggest fear of the future is right after they figure out how to make cheap, unlimited power is going to a massive number of wars. People like to imagine it will bring world peace but that's not human tendency. We seem to always go towards killing people.
Some of these are very reasonable, like the driving car in 2030, but some of them are pretty far fetched and I don't understand the reasoning behind them. Why would we abolish tax in the USA in 2090? How would that even work?
I think the tax idea is interesting. They have it 55 years after the singularity. I've heard (singularity advocates) say that once the singularity occurs our economy will double every few months. That means that after 55 years the average person would earn 9 figure salaries. At that point the government could probably pretty easily run on donations versus taxes. If thats the case I think 55 years after the singularity is a conservative estimate. I'd bet it will happen less than 5 years after the singularity. Assuming the singularity occurs of course.
Diagnosing some diseases , detecting landmines , detecting food safety, detecting tracks(like dogs), analysis of biocompatiblity of couples(through pheromons),improved robotic chefs can all achieved by smelling.
In general , smelling , i.e. analyzing the volatile compounds materials emit can teach us some things about those materials and what processes they are going through.Those seem like usefull capabilities for many industries.
The odds seem to be all over the place. 8:1 for a superintelligence in 2045 but 100:1 for a mere corporation-status AI in 2112? Unless they mean that it's highly unlikely that the concept of a "corporation" has any meaning in a hundred years...
On the contrary, "corporation" in a hundred years will mean exactly what it means today: "person." Ergo, this is how robots will get around the Turing test.
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