Microsoft Research Shows Off New Projects On College Recruiting Tour 62
In a recent college recruiting tour, Microsoft's Craig Mundie was able to showcase some of the experiments coming out of their Research division. Among some of the interesting projects were another pass at the Minority Report interface, eye-tracking, intelligent data sorting, a global carbon-climate model, and several other software and hardware experiments. A video and supporting slideshow are also available via Microsoft's press site. "Mundie also will discuss the kinds of computers students will soon be using – machines that will respond to gestures through new natural user interfaces; deploy the power of new microprocessors; migrate data to the cloud; and use live data to drive new simulations and visualizations. He’ll center on an environmental theme to show what it might be like to be a research scientist working on zero carbon energy in the future using new interactions with data and computers to increase insight."
Bar of soap mouse (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's hardware research division ages back demoed a mouse that was akin to a bar of soap. You held it up in the air like a remote control, and rotated around in your hand. It could be operated from a couch or another location where didn't have a traditional hard surface. I thought it was a great idea.
Whatever happened to it?
Re:Bar of soap mouse (Score:5, Insightful)
No idea. Now shut up, I'm playing Mario Kart on my Wii.
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The Wii-mote is a pointer, and a very inaccurate one at that. It is a very different tool from a mouse.
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No profit in it. Just get a sufficiently round mouse, stick it in a sock and sew it shut. Tadah.
The knockoffs would blow them away.
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I imagine it is caught in a development life cycle...or that Microsoft determined that most consumers are content using touchpads or game system controllers to interface from the couch.
Re:Bar of soap mouse (Score:4, Funny)
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They invented an extra bulky presentation mouse [gyration.com]?
Eye tracking? (Score:1)
"Wild" body gestures eh? (Score:2)
So sweaty monkey dancing is really some form of user input device.
I think I'll stick with my keyboard...
Re:"Wild" body gestures eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
I love posts like this, and must admit that I've been guilty of the same thing.
"In it's current state, this technology is clearly outclassed by other technologies on the market. They're wasting their time. I'm not buying it."
Yeah, in it's current state, it looks retarded. But what will it develop into?
A lot of people thought the Eyetoy was stupid and motion control video games would only be a passing fad. Further development of motion sensing technology pointed to using a controller rather than a camera, which was then masterfully executed by Nintendo. Did the tech suck when it first came out? Absolutely. Was it worth forging ahead into the arena of motion control? Indeed.
Actually, now, there's a renewed interest [xbox.com] in using cameras to control what's going on in the game.
In review: Yes, new technology is often outclassed by other alternatives before it matures. If you give it time, though, it can develop into something really cool.
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Project Natal was actually part of the demonstration. Not only in its current form (no, Mundie did not get up and play a game of 3D-Breakout using his hands as paddles, but he showed a video of it from, IIRC, E3) but also as a PC input device; using gestures in open air to do things like manipulate a 3D model in a CAD program.
I wouldn't want that to become the *primary* input means, but it certainly makes sense as an option for certain types of input.
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http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid713271701?bclid=713073346&bctid=709364416 [brightcove.com]
Reminds me of a quote by Michael Faraday (Score:1)
When the Prime Minister asked of a new discovery, 'What good is it?', Faraday replied, 'What good is a new-born baby?'...
Bo-ring (Score:1)
No intelligent robots.
No flying cars.
No ray guns.
*YAWN*
NEXT please.
'Minority Report' Get All The Chicks... (Score:1, Offtopic)
... but there was another PKD story that portrayed the same tech first. Of course, that one was turned into a crappy movie [imdb.com] starring Ben Aflac!
If only it had had Cuba Gooding Jr. in it - he's much better than Ben Affleck...
(did I say that out loud?)
In other news, (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft released a product that does not suck. Unfortunately, it is a vacuum cleaner.
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Not necessary (Score:1)
He presented at the U of Washington last night (Score:3, Informative)
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Nice link, thanks.
It's worth pointing out that this was not in any way an actual recruiting tour. I'm sure it interested some people who may now go apply, but there was nobody from HR there, and nobody was taking resumes or discussing internships. Instead, Mundie was basically traveling through several leading universities to talk with administrators, faculty, students, and the general public. The big presentation (in the linked video) is the "general public" one; although much of the audience was connected
I went to one of these talks (Score:2)
The two main points of his talk were a) we need to find a better paradigm for organizing the vast amounts of information we're being deluged with and b) we haven't found a good replacement yet for the mouse-and-keyboard model of human-computer interaction (he basically admitted that Microsoft's efforts at speech recognition so far have been a total failure), but we're going
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The keyboard only model works great.
Of course with your sig I am sure the little unemplyed college student thinks he knows better.
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Normally replying to a sig results in an automatic -1 Offtopic, but in this case, I think it makes a perfect point.
Here we are discussing the merits of new realms of human interface when we don't properly understand the interfaces we already have. Over the decades, people have tried again and again to reinvent the IDE, in many cases failing utterly, in others just trading one set of features for
Finally! (Score:2)
WOW! CUTTING EDGE STUFF FROM MICROSOFT!! (Score:1)
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All joking aside here... (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly what truly innovative stuff from Microsoft Research has seen the light of day?
Yes, I know that such research is expected to produce remarkably few results in the real world. But the closest thing to innovation I've seen is the ribbon toolbar in Office 2007.
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Back in the 90s Bill Gates made fun of how much Apple spent on research and how little came out of the labs.
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Back in the '90s Apple nearly went out of business. Today they act as another Microsoft research facility.
"Recruiting tour"?!? (Score:2)
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First off, I wouldn't call it a recruiting tour. Nobody was taking resumes. Nobody from HR was present. There were no references to internships or other openings. Heck, I spoke to Mundie in person before the talk, attended the talk, and attended the reception afterwards, and nobody (Mundie or anybody else) made any reference at all to recruitment.
Second, the people who were laid off were not Microsoft's engineers and programmers, but instead were people in fields such as marketing and legal affairs. They've
To the "OSS should stop copying..." crowd (Score:2)
One thing to mention here is (Score:2)
One thing to mention here is if you join Microsoft itself (as opposed to its research arm - Microsoft Research), you won't ever get to work on any of the cool stuff. And if you join MSR, the shit you work on will never ship. So it's a lose-lose, no matter where you go, unless you're a researcher and publishing papers gives you a boner.
Why is Microsoft on a Recruiting Tour? (Score:2)
-Todd