Every year around this time, IBM has brings out its crystal ball
to make five predictions about the world in five years.  Here
are the company's predictions for 2016, with our snap judgments
of how likely they are to come true.    • Power your house with
energy you create yourself -- for instance, when you pedal your
bike, the energy you create will be stored in some kind of
battery and later fed back into your house.     Snap judgment:
doubtful. Nice idea, but will require some new equipment in
houses, and it's hard to imagine that the energy savings will be
enough to justify that -- why not start with bigger bang for
your buck like installing solar panels?   • No more passwords.
Biometric sensors will use your retina or voice to figure out
who you are.     Snap judgment: partly. This is already starting
to happen in some places, but most systems don't require this
much security -- it's hard to imagine eBay or Yahoo Mail (for
instance) retrofitting their log-on systems to get rid of
passwords.    • Computers