
Netflix wins a longbet from 8 years ago. - JustinSeriously
http://www.longbets.org/3
======
drats
Esther Dyson's bet "By 2012, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times
will have referred to Russia as "the world leader in software development" or
words to that effect."

<http://www.longbets.org/5>

The Computer History Museum gets $10,000 if she loses, I guess they should
start planning an exhibit on old Russian computer technology.

But to be less smug for a moment why anyone would think this is beyond me.
While the Russians did achieve significant technological advances in the 20th
century, and implemented an impressive education system with regard to
mathematics and computer science there are so many other factors which play
into this. Namely Russia obtaining a score of 2.7/10 for corruption in 2002
from the Corruption Perceptions Index and sliding down to 2.1/10 in the most
recent ranking putting them in 158th place. Further they are ranked 143rd on
the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom. India with 87th on corruption and 124th on
economic freedom, not great, has plenty of English speakers and a more
impressive computer science educational infrastructure, as well as being
cheaper. The stories of people dying in Russian prisons after resisting
corrupt government shakedowns are just horrific and I am not aware of any
Indian equivalent. But I suppose if you invest there as she does, you need to
talk it up.

~~~
lmkg
It's a stronger bet than it first sounds, although probably not in the way the
author intended. Russia doesn't actually have to be the world leader in
software development, they just have to be referred to as such by a news
organization. Considering the linkbait trends in modern journalism, the
following headline wouldn't surprise me, regardless of what the ground truth
is: "Russia: The World's New Leader in Software Development?"

~~~
jerf
These bets are adjudicated by humans, not computers doing a string matching
algorithm. If that article's headline was just a lead up to an answer of "No,
not even close" or was even a reference to the bet itself followed by "no, not
even close", I don't think anyone is going to argue that as a win. It has to
be serious, and barring catastrophe at this point, that's not going to happen.
"World leaders in botnet development" won't cut it, either.

------
cobralibre
Maciej Ceglowski had a similar, if less grandiose, site called Wrong Tomorrow,
but it looks like it's down:

<http://wrongtomorrow.com/>

I don't know if the site is only temporarily down, or if it's been abandoned,
but it's a shame if the latter. The idea behind Wrong Tomorrow was chiefly to
hold pundits accountable for their frequently bad predictions. You can read
his site announcement, where he explicitly mentions sites like Long Bets and
how Wrong Tomorrow differs from them:

<http://idlewords.com/2009/04/wrong_tomorrow.htm>

~~~
gwern
I believe the right URL had a prefixed www. (During some downtime, but not
this one apparently, <http://wrongtomorrow.com> didn't work but
<http://www.wrongtomorrow.com> did.)

Back in July, Maciej told me

> It's not abandoned, but I had to take it down since a sister site on that
> server was getting high traffic, and needed the resources.

I began copying over predictions from Wrong Tomorrow and Long Bets to
<http://predictionbook.com/> and I found that a bunch of Wrong Tomorrow
predictions were corrupted/unavailable, and told Maciej about them; no reply.
So I think it's safe to say that Wrong Tomorrow has been pretty much
abandoned.

------
klochner
David Peterson nailed it in the comments in 2003:

    
    
      NetFlix claims to have more than 13,500 titles and more   
      than one million members. You order the movie on the 
      Internet, you just can't watch it until all of the bits 
      of the movie arrive. They just happen to be delivered 
      to your mailbox and you have to put the bits into your 
      computer or dvd player.
     
      -- Posted by David B. Peterson on May 16, 02003 at 12:32AM PDT

------
chrisaycock
"By 2010, more than 50 percent of books sold worldwide will be printed on
demand at the point of sale in the form of library-quality paperbacks."

Vint Cerf challenges with, "At some point, laptop or smaller devices with high
quality displays and suitable access controls for intellectual property will
make the sale and consumption of books, sound and movies through these devices
practical." He goes on to cite the "iPOD" as an example.

<http://www.longbets.org/6>

------
blaines
Wow good find. I especially like this bet, Warren Buffett v. Protege Partners,
LLC.

    
    
      “Over a ten-year period commencing on January 1, 2008, and ending on
      December 31, 2017, the S & P 500 will outperform a portfolio of funds
      of hedge funds, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees,
      costs and expenses.”
    

<http://www.longbets.org/362>

------
icegreentea
Reading the comments (I love that the years are written as 02002) this one
particularly strikes me..

"...The net works differently than that... and Content owners have missed (and
will continue to miss) it for 3 reasons: 1) Technophobia coupled with
crippling ego (too cool to look dumb they fear the pipe) 2) Misguided content
protectionism (go back and watch 'The Power of Myth'... again! It's the
'story' damnit!) ..."

This is 8 years old (and proven somewhat wrong), and we're still saying it, in
some form today.

~~~
steveklabnik
Check out the comments on bet 2:

    
    
        Will Google be around?
        POSTED BY [redacted] ON AUG 28, 02002 AT 07:03PM PDT
        I think it will be more interesting to see if Google 
        will be around in five years? Or better yet will we 
        still be searching for information using search engines 
        and keywords?
    

Very interesting.

~~~
random42
Well, they are still here and thriving, and we still search for information,
Mainly on search engines (Wikipedia is one, right?) and keywords.

------
antidaily
_Service Temporarily Unavailable_

Cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cyGf1Tn...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cyGf1TnWdtEJ:www.longbets.org/3+http://www.longbets.org/3&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
blntechie
I would love to see (or not see) how the predictor wins this bet,long bet
making a decision and awards the stake.

“Large Hadron Collider will destroy Earth.”

<http://www.longbets.org/382>

~~~
eru
I guess it's just an interesting way to give to "Save the Children".

~~~
eru
And a way to say "I'll give to the NRA only after the world's destroyed."

------
steveklabnik
I like the RESTful urls, check out bet #1: <http://www.longbets.org/1>

We've got a while, but it feels like an appropriate bet.

