ITT: Call It Now, Be Right Later

[tyrannosaurus vex]

A Healthcare bill will be passed this year, and it won't do a damned thing. 

NOT TRUE!

It will provide hundreds of Democrats with hours worth of bullshit to pack their next campaign ads with!
Republicans, too!

[Cainad (dec.)]

A Healthcare bill will be passed this year, and it won't do a damned thing. 

NOT TRUE!

It will provide hundreds of Democrats with hours worth of bullshit to pack their next campaign ads with!
Republicans, too!

Good call.

Also, it becomes a buzzword for the TV talking heads.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I predict that Google's antics with Android and Chrome will further confuse any beginning programmers who are trying to determine what an operating system is, and yet will not affect Microsoft in any way. I predict that Bing will be shut down in a month or two with no fanfare whatsoever, only to be relaunched with a different name amid much fanfare in a few more months. Furthermore, it will be the default search engine for IE 12.

I predict that Python will have built-in support for at least six different forms of collaborative multithreading, none of which will work any better than their existing pylinda, and that these advances will be lauded as the best thing since sliced arrays by python fans, and begrudgingly accepted by python developers due to how common multicore systems are.

I predict that people will continue to use Perl, and that Larry Wall will not reveal that it is a prank until he woos over the Ruby and Python crowd with "Beautiful Perl 5.0 On Rails With Spam".

I predict that Ubuntu will be replaced as open source darling of windows users with another distro which is indistinguishable from it.

I predict that MPlayer will take another five years to choose a final release for 1.0.

I predict that Windows 8 will come in six different levels of usability, with the lowest being the ability to run a single DOS program with mouse support and the highest being roughly equivalent to windows vista. All versions will be distributed on the same disk, and they will be leased rather than sold. If you stop paying the rent for windows, they will downgrade you. It will require four 64-bit cores and a terabyte of disk space, as well as twelve gigs of ram, just to run the installer. It won't support your scanner.

I predict that Tab and Coolah will release energy shots, and that Amp will release six new flavours of energy shots. Redbull will counter by releasing quadruple-size energy shots. Everyone will prefer the energy shots to the energy sprays. No one will buy Coca Cola's caffinated hand sanitizer, and their licorice-flavoured energy drink marketed as a weight loss supplement for prius drivers will fail.

Someone will attempt to make a film version of The Invisibles, it will be terribly hyped, and when it is released it will have the dual effect of making Live Free Die Hard look like a masterpiece and filling PD with Matrix fanboys. Grant Morrison will give a press release about how awful it is, and then will later get some kind of award.

Every Twilight book in existence will be made into a film. The final film will be done with the approximate budget of Repo Man (not adjusted for inflation) and will have at least a ten-thousand percent return, mostly among the teenage children of the teenage fans of the first film.

[Suu]

Hey, snobby left coast chick...

http://www.liwines.com/


DNT

This. Rhode Island also has a damned good winery out in Newport, but they won't ship out of state.

Fortunately, most of New England is known for more important things like beer and cider, and not that snooty stuff that California thinks makes them important.

(I <3 u Jenne!)

[Captain Utopia]

I predict that Google's antics with Android and Chrome will further confuse any beginning programmers who are trying to determine what an operating system is, and yet will not affect Microsoft in any way.

I predict Operating Systems as we know them, as a way to store and access files, is a dead concept - as all anyone cares about is the data inside the files, not the containers themselves. Google Wave + Gears will blur the line between off/online further, and when they finally get their AI project working we'll all be seemlessly assimilated.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I predict that Google's antics with Android and Chrome will further confuse any beginning programmers who are trying to determine what an operating system is, and yet will not affect Microsoft in any way.

I predict Operating Systems as we know them, as a way to store and access files, is a dead concept - as all anyone cares about is the data inside the files, not the containers themselves. Google Wave + Gears will blur the line between off/online further, and when they finally get their AI project working we'll all be seemlessly assimilated.

