The first languages which I used to write properly-speaking programs were C and C++, when studying mechanical engineering at the university. Theoretically, I firstly used Basic in high school, but what we were doing back then cannot be called programming. My career as a programmer started some years later working as a mechanical engineer and with Fortran.
Some clarifications just in case: - I don't think that archive.org or any other site should fully ignore robots.txt, or any other express indication of what the website owner wants. - The robots.txt files of my two sites don't include any kind of restriction and never did. - All the crawling bots which I develop (currently running ones ranking web domains) always respect robots.txt or, depending upon the exact conditions, anything else which clearly indicates the site owner expectations. - I am not precisely a (restricted) copyright fan and my whole online activity may be considered public domain.
If, on day 1, the robots.txt file of a given site allows to collect information and archive.org does it, they would be fully complying with robots.txt. If, on day 2, that site modifies the robots.txt file and restricts the access to all the bots, archive.org shouldn't collect any more information but why deleting the day-1-rightfully-stored one? Such a deletion would be exclusively motivated by their own policy, not by what should be expected from a robots.txt compliance.
A different story would be determining whether they can rightfully store and display information from other sites, what the owners have to say about that and for how long certain type of information might be kept. Nothing of this has to do with respecting robots.txt, but with privacy and third-party information management on the lines of the right to be forgotten.
Most of (all?) the names of the authors of the last 107 papers seem Asian (Chinese?). And the Nature article about the previous 58 ones says that all of them were from Iran. These two issues are apparently confirming what seems the most probable reason for problems of this type (being discovered by the publisher): too permissive/greedy/keen-on-growing local authorities, universities or governments.
I guess that you mean Community version and that it similar to VS 2015. In that case, you should be able to use it without linking any account for around 1 month; after that, you would have to log-in just once, then you can log-out and it will work forever (or perhaps until the next important upgrade). I didn't use 2015 too much (and much less 2017), but I saw some curious situations like not being able to offline compile some projects which shouldn't require an internet connection.
I am quite sure that Microsoft collects and will continue collecting lots of info, like all the other companies and I will never defend them for that (or anyone else). I don't think that anyone should be understanding with this kind of data stealing either. I will certainly always agree with anyone trying to minimise the power of corporations/governments and the invasion of privacy. On the other hand, I like Visual Studio and my old version ( 2012) will have to be replaced at some point. I also know that I don't do anything which should be hidden from Microsoft or anyone else. I also know that most of these privacy-info collecting actions are just-in-case resources and that most of this information cannot even be adequately understood. So, I guess that I have a practically concerned position on this front: don't support/like it and will try to minimise its impact as much as possible, but I also take advantage of the associated benefits by being sure that nothing of this is likely to have a direct impact on me.
Honestly, I wouldn't really mind to unfairly (-> only possible way as far as I am not doing anything wrong) be in a blacklist. Although I am a peaceful person not particularly interested in getting in trouble, I don't think that abusing authority/power should be tolerated via fear. In democratic and law-based countries, civic resistance to official arbitrariness is almost a must. When what is really behind that unfairness is capital, rich people getting richer and wellness/peace of mind of the few (what unfortunately is almost always the case), this is almost a pleasure to me.
Don't misunderstand my position. I don't despise rich people or any other generic kind of people (although I think that rich people getting richer isn't precisely a top priority for the world). I despise ignorance-driven invasion of others. I despise those seriously thinking that whatever they have/like/expect can be unilaterally imposed to others. A big proportion of rich people have the distorted impression that everyone else want what they have and I do enjoy proving them wrong.
I didn't know what that meant, so I did a quick search and apparently is a reference to a 1981 Bill Murray movie about war/soldiers. This fact seems to give some indications about you and your personality (apologies if I am wrong on any issue; as said to the AC above, I am writing all this on the go, as my morning distraction):
- You are older than me. I was born on 1978 and never heard about that movie. It doesn't seem a classic, but the kind of movie which is enjoyed by the given generation. Were you in the 15-25 range when this movie came up? 50-60 yo? Older?
