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Microsoft's Vision Of Future Workplaces
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft unveils their new office of the near future in a swanky center in Redmond. Inside this article you will find clear evidence of institutional navel gazing like never before and a staggering ignorance of current technology (much of this seems retreaded) not to mention actual business needs or wants. Want proof? How about: '"Surround sound is going to be increasingly important in future offices," says group marketing manager Tom Gruver in leading a tour of the new facility.' Right. More chestnuts inside."
please tell me this office of the future comes complete with soundproof cubicles. Thats what everyone needs to hear their neighbors blasting their Abba CDs.
Gates book, 'The Road Ahead' was disconnected from reality as well. MS was late to the Internet, and continues to exhibit a follow-the-leader style of reaction vs. action thinking. They don't get it and they never will.
Has any one read 1984?
I like the monitor they show in the article. We're starting to have more people with multiple monitors at my work, and it does really help for programming tasks.
This one they show is great, because of the shape and not having to have separate monitors. Very nice.
- sigs are for wimps.
The article mentions few details. Yes, surround sound is a little bit ridiculous. But, the pen copy and paste from computer to computer is interesting. Biometrics for access control? That is already possible with Windows. What else is the big news? Microsoft has some great plans to revolutionize the office? This has been their grand dream since the released their wonderful product "office". Of course, we are all well aware how well that plan worked...
This is a pointless article.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
I would of guessed the opposite from Microsoft.
"The lines between home and office are blurring,"
And that, my dear friends, is what will decide its success. Ever-increasing workloads and unreasonable expectations of "productivity" from cost-cutting employers mean there's a good chance the above statement will come true, even if the rest [of the vision] doesn't.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
"At one desk, users can move a wireless mouse's pointer from the screen of one computer to the screen of a laptop, with no wire or wireless connection between the computers themselves. That allows copying or moving material between the computers, a task that would otherwise be more difficult."
Hahahahah! The idea that it would be really hard to copy info between 2 computers unless you can drag from one desktop to another! Even in Windows you can just open 2 explorer windows if you REALLY REALLY HAVE TO use drag 'n' drop to copy files.
Stuff like the quote from the article is like some myopic future gazing from ancient SF, where they "solved" problems of the future using an extended version of the current method- i.e. The way people in the future will save space with books is that they will keep all their books in a warehouse many miles from their house and be able to teleport the volume they require from the warehouse when they want to read it...
graspee
Your choice, Mr. Anderson:
- Receive your message via some old Gleep rattling on about the weather, his latest aches and pains, finally getting to the point 13 minutes into the message..., or
- Skimming the email until you get to the part that matters, reading it quickly and then hitting a ^D to send it to hell.
Well, Mr. Anderson, which is it? Listen to 5 messages an hour (if you're lucky), or processing 30 emails in the same amount of time? Where do you want to go today, Mr. Anderson?My name is Neo!
THUD.
Yeah, right.
Though it might be an improvement.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Surely there *must* be some more new ideas floating round than that - for instance, what about better tools to manage the flood of email people now receive?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
1) That wraparound screen actually looks pretty cool and potentially useful. I find myself glancing back and forth slightly across my large screen, so something like this could help with limited screen real estate. Not everyone's comfortable with X-style multiple desktops. My one worry is that this monitor would be MS-only (insert quote about GM requiring GM wheels here...)
2) Surround sound being an important part of an office? If your office is a production studio, maybe - but if your office is a studio, chances are you know more about what you need than a bunch of marketing hacks from MS.
I kind of hope this was a joke that the article didn't quite make clear.
3) The lack of a focus on security - on the one hand, MS might not want to overhype something they've been horribly deficient with in the past. On the other hand, it sounds like even the visitors noticed a lack of focus on secure computing, and I'd be a bit concerned about a company that promotes style over substance as the "office of the near future".
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
"...workers e-mail each other spoken messages, or videos of themselves delivering messages"
Here I am in this next scene, walking to Sue's office delivering her the memo on a Post-It, written in crayon. The Digital "Rights" Management system intergrated at great expense into everyhting from the coffee maker to my car dashboard is fsck'ed up again and the entire office is broken.
- At one desk, users can move a wireless mouse's pointer from the screen of one computer to the screen of a laptop, with no wire or wireless connection between the computers themselves. That allows copying or moving material between the computers, a task that would otherwise be more difficult.
Does anybody else have difficulties with this particular idea? Since when did the ability to move a mouse pointer mean you could copy and paste?"At one desk, users can move a wireless mouse's pointer from the screen of one computer to the screen of a laptop, with no wire or wireless connection between the computers themselves."
I am doing that right now...
win2vnc
AdFuel
"There is an emphasis here on security, but that doesn't mean we can't be visionary," Gruver explains.
If by 'visionary' they mean 3d sound, video emails and hierarchical buddies I'd rather have them concentrate on security.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
At one desk, users can move a wireless mouse's pointer from the screen of one computer to the screen of a laptop, with no wire or wireless connection between the computers themselves. That allows copying or moving material between the computers, a task that would otherwise be more difficult.
Yes, that normally is difficult if there is "no connection between the computers". So is the mouse also a base station for wireless ethernet?!?
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
Prefences->Homepage->Exclude Stories from Homepage->Topics: Microsoft. Theres also a filter for JonKatz if anyone out there doesn't already have it checked.
Here's ZDNet's article. It has a different picture with it. You can find it here.
Won't it be great to open an email in your office that says,
"HARD TEEN ANAL SEX WITH ANIMALS!
CUM GET YOUR HARD TEEN ANAL SEX WITH ANIMALS!"
Won't spam be fun then.
Surround sound could help...
