Worst tech predictions

All Indiatimes articles are essentially trolling attempts to generate page views - they divide a fluff piece into 10 parts and add tangentially related photos to each. This seems to be a universal problem with Indian news websites (Rediff.com is equally bad).

It's a slideshow. Here's the list, click through to TFA to see the descriptions and who made the predictions:

'iPod will die by next year'

'YouTube will not go far'

'No need for a computer at home'

Who needs more than 640 KB

TV won't last

'There will never be a bigger plane built'

'Spam will be solved'

eBay will be huge in China

'Telephone is inherently of no value'

Photocopiers are niche

`iPod will die by next year`

They quote Alan Sugar saying that the iPod would die by Christmas 2005 and then state "Incidentally, at the time Sugar's Amstrad and Apple were reportedly neck-and-neck in the personal computer race. "

Amstrad haven't been in the computer business since the 1990s (and I doubt they were ever "neck and neck", except maybe in the race to launch a PDA in the early 90s). If they can't get the first item factually correct, I'm wondering if I should bother with the rest.

Because when I think "list," I think "clicking next and waiting ten times."

Re predictions, I'm slowly coming around to the view held by some economists that if you want accurate predictions, go to prediction markets where they're recorded, associated with people, and the incentives lead to making good predictions, not loud ones.

This piece is more fluffy than a cat in a dryer.