- War/soldiers movies, mainly not precisely excellent movies like this one (never saw that movie and don't want to criticise it, this is just a more or less blind guess), are usually appealing for a very specific audience. So, I guess that it is safe to assume that you are a man and, mostly likely, you have some kind of relationship with military or similar (police or spying agency or something like this). It might be even possible that this movie (or this sentence or the specific nutcase who said it) is popular among certain group of people (soldiers?) and perhaps you are even younger than what my first point assumed (but I do think that you are old).
- You are arbitrarily insulting me (you are directly calling me psycho), despite how the aforementioned conversation has evolved and the behaviour which I have shown (Slashdot is kind of problematic for people liking to misunderstand others, right? Things are written forever and cannot be edited, so manipulating what a person did or said is quite difficult. The actions are there for anyone to read as many times and as slowly as they need in order to understand the whole situation properly), which might be too-descriptive and even a bit too aggressive but always reasonable (well, unless you feel attacked by a higher number of words, this is the case with some people; but I am afraid that this isn't a valid interpretation). Another relevant issue is that you don't know me at all (I guess) and that you have self-invited yourself to a conversation which wasn't about you (I guess, again), all this anonymously. So, the summary of this point: you are arbitrarily insulting someone in an anonymous way because of whatever (didn't like me or what I say or what I represent) and you are calling me psycho! Don't you get the irony of this?
So, it seems that you have no relationship with me (certain age, military-like taste, anonymously/cowardly insulting others) or with the kind of people I want to deal with. It seems that you want just be part of a group against one person (because it might seem that I am in the weakest spot against all these other anonymous cowards, but appearances aren't always too accurate, you know?). It seems that your perception of reality is hugely distorted (acting as a psycho and thinking that other person has that behaviour) and that you seriously think that can arbitrary attack/force/being forced (military way of doing things) anyone? Hmm. All this sounds kind of familiar to me. Did I meet you in a previous chat in another Slashdot article? You were repeating like a crazy the same nonsense over and over and I tried to calm you down and explain you that you didn't get anything right? You were like expecting me to prove something to you (like you being any kind of authority). It was about something that the US army did. Does anything of this sound familiar to you? Because if it does, I guess that I have to warn you that I am into women (not too concerned about age or other generic features, but tend to like those a bit younger than me) and, even in case that you are a woman, am not too much into the obsessive stalker thing, I mean, I am sure that you are marvellous person, it isn't you, it's me, but I think that you should better get obsessed with other logged-in users who are more compatible with your "peculiarities". I am completely sure that you will find someone with whom you will get in a long obsessive relationship of anonymity and crazy misinterpretations.
LOL. You and the other AC made my morning, thanks:)
Perhaps not the original one but sharing the same pathetic views, so no real difference to me. Am I a tool? The one being the target of a random idiot insulting me? I have to tolerate any random idiot arbitrarily attacking me and cannot say anything, because that random idiot might be part of a group of pathetic fanatics which might try to "defend" it? Seriously, what is wrong with people like you? Are you able to understand the simplest situation? You all are pathetic fanatics in my book and, lately, my tolerance with you is zero (-> self-promotion of my online business which doesn't want to deal with people of your kind). Too aggressive? Learn to behave and to not arbitrarily invade others or accept the consequences.
Here you have another version: you are a pathetic fanatic, coward, part of a small lynch squad of pathetic fanatics cowards attacking someone for no reason (other than justifying the initial unreasonable attack of another idiot -> fanaticism in its purest form). The most pathetic part is that you are probably thinking that what you did is fair or right?! You are a shame for you and for anyone who has ever tried to actually help others. You are what is wrong with internet and the new wave of stupidity which has provoked (too much power=knowledge for people not used to have it). You are a half-person. You need to grow and to learn to become a real person (try by living outside your bubble; I guess that you are a rich kid who hasn't ever done the slightest effort, someone whose ideas mostly come from TV and blind guesses). You should be kept under quarantine until you become a person in order to avoid you making stupid actions damaging you and others. You and all what you represent were, are and will be crap for me and I don't want you to be near me.