If I could get the MS Paperclip to speak at me from all directions, I think I could be even more productive at work.
oh. that'd be everywhere, then...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
I wasn't forced, but it would be nice to be able to automatically have it now appear on the page. I'd rather read 10 Katz stories per day than have to put up with annoying stuff like the MS bashing. It's just immature. I'd rather read comparisons of software performance, or programming language learnability, etc., not the kind fo claptrap that the Editors post when there's nothing better to do.
Amazing magic tricks
I can understand the advantage of dual displays for graphics tasks but what is the advantage of having dual displays for programming? Can't you just use virtual desktops and have a big monitor? My monitor, the sony in the middle runs at 1600x1200. What would be the advantage of running 2 displays at 800x600 over running one big monitor at 1600x1200?
workers e-mail each other spoken messages, or videos of themselves delivering messages, rather than simply writing e-mails or leaving voice mails.
simplifying:
workers e-mail each other...videos of themselves delivering messages... rather than simply writing e-mails..
What? They email each other videos of themselves delivering messages? Is this some dystopian big brother style post office, where you have to keep your supervisor informed about all your work via email? Or is it instead an ultra paranoid method of document authentication?
We must be told!
PS. Yeah, yeah, I know that they meant saying the message into a webcam or whatever, but the above is how I read it first time...
Here.
The article... well... isn't. It's an ADD. Take a look at every "article" on MSN. Wake up and watch the Matrix, people, MSN is one big banner add. LOOK AT IT! So is this article. One big add. Puppets pushing Media Player 9 and all the other "extra" features in MSN that you ahve to pay for.
here
/me wonders if http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=microsoft&btnG =Google+Search is the next slashdot (w/o karma)
I'd be a bit concerned about a company that promotes style over substance as the "office of the near future".
Hello.. this is Microsoft. I would be more concerned if they started promoting substance at all. Have you used Windows FisherPrice recently? =)
At one desk, users can move a wireless mouse's pointer from the screen of one computer to the screen of a laptop.
Imagine going mad at somebody and throwing your mouse at him. It will take weeks before you have found your cursor back!
Euh... I have a mouse-cursor on the screen but I don't know who it belongs to..."
Please, stop playing around. Get away from that start-menu!
Don't! DON'T. Don't run winipcfg! I will hate you for the rest of your life!
*** irc-user has quit (Ping timeout)
bash$
"One concept not addressed is the bugs, unnecessary or hidden features and overly complicated products Microsoft has already introduced into the market."
Yeah, I tend to call the stuff Microsoft has already introduced into the market bugs too.
I don't want to filter out ALL microsoft postings, just the ones that are unfairly or rediculously critical. Occasionally there is some interesting stuff posted. There should be another topic checkbox labeled "Anti-Microsoft"!
Amazing magic tricks
Truly the most disturbing part of this is the implication that in the office of the future Microsoft will have extended their oh-so-clever-I-want-to-puke C# naming convention to the D# display. After getting a slew of MS products named ActiveSomething, and then suffering through the Product Year scheme started by Windows 95 and subsequently embraced by software companies outside of Redmond and continuing today (Unreal Tournament 2003 anyone?), we can now look forward to seeing such great products as E#, F#, G#....
Over the next 10 years, this fancy new Information Technology is going to be a great separator of good, capable companies (who will prosper in it), and those who just buy it because of Microsoft's cool commercials on page 2 of "Business Week" and on CNN.
:)
Not many people are properly wired for this InfoTech stuff. A _very_ senior guy at the company I work for emailed me last week because I dropped the "Open Directory Project" into a conversation down the pub. The guy in question knows all about Google, yet he still emailed me with the precise words "What was that URL you told me the other day for 'The Open Directory Project'?".
In a way it's all happening now with Intranets, Extranets and CRM etc. Companies that are created by, or led by people that "get IT" - and have the business genes to go with it - are going to have no problem in this exciting new landscape where new "technology" comes along every 24 hours.
I can't wait
What up with all the MS articles lately.
/.?
Did MS buy
Where I used to work some of the more nerdy types devoted their lunch hours to Doom death matches over the network. (For a while I wondered what the "AHHH SHIT!" from a few qubes away was all about). I can just imagine what goes on at M$ during lunch hour (or after hours for that matter). And I can almost see Bill getting a face full of BFG2000.
Well, the article isn't very in depth.
However, some of the described features made me grimace...they are the sort of thing that is almost GUARANTEED to be a security hazard and loaded with bugs.
Video email...sounds good til you realize that means that spammers will be sending 50meg files of porno videos. (porn good...bandwidth wasted because the spammers sent the same video 20 times...bad)
I just flinched when it talked about being able to send spreadsheets to a contact's cell phone or pda. Somehow this doesn't seem like a very safe or reliable method of distributing confidential financial information... (because of the tremendous complexity of the software that would be required to accomplish this means it is likely to have many security bugs)
Surround sound...star wars theme to copy files...lol I bet it even has a subwoofer. Unless you are the only one in the office I don't even need to address the problem here....
The wrap around screen might actually be useful, but it looks like it distorts the image. Pro developers have used multiple monitors for years now.
Finally, the mouse "automagically" moving from screen to screen...sharing network drives is shaky and buggy enough without this extra layer of complexity added in...
2) Surround sound being an important part of an office? If your office is a production studio, maybe - but if your office is a studio, chances are you know more about what you need than a bunch of marketing hacks from MS.
Surround sound makes sense to MSFT employees because most of us [including wet behind the ears college hires like me] have their own office. I love being able to listen to my obnoxious hip hop music without having to worry about an office mate like I did at internships in the past. However I often find myself wishing for speakers better than the stock, cheap PC speakers than came with my Dell. Surround sound would be way fucking cool.
