Long Bets in 02010

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I love this stuff. Some of them are very sci-fi, others economic, but all are interesting. I would kill to hang out with this crew. I actually got to meet Danny Hillis back in 2005 along with Bran Ferren. Fascinating, cool people.

This year there are several Long Bets and Predictions up for adjudication.  We will be contacting these bettors this year to ask them to make a self assessment of the bet, if the parties cannot come to an agreement we will make a determination.  Some wont be decided officially until the end of the year, but we may have passed the tipping point on some of these already.

We welcome your input as comments on this thread…
A profitable video-on-demand service aimed at consumers will offer 10,000 titles to 5 million subscribers by 2010.

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.

The U.S Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.bts.gov) will report a lower number of total highway vehicle miles traveled in 2010 than in 2005.

Predictions:  While we dont officially make adjudications on predictions, they are posted for the world the judge.  Tell us what you think.
Within 5 years all power plants will be converted to full-spectrum laser-fired—all oil/gas/coal/nuclear power plants will be obsolete and retired.

Within the next 5 years, Google employees will become dissatisfied, and kick-start a new wave of new technology and prosperity in Silicon Valley.

The world will not reach ‘Peak Oil’ by 2010.

There will be a quantum computer with over 100 qubits of processing capability sold either as a hardware system or whose use is made available as a commercial service by Dec 31, 2010

By 2010, the use of dial-up modems will represent less than 5 percent of all Internet access (represented as a percentage of all households) in the United States.

The U.S. will not pull all of its troops out of Iraq until the 10 largest corporations in the U.S. use their influence to make it happen. I don’t see this as a possibility until after Nov. 9, 2010 the next mid-term elections.

Alma

Shared by bjohnsme
This is totally bizarre and creepy. (thx Josh!)

This is a just a great little piece of 3D animation.

Credits:
Written and Directed by: Rodrigo Blaas
Produced by: Cecile Hokes
Music: Mastretta
Art Director: Alfonso Blaas
Lighting Supervisor: Jonatan Catalán
Character Technical Supervisor: Jaime Maestro
Character Design: Bolhem Bouchiba, Carlos Grangel,
Sergio Pablos, Santi Agustí
Animation: Daniel Peixe, ManueBover, Remi Hueso
Sound Design: Tom Myers and David Hughes
Post Production Coordinator: David Heras
Special Thanks: Keytoon, Next Limit, UserT38

Full credits: almashortfilm.com

The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas - Magazine - NYTimes.com

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Wow!

  In April, the world was introduced to Ruppy, the first known fluorescent dog. In natural light, Ruppy seems to be an almost-normal beagle — though his paws look as if he has stepped in pink ink. Under ultraviolet light, the effect is quite evident: he emits an eerie red glow.

<span style="text-decoration:line-through">99</span> 10 Red Balloons

Earlier this week DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, moored ten, 8 ft red, weather balloons in undisclosed locations across the United States.

The DARPA Network Challenge offered a prize of $40,000 to the person or group who first identified all the locations.

The MIT Group which won the challenge used a clever pyramid  incentive scheme.  Each balloon was worth $4000.  The person to identify the location earned $2000.  The person who invited that person to join the MIT group got $1000, the person who invited the person who invited the person who located the balloon got $500 and so forth (any money not distributed in this way was given to charity.)

The incentive scheme meant that contestants not only had an incentive to find balloons they had an incentive to find someone who could find balloons (or find someone who could find someone who could find balloons and so forth).

Incredibly, the MIT team located all ten balloons in just under 9 hours!  The challenge may seem frivolous but in fact is a great example of how prizes and network technologies can combine to collect and use highly dispersed information--a problem of very general interest and relevance.