I'm sure many other bilingual people that speak both languages frequently can probably say something similar.

I have a good understanding of 4 languages and speak 3 fluently (English, Dutch, French, German)

I can attest to this in a certain extend: My thoughts are often also in concepts, but the "context" of a language differs greatly and the way people express themselves in the different languages have different nuances. Often it depends on the context I'm thinking to which language I switch if I'm actually thinking in language. It feels like a post-process filter, where I sometimes conclude mid-sentence I don't have a translation for a specific word yet I'm in the process of actively verbalizing the concept or idea.

The concepts that the languages describe are not just langual but also cultural and within your demography you're "on par" with the cultural nuances to be able to communicate.

The languages I've been in contact with are a bit simular and related, but as an example the Spanish they speak in Cuba is a different one with different expressions as the Spanish in Spain, where the life-conditions are vastly different.

So for me, it seems a grand challenge to come to a "babelfish", which translates universal concepts and where brainwaves are identical to recreate the same (or simular, or derived, or local) concept or idea.

To me it seems these "thought reading machines" are just able to capture a brainwave pattern, associate a concept or word with it individually. Otherwise it would raise for me personally ALOT of additional questions and requires a readjustment of how I imagine the brain to operate and come into form through aging and learning.

It was just a feedback-loop where after pushing some buttons you receive a (audio)visual/sensory reward or result for pushing the buttons in a certain sequence.

As a programmer, you are paid to generate a certain audiovisual result for someone who has learned to ask other people to learn to push the buttons in the right sequence to come to the sensory result (s)he desires.

about the [x year olds] that send 300 text messages a day (not an exaggeration) and live their life through facebook

I used to do that; constantly texting, facebooking with my smartphone. All lulz and cute, status updating and "self promoting". As a partial introvert, this suited me very well.

But after a while it gets tiring people always get a hold on you, for the annoying bitchy things first. My life evolved and I stopped feeling the need to read other people's drama, how they bought a puppy, how they got dumped *again*, what tv-shows they're currently watching...

Not that I like these people less, but the depth of (expected) immersion is too deep compared to what I usually put into it (once in a while opening up MSN, a textmessage or sporadically meeting at a bar and have a conversation packed with more content, ...).

So while it "felt at first" I was more efficiently communicating, "managing my contacts", it's been not really all that efficient on social and communicative terms. Nor the energy I put in and what I got out of it.

I have two younger sisters, and when they were between 12 and 16 they were heavy internet users as well, very connected and what have you, using MSN-chat, MSN Messenger and what have you. All pre-facebook. Teens will find always ways to stay connected (remember the conventional phone in the 80s-90s? I didn't have a cellphone, I used to actually use a phone for talking with my friends and gf..)

If I made my thoughts public or let everyone know who my friends are I would be in a lot of trouble

Did Putin add you as friend on facebook ?

Brain-computer interface really taking up via to emos?

For me this raises the question; if an emo watches emoRate. Should emoRate show the emo video material matching the emo's emotional state and thus amplifying and affirming emo's emotions entering a self-referencing emo-loop...

Or should one design an algorithm detecting emotional changes of users watching emoRate, and serve emo content countering emo's current emotional state in the opposite direction?

Say, distilling your facebook data:

"subject x in agerange y who lists keyswords a,b,c as interest matches category 'Emo'."
"category 'Emo' responds well to imagery of young kittens yet negative being presented by imagery of maternal figures"

and keeps using it for the same or other purpose for which it was designed.

Consider this: if you want to hide something, hide it in plain view.

But I can imagine this is also a great inside joke, imagine this:

Young eager cadet: "Sergei, what is this?"
"Our top of the line distraction and nuclear defence device!"
"How does it work?"
"We keep on broadcasting this pendula going over this magnetic field"
"Why?"
"Oh, you see... The CIA is listening since 1982 and can imagine it's a nuclear reaction device or anything they can come up with. We use it joke around since the signal can be picked up everywhere in Russia."
"How?"
"Do you see this microphone?"
"Yes..."
"Say, I met this girl Naimina and I want to share story and her number and zipcode with my comrades..."
reaches for microphone: "UVB-76, UVB-76 -- 93 882 naimina 74 14 35 74 -- 9 3 8 8 2 nikolai, anna, ivan, michail, ivan, nikolai, anna, 7, 4, 1, 4, 3, 5, 7, 4"

Just diversifying their portfolio or are there other objectives at work?

They want to optimize their support-offices...
Someone realized 90% of their calls was among these lines:"MY COMPUTER RUNS SLOW SINCE I GOT A PENTIUM!"
with the sole fix to uninstall McAfee and afterwards reinstalling the OS if the McAfee uninstal takes the guts of your PC with it.