Of course, this all assumes having your own office. Cubicles or other shared spaces may not be as conducive for surround sound music listening as ones own office but I wouldn't just dismiss it out of hand as you have.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not reflect the opinions, thoughts, strategies or plans of my employer.
1.) E-mail will become voice oriented
2.) Soon, the voice file will not be in a seperate file; one will only have to click on the e-mail to hear it
3.) Microsoft will see that people are tired of sending e-voice#-mail with delays between them, so they create a technology to allow them to connect and talk to each other instantly
4.) Microsoft realizes that it can create a product for e-voice#-mail which is much smaller, so it does
5.) Microsoft discovers a way for e-voice#mail to be exchanged over regular POTS wires
6.) Microsoft releases the their latest innovation...the telephone
The telephone: the next stage of computing
The one thing that is dead on is the importance of more immediately visible screen area! Financial companies have used multimonitor for quite a while, with the need for analysis of a great deal of dynamic data being paramount to their work.
Virtual desktops are of dubious use, and are more a matter of personal habit- the point of more desktop space is greater visibility, and multimonitor delivers this.
Matrox has always been aware of this need, and has served it well for years. Recently, nVidia has started to catch up, with all new Geforce chips being equipped with multimonitor capability- what facilities the actual OEM's card has is another matter, but the chip at least can handle it, encouraging more manufacturers to make multimonitor parts without having to take a risk on buying lots of multimonitor specific GPUs- so this sort of thing is bound to arrive in an office near you.
With CRTs getting cheaper and cheaper, multimonitor is within everyone's reach without breaking the bank. When flat panels come into their own, we'll get even more capability.
The one change I made to my PC setup that made my computer use more productive was to get a larger monitor. The next best thing I did was to add a second one. Online documentation is no longer a joke- it now lives on monitor 2. Now, every workstation I own has at least 2 screens.
If you've never done multimonitor before, go dig out an old PCI card (unless it's a Matrox card, you'll need to set it to init before your AGP card in the bios) and a random spare monitor, set them up on your machine, and try it. Both Windows and Linux support multimonitor very well (I've used the binary nvidia drivers under linux, and have had a great deal of success with dualhead on one card, and the recent win2k drivers have resolved their old problem with single card multimonitor.)
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Such as the ability to attach hand-drawn sketches or vector diagrams to instant messaging?
Multiple people editing concurrently one multimedia document?
Multiple keyboards for one machine, for extreme programming / pair programming, for example?
Desks that are actually the right height?
Wireless monitors & monitor stations? (let's not get into security with that, though!)
Signed and encrypted documents, changes, and messages? What about that whole DRM thing? Left and right hand at MS marketing not talking? (they are pretty big)
These are things I want and would pay money for.
Same thing goes for retinal scanners. If I lodge a screwdriver in my eye socket the next time Windows crashes, I'll be locked out of my machine.
Really.. think about it.
Who *wants* to have work follow them everywhere they go? Get up.. there's the boss on the computer waiting for you to get out of bed. Try to escape? Nuh uh.. the toaster has a few voicemails waiting for you before breakfast..
Run out the door to the car.. that's ok.. everything was forwarded to your dashmail while you were unplugging the toaster since you didn't verify it was read before it was unplugged. All this time your cell phone is going off because someone thinks their current thoughts are more important than yours. Meanwhile you're probably being tracked by marketing droids to see if they can sell you a product that will somehow get you out of bed, dressed and to your corporate shackles quicker, after all it's not you that matters.. it's the almighty dollar.. which you are making for someone else and the marketing people want some too. you're just a simple consumer after all aren't you?
Cell phones, pagers, voicemail.. bah I say. If you want to get ahold of me it's your job to track me down not my job to have every available tracking device at your disposal.
Thanks, but no thanks.. you can keep your integrated office far away from me.
In the event of a colloquy, it picks the most vociferous participants.
Imagine what that would do to slashdot. Getting moderating up for larger and larger fonts?
No, the future is Digital Pants ... a so called, Smarty Pants.
DIGITAL PANTS ACTIVATE
For those who don't get it.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
no that there weren't a few interesting things mentioned in the article.
- being able to move the mouse pointer between computers (assuming these are separate computers, not just multiple monitors); I assume this indicates some sort of network-transpart clipboard (and that the user is signed onto both computers). cool, that.
- the larger, semi-circle screen - mostly for the cool wraparound aspect (semi-inevitable considering increasingly thin monitors and e-paper (somewhere) down the line, though).
Otherwise, it sounds like they're just hashing out more variations of video/audio conferencing - whoop-de-whoo.
There seems to be a problem of understanding the _purpose_ of business communication, vs. just the _forms_ of communication. Video and audio voicemail are high-bandwidth, low content, and do little to guide the sender towards composing a coherent message. When using text, OTOH, we are often forced to skip the details and focus on the meat of what we intend to say.
However, neither of these formats truly _aids_ us in the actual composition of our thoughts - one can easily compose a syntactically perfect text message with zero content - and this is even easier in audio/video formats.
A spreadsheet and a database are useful in that they assist use in ordering large amounts of quanitative data; unfortunately, we have few tools that assist us in bridging the gap between quantiative data and qualitative data, in other words, making our intent clear while exposing the reasoning behind it.
Step-by-step-"Wizards" are a (mostly) futile stab in the general direction of this, tending to assume a very rigid result (as well as presuming that we know the final format of the ends result from the start!); what we need instead are tools that allow us to begin very broadly, and then assist us in narrowing our concepts down until we have a clear set of assumptions, observations, related analysis, and conclusions.
