Microsoft Research Projects Showcased

prostoalex writes "Seattle Times reporter visited the Microsoft Research expo hosted by the company. The inventions of the future include a robot that could attend conferences in your behalf and allow you to communicate via video and audio applications, a software package that translates the sign language into readable English, e-mailable identification documents and some enhancements to Microsoft's operating systems."

Comments

end of convention as we know it?

[fermion]

Was it in Back to School where, during the movie they had a progrsion of students leaving tape recorders in their seat instead of attending of class, and by then end even the proffesor was replaced by a tape recorder?

It seems to me that there would be nothing more useless than a robot attending a conference. Why rent a conference room and fly in a speaker of the audience is going to be inanimate? I think the hotel and covention lobby will make quite sure that such a machine never exists.

Re:Don't read the article!!! [don't worry]

[CurlyG]

They turn photos into data?!? How the hell did they manage that? Sheer genius! Thank the gods that we have MS around to keep the world in amazingly inventive, original products.

However their incredibly innovative (sorry, Microvative) robot, Robie, seems strangely familiar!

Re:MS stability not that far from Linux stability

[Tim C]

Explorer crashing generally isn't a big deal in XP (or 2k for that matter). 9 times out of 10 the OS notices and restarts it for you, and on the odd occassion when it doesn't, you can just launch it yourself from Task Manager.

That said, these days, XP crashes on me about as often as Linux does - ie not very often at all. And yes, I am talking about a machine that gets left on 24/7 - I do not switch my work machine off at all.