If you seriously want to help someone, you could try with me. There is something which you can do for me. This is a very important mission and your contribution is extremely relevant. Calm down! Breath deep! And think very carefully before answering this very important question: what version did you find more offensive/hurting (the insults in the first paragraph or in the second one?)? I am doing a small research among those of your kind to increase the effectiveness of my reactions to your nonsense. You know? To not waste too much time with you. Honestly, I am not too concern about this issue, because I could plainly ignore your crazy nonsense and laugh at you (even make you part of my enjoyment without you realising about it because you are soooo stupid) but I guess that everyone, even crazily stupid fanatics like you, can be useful for something and here you have your opportunity.
(Clarification: I have written all this text on the go, some minutes after reading your stupid comment. In parallel, I have been checking what some applications have done during last night, drinking my morning coffee and reading the news. I know that if I don't explain all this, you would think that my comment, your comment and even all what you represent is much more important to me than what it really is. You are a distraction, a joke, a sad reality which I already accepted that cannot be fixed and plainly enjoy it.)
There have so much money and software-based anything generates so much revenue with a relevant investment that this apparent nonsense seems self-sustaining! This project, for example, is likely to not lose a dime, even to generate profits, independently upon its final outputs. After injecting a relevant amount of money, Facebook might start applying for R&D grants/prizes which will most likely earn; just this might be enough to account for all the costs during some years. Additionally, it will be very positive for the public image of Facebook as a game-changer and R&D-focused company. All the workers and managers will get lots of money, excellent experience for their CVs and lots of relevant knowledge (even in case of not reaching a proper product, working on so demanding projects is the best to get top-level expertise). Facebook might even get some further direct benefits via commercialising preliminary versions or merchandising.
When you have enough money to invest, losing in software is virtually impossible, mainly in a place like Silicon Valley which has already an important intrinsic value (virtually anything from there gets lots of attention/free advertisement and is appealing to customers everywhere). I mean having more expenses than earnings, because in case of bringing costs of opportunity into picture too, all these jokish projects would be pure losses. But I guess that nobody cares/knows as far as the apparent profit continue flowing.
Someone might think that people like me might be unhappy with such an unfair situation, but I do fully accept it. Note that my personal situation (as the one of most of programmers/software-companies outside a few privileged areas) is completely different than all that: no investors, no opportunities, no money flowing around, having to do everything perfectly to be systematically ignored, not having any kind of support (for most of people in the town where I am now programming isn’t even an actual occupation or cannot understand what remote work is), etc. Although I would certainly love working under better conditions, I wouldn't ever renounce to some of my current benefits (e.g., doing what I consider right without tolerating ignorant arbitrary impositions); I am also sure that most of people working on these generating-money-from-nowhere projects are systematically tolerating what I would never do. That's why I don't envy those programmers and think that this Silicon Valley apparent nonsense is likely to continue existing for a while (and, hopefully, the TV series forever! Season 4 premiere on Sunday!!).
To give some context to my aforementioned surprise (funny rather than insightful!) to future readers which might not see them, here you have an excerpt of the current version of my bio: "...Unbuyable. Never had money and never minded it. No fan of politics, but leftist..."; and my signature: "Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.". If you still have doubts about the exact intention of this or any other of comments, please take a look at any of the multiple over-clarifications which I have written everywhere or, ideally, ask me.
(Unnecessary clarifications? I wish this was true.)
... something like this, because it goes against how things have to be, right? And you are judge, jury and executioner of that ultimate truth! Everything what is against the format which you consider acceptable is intrinsically bad and, consequently, attackable. Yes, this is where your pathetically unreasonable anger comes from. People doing things slightly different than you are so infuriating, right? Why are all these people not doing exactly what you want as you want it? You can only think about making them aware and pay for their wrong actions by releasing all this anger that burns inside you!
Contrarily to what you think of me, I think that you are very funny. I might even pay for seeing you getting angry with ridiculous nonsense, like people making some mostakes while wriiting or having different priorities than you do. Some time ago, I used to try to help those like you understand, but quickly realised that this was a very bad idea. Now, I plainly enjoy you (+ write some clarifications; just in case, because some of these fanatics might do really weird things).
As explained, I cannot be drunk and you are the only stupid here. Additionally, your attitude of attacking someone with a random accusation does seem indicative of being under the influence of something perhaps different than just stupidity.
