Doper Prophecies come to pass?

[Enola_Straight]

In this thread

What interesting technology can we expect in the next five years?

we foretold what tech was coming to fruition 5 or so years down the line.

How much came true?

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=56005&highlight=Laden

This thread, predicitng Bush’s wars may also be of interest

[Yllaria]

Well, voice-recognition is available and affordable now on your computer.

In five years, expect voice-recognition on Palm-sized devices; the ability to dictate and have it send out the results as email; the ability to use it to answer phone calls and transcribe the conversation as a text file. (=beginning of end for the regular telephone)

AHunter3 nailed that one.

[Yllaria]

Posted by Kalishnikov

HDTV should become popular by then (at least the manufacturers and the US government think so)

even if they’re not HDTV, large flat screen TVs will become more affordable and popularso will LCD computer displays (although CRT’s still have some advantages)

there will be better cellphone service, and there will be less and less difference between cellphones and PDAsthere will be more wireless networking, wireless peripherals etc.
personal video recordeers (like TiVo) will become common

there will be more anti-copying protection on consumer audio/video devices, but DVD-ROMs will get more popular as people find ways around the protection

hopefully one of the various** flash memory devices **(CompactFlash etc.) will become the standard, and will become much cheaper
**PCs will start to be sold with out a floppy drive **but with other removable storage devices, hopefully including flash memory devices (THAT should drive the device prices down)

Sounds good. Unless flash memory isn’t the same as a USB thumb drive.
(bolding mine)

[Justin_Bailey]

I think Sam Stone’s response was my favorite. As it included a nice variety of stuff that a) already existed or b) would be announced six months later or c) was completely off-the-wall batshit insane (why would anyone try to sell a disposable digital camera.

@Sam_Stone

With lots and lots of memory, a lot of devices become practical. Pocket-sized $200 multimedia devices that fit in your pocket and can hold an hour of DVD-quality video and an almost unlimited number of still pictures and MP3’s. You’ll be able to buy cheap disposable cameras that take 20 pictures and then spit a little memory stick out that can be plugged into your univeral memory port at home. With cheap memory, there will be music videos in cereal boxes and video games in happy meals. You’ll have a personal memory device on your keychain that can carry your photo albums, copies of all your personal documents and work documents, a novel or two, a digital signature protecting it all.

[elfkin477]

**Kalishnikov **did better than Nostradamus.

[willthekittensurvive]

BrainGlutton’s

I predict no more Arab/Muslim regime changes this year

[An_Gadai]

@willthekittensurvive

BrainGlutton’s

I predict no more Arab/Muslim regime changes this year

The year ain’t over.

[bouv]

@Yllaria

Sounds good. Unless flash memory isn’t the same as a USB thumb drive.

It is flash memory, from a technical standpoint, but what Kalishnikov was referring to was memory sticks, and while it’s not as bad as it was circa 2002, there is still too many of them.

SD and MicroSD are as close to a standard as we’re going to get. Almost every new laptop for the past few years has had an SD slot, and sometimes other memory slots, but often only the SD slot. All non-iPhone smartphones that use external memory use microSD, non-iPad tablets use microSD or regular SD. Almost all cameras use SD/microSD.

CompactFlash is, I think, still used a bit in some larger DSLR cameras. Since these cameras are larger to begin with, it’s not hard for designers to include room for the bigger memory card. Originally, they were cheaper per GB because of the larger size, but they are now more expensive than an SD card of similar capacity, probably because there’s less demand for them so they need a higher profit margin.

And then there’s Sony, who stick to their home-grown memory sticks for lots of their devices. Their portable game units (PSP,) cameras, and maybe other devices (maybe some phones? I know they have some android phones that HAVE to use microSD, but if they have non-android phones they could use whatever memory card they wanted.) There are also too many kinds…memory stick, memory stick pro, memory stick duo, memory stick pro duo, probably other varieties…though I think the pro duo is the standard now, yes?

The biggest problem is price…memory sticks cost way more than they need to. An 8GB SD card costs less than $10, an 8 GB pro duo memory stick costs almost $25.

And then there’s the little xD card, which AFAIK is only used in Olympus cameras. Suffers a similar problem to memory sticks in that it’s proprietary and you pay too much per GB…but I’m not sure if it’s even still around…I mean, I know you can buy them, but I don’t know if Olympus still makes cameras that use them or if they finally switched to SD.

[Yllaria]

OK, so we downplay that one and he still has five hits.

Time for me to read the rest of that thread.

[Yllaria]

Per Bryan Ekers:

In 5 years…

Windows 2004 will ship. There will be bugs.

Did that ever happen? My work box is running Windows XP. I can’t say I want to know much about different flavors of Windows.

[bouv]

@Yllaria

Per Bryan Ekers:
Did that ever happen? My work box is running Windows XP. I can’t say I want to know much about different flavors of Windows.

Change 2004 to 2006? is that when Vista came out? And it’s spot on.

But Win 7 is rock solid, IMO. Though going right from XP to 7 with no “baby step” of Vista between would take some getting used to.