Chief Prognosticator » 2008 » March
The ANSWER? The Deep Web.
What?
First we need to define what is the “Deep Web”. The Deep Web is the content of the Internet which is not easily accessible for one or more reasons. These reasons include password protected sites, sites that have ZERO incoming links, or sites which are meta-created and change very often. In contrast to the Web we normally see and use (the so-called “Surface Web”), the Deep Web is a vastly unexplored and unknown area. It is estimated that only 1% of all information on the Internet is in the Surface Web. That leave thousands and thousands of Terabytes hidden from view.
The Deep Web is of great interest to many in the scientific and security community because it is seen as a harbor for Terrorists. How do you find and shut down these Deep Web sites used by Terrorists if you can’t find them? Well that was one of the topics of conversation on a recent episode of Talk of the Nation Science Friday on NPR. Listen to the podcast online. In the show not only the Deep Web (or Dark Web, at the guests refer to it as) is discussed but also how computer scientists and mathematicians are using social network modeling to discern hierarchical structures of terrorist organizations. Very interesting!
So what’s next from Apple? Well I think one of my previous predictions can be merged with Apple’s creativity to create something really cool — the iScreen. First read my prediction here on my original Chief Prognosticator blog.
Now think of a pocket sized screen like the iPod Touch, maybe smaller, which you can unfold into a 2×2 array of touch screens! Then the device would play movies on a “large screen” from internal storage or off the Internet. It would be a truly portable 15? video player, less than a quarter of an inch thick!
Here’s a great post I wrote a few months ago….
Come on, you may ask, how can Google come to an end? Well here’s a scenario which might make dry up Google’s revenues and send the stock crashing back to Earth. There is a movement underway to create a National Do Not Track list. Similar to the National Do Not Call list which prevents telemarketers from calling your home phone, this list would prevent Internet Service Providers and the sites which are accessed through them to place Cookies on their users machines or track them in any other sort of way. What would this do to Google’s ability to place targeted ads in search results and AdSense page views? Well on the surface it seems that Google would be safe since it serves ads based on search queries. This way Google doesn’t need to place any Cookies because the “targeted term” is physically submitted by the web visitor. You type in “Chinese Restaurants Atlanta” and Google knows to show ads for those companies who paid for those search terms. But the trouble comes in when we look deeper. Nobody knows exactly how much data Google tracks of it’s users over time. It has been made public in the past that Google compiles search data over time and perhaps this involves examining particular IP addresses or users. If the National Do Not Track list comes into existence, then Google will be severely limited to mine this valuable advertising data. In return Google’s entire advertising model could be compromised, send earnings way down and opening themselves up for class action lawsuits from anyone still tracked. So could it be the end of Google? Only time will tell but at least you stock holder have been warned.
With the NASA Space Shuttle on its way out, what will be the next way to take us into space? Well it probably won’t be the “next” one, but the Space Elevator is a pretty cool concept. It’s basically a long tether of ultra-strong material which rests in a a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit” title=”Geosynchronous orbit”>geosynchronous orbit. The other end is anchored to the Earth, What’s so good about a space elevator? Well it takes a whole lot less energy to push objects up the tether than it does to blast it into space with a rocket!
Here’s a new idea — how about a new CD technology that included a small slab of flash memory in the middle. A flash memory chip could be used to store read-write data with ease without having to burn directly to the disk. A small modification to standard CD players would need to be made, but the technology shouldn’t be so difficult. Think about it:
- You could save preferences like song order or equalizer settings directly to your music CD.
- You could save your game data directly to a PlayStation game disk.
- You could create and change passwords to your data disks.
I know CD-burners are cheap and digital storage in on the rise, so perhaps this idea is about a decade too late. Oh well, at least it’s a fun glimpse into an alternate universe.
I wrote a few months ago about a quick way to win $25. Now here’s a second chance:
Check out the contest over at TheGuru.com and read the rules. It’s easy! Just make a post and leave a comment… that’s all it takes.
Here’s a prediction: Several key technologies will continue to evolve and finally combine to create contact lenses which will be able to record everything you see. The video will be captured and wirelessly transmitted to a storage device on your body. Perhaps even the video could be stored directly on the lens and download later when you clean them!
I wrote about this once before on the *old* Chief Prognosticator site, but I think I need to share this prediction with you: The First Trillionaire.
[W]ho will be the first trillionaire and how will they do it? Bill Gates made his money on Software. Carlos Slim made his money in telecommunications. What’s left? Well for one, I don’t think there is enough anything in the world to create a trillion dollars of personal wealth — that’s why I am looking elsewhere…
Prediction: The World’s First Trillionaire will earn their money in space!
Either space travel (think Virgin Galactic) or, more plausibly, mining asteroids for minerals and raw materials. Asteroids have trillions of dollars worth of precious and rare metals in them and they are just floating around in the solar system waiting to be taken. The first person to be able to land on an asteroid with robots and mine it will be a trillionaire. There is no question in my mind this will happen!
Leave it up to those great folks at the X Prize Foundation to do it again.
First it was their $10 million competition to promote private Suborbital Spaceflight. That contest was of course won by Burt Rutan with his spacecraft SpaceShipOne on Oct.4, 2004.
There has been others in medicine and moon landings (see The Google Lunar X PRIZE), but now there is a really timely one:
The main objective is to create a production-commercial viable car that gets 100 MPG (2.35 liter/100 kilometer). Judging the winner isn’t straight forward — it will be a combination of an endurance race, the viability of the business plan, and the emissions of the vehicle. What a great idea!
We are all looking forward to the 2008 income tax credit advance from Uncle Sam. Earn an Adjusted Gross Income of less than $75,000 single or $150,000 married and get $300 or more in the mail in a couple of months. All you have to do is make sure you qualify and file your 2007 tax return. Even if you haven’t filed yet, you might already have received an informational notice in the mail from the IRS about the program. I guess they send the note “just in case” you didn’t hear about it on the Internet, on the radio, on TV, or from a “friend”….