Responding to yourself again and again to explain yourself
I see. You belong to the fanatic, low-self-esteem subgroup of things-have-to-be-like-this-end-of-the-story (among who are those called grammar nazis). Commentators are expected to use just one comment to write the whole idea, with minor exceptions like highlighting relevant mistakes. Sorry for having misjudged the origin of your imaginary motivation to unmotivatedly attack me: you don't care about rich people/butlers, you care about the way in which I have misused the comments section! For example, you...
Although I am kind of funny, at least some times, you might be right and should better focus on enjoying humour rather than on delivering it. I might add some funny bits in serious comments, but better letting the 100% humour posts for the pros (there are some really funny fellows around).
In any case, note that all the clarifications are my reaction to quite a few bad past experiences with people misunderstanding what I thought that was evident, rather than a normal output of my jokes.
Why are you saying that? Are you not understanding or not liking the joke? Either way, what is the point of reacting so aggressively to someone merely sharing some funny stuff? How has my attitude hurt you? Are you a low-self-esteem (-> only kind of people I know who cannot make fun of themselves) rich person or butler? Either way, sorry for having said the words which your imagination made you think that were a personal attack to you, your status or your profession, because it wasn't my intention.
Just FYI, I am working in my office, where I am pretty much during the whole day, and have never consumed any kind of drug at work (or the day before), because my job is quite demanding and doesn't allow me to do things like this. To not mention the fact of being a small-business owner working under very tough conditions (and eventually having to deal with "people" like you), for whom his online image is very important. As far as you seem so concerned about me and what I do, I can confirm you that I haven't drunk alcohol (other than perhaps a couple of drinks in 2/3 social events) in over 2 years, a decision which I made one random day and which I have honoured with no effort. And even when I was drinking alcohol (not precisely the only drug which I have ever tried; at some points of my life, I did party a lot), I never wrote anything on internet (not even outside my work) or performed any other kind of action usually associated with weak or low-self-esteem personalities like drinking to forget (I always drunk to loosen up a bit and to enjoy the experience).
Tremendous contribution, other AC, please continue writing these brave, sensible and not-indicative-of-your-personal-lacks-at-all comments (clarification because you seem quite stupid: I am being sarcastic).
I mean... he read my credentials in a Post-it on the computer which I use for Slashdot, near my favourite piano, in my summer villa, where I have all my sport cars. BTW, I have already punished him.
After having read the title of the new Slashdot article (Physicists Observe 'Negative Mass'), I prefer to replace my aforementioned "what science can deliver" with "what the reproducible, experimentally-validated and somehow-compatible-with-all-our-remaining-knowledge-including-common-sense side of science can deliver".
(My apologies to the AC above for having used so many words which ideally shouldn't be required).
My comments are completely on-topic, are you sure that you understood them?
Many posts in this thread are talking about thoughts and reading minds and this is very far away from this article (and from what science can deliver now and in the next quite a few years). This research is just about blindly mapping current brain activity with patterns assumed to be associated with very specific outputs. For example, it might be possible to know what happens in the brain when a person performs certain movement, but it is completely impossible to know what a person is thinking about. Clearer now?
It doesn't deal with thoughts. We are still very far away from understanding how the brain works at different levels like how ideas or thinking process happen. All what we can do is to locate the parts of the brain which have activity under very specific conditions (e.g., performing certain movement) and, without understanding well how it exactly works, we might recognise that specific behaviour by looking at future brain activity. This particular research deals with words about to be said (the thought has already happened) and its exact reliability (better: applicability to any random person) is unclear.
be amazing for handicapped people
It is already possible to somehow account for this specific scenario. Note that one of the most difficult parts of these developments (like any other one dealing with not-properly-understood phenomena) is making it generally applicable. If you focused on just one person and accounted for just specific actions (e.g., using certain finger to press letter "a" in a keyword in certain location), it could already be done. On the other hand, it might be a bit too expensive to get a not-clearly-beneficial output.
Slashdot Mirror
The first languages which I used to write properly-speaking programs were C and C++, when studying mechanical engineering at the university. Theoretically, I firstly used Basic in high school, but what we were doing back then cannot be called programming. My career as a programmer started some years later working as a mechanical engineer and with Fortran.