Yes, there are many _people_ who are good at this, and there are processes for _teaching_ people to be good at this, but we don't (yet) have automated tools that are good with helping people accomplish this.
And until someone manages to construct the fundemental versions of those tools, we'll have to deal with new versions of tools that make it easier to transfer nonsense back-and-forth, vs. actually developing, refining, and communicating ideas. Anything less than this is just another improved method to pretend that we're in the same room with someone who's not.
Or, God forbid, another variation on Powerpoint (shudder).
It would be fabulous not to have to waste the space taken up by monitor borders in my current multimonitor setup :)
I'm pretty sure that such a thing wouldn't be MS only- it looks like a curved triple size flat panel, and probably just appears to the OS as a single 3840x1024 screen or whatever.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Actually, having surround sound in an "office of the future" will be extremely important. I think the problem a lot of people have when thinking about something like this is they are thinking surround sound coming out of their computer speakers. But that is not the only place audio will be important in the "office of the future".
What will be great about these proposed offices is teleconferencing and immersive environments. And that is where surround sound (i.e. directional sound) will be incredibly important. If you are teleconferencing with several people, who will be spread out across a wall or several walls, you need audio to help you figure out who is talking. Without it, things will both feel weird and strain your brain. Think watching a movie with left and right channels reversed and both speakers on one side of your head instead of in front.
The same thing goes for video, BTW. You want eye contact to be there, so when you are talking to person A, you better be looking into person A's camera view.
Access Grid nodes encourage stereo sound and camera placement in-line with eye contact. Cool concept images and actual working prototypes of an "office of the future" can be seen at the UNC Office of the Future research site.
- Surround sound is an importent part of the workplace, because surround sound advertising embedded in the operating system that must be watched in order to continue to use the system is making Microsoft millions. Thanks to Palladium, there's no way around this.
- You try to copy a snippet from a webpage by simply moving a mouse pointer from your desktop to your laptop, but you don't have permission to copy the snippet from the webpage, and the copy action fails due to DRM.
- A worker tries to email his boss a clip of the broadcast news story about their company, but the embedded watermark blocks him from doing so.
- An email is forward to the CEO's car dash. The CEO's car 'blue screens', and literally crashes, killing the CEO, because for all the Microsoft rhetoric, they are still interested in neither security, nor correctness.
- Two of the six feet of the screen are dedicated to advertising.
Sarcastic? Yes. Overstated? Yes. Am I any more guilty of twisting things then Microsoft in this article? No.It's amazing how hard Microsoft's actual actions are working to block as much of this as possible and ruin it in every way, even as they talk this stuff up.
I think it's because Open-Source generally comes out with truly useful features, not just crap. I see no reason why someone would need to move their mouse between their laptop and their desktop. Why not just use a base-station and have them both be the same computer?
The difference between open-source and proprietary software is that open-source solves problems, while proprietary software also creates new problems to solve that weren't problems to begin with.
Think ISA Plug-N-Play. The user already had to be knowledgeable enough to open the case of their box and install the card, so they were usually already smart enough to set jumpers. People who couldn't do this simply hired someone who could to do it for them. Then PnP came along and made _every_ device impossible to install for _everyone_. Luckily, the move to PCI has made this obsolete.
I remember doing tech support for an ISP and having to help people reload their PnP modem drivers every few weeks or so, or helping them reset settings that PnP screwed up for them. Blech.
Engineering and the Ultimate
maybe A$$ of B$...
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
That's what the surround sound was for!
My ass. They can try to blur them all they want, but it will be a cold day in hell before my office is in my home. When I go home, I want to get away from work. My employer gets fully a third of my weekday existence as it is (8 hours of 24), plus occasional weekend work when things get tight. I don't want to go home, only to do more work. That's my time for family, friends, or just plain sitting on my couch in my boxers drinking a beer.
We've been way to permissive in allowing our employers to demand increasing amounts of our time, particularly those of us on salary, who don't get overtime pay. We need to grow a backbone, stand up, and declare, in one voice, "NO MORE!" If we fail to do so, we will all be changing our job descriptions to "wage slave," because that's what we'll be.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
The things that currently annoy the people who can actually use computers are going to get much worse. Your computer will still crash every time you try to search for a file on a network drive, and your OS will still inappropriately lock files for days or months at a time. You will have to have your fingerprints and a bone marrow sample taken, and give a urine sample while taking a polygraph exam to prove you are not an IP stealing terrorist pothead. Your monitor will be curved which will cross your eyes forever if you look at it for more than 12 minutes at any one time. The police will be at your door within minutes of trying to install an unsigned driver. And, of course, you'll be renting your software, and you'll like it.
but I teleconference ALOT, and surround sound would actually KICK BUTT. On a phone meeting with 18 people any sort of directional focus would help. Beyond that and my MP3 collection, what other uses ? anyone ?
:)
Ooooo I NEED THX boss, for a proper development environment
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Yeah, of course ... but what about the flying cars and silver suits with big shoulders?? :-)
[Insert pithy quote here]
Memo to Microsoft: maybe you should work on making your VPN infrastructure secure before encouraging people to access documents from anywhere!
E-mails are forwarded to car dashboards... I wonder how the NTSA (National Traffic Safety Association) feels about this...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Heh heh... Yeah and the idea is just as ridiculous today as it was then. How many people actually used that thing? I remember watching executives try to cut and paste their voice in that thing as they "edited" the email... Yikes.. The end results were pretty funny, but not useful for communication.
It'll be just like those people that drone on and on in your voice mail except it'll be in email with no easy way to skim ahead. Yeah, I don't see this one taking off anytime soon.
What, no Evangelion, no Lain concepts?
with no wire or wireless connection between the computers themselves. That allows copying or moving material between the computers, a task that would otherwise be more difficult.
