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Secondlight, Microsoft's New Surface Prototype

Posted by samzenpus on from the look-deep-into-the-table dept.

Barence writes "Microsoft has literally added another dimension to its touchscreen table technology Surface. The new table projects an image through the table itself, so that any translucent material (such as tracing paper or perspex) held above the Surface screen displays a different image to what you see on the table's display. This means you can have a satellite image of a town on the table, and have the street names projected on to a piece of paper that the user holds above the map. Or you could have a photo of a car, with the tracing paper displaying images of its innards."

2 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Re:first post! by bdabautcb · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    OT, I know nothing and I need help. My father has been internet dating and has exchanged e-mails with an 'artist' who refers to Robert Redford and Martin Scorsese as RR and Marty respectively. She often inculudes hyperlinks in her emails that refer to the artist's website, and has talked on the phone the same way. Is this a dangerous 'e-match', and is there any way for me to expose it? PS: I brought up to my father that opening the links was a bad idea, and my father told me to 'go away' because there is no way a link to the artist's page could be false. Please help /.ers, I know knothing.

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    Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
  2. If MS is wasting money... by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    If MS is wasting any resources, they are doing so by not leveraging their current projects and products. They've been in business for 20+ years and hundreds of thousands of packages for X86 MS platforms. Instead, they choose to throw away all that collaborative (and competitive work) to create a kludge called Surface.

    Ill explain. We in that weird wired west called Linux has a thing called XWindows. It can do over-network window drawing, remote logins, full 3D, and a bunch of other stuff. It had multiple inputs, but the same way that MS and Apple handles them. 3 mice = mouse on crack. 3 Keyboards = whbfqhwbfqwiufqrif. Well, a group of smart input guys found that one could make an extension for XWindows called MPX, short for Multiple Pointer Xserver. Instead of crack-mouse or jibberish-keyboard, one can have up to 16 independent mice and 16 independent keyboard inputs.

    There's a caveat: One needs MPX aware software to _properly_ utilize the multiple inputs. That's the downside. Th upside is that MPX aware Xserver DEFAULTS to a non-MPX model in that everything is used to running in. So that means all your older programs will work 100% without modifications. The only real mods required is Compiz (for 3D windows and desktop effects), Gnome, KDE, and XFCE (the rest are choices in windowing environment).

    Linux devs can make things work for backards compatibility. Why cant MS do the same?

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