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Secondlight, Microsoft's New Surface Prototype
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."
If they're presenting it then you can be assured that it is already patent pending.
Which means its been in the lab for about 2 years already.. so in another 8 it might be on the market - but it'll be (more) boring by then, so it won't.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So... it can display a second image that is completely invisible unless I hold a piece of paper in front of it.
Is it just me or does that sound kind of silly?
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
A bigger ass table!
Task Mangler
...since when did companies routinely invest in research and then give the results away for free, unless there was some other way to make money off it?
Is actually laying off people as a result of the supposed economic crisis and yet still wasting away resources on Surface. We're wasting money on this crap because our new manager wants to be all "trendy" and make us look like some sort of cutting age IT outfit. I'd rather us keep on doing what we already do and have been highly profitable at instead of wasting time and money on this type of toy product and ruining people's lives in the process. There were some people who found out they were loosing their job by watching the evening news, but we still have enough money to buy and maintain electronic tables. Horrible.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Seems pointless to me.
If this functionality is useful, why couldn't you just have the software display a rectangle that you can drag across the screen that affects what is displayed within the rectangle?
Then it's always available regardless of whether you happen to have a nearby supply of tracing paper with the proper translucency characteristics.
And then it's equally visible with the main image, from all angle and lighting conditions, because it is in fact the main image.
Actually I don't understand why you'd only want street names displayed only with a small rectangular area, rather than toggling them on and off across the entire image.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"Do not stare into table with remaining eye."
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He's bitter beacuse he's dyslexic, and to add insult to injury he name himself "moniker" when he meant to type "monkier".
Now, I can display one image on the large-format table, while I struggle to manually hold a 36" x 48" piece of frigging tracing paper a few inches over it, thereby rendering the tracing-paper image impractical, and the other image invisible!
Damn! Why didn't I think of that?? I would be RICH!!!
Rich, I tell you!
That's what I want to know.
Clearly I'm missing something obvious, but other than looking cool, is there any practical advantage to this?
It would seem that the very thing that makes it look cool -- that "added dimension" -- is also going to mean that the way in which the images are superimposed varies depending on where you're standing. The only way the roads in that "road map" idea would be in the right place is if you were hovering directly over the table -- except you'd be blocking the projector, and it still wouldn't be right towards the edges of the table.
I mean, I get the point of Surface itself. I do. What I don't get is what value this other layer has over doing the same thing in software.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Its fucking cool technology. Don't let fanboyism ruin this. Its a big table, its expensive. But its still fucking cool. Have you forgotten you are nerds? Who gives a shit how useful it is? Aren't people always arguing pro research that isn't about making a buck. Now when 'evil' microsoft does something all nerds like (making cool shit without having purely profit in mind) what happens? You bash it? I expect better :S
No, but there are some pop-ups.