They are going to fix McAfee.

You know too much...

Can I suggest you a nice locationbased facebook game? You can share your score with your friends and grandmother!! FOR FREE!

Google came to be because there was an opportunity in the market, and a very large one at that.

Oh really?

Do you remember the internet around that time?
We had AskJeeves, Astalavista, HotBot, Yahoo, Ilse and a pile of other searchengines. Google was one of the pile.

Later google released gmail. We had millions of online email providers, hotmail was really hot that time with MSN-chat integration and your profile page (taking a throw at MySpace)

Google did bring innovation in searchresults and found a way to neatly advertize. But most of its funtionality was very much already existing. They played the same game as alot of others at that time, but just slightly better.

Yahoo, in every thing they've done has had the upper hand, and let it slip away. They grab a market, and fail to innovate beyond that. They get greedy with big checks from advertisers and can't see beyond that.

Every large cooperation at a certain point starts to work profit driven and do get greedy in a sense. I doubt someone sat at Yahoo thinking "ok, this is slipping away", no they thought they were doing the thing generating the most profit.
Alot of older softwarehouses have a product, they (suits) milk it for years to come and just "innovate" as necessary, not beyond that.

You know what, before I die I will create a program that posts random predefined messages to my Facebook account after I have died.

This makes me want to create a task which prompts once a week/2weeks wherever the user is still alive.

Once you stop confirming, your account gets taking over by the random predefined mode.

Image the stress after coming back after a 3-week holiday...

Connected to the overly-expensive cellular internet

If you drive an Audi A8 you have some extra pocketmoney to spare.

Added to that, I can imagine these cars being leased by coorporate/direction types who can bring it in as a company expense.

I pay 8euro for 500Mb/month for my 3G connection which gets me by for what I do until I hit a Wifi-hotspot.

For a "businesspack" with unlimited calling/texting and 500Mb on 3G (+0,0165euro/MB if you go over it) you put out 70euro, which you can write off taxes. (mind you, a nice businessdinner cost you ALOT more as 70 euro)

Maybe this will give them an idea of how it feels to have your privacy invaded.

While I share your concerns and it's a hot debate the latest years consider this...

The greater part of people go online these days and enter personal data, as a matter of fact, plenty of then do no other thing online as entering data on servers owned by others.

These services these people enter data and content (gmail, google, facebook, slashdot, fora, flickr, twitter, ...) without needing to host or create a platform themselves in a 1990s online-experience.

In return they have their data analyzed and shown "discrete ads".
Seems a fair tradeoff in business terms and value-return.

OTOH, google owes you nothing; you can always close your account and seek alternatives.

Long live 3dfx.

3dfx is dead.

They've gone bankrupt since 2000

But I share your sentiments, once I got my Voodoo Banshee card and got some extra RAM in my Pentium I was king on earth.

Based on the way Apple has talked about flash, I guess people's iPhones are just going to explode.

It's why Papermann, the Apple Hardware designer, has resigned after "the last ultimate hardware design".

The plot to cleanse the world of consumerism, why do you think they had those Russian spies all over the USA? No doubt Papermann was a nice infiltrant and will now enjoying his view on the beach in Russia (which is, a bit more tropical climated as usual as a way to compensate Papermann.)

Brilliant to take out the Apple drones first, the class-A model of consumerism, Communism will be victorious AGAIN!

Fire up those Linux advocate-engines!

2011 *IS* the year of the Linux desktop, hooray!

What I want to know is, what will the trend-followers jump on to next

Well, that thing is having a small niche of people enjoying it right now privately. The moment it become "popular" and "trendy", it will kill its originating core-base.

By the time it's general public, its soul will be dead.

I guess you should ask 14-15yo's right now what's hot and cool to know as we've pushed through our generation and hypothecated on it, we grew older and made (or found ways to justify) our jobs with it for what we thought was cool and innovating and all in their niche has preached it as the next best thing because we believed it was and taught it was while all envisioned a world where it could be.

It's why we're here without a renewing populus, reliving our own tech-nostalgia. Ever wondered why "hardcore nerds" are *STILL* talking about starwars? It's yought-nostalgia and with slashdot and all we unite, justify it and keep the "image alive", but we'll die out and the legacy we're leaving behind us with the interest to understand and maintain the "pragmatic thinking in coding" or preaching in the industry we've pushed forth and discussed about in a self-serving sense of importance and creation of an industry we all feel good with because we can "thinking with computers and get paid for it".

So, while making the extrapolation and combing the enthousiastic talks of my cousins, the future will be about vampires and law-enforcement with cool forensics skills.