Some clarifications just in case:
- I don't think that archive.org or any other site should fully ignore robots.txt, or any other express indication of what the website owner wants.
- The robots.txt files of my two sites don't include any kind of restriction and never did.
- All the crawling bots which I develop (currently running ones ranking web domains) always respect robots.txt or, depending upon the exact conditions, anything else which clearly indicates the site owner expectations.
- I am not precisely a (restricted) copyright fan and my whole online activity may be considered public domain.
If, on day 1, the robots.txt file of a given site allows to collect information and archive.org does it, they would be fully complying with robots.txt. If, on day 2, that site modifies the robots.txt file and restricts the access to all the bots, archive.org shouldn't collect any more information but why deleting the day-1-rightfully-stored one? Such a deletion would be exclusively motivated by their own policy, not by what should be expected from a robots.txt compliance.
A different story would be determining whether they can rightfully store and display information from other sites, what the owners have to say about that and for how long certain type of information might be kept. Nothing of this has to do with respecting robots.txt, but with privacy and third-party information management on the lines of the right to be forgotten.
Most of (all?) the names of the authors of the last 107 papers seem Asian (Chinese?). And the Nature article about the previous 58 ones says that all of them were from Iran. These two issues are apparently confirming what seems the most probable reason for problems of this type (being discovered by the publisher): too permissive/greedy/keen-on-growing local authorities, universities or governments.
I guess that you mean Community version and that it similar to VS 2015. In that case, you should be able to use it without linking any account for around 1 month; after that, you would have to log-in just once, then you can log-out and it will work forever (or perhaps until the next important upgrade). I didn't use 2015 too much (and much less 2017), but I saw some curious situations like not being able to offline compile some projects which shouldn't require an internet connection.
I am quite sure that Microsoft collects and will continue collecting lots of info, like all the other companies and I will never defend them for that (or anyone else). I don't think that anyone should be understanding with this kind of data stealing either. I will certainly always agree with anyone trying to minimise the power of corporations/governments and the invasion of privacy. On the other hand, I like Visual Studio and my old version ( 2012) will have to be replaced at some point. I also know that I don't do anything which should be hidden from Microsoft or anyone else. I also know that most of these privacy-info collecting actions are just-in-case resources and that most of this information cannot even be adequately understood. So, I guess that I have a practically concerned position on this front: don't support/like it and will try to minimise its impact as much as possible, but I also take advantage of the associated benefits by being sure that nothing of this is likely to have a direct impact on me.
You don't want to be on a blacklist, do you?
Honestly, I wouldn't really mind to unfairly (-> only possible way as far as I am not doing anything wrong) be in a blacklist. Although I am a peaceful person not particularly interested in getting in trouble, I don't think that abusing authority/power should be tolerated via fear. In democratic and law-based countries, civic resistance to official arbitrariness is almost a must. When what is really behind that unfairness is capital, rich people getting richer and wellness/peace of mind of the few (what unfortunately is almost always the case), this is almost a pleasure to me.
Don't misunderstand my position. I don't despise rich people or any other generic kind of people (although I think that rich people getting richer isn't precisely a top priority for the world). I despise ignorance-driven invasion of others. I despise those seriously thinking that whatever they have/like/expect can be unilaterally imposed to others. A big proportion of rich people have the distorted impression that everyone else want what they have and I do enjoy proving them wrong.
Lighten up Francis.
I didn't know what that meant, so I did a quick search and apparently is a reference to a 1981 Bill Murray movie about war/soldiers. This fact seems to give some indications about you and your personality (apologies if I am wrong on any issue; as said to the AC above, I am writing all this on the go, as my morning distraction):
:)
- You are older than me. I was born on 1978 and never heard about that movie. It doesn't seem a classic, but the kind of movie which is enjoyed by the given generation. Were you in the 15-25 range when this movie came up? 50-60 yo? Older?
- War/soldiers movies, mainly not precisely excellent movies like this one (never saw that movie and don't want to criticise it, this is just a more or less blind guess), are usually appealing for a very specific audience. So, I guess that it is safe to assume that you are a man and, mostly likely, you have some kind of relationship with military or similar (police or spying agency or something like this). It might be even possible that this movie (or this sentence or the specific nutcase who said it) is popular among certain group of people (soldiers?) and perhaps you are even younger than what my first point assumed (but I do think that you are old).