Copying data with no connection of any sort!
Bill really must be a genius.
Or quite, quite mad.
Then simple use the computer ala Dialpad to dial into the voicemail distribution that playes email and you can hear the computer read attachment.
The next step would be enabling idiots^H^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers to dial into a terminal server via VNC/VPN combo, so they can access the telephone (see first sentence) over a "virtual" phone on their PC. Then have Windows Remote Desktop servers up so they can use a second computer to access the first computer to access said phone to listed to computer voice transribed email of text from original call as transcribed.
Shit, wish I though of this sooner.
We also need computer consoles that explode in a hail of white sparks and smoke, possibly injuring the operator when something unusual is happening - a bit like those ones in Star Trek.
Makes me wonder why, some 400 years in the future, they don't have stricter guidelines on the construction of this equipment. And another thing, why don't they wear seatbelts to stop getting thrown about when a dylithium positronic relay explodes or something?
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Exactly. Yes, I may do a bit of coding at home in my spare time. But it is mainly an intellectual pursuit. Building a deck, or helping the kids with their homework, or simply sitting on the couch with the wife has FAR more priority. Do NOT email me at home about work and expect a reply. Unless I am secondhatted as the facilities manager, and the building is burning.
I can't help it if *you* don't have a life, and need work 24/7 for make you feel complete.
Maybe MS will try to embrace and extend this:
http://www.nullsoft.com/free/nbeep/
Are there different visions of the future workplace beside Microsoft's? I would be particularly interested in the ideas stemming out of Open Source Community. Any pointer'd toward particular URLs are welcome.
Well, read carefully, it states with no wire or wireless connection between the computers themselves. If read in one manner, it means that the computers are not connected at all. If read in another manner, it means that the computers are not connected directly to each other. That does not preclude them from being connected to the same LAN, at which point this operation becomes trivial.
(For those of you who question the triviality, imagine a porgram running on both computers whose sole job is to inform the other computer when the mouse has reached the edge of the screen).
It sounds to me like they spent a lot of time making this advertising copy more exciting than it really is.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
The point is to create a need for new office hardware and software, since the current paradigm of office suite, email, and browser have leveled off in terms of demanding that software and hardware upgrades be purchased by businesses in order for them to say with the curve.
The slashdotters are right; no one actually needs wraparound monitors, wireless mice, surroundsound speakers, or video email. But Microsoft has a few billion dollars that say they can make you (or your company's IT management) believe that you do need them all. In fact, the need for them to keep their current rate of growth steady (and their stock price (and the executives' net worth) up) demands that they do.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Blue Phone of death?
"booo-beee-BEEEEE! WE're sorry! This phone has caused a core dump and will now be shut down. Good bye!"
bloody fookin' 'ell.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Um, yeah, get a load of this quote:
# XML (Extended Markup Language) invisibly marks up a list of
# executives' names in a PowerPoint slide, so that dropping the
# list into an e-mail's "To" field turns the names into the
# execs' e-mail addresses.
Let me get this straight: in the future office environment,
every time you put together a slide show, Microsoft wants you
to fill in all sorts of extra information that isn't relevant
to the presentation and won't show up in the slideshow, in
case at a later time someone wants to send an email? Huh?
What if I want to drop that list of names into Timidity or
somesuch -- should the person who creates the slideshow also
add each executive's favourite work of music to their markup?
How about also filling in their birthdates, so I can drop the
list on my calendar application? Riiiight.
It's nice to see MS talking about using XML, but you'd think
they could come up with a use for it that would be... useful.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
How about make a public bathroom of the future? I don't like that 1-foot gap on the bathroom doors & walls to the floor, nor the 5-foot gap from the ceiling.
That's where you can do some innovation.
And email is the only thing that really caught on........
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Please allow the grammar nazi to ask the following question... How in the heck do mock-up plane seats and a car dashboard allow me to easily access work documents? Because of this guy's grammatical continuity error, it sounds as though the lines between home and mock-up junk are blurring.
One needs to thank the futuristic technology for allowing easy document access, not the mock-up junk.
Rather than see the lines between home and office blur, I'd rather see the lines between personal electronics blur. Apple has the right idea with iSync, but why should it stop with Celular phones and PDAs. Why can't one sync up an PDA addressbook with officephone. I shouldn't have to read some number off of a display and then manually type it into a telephone. That's not syncing the most important thing to sync to. Futhermore, addressbooks could be synced to fedex/mail drops so you never write an address, or synced through the phone, so that you never have to give an address to a flower-delivery or pizza delivery person. My appointments sync with my doctor's/hair stylists. Get the idea?
Keeping
hah... we have a bunch of graphic artists at our main company's office (they do mostly multimedia training stuff. pretty good stuff). Anyway, they all have dual flats (or most do, some have one old monitor), that when the big boss came visiting our cubes at the gov't (where we contract), he said " why do these guys only have one monitor? They make all the money for us? Get 'em another one." Actually, he didn't SAY the part about the money, but I think that was his implicit message.
It is pretty sweet. My eyes aren't so great, and with more desktop real estate for the palletes and stuff, you can actually run each at a decent resolution and still have some screen real estate to code. They are 18" viewable and I run 'em at 1024 by 768.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
1. There /. goes again. MSFT tries to jump-start the economy by convincing the suits that they need surround sound. Maybe, just maybe, their neck-tie addled brains might be induced to increase capex (that's capital expenditure for those who've never watched CNBC) and kick-start the hi-tech sector but NoooOOOOooo. Slashdot has to point out their idiocy before they even have a chance. Waytogo Slashdot. Now all the geeks are gonna talk about it and when the weekly e-mail monitor reports go out to the suits they might get clued. Best thing is nobody says anything negative about this from now on.
