Supercomputer predicts a riot

Not Egypt, you idiot.

Sadly in the US we only voice change via the net. Gone are times people actually gathered and marched for a change. Now all our heroes are ghosts.

Nothing is going to change until the government fears its people.

Amazing that predictions always come after the event. I call FAIL on this one.

These algorithms are nothing extremely new. I have also build such a small machine based on similar findings. There is a great decline in sentiment right here in the states as well. Most is just based on common sense and common outcomes of past events and slight changes in environmental causes.

Thomas Jefferson among others did not need a computer to fairly accurately predict these events. "Expect this new government to see economic decline every 50-70 years and a revolution every two to three hundred."

It was predicted during its design that things will change, morals and ethics, and powers will change. How can we best ensure its survival? The U.S constitution was not planed or written overnight.

If power that be make mistakes they will be forced to correct it or have it corrected for them.

In the long run it will correct or inevitably cease to exist. In which case something will start anew.

You are right of course but the thing is that the news works for the government to rile up the people who then demand action, so if the news gives the impression there's a huge issue then it does not matter if it's not true since you can still predict there might be something in planning.
Lost of reports of 'terrorism' and it might indicate they want to bomb a country and need to prepare the public to support it, reality in the reported areas is secondary.

As I said earlier, if the whole thing is set up in advance rather than relying on chance and reality and how people really behave then 'prediction' becomes so much more viable.

the problem with this sort of info is the Newspapers only report on news, that is already out there. we all knew Egypt was in revolution by the time it was in Revolution.

it is like reporting on Afghanistan, you here about a bomb blast, or a road side bomb going off, yet in the vast majority of the country, there wasn't a bomb going off.. so people get the impression that Afghanistan is under a sustained war... it is not, there are too few Taliban fighters left to wage any war at all... they can only set off a bomb or suicide in a single location most of the time... yet people call this war?

even now today, there is reports of "taliban attacking kabul" yet when you look at it closer, it is just another bomb blast, and some Taliban setting off mortars, which is all they can do... just before they run off or are killed.

what kind of war is that? yet reading the newspaper you'd think everyone was dying in kabul...

yet one report of a death???? how's a computer going to predict anything from that?

I wonder if their silly silicon guru can predict the inevitable blood-drenched revolution that will occur in the United States with a few short years. I plan to laugh like a jackal when it happens.

The computer will be able to create an ideal model of upcoming social changes as if all the people acted like computers. But the latter isnt true.Thus the model will not be practical and genuine "time machine", the predictions it would do for the sake of science of prediction itself, couldn t be taken seriously by broader public.And there would be GREAT confidense intervals and low probabilities in the predictions.

Well I for one am seriously disgusted that in europe there is no separation of religion and state in most countries, and that in so many countries the christian parties run things, and I can certainly tell by their policies (in a negative manner), even when the country isn't extreme about it.
I'm just glad that on a regular basis they have to play down their motivations (ie: lie) and tone down their laws because there are a great many people more rational.
So you aren't really making the point you'd hope I guess? Because I'm not happy with religion of any kind.

And I didn't say the middle eastern countries had to be stopped, but the question was about how eager you should be, and how hopeful and how trusting that things would actually be so much better if/when they hold elections in egypt (it's still on track AFAIK).
But they should try yes I suppose, but to be 100% sure that's going to be great is a bit daft.
And the recent attack on the israeli embassy is a nice example of the misunderstandings and how things can lead to chaos as various people with various motivations and various kinds of mutual misunderstanding and lack of realism get in each others face.

Hell not even british parliament and most news organizations can think and report sanely about their own UK riots.

And incidentally, to see what happens when religious christian fanatics get a free reign I refer you to european history, it's not pretty, from bloody marry to the inquisition to G.W bush.

In Algeria, a political party with a religious ethos won the election. Cue coup. Yeah, like the military don't have an illiberal ethos. In Egypt they're still shooting protesters.

Likewise Turkey is very neurotic about religious people getting elected. Unfortunately, democracy doesn't really allow you to stop that. But a large and independent-minded army does. This paragraph is almost certainly illegal in Turkey, by the way.

But, golly gosh, you're right that it's a terrible, terrible thing when a religious faction gains some political influence. Just imagine in countries in Europe if some Christian political party were to... ah. Oh, yes. Well, anyway, suppose in the United States if... oh. Well, then, imagine if India, one of the most populous cuuntries in the world, were... good heavens, so it is. All right, imagine if Somalia had a government. Well, it very nearly did, but it was Muslims, so lots of African Christian countries got together and forced the Muslims out. Happy ending. Lovely place now. I think the U.S. came in at the end to do some bombing as well.

Likewise the Chinese got rid of the Buddhist government in Tibet. Well done. Actually I was told, although I haven't checked this at all, that the Buddhists really were pretty awful when they were running things. When you think you know what's best for people... but I'd better look into that sometime. Not that it matters now, particularly. I really don't think they're coming back any time soon.

My computer has 2 TFLOPS and doesn't have 1000CPU's, only a fast video card. IBM Roadrunner has 1.2 Peta FLOPS, this "supercomputer" is so weak.
Even some PS3's running together have more procesing power.
Maybe they sould have used a computer with punching cards.....

As an egyptian said, the protesters are now in 2 separated groups, the liberals and the religious, and when there is an election seeing that the religious are in a majority they would get most votes, and perhaps you should not be vying for that moment so much.

And I think the guy has a point.
Because when the religious are in a majority it's bad but then when there are a large vocal group of liberals making themselves be heard then things can become violent to boot.
Unless those islamic religious guys were going to be considerate towards the liberals of course, haha, wouldn't that be something.
And then there's the army, if they step back and then things go sour what will they do then? What should they do?

As for the CIA, they are always pushing buttons for sure, but humans are not always moving like you want or hope and the CIA has a limited competence anyway, and are also severely hampered by their own shortsightedness obviously.

If something were to be very much purposefully orchestrated, via the internet, then a computer should be able to 'predict' things went as planned, since it only has to look for indicators known in advance that the plan is working as intended.

@ivan why are you afraid to say the words bullshit? This isn't american TV you know, this is the internet.

The BBC are of course technically (and otherwise) illiterate, but The Inquirer should not be writing silly things like this.

It's the software that does the computation, of course; the hardware (while very powerful) is just what makes the software go. Even the software is no better than the assumptions and algorithmic/coding abilities of those who wrote it.

As for Libya, Egypt, et cetera, I've assumed all along that about twenty teams of CIA trained agitators were busily organising trouble across the Middle East this spring and summer. Now Egypt is under a military junta, well done. Going by recent relations with Pakistan, the U.S. prefers friendly dictators to troublesome independent-minded democracies. There wasn't a word of complaint that I can recall from the U.S. about General Pervaiz Musharraf being so helpful and so tyrranical. He went on [The Daily Show]. I think he went on again after they kicked him out. He may have written a book.

The big problem with this is the fact that most MSM articles are over hyped bulls**t - not a very good starting point unless you are looking foe an excuse to suppress the people.