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Look What's Cooking At Microsoft Labs

Posted by timothy on from the smart-people-cool-toys dept.

stinkymountain writes "Writer John Brandon spent two days at Microsoft Research Labs in Redmond and got an inside look at some pretty interesting projects under development, including a robotic receptionist, a new type of touch screen for people with fat fingers, and an electronic table that allows multiple people to collaborate in real time. Brandon also talks about some of these research projects on this NPR podcast."

4 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Robotic receptionist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    You have to reactivate it with flowers every fucking year. And no blow jobs.

  2. If I Had to Guess ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    What's Cooking At Microsoft Labs

    Probably Kool-Aid.

  3. Nice tag by Kernel+Rootkits · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    LMAO I love the mashthekeypad tag that's hilarious!

  4. Re:No need to apologize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Fuck Microsoft and fuck you. Microsoft is a lumbering pestilence that slowly but surely will be brought down. Ray Ozzie can't save them no matter what Gates thinks. Their "innovations" are nothing but gorilla arm inducing pathetic jokes. Really, they don't innovate shit, they copy or outright steal everything they do. Balmer, "ZOMG G0ogle IS DOING SOMEHTING, LETS DO IT 2!!ONE". And, furthermore, you're proud of being a .net developer? The slowest, buggiest apps on my Win2000 virtual machines are .net apps. I'd actually prefer they were coded in Qbasic. At least then maybe they wouldn't crash on a daily basis.

    The only thing Microsoft ever did that was actually worth a shit was the taskbar in Windows 95. Seriously, it's almost sublime. I actually kind of like it and honestly have yet to find another approach that works better for me so, honestly, I basically mimic the basic idea of it in the window managers of all the platforms I use. Obviously in Windows form, it's very limited but with other OS's the taskbar tends to actually be very configurable. But that's it, it's the only one. Practically everything else Microsoft shits out completely and totally sucks. The only reason people continue to use it is, Macs perceived prices are too high, and Windows supports all hardware and the vast majority of proprietary apps out there. The only reason I use it in a virtual machine is I have 2 business apps that are naturally written in .net that won't run in wine or mono. If it wasn't for that and I had the ability to rewrite those apps in a saner language, I'd drop windows like the detritus that it is.

    And, no, I'll never apologize for despising a monopoly abusing, anti-innovating, ham handed 3 ring sideshow like Microsoft.