Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Shows Off Future Product Tech
adeelarshad82 writes "Microsoft opened a portion of its fifth TechFair to Silicon Valley residents, demonstrating more than 15 technologies, which included everything from real-time translation to mobile-to-mobile networking to improved image stitching. The top two that really stood out were the translating telephone, which actually used no 'telephone' at all — it was a test to discover how well Microsoft's speech algorithms could interpret speech, translate it, and then speak the translation using text-to-speech algorithms — and Manual Deskterity, a new paradigm for a user interface; a right-handed user's left hand, for example, can be used for coarse manipulations of objects, while the right can be used for fine manipulation, such as with a pen. It sounds a bit simplistic, at least at this stage. Since one of the charters of Microsoft Research is that the work should eventually be moved to product teams, there's a good chance that the prototypes will eventually be made available to the public at large."
i have most of it disabled (classical comments view and all). Still some areas that revert to 2.x style tho.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
I too have the classic discussion system enabled in my prefs. The performance issues are one thing, but I can't figure out what the fuck's what with the 2.0 version. Every time I scroll, the page seems to go nowhere, then it offers to load "x" number of more comments, which then changes to a completely random "x" again. What a god-awful mess. If this was an attempt to mimic Digg's discussion system (and aren't most recent Slashdot developments a reaction to Digg's popularity?), then they failed miserably.
And, as mentioned, even if you opt for the classic discussion system, you can't escape some 2.0 elements, like on the front page. And don't even get me started on metamod. It is not meta-moderating anymore, and I'm not even sure what the new system is supposed to accomplish. The FAQ hasn't been updated to clue us in on what any of this shit means.
:q!