2. This is the autoshow. Of course the funky-looking cars with Wankel-engine powered window cranks and video exhaust system diagnostics never make it to the show-room. These are the tech equivalent of concept cars. Oooooh... pretty. But everybody knows it's not the final product.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Voice mail comes as .wav attachments, open in your favorite player, skip the uninteresting parts and get to the point.
So, um, how do you tell which parts are the interesting parts?
I move mice all the time. Of course, it requires a PS2 to USB adaptor in my case, which makes it a little more challenging.
Um, I didn't read the article, but that's wrong.
sic transit gloria mundi
I agree. I work at home if it's something I'm really interested in, but I would not want management to know that. First, they would expect me to do it from then on, and second they would think that I was an asskisser. If you want to move into management and don't mind being an asskisser, go ahead and tell them that you worked at home on a project. Otherwise keep the two as seperate as possible, and make sure that management knows that, even if sometimes you get really into a project. I've seen a few coworkers get screwed this way.
At least as far as this article is concerned...that wrap around monitor is hellacool!!! Sign me up....screw it...I'll even run XP if I can take one of those bad boyz home! :)
Thanks for the insight... it sounds like a very nice environment you have. However, this simply underscores the problem.
It has been my experience, reflected by the popularity of cultural icons like Office Space and Dilbert, that organizations (both corporate and US Government) tend not to have such a wealth of workspace. The average employee does not get their own office space. They're lucky if they get their own cube. Furthermore, management seems eager to explore ways to further share a shared workspace - witness the interest in "hoteling".
This leads to two points. First, sound is more a disruptive entity than enhancement of this shared space. Secondly, a business is not likely to invest in the extra money for a good set of surround sound speakers to further that disruption.
Scoffing at Microsoft's claims that surround sound will be an important part of the office is not simply dismissing the point out of hand. It is recognizing the current environment. And it might further question whether Microsoft's visionaries are too removed from the reality of that current environment.
So, um, how do you tell which parts are the interesting parts?
;)
You listen to it once, making a note of the time elapsed when you heard an interesting bit. Then you go back to the start and skip to the bits you made a note of.
Geez. Is it that hard
"I'm tired of all this 'Aren't humanity great' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks
I don't want new-fangled surround-sound. The wrap-around screen is neat, but I don't want that either.
:(
I'd just like an office, with a door. That I can close. So I can get work done. I promise to still talk to people who need to talk to me. Heck, I'll even have "office hours" so people can get face-time.
I just want an office.
Today I got interrupted 42 times (yeah, I counted, kinda sad) at my cube. All variations of "I have a quick question." I don't think I got much work done today. Well, I answered some emails.
Please stop talking about the bright lights of the future and give me a door.
So I can work.
Thanks.
1)Many offices already have the problems of idiot "admin assistants" sending out 2mb Powerpoint (or Word) documents filled with details about a baby shower, photos of their new niece/grandchild/whatever, or "motivational" crap. the LAST thing people like that need is *video messages* they can send out. Great! 2 gig .avi files showing the new baby puking. Lovely.
2)Surround sound? Wow, that'll be great for management. Many people chained to a cubicle don't have the luxury of having their own CDROM drive, much less a sound card and speakers. So is Microsoft trying to tell us that cubicle dwellers will soon have the same luxury as management? I highly doubt it.
When Microsoft develops an "office of the the future" that removes the slave-like, locked down environments people have now, I'll be interested.
Seriously man. Sound systems at the office desk are a BIG no-no. First off, this means every moron will be playing his or her music, which may or may not suck. Secondly, Microsoft's "noises for everything" campain is annoying. Noises that do not pertain to me distract me.
:) I'd be down to have my desktop look like Pre-Crime :)
And what's the deal with the video / audio emails? I can guarantee you that they will not catch on. (anyone own a video phone?) Email is great because -we don't- have to listen or see each other. People like it because it is impersonal, you don't have to rush your thoughts, etc etc.
And then there is the data transfer wireless mouse. Now there's something that I'll break or misplace. Whatever happened to networks? It's easier to drag and drop a file over to someone... why should I walk over to someone's office with my mouse? That's idiotic.
It's like MS just doesn't "get it." Moreover, I don't mean to preach, but companies like Apple do (to some extent) "get it."
I mean, why make wireless data mice. Why not work on zero-config wireless networking (like OS X supports now)? And why annoy the HELL out of coworkers with dolby 6.1 "you've got mail" sounds. Why not work on soft silent visual cues insead (ie OS X can do a subtle 'pulse' of a users display instead of using alert sounds)?
The only thing I want from that artical is that monitor
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
No, not them. YOU - and the idiots who modded you up.
At work, they recently introduced unified messaging. Guess what? I love it! When someone leaves me a voicemail, it shows up as an email in my inbox with a sound-file as an attachment. I can check my voicemail anywhere that I have email access. I have one place where I get incoming messages - be they email or voicemail. I can work away from my desk without worrying about not seeing that blinking red light on my phone.
So, YOU welcome to the real world. Not everyone works exactly where you do in exactly the same way you do. In the real world, some people prefer to leave voicemail. Some people leave messages even when they don't have access to a computer or their address book.
So exactly who is clueless? Is it the average Slashdotter who makes fun of something without even understanding what it does?
Mmmm.. Donuts
1. Install openssh
2. Get the public/private keys setup
3. RTFM the manpage on scp
4. Bliss!
Democrat delenda est
EOM
"There is an emphasis here on security, but that doesn't mean we can't be visionary," Gruver explains.
What makes me hesitate though, isn't the ideas but the way M$ is approaching things. The inhouse software only policy they ride is counterproductive if they want to achieve technology perks like these.
