You've Come a Long Way, Baby! OR Not All is What it Appears to be?

I must say, when I received the picture from a friend in 2004, I thought, "isn't it amazing that even scientists and visionaries in 1954 could not have predicted that in 2004 we would be wearing more computer power in our wrists and pocket devices!" So I filed the picture away. Today, I was about to delete the picture, but I decided to take a minute and check for any follow-up on this story. So I did a Google search on "Scientists from RAND corporation have created a model" and did find the truth.
The original story: Scientists from the RAND corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "Home Computer" could look like in the year 2004. However, the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the FORTRAN language, the computer will be easy to use.
Now for the true story, as far as you can trust the web:
["... tracked down Troels Eklund Andersen, a sales and tech support technician for a Danish hardware and software distributor, who originally entered the image in an online photo-manipulation contest. He took a photograph of a mock submarine maneuvering room and added a 1950s-era Crosley Ridgewood TV, a 1970s Teletype, a hardware store owner from Ohio and a pseudo scientific caption. "I wasn't intending to create a believable fake," he says."]
The moral of this story of course is... don't automatically believe everything you read on the internet, or for that matter on any medium. A little skepticism can be healthy; if it is too amazing or too good to be true, you can always verify.

Brazil shifts to creditor status

I couldn’t help but feel a little pride of my old country when I first heard and later read this Bloomberg news article, see the excerpt below. Brazil, the “B” of the BRIC countries, has been on its long march to recovery away from decades of misguided policies of the 60's through the 80's to a bright future which has long been the expectation [or national hope] of every Brazilian.

This should not come as a total surprise; Goldman Sachs has published various research papers going back to 2003 predicting the growth and economic success of the BRIC countries. Read this one, it predicts that by 2050 the BRIC will be larger than the G6 economies.

The headline: Brazil shifts to creditor status - From Bloomberg News - February 22, 2008

“Brazil, the world's largest emerging-market debtor for decades, became a net foreign creditor for the first time in January.

International reserves, swelled by investment inflows and record exports of agricultural commodities and oil, probably exceeded gross foreign liabilities last month by about $4 billion, Banco Central do Brasil said Thursday….” See full story.

Eu senti orgulho de meu velho país quando eu ouvi, e mais tarde li este artigo de notícia da Bloomberg, veja o excerpt acima. Brasil, o “B” dos países BRIC, depois de décadas de recuperação das mas políticas dos 60’s aos 80’s, finalmente ve um futuro brilhante que apezar das dificuldaded é a expectativa [positiva] de todo Brasileiro.

Isto não deve ser uma surpresa; Goldman Sachs publicou vários papéis de pesquisa em 2003 que predizem o crescimento e o sucesso econômico dos países de BRIC. Leia este, ele prediz que por volta de 2050 o BRIC será maior do que as economias do G6.