~~~
wvl
Those urls have nothing whatsoever to do with REST.

~~~
steveklabnik
Yes, I'm aware, but the feature is often called "RESTful" urls in frameworks.
I actually thought the url was '/bets/1' until I went back and re-read it...
my brain inserted it in there, since it's so common.

Like 'HTML5' or 'hacker,' 'REST' is a totally destroyed, meaningless term. I'm
attempting to be pragmatic about it. Better to effectively communicate than
hold onto intellectual purity.

~~~
seabee
If the term is totally destroyed and meaningless, with different people having
different ideas, you'd be better off avoiding it altogether. Don't beat a dead
buzzword!

~~~
steveklabnik
In the general case, I agree with you. However, everyone knows what 'RESTful
urls' and 'RESTful apis' mean, it's just that it's not the original recipe
REST. For better or worse, the definition has changed.

It's still effective communication, because you know I'm contrasting '/bets/1'
with 'index.aspx?action=displayBet&bet_id=1&' (which still could be quite
RESTful, actually...), and a form that POSTs to '/bets' vs. a form with
method=GET request to
'index.aspx?action=addAnotherBet&=SomeValue=1&something_else=2'. And yes,
there's more to it than that, but you get the idea.

Just because it makes puritains die inside doesn't make it wrong.

~~~
rlivsey
In this case I'd opt for "clean" as a better word for what you're trying to
describe.

I'd have thought everyone understands what a clean URL is without bringing
across all the extra baggage/meaning of calling it RESTful.

~~~
steveklabnik
In this case, you're probably right.

I'm usually discussing this more fully, as in "RESTful API vs. SOAP" or the
actual nitty-gritty of POST vs PUT requests and such. "clean" works much
better in this context, though, thanks. I'll file that one away...

I'm one of those puritans who cries a bit inside myself.

------
stellar678
Is it just me or did this seem completely inevitable and kind of on the cusp
by 2002? We were building fileserver-based VOD services just to save our
Internet connection from the torrenting masses in shared housing situations
around this time.

This seems like a risky one to bet against, at least from a technical
perspective.

I suppose it is true that it was still a pretty open question whether anyone
would manage to negotiate licenses with the media producers to do VOD, but
Bell doesn't even touch on that issue.

~~~
iuyhgttg
Technically do-able, but:

It could have easily been derailed the studios wanting to try and run the
business themselves, ISPs who are also cable companies throttling it, national
broadcasters lobbying to block it legally.

It also said profitable - I thought even Amazon wasn't profitable yet?

~~~
leftnode
Amazon has been profitable since 2001.

------
alextgordon
It's amusing that Eric Schmidt is the challenger on
<http://www.longbets.org/4> in light of Google's autonomous cars.

~~~
stuartloxton
Amusing - but a car with 2 passengers going at a conservative 30MPH is very
different to a plane flying 9KM over the ground at 567MPH.

I'm just hoping that in 80 years I won't be alive to see my comment becoming
horribly wrong, with people laughing at it while a processor flies them across
the world.

~~~
apl
_Amusing - but a car with 2 passengers going at a conservative 30MPH is very
different to a plane flying 9KM over the ground at 567MPH._

You're right: building an automatic car is much harder. It's counterintuitive,
but speed or altitude are irrelevant if the problem space is sufficiently
simple. Additionally, risk doesn't scale linearly. If a plane crashes at
800km/h, all people on board will die; if a car crashes at 130km/h, you'll see
a very similar result.

~~~
stuartloxton
That's true for the occupants of the vehicle but the dangers of those outside
are greatly different. I'm not saying that planes will never be flown
autonomously however there are a lot of hurdles including convincing the
public.

If a car when parking is out by 1% it's maybe sticking out of the space and
causes other people to have to park badly too, if a plane rounds incorrectly
or a sensor plays up and is 1degree out (so even less than 1%) it lands onto
of a terminal filled with tourists.

Even as a professional programmer I tend to trust unknown programmers less and
less, bugs get uncovered too late, shortcuts taken... online e-commerce fine,
cars and busses - maybe but scaling up the trust and risk involved is
difficult.

~~~
Figs
Planes were capable of being flown autonomously in the 1980s. In particular,
the Soviet's space shuttle, Buran, performed unmanned orbital maneuvers and
landing during its 1988 test flight.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_%28spacecraft%29>

So, the technology to do these kinds of things has already been done before
(though unfortunately neglected!). I think the main challenge is just
convincing people that it's safe enough that they will be willing to buy
tickets.

------
iwr
For a foundation thinking ultra longterm, they have a flaky server.

"Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance
downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later. Apache/2.2.11 (Ubuntu)
Server at www.longbets.org Port 80"

~~~
bgutierrez
Thinking long term isn't the same as scaling a site up for occasional
increased traffic. The vast majority of the time, the traffic is extremely
light on this site and the server (and its network) is more than adequate.

------
herrherr
Another proof that you may look like a fool when trying to predict the future
(Bell's argument).

Also interesting in this context:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1887215>

------
tjmc
Cool site. My prediction is that by 2025 electric vehicle sales will overtake
ICE vehicle sales. I don't want to spend 50 bucks to put it up there though!

------
rudasn
now _this_ is an interesting site!

------
WingForward
I wonder what the contribution to the bet has been from Xbox.

Connecting the Internet to the television is one of its great accomplishments.