- You are arbitrarily insulting me (you are directly calling me psycho), despite how the aforementioned conversation has evolved and the behaviour which I have shown (Slashdot is kind of problematic for people liking to misunderstand others, right? Things are written forever and cannot be edited, so manipulating what a person did or said is quite difficult. The actions are there for anyone to read as many times and as slowly as they need in order to understand the whole situation properly), which might be too-descriptive and even a bit too aggressive but always reasonable (well, unless you feel attacked by a higher number of words, this is the case with some people; but I am afraid that this isn't a valid interpretation). Another relevant issue is that you don't know me at all (I guess) and that you have self-invited yourself to a conversation which wasn't about you (I guess, again), all this anonymously. So, the summary of this point: you are arbitrarily insulting someone in an anonymous way because of whatever (didn't like me or what I say or what I represent) and you are calling me psycho! Don't you get the irony of this?
So, it seems that you have no relationship with me (certain age, military-like taste, anonymously/cowardly insulting others) or with the kind of people I want to deal with. It seems that you want just be part of a group against one person (because it might seem that I am in the weakest spot against all these other anonymous cowards, but appearances aren't always too accurate, you know?). It seems that your perception of reality is hugely distorted (acting as a psycho and thinking that other person has that behaviour) and that you seriously think that can arbitrary attack/force/being forced (military way of doing things) anyone? Hmm. All this sounds kind of familiar to me. Did I meet you in a previous chat in another Slashdot article? You were repeating like a crazy the same nonsense over and over and I tried to calm you down and explain you that you didn't get anything right? You were like expecting me to prove something to you (like you being any kind of authority). It was about something that the US army did. Does anything of this sound familiar to you? Because if it does, I guess that I have to warn you that I am into women (not too concerned about age or other generic features, but tend to like those a bit younger than me) and, even in case that you are a woman, am not too much into the obsessive stalker thing, I mean, I am sure that you are marvellous person, it isn't you, it's me, but I think that you should better get obsessed with other logged-in users who are more compatible with your "peculiarities". I am completely sure that you will find someone with whom you will get in a long obsessive relationship of anonymity and crazy misinterpretations.
LOL. You and the other AC made my morning, thanks
Not the original AC.
Perhaps not the original one but sharing the same pathetic views, so no real difference to me. Am I a tool? The one being the target of a random idiot insulting me? I have to tolerate any random idiot arbitrarily attacking me and cannot say anything, because that random idiot might be part of a group of pathetic fanatics which might try to "defend" it? Seriously, what is wrong with people like you? Are you able to understand the simplest situation? You all are pathetic fanatics in my book and, lately, my tolerance with you is zero (-> self-promotion of my online business which doesn't want to deal with people of your kind). Too aggressive? Learn to behave and to not arbitrarily invade others or accept the consequences.
Here you have another version: you are a pathetic fanatic, coward, part of a small lynch squad of pathetic fanatics cowards attacking someone for no reason (other than justifying the initial unreasonable attack of another idiot -> fanaticism in its purest form). The most pathetic part is that you are probably thinking that what you did is fair or right?! You are a shame for you and for anyone who has ever tried to actually help others. You are what is wrong with internet and the new wave of stupidity which has provoked (too much power=knowledge for people not used to have it). You are a half-person. You need to grow and to learn to become a real person (try by living outside your bubble; I guess that you are a rich kid who hasn't ever done the slightest effort, someone whose ideas mostly come from TV and blind guesses). You should be kept under quarantine until you become a person in order to avoid you making stupid actions damaging you and others. You and all what you represent were, are and will be crap for me and I don't want you to be near me.
If you seriously want to help someone, you could try with me. There is something which you can do for me. This is a very important mission and your contribution is extremely relevant. Calm down! Breath deep! And think very carefully before answering this very important question: what version did you find more offensive/hurting (the insults in the first paragraph or in the second one?)? I am doing a small research among those of your kind to increase the effectiveness of my reactions to your nonsense. You know? To not waste too much time with you. Honestly, I am not too concern about this issue, because I could plainly ignore your crazy nonsense and laugh at you (even make you part of my enjoyment without you realising about it because you are soooo stupid) but I guess that everyone, even crazily stupid fanatics like you, can be useful for something and here you have your opportunity.