:-)
M$ has 3 choices:
1. Carry on as usual ("inhouse software only") and eventually lose monopoly. (Linux is scaring the creeps outta them allready - a little late if you ask me)
2. Make an all out change to a service orietated company with all the certification and stuff. Embrace and extend OSS. (Difficult. It could be to late for that allready. To many ppl know about M$ vs. *nix allready.)
3. Move to closed hardware gadgets and generate revenue from locked hardware/software combos. (XBox anyone? Bills favorite upcoming Tablet PC anyone?)
This article is another indication that they are moving towards number 3. Not the dumbest thing for them to do.
One thing you have to admit: If M$ does marketing mistakes, they usually do them fast enough to notice early on if they are right or wrong.
A well, what ever, im just gonna set up that Drag and Drop from Box to Box with 2 or 3 little XFree configuration evenings. Cuz' that's a cool idea.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I like that. If there's no wired or wireless connection between those computers, then there are no electrons or radio waves involved, meaning that this could be faster than light. Just think of the applications!
[...] semicircular 6-foot screen that wraps around in front of the user. The screen technology is called D# ("D Sharp").
Nonononono. Why did they have to choose the letter D, of all letters. Why not B#, pronounced "Be sharp" . Or A# as in "that's A# screen". Or C#, but that's already taken. Y#? iSharp?
Sheesh. --Bud
It looks like someone has been smoking too much Merriam-Webster again. I believe there should be health warnings on dictionaries: "Excessive quoting from dictionaries may lead to people hitting you over the head".
Money for nothing, pix for free
Nah, it's just a sign that the people who write this crap don't know their arse from a hole in the ground. Don't pretend you expected any different... *yawn*
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
At one desk, users can move a wireless mouse's pointer from the screen of one computer to the screen of a laptop, with no wire or wireless connection between the computers themselves. That allows copying or moving material between the computers, a task that would otherwise be more difficult...
Wow I am really impressed, shocked even, amazed, astounded, floored, awed,... oh wait I've been doing this for three years at work with VNC and x2vnc between my linux and windows desktops. Plus, hold your breath for this... only one keyboard too. I know, I know, it's incredible isn't it? I find it hard to work I just stare at this amazing feature every day.
Give me a break, no wire, or wireless connection? It's on the network you fucking moron. IMHO that constitutes a fucking wire.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
You can laugh about this but in the end most software is bought by pointy-hairs who are mightily impressed by features like this. Microsoft knows this better than anyone I guess. So if we want Linux to make it on the desktop we'd better make sure these features are developed soon!
-- Cheers!
Like their recent press release for their next generation of vaporware, this looks like a delaying tactic to give the illusion that the company is going somewhere. From that view, at best it can delay an audit until the company can get a world level monopoly (and thus positive cash flow) through DRM. At worst it can postpone the date when the company flatlines, but postpone long enough for major share holders to offload.
DRM is their last hope. It won't help them out of their security and design problems, but it will let them keep dominion of the desktop and keep using that as a hammer. Otherwise, OS X did an end run around them for the desktop. In general, MS products cannot compete on technical merits, especially security, or price. Even Balmer and Allchin now admit it publicly. And it looks like Microsoft is not likely to catch up, either.
Having been found guilty of illegally maintaining a monopoly, MS will no longer be able to rely on purely on existing marketshare either. In fact many key applications types (spreadsheets, wordprocessing, fincancial software) are starting to appear on faster, cheaper, more secure, more easily maintained platforms. Quite a few execs and VPs have been hopping off recently. Bill himself stepped down as CEO the first year Microsoft posted a major loss.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
This isn't MS bashing per se, it's bashing the stupid. MS just happens to have been behind this particular case of stupidity. I would have expected this article to appear regardless of the company that was behind it.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
In the 1960s, Ford said we'd be driving atomic-powered cars in 20 years. In the 1930s, just about everyone assumed we'd all have our private helicopter or airplane by 1980. (Imagine the air congestion and accidents with that...soccer moms flying their SUV-copters.) And we're still waiting on our Mr. Fusion powerplants...
Yogi Berra said it best. "It's tough to make predictions. Especially about the future."
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Quoth the article: Instant-messaging buddies are grouped to reflect their hierarchy in the company, or where they're logged in. E-mails, instant messages and Web pages can be grouped into "Info Clusters" and then e-mailed or quickly turned into a Web site.
Nah, this is more like "Metropolis" or "Brave New World" -- where everyone knows their place in the Great Corporation, and the technology is there primarily to enforce that hierarchy (oh, good Ford!).
Maybe MS should have been more honest and obvious and referred to the managers in the "widget factory" as Betas, with the bosses Alphas. And handed out lots of soma. Orgy-porgy...
So much for the Internet flattening out society. Looks like MS wants it to be the tool for The Man to keep us peons where we belong.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Why not have it just take n number of video imputs? Basically, instead of having 2 monitors, its possible just to have one screen with the same amount of screen space, but with two inputs. Then its compatable with any multi-headed capable OS.
Suppose it would be a niche product though. Be nice for saving space and avoiding the monitor borders I have now with my dual setup.
Force yourself to play Half-Life, go on! ;-)
It is rather good - well, except maybe for the bit where it turns into a platform game...
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Funny, your description of Plug and Play hell sounds like what I go through with PCI cards.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Then who decides which category a story goes in?
Slashot may put a story in the 'Microsoft' bucket where you'd classify it 'Anti-Microsoft'.
Easist thing is to read the summary and then decide if you want to read the comments or not.....
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
So we've got everyone in the office talking over everyone else trying to message each other, while these bloody great surround sound speakers play whale song or dolphin noises or whatever management have heard makes people more productive this week?
