Netflix wins a longbet from 8 years ago.

Esther Dyson's bet "By 2012, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times will have referred to Russia as "the world leader in software development" or words to that effect."<p><a href="http://www.longbets.org/5" rel="nofollow">http://www.longbets.org/5</a><p>The Computer History Museum gets $10,000 if she loses, I guess they should start planning an exhibit on old Russian computer technology.<p>But to be less smug for a moment why anyone would think this is beyond me. While the Russians did achieve significant technological advances in the 20th century, and implemented an impressive education system with regard to mathematics and computer science there are so many other factors which play into this. Namely Russia obtaining a score of 2.7/10 for corruption in 2002 from the Corruption Perceptions Index and sliding down to 2.1/10 in the most recent ranking putting them in 158th place. Further they are ranked 143rd on the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom. India with 87th on corruption and 124th on economic freedom, not great, has plenty of English speakers and a more impressive computer science educational infrastructure, as well as being cheaper. The stories of people dying in Russian prisons after resisting corrupt government shakedowns are just horrific and I am not aware of any Indian equivalent. But I suppose if you invest there as she does, you need to talk it up.

Maciej Ceglowski had a similar, if less grandiose, site called Wrong Tomorrow, but it looks like it's down:<p><a href="http://wrongtomorrow.com/" rel="nofollow">http://wrongtomorrow.com/</a><p>I don't know if the site is only temporarily down, or if it's been abandoned, but it's a shame if the latter. The idea behind Wrong Tomorrow was chiefly to hold pundits accountable for their frequently bad predictions. You can read his site announcement, where he explicitly mentions sites like Long Bets and how Wrong Tomorrow differs from them:<p><a href="http://idlewords.com/2009/04/wrong_tomorrow.htm" rel="nofollow">http://idlewords.com/2009/04/wrong_tomorrow.htm</a>

David Peterson nailed it in the comments in 2003:<p><pre><code> NetFlix claims to have more than 13,500 titles and more than one million members. You order the movie on the Internet, you just can't watch it until all of the bits of the movie arrive. They just happen to be delivered to your mailbox and you have to put the bits into your computer or dvd player. -- Posted by David B. Peterson on May 16, 02003 at 12:32AM PDT</code></pre>

"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."<p>Vint Cerf challenges with, "At some point, laptop or smaller devices with high quality displays and suitable access controls for intellectual property will make the sale and consumption of books, sound and movies through these devices practical." He goes on to cite the "iPOD" as an example.<p><a href="http://www.longbets.org/6" rel="nofollow">http://www.longbets.org/6</a>

Wow good find. I especially like this bet, Warren Buffett v. Protege Partners, LLC.<p><pre><code> “Over a ten-year period commencing on January 1, 2008, and ending on December 31, 2017, the S &#38; P 500 will outperform a portfolio of funds of hedge funds, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs and expenses.” </code></pre> <a href="http://www.longbets.org/362" rel="nofollow">http://www.longbets.org/362</a>

Reading the comments (I love that the years are written as 02002) this one particularly strikes me..<p>"...The net works differently than that... and Content owners have missed (and will continue to miss) it for 3 reasons: 1) Technophobia coupled with crippling ego (too cool to look dumb they fear the pipe) 2) Misguided content protectionism (go back and watch 'The Power of Myth'... again! It's the 'story' damnit!) ..."<p>This is 8 years old (and proven somewhat wrong), and we're still saying it, in some form today.

<i>Service Temporarily Unavailable</i><p>Cached version: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cyGf1TnWdtEJ:www.longbets.org/3+http://www.longbets.org/3&#38;cd=1&#38;hl=en&#38;ct=clnk&#38;gl=us" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cyGf1Tn...</a>

I would love to see (or not see) how the predictor wins this bet,long bet making a decision and awards the stake.<p>“Large Hadron Collider will destroy Earth.”<p><a href="http://www.longbets.org/382" rel="nofollow">http://www.longbets.org/382</a>

I like the RESTful urls, check out bet #1: <a href="http://www.longbets.org/1" rel="nofollow">http://www.longbets.org/1</a><p>We've got a while, but it feels like an appropriate bet.

Is it just me or did this seem completely inevitable and kind of on the cusp by 2002? We were building fileserver-based VOD services just to save our Internet connection from the torrenting masses in shared housing situations around this time.<p>This seems like a risky one to bet against, at least from a technical perspective.<p>I suppose it is true that it was still a pretty open question whether anyone would manage to negotiate licenses with the media producers to do VOD, but Bell doesn't even touch on that issue.

It's amusing that Eric Schmidt is the challenger on <a href="http://www.longbets.org/4" rel="nofollow">http://www.longbets.org/4</a> in light of Google's autonomous cars.

For a foundation thinking ultra longterm, they have a flaky server.<p>"Service Temporarily Unavailable<p>The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later. Apache/2.2.11 (Ubuntu) Server at www.longbets.org Port 80"

Another proof that you may look like a fool when trying to predict the future (Bell's argument).<p>Also interesting in this context: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1887215" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1887215</a>

Cool site. My prediction is that by 2025 electric vehicle sales will overtake ICE vehicle sales. I don't want to spend 50 bucks to put it up there though!

now <i>this</i> is an interesting site!

I wonder what the contribution to the bet has been from Xbox.<p>Connecting the Internet to the television is one of its great accomplishments.