(Clarification: I have written all this text on the go, some minutes after reading your stupid comment. In parallel, I have been checking what some applications have done during last night, drinking my morning coffee and reading the news. I know that if I don't explain all this, you would think that my comment, your comment and even all what you represent is much more important to me than what it really is. You are a distraction, a joke, a sad reality which I already accepted that cannot be fixed and plainly enjoy it.)
There have so much money and software-based anything generates so much revenue with a relevant investment that this apparent nonsense seems self-sustaining! This project, for example, is likely to not lose a dime, even to generate profits, independently upon its final outputs. After injecting a relevant amount of money, Facebook might start applying for R&D grants/prizes which will most likely earn; just this might be enough to account for all the costs during some years. Additionally, it will be very positive for the public image of Facebook as a game-changer and R&D-focused company. All the workers and managers will get lots of money, excellent experience for their CVs and lots of relevant knowledge (even in case of not reaching a proper product, working on so demanding projects is the best to get top-level expertise). Facebook might even get some further direct benefits via commercialising preliminary versions or merchandising.
When you have enough money to invest, losing in software is virtually impossible, mainly in a place like Silicon Valley which has already an important intrinsic value (virtually anything from there gets lots of attention/free advertisement and is appealing to customers everywhere). I mean having more expenses than earnings, because in case of bringing costs of opportunity into picture too, all these jokish projects would be pure losses. But I guess that nobody cares/knows as far as the apparent profit continue flowing.
Someone might think that people like me might be unhappy with such an unfair situation, but I do fully accept it. Note that my personal situation (as the one of most of programmers/software-companies outside a few privileged areas) is completely different than all that: no investors, no opportunities, no money flowing around, having to do everything perfectly to be systematically ignored, not having any kind of support (for most of people in the town where I am now programming isn’t even an actual occupation or cannot understand what remote work is), etc. Although I would certainly love working under better conditions, I wouldn't ever renounce to some of my current benefits (e.g., doing what I consider right without tolerating ignorant arbitrary impositions); I am also sure that most of people working on these generating-money-from-nowhere projects are systematically tolerating what I would never do. That's why I don't envy those programmers and think that this Silicon Valley apparent nonsense is likely to continue existing for a while (and, hopefully, the TV series forever! Season 4 premiere on Sunday!!).
Still not clear? Let me put it in a different way: even in case of ever considering acceptable to have a butler, I couldn't afford an Eddie-like one.
To give some context to my aforementioned surprise (funny rather than insightful!) to future readers which might not see them, here you have an excerpt of the current version of my bio: "...Unbuyable. Never had money and never minded it. No fan of politics, but leftist..."; and my signature: "Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.". If you still have doubts about the exact intention of this or any other of comments, please take a look at any of the multiple over-clarifications which I have written everywhere or, ideally, ask me.
(Unnecessary clarifications? I wish this was true.)
+1 insightful? Come on!
... something like this, because it goes against how things have to be, right? And you are judge, jury and executioner of that ultimate truth! Everything what is against the format which you consider acceptable is intrinsically bad and, consequently, attackable. Yes, this is where your pathetically unreasonable anger comes from. People doing things slightly different than you are so infuriating, right? Why are all these people not doing exactly what you want as you want it? You can only think about making them aware and pay for their wrong actions by releasing all this anger that burns inside you!
Contrarily to what you think of me, I think that you are very funny. I might even pay for seeing you getting angry with ridiculous nonsense, like people making some mostakes while wriiting or having different priorities than you do. Some time ago, I used to try to help those like you understand, but quickly realised that this was a very bad idea. Now, I plainly enjoy you (+ write some clarifications; just in case, because some of these fanatics might do really weird things).
... when I do ...
... like ... (there is a waiting period between consecutive posts, even for logged-in users! I didn't know about that)
... might not ...
You are either drunk or stupid
As explained, I cannot be drunk and you are the only stupid here. Additionally, your attitude of attacking someone with a random accusation does seem indicative of being under the influence of something perhaps different than just stupidity.