In any event, people won't like using voice e-mail, the same way they now don't like talking to answerphones, voice mail, or any crappy voice recognition system. They all suck.
I think about the ideas Douglas C. Engelbar did, vs. the Microsoft "vision of the future".
.
Consider: Douglas Engelbart didn't just come up with wizzier ways to do the same old crap ("Look, this thing AUTOMATICALLY puts the memo in the pneumatic tube FOR YOU!"), he looked at technologies that didn't exist yet and asked "And how could this be used to be more productive".
Ever since seeing that video I have been asking "And where is that sort of demo TODAY?" "What would a demo that is as far in advance of today's state of the art look like?"
It would take ENORMOUS resources to pull off such a demo. It would take an organization that has plenty of R&D money to be able to do that kind of research.
Microsoft could do it - they have the people, they have the money. What they don't have is the vision
My apologies to the various Microsoft employees that read Slashdot, but I assert that MS does not have the vision to create a demo on the scale of the Englebart demo. Englebart's vision was "How can we improve our ability to work on complicated projects", Microsoft's vision is "How do we gain even more monopolies and make even more money". MS employees, this is not a slam against you - it is an indictment of the very top level of management at Microsoft.
And mind you, Microsoft is not alone in this - most companies today are as myopic as a mole in this. They have no motivation to really improve the world, they improve the world only as a side effect of trying to "maximize shareholder value". But the companies that REALLY take off are not the ones trying to artificially inflate their stock price, but rather those companies who's products truly revolutionize the world.
www.eFax.com are spammers
"Surround sound is going to be increasingly important in future offices," says group marketing manager Tom Gruver in leading a tour of the new facility.
I work in an open plan office. There are Unix and Windows users. We Unix users all hate Windows because of the loud and intrusive sound of the weekly defrag that all the Windows users insist in necissary for the continued funtion of their machine.
Add Surround Sound and I think we'll see people resorting to violence.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
Actually I would think that the D came from display. You know, linux may support a display, but do they also support Display Sharp (D#).
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Of course, this made me go double-check and make sure I had filtered out Katz's stories - I didn't. Then I realized that I haven't had a good bout of blinding rage in a while. Has anyone else noticed that he hasn't posted anything for several months? Wonder what's up with that? Not that I want him back, good riddance. I just wonder if someone finally told him to hit the road.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Has anyone worked in an cube farm where people have speakers? Let me tell you nothing makes you want to turn around and go home quicker than the sound of dozens of PCs all blasting out their startup sounds and endless beep confirmations. As soon as I had a say about buying the next series of PCs the speakers went right out the door with the old machines, "Sorry, you'll have to use headphones to listen to your Celine Dione cd". It is bad enough dealing with phones with the ringer volume cranked up to the max (not to mention the mouths of the owners).
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I think that we (the Linux/Unix & Open Source community) should seize the term "B#" and make it our own since the sound (be sharp) implies that we strive to be intelligent and do smart things, plus in music the (really non-existant) "B#" means "C" and most of our stuff is written in C anyway :-)
Sound too corny?
They wait for someone else to show the way, follow for a bit and then use all their might to swallow their competitors.
They don't have to waste money and time on researching new concepts and ideas, their competitors do it for them.
Deleted
.. That allows copying or moving material between the computers, a task that would otherwise be more difficult.
I can see it now.. "Error: The clipboard content you have selected may contain copyrighted material and cannot be transferred to this machine without prior authorization"
BTW, if you want multiple-desktop keyboard / mouse / clipboard integration today, check this out.
The original submission, as well as countless comments, is just trying to find something to Microsoft bash, and you're being stupid. I hate Microsoft, and I still see the wisdom in the statement "Surround sound will be important..."
For that matter, so will a 3 dimensional desktop. On the Surround Sound front, it's not to watch DVDs, it's to give you better aural cues while you're working. When an application in the tray needs attention, the beeps come from the lower right. When your MS Office paperclip assistant wants you're attention, the sound comes from that direction, etc. Audio cues can make things more usable - and it becomes even more true if you consider a 3-d desktop environment to be the future.
11*43+456^2
"Surround sound is going to be increasingly important in future offices"
At first I thought this was a joke. However, then I realized one way it was possible. The previous slashdot article Voices in your head outlines a point focus method where inaudible sound could be beamed over distance and converge at the listener. This may be useful for surround?.
Of course, then we need a white noise generated to silence the guy in the next cubie who sings to himself - phorm
I was told I.. could .. listen to my music... they let Susan listen so .. I asked that I should be able to.
yeah yeah ok.
-J
The fact that it makes the /. readers happy (which is precisely why the editors do it) is what I find annoying. It's as though every time Microsoft does something mildly stupid, /. is there to say "See, I told you Microsoft sucked".
Amazing magic tricks
This sounds like any number of sci-fi visions of society as a hellish beehive of workers who never leave their jobs behind. What bothers me most is the push for car-mounted information displays. I hope soembody is working on getting the cars to steer themselves while the "driver" reads email, sends the boss a status report and tells the micro-refrig-owave at home to nuke a pizza, while ransacking the glove compartment for blood pressure pills.
Ha! The URL is incomplete -- it's not even a complete host name. And yet it gets modded up as informative.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Then again, I don't need any computer products period. I bought them because they are cool, and very useful at times.
****
You misunderstand me. What I'm saying is that open-source generally (but not always) doesn't bother with "cool" things, but focuses on useful things. Therefore, if it _actually_ makes your life easier, it will likely be implemented. However, if it just looks cool yet causes many problems for you and your system administrator, it isn't.
Engineering and the Ultimate