I disagree, but mainly because I am primarily a systems programmer and not a web programmer. People who are more concerned with frontends than backends often conflate terms in ways that seem ludicrous to systems programmers but make a lot of sense to users. If I tried to explain the concept of an OS to a non-programmer, they would either run away confused or end up learning to code just to figure it out, but that's because I've written OSes.

That said, because I feel that I should in this situation exert my right to be a pedantic elitist asshole, I should correct you. An OS is not a filesystem. I would argue that an OS can be best modeled as a combination library and abstraction layer, with the library routines allowing non-systems-programmers to do their daily work without having to worry about the machine itself, and the abstraction layer (typically) attempting to afford some minimal protection from incompetent/malicious programmers. To talk about an OS in terms of users seems silly, since users rarely interact with the OS proper (more or less never since the days of MS-DOS, and MS-DOS is that way only because the shell was built into the kernel).

[Captain Utopia]

I predict Operating Systems as we know them, as a way to store and access files, is a dead concept - as all anyone cares about is the data inside the files, not the containers themselves. Google Wave + Gears will blur the line between off/online further, and when they finally get their AI project working we'll all be seemlessly assimilated.

I disagree, but mainly because I am primarily a systems programmer and not a web programmer. People who are more concerned with frontends than backends often conflate terms in ways that seem ludicrous to systems programmers but make a lot of sense to users. If I tried to explain the concept of an OS to a non-programmer, they would either run away confused or end up learning to code just to figure it out, but that's because I've written OSes.

Well users tend to be the ones who end up paying the wages of systems programmers. You already have bioses which have linux boots embedded inside, and bioses seem to be encroaching on more and more territory that used to be the domain of OSes. Your view of how those trends will merge, if at all, is likely clearer than mine.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I have yet to have anyone pay for my work in systems programming. Chances are I will have to get a lucrative job as a janitor or a garbageman to support my OS development and compiler writing habits .

I would, however, argue that an OS can still be considered an OS even if it's on firmware. In the DOS days, the BIOS provided far more OS elements than DOS did. Some of the Macintoshes were planned to have Mac OS on PROM.

For what it's worth, if I remember correctly, the LinuxBIOS project wasn't to put the Linux kernel onto firmware, but to write an open source BIOS that lacks all the crap that modern OSes don't use. There *are* projects that stick Linux kernels onto firmware (and at least one by microsoft that sticks a cut down version of windows onto firmware), but I didn't get the impression that that was what you meant.

[Captain Utopia]

I have yet to have anyone pay for my work in systems programming.

I predict that Enki≈〗〖 will be paid by someone to do contract systems programming work within the next 3 years.

Gov/Military/Infrastructure in many countries all seem to be adopting Linux/OSS at a fantastic pace. Great rates + casual deadlines (a year late? Not a problem) + interesting work ftw. I have no business doing custom kernel hacks, well - I do because I'm contracted to and I find it interesting, but I'm not the top choice by a long shot.

[Triple Zero]

I predict that one of the first claims of intellectual property right violations by 3D-printers will be about people printing and/or downloading Warhammer-like miniature figures.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Paris Hilton is going to reinvent herself as a tough, leather jacket wearing bad-ass.

No.

When the Large Hadron Collider goes operational in May 2008, a lot of crazy shit is going to happen.

No.  So far as YOU know.

Moar nostalgia based movies -- Transformers and TMNT paved the way for mega blockbusters based on selling you your childhood, especially if you grew up in the 80s.

Yes.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

21/12/2012 will be the date a lot of hippie new agers will be sorely disappointed.

Yes.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

incontinent discordians, ITT

Yes.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm going to predict Obama as the next president and Hillary as his VP since no one else has.  And someone will try to assassinate him in 2010.

Yes no no.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm going to predict Obama as the next president and Hillary as his VP since no one else has. 

Never.  He'll pick Chuck Hagel.

Yes no.     (gross prophet margin, there.)