Responding to yourself again and again to explain yourself
I see. You belong to the fanatic, low-self-esteem subgroup of things-have-to-be-like-this-end-of-the-story (among who are those called grammar nazis). Commentators are expected to use just one comment to write the whole idea, with minor exceptions like highlighting relevant mistakes. Sorry for having misjudged the origin of your imaginary motivation to unmotivatedly attack me: you don't care about rich people/butlers, you care about the way in which I have misused the comments section! For example, you...
Although I am kind of funny, at least some times, you might be right and should better focus on enjoying humour rather than on delivering it. I might add some funny bits in serious comments, but better letting the 100% humour posts for the pros (there are some really funny fellows around).
In any case, note that all the clarifications are my reaction to quite a few bad past experiences with people misunderstanding what I thought that was evident, rather than a normal output of my jokes.
Why are you saying that? Are you not understanding or not liking the joke? Either way, what is the point of reacting so aggressively to someone merely sharing some funny stuff? How has my attitude hurt you? Are you a low-self-esteem (-> only kind of people I know who cannot make fun of themselves) rich person or butler? Either way, sorry for having said the words which your imagination made you think that were a personal attack to you, your status or your profession, because it wasn't my intention.
Just FYI, I am working in my office, where I am pretty much during the whole day, and have never consumed any kind of drug at work (or the day before), because my job is quite demanding and doesn't allow me to do things like this. To not mention the fact of being a small-business owner working under very tough conditions (and eventually having to deal with "people" like you), for whom his online image is very important. As far as you seem so concerned about me and what I do, I can confirm you that I haven't drunk alcohol (other than perhaps a couple of drinks in 2/3 social events) in over 2 years, a decision which I made one random day and which I have honoured with no effort. And even when I was drinking alcohol (not precisely the only drug which I have ever tried; at some points of my life, I did party a lot), I never wrote anything on internet (not even outside my work) or performed any other kind of action usually associated with weak or low-self-esteem personalities like drinking to forget (I always drunk to loosen up a bit and to enjoy the experience).
Tremendous contribution, other AC, please continue writing these brave, sensible and not-indicative-of-your-personal-lacks-at-all comments (clarification because you seem quite stupid: I am being sarcastic).
Just in case it isn't completely clear: I am joking (+ hoping that the parent poster was joking too).
I mean... he read my credentials in a Post-it on the computer which I use for Slashdot, near my favourite piano, in my summer villa, where I have all my sport cars. BTW, I have already punished him.
LOL. I wish my stupid butler didn't spend all the mod points.
After having read the title of the new Slashdot article (Physicists Observe 'Negative Mass'), I prefer to replace my aforementioned "what science can deliver" with "what the reproducible, experimentally-validated and somehow-compatible-with-all-our-remaining-knowledge-including-common-sense side of science can deliver".
(My apologies to the AC above for having used so many words which ideally shouldn't be required).
My comments are completely on-topic, are you sure that you understood them?
Many posts in this thread are talking about thoughts and reading minds and this is very far away from this article (and from what science can deliver now and in the next quite a few years). This research is just about blindly mapping current brain activity with patterns assumed to be associated with very specific outputs. For example, it might be possible to know what happens in the brain when a person performs certain movement, but it is completely impossible to know what a person is thinking about. Clearer now?
which thoughts to type
It doesn't deal with thoughts. We are still very far away from understanding how the brain works at different levels like how ideas or thinking process happen. All what we can do is to locate the parts of the brain which have activity under very specific conditions (e.g., performing certain movement) and, without understanding well how it exactly works, we might recognise that specific behaviour by looking at future brain activity. This particular research deals with words about to be said (the thought has already happened) and its exact reliability (better: applicability to any random person) is unclear.
be amazing for handicapped people
It is already possible to somehow account for this specific scenario. Note that one of the most difficult parts of these developments (like any other one dealing with not-properly-understood phenomena) is making it generally applicable. If you focused on just one person and accounted for just specific actions (e.g., using certain finger to press letter "a" in a keyword in certain location), it could already be done. On the other hand, it might be a bit too expensive to get a not-clearly-beneficial output.