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Google Nabs Bing Maps Architect
theodp writes "In another case of Microsoft's-loss-is-Google's-gain, GeekWire reports that Google has made a big hire from Microsoft, bringing aboard TED crowd-pleaser Blaise Agüera y Arcas, the well-known software architect and designer who was among the Redmond company's elite ranks of distinguished engineers. Known for his work on services including Photosynth and Bing Maps, Agüera y Arcas called the move 'the hardest decision of my life'. A stunning preview of Photosynth was released by Microsoft last week, and TED just released a video of Agüera y Arcas demonstrating the technology at a conference earlier this year."
Microsoft pays well, but the way it treats employees is pretty bad. I am so glad I got out of that place.
Witnesses described it as 'chair shaped'.
he left because he hates Windows 8.
I am waiting for the headline that Ballmer has decided to move to Google !!!!
Some people really don't have any real problems.
If the hardest decision is whether to work for one nasty tech gorilla or another slightly younger but turning out just as nasty tech gorilla, you've never really done anything of relevance to humankind.
Google Streetview is realised with equipment $200k (Car, GPS, Lidar, IMU), while Photosynth is done with public pictures on the web, most likely taken with cameras around $1k.
MS always had talent. The problem was that MS wasted it with a corporate structure that promoted intracompany fighting rather than cooperation.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
From everything (and I mean it, everything) I read about working conditions and the environment in Microsoft, it's a place unfriendly to creative guys, and those who question authority. In general, it seems an unhealthy place to work, regardless of the good salary.
Actually, I heard he hates Visual Studio 2012 even more. Something about using bland, similar monochromatic icons tends to bother people who work with image processing and innovate the field using all that wonderful color information in those images.
Same difference though... some idiot exec at Microsoft has decided the world needs Fisher-price Playschool operating systems and development tools.
...I am waiting for for a free programm and an adapter, where you snap an android phone to the new kinect, connect it to a battery pack and record really impressive 3d scenes (hopefully it get's exported as an usable 3d format)!
There's just a lot of "woohoo microsoft" phrasing in this, that makes it feel far too much like an advertisement to actually investigate.
It seems clear they are saying that this guy worked on some good and interesting projects, not that Microsoft's products are the best evar.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Have you seen many videos where the user can pan at will or zoom in on important details without loss of resolution?
Photosynth looks like video, but pretty clearly has benefits video can't offer. Of course video also has strengths where photosynth is weak - the two aren't really competitors.
Silicone Valley? What is that? A mammary implants mecca?
Google also does that. They integrate panoramia pictures in some locations.
Go to "Old Tucson Studios" in google maps (not the preview). Grab the man and drag him to a spot on the map. You will get pictures of the different buildings. In some you can click on other areas which will transition to another picture a different person too. You can move around like this. It's all from public pictures.
Google hasn't integrated this into the preview yet, so they clearly don't know what to do with it yet.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I used to work with this guy and he is incredibly overrated. He's been the architect of Bing Maps for 5 years. What earth shattering innovations has he led in that time? Somebody above mentioned that this 'incredible' v2 Photosynth 1) isn't even as good as v1 and 2) has never been developed into anything more useful than a TED demo. He worked on the same team as Gur Kimchi, the guy behind the Amazon delivery drones. Between the two of them, they are the king and queen of vaporware. Neither one produced a damn thing in 6 years at Microsoft, so fuck it Google can have him. He's a one man hype machine.
It seems clear they are saying that this guy worked on some good and interesting projects, not that Microsoft's products are the best evar.
To bad "good and interesting" mapping projects weren't on his resume.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"radiologist in India for diagnosis" hey maybe they can afford toilets then
They have better imaginations in India perhaps.
After all it takes a great deal of imagination to read most Xrays, and it its a lost art in this country, its only because
there are so many better imaging technologies that imagining soft tissue shadows in an Xray is simply worth pursuing any more.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It also was overloaded with fresh-undergraduate talent. However some tasks require a substantial number of people with significant experience, yet Microsoft only rarely went after them. In at least some cases the sole reason they hired talent was to silence them (Mark Russinovich I'm looking at you) not to benefit from them.
Their search engine effort is notorious for the lack of inside experts, and the person in charge is, as best as I understand, a non-techie.
My thought as well. Sounds more like Hollyweird.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
I remember this guy. This happened more than a year ago.
James Whitaker was a Microsoft exec who left Microsoft to join Google for a bit and then go back to Microsoft at a higher level. His main motive in joining Google was apparently to get a promotion back in Microsoft and to make some money on the side by writing a book. Ridiculous microsoft politics at work. And yes this was covered extensively on slashdot.
Of course recoiledsnake is a well known paid microsoft shill who will misrepresent facts.
Googles not in the fuddy-duddy category like Microsoft is... but cool it ain't.
Geeky, yes.
#DeleteChrome
Of course recoiledsnake is a well known paid microsoft shill who will misrepresent facts.
Anonymous name-calling isn't very convincing. If you want to dis someone, put your name behind your words so we can see what your own agenda might be.
#DeleteChrome
In your rush to post something Anti-Google, you totally missed the point of the very article you posted.
It wasn't even about Google. It was about ship-jumping techies scorching the earth as they head for the exit, regardless of what company they were leaving.
The most telling quote in the article: Whittaker's criticism merely burns a bridge.
What you are seeing here is the petulant child syndrome of someone who didn't get their way, or was passed over for promotion. Its not the way a grown-up leaves a job.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The Photosynth demos look nice, but surely there's a point where it becomes simpler just to shoot an HD video of your "walk" (or "spin") rather than having to reconstruct all those intermediate frames?
Photosynth may be useful if you didn't think of that beforehand, but since those demo images were presumably taken specifically to demonstrate Photosynth, it seems a bit of a waste of time - like demonstrating your colourisation program on a black and white version of a colour movie.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
What he doesn't realize is that teleradiology is already a big thing.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
My intent wasn't to post something anti-Google, it's to show that people move all the time, and it's not particularly newsworthy. For example here's an article from a few years ago which showed some people moving from Google to Microsoft.
http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/06/29/TheGOOGMSFTExodusWorkingAtGoogleVsWorkingAtMicrosoft.aspx
This space for rent.
His main motive in joining Google was apparently to get a promotion back in Microsoft and to make some money on the side by writing a book. Ridiculous microsoft politics at work
Nice way to slander someone who you don't even know, while not even being signed into Slashdot. Add the karma bonus for accusing OP of being a paid MS = +5 INTERESTING!!!!
The same old chair jokes and MS bashing in most of the posts and modding down any contrary comments and destroying their karma, guess I am not the only one getting bored with the echo chamber and the circlejerk, from the past few years Slashdot activity and readership seems to be dropping a like a rock.
[Sound of crickets]
Have gnu, will travel.
> the hardest decision of my life
Cut the guy some slack. You environmentalists should love him -- I'm sure his decision was very, very Green.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Huh? Just check recoiledsnake's comment history. You don't need my name for that.
Dissing anonymous comments just for the sake of dissing them is very hacker newsy. Welcome to slashdot where things work a little differently and people judge comments by their merit instead of whether they are made by anonymous perosnas . Also you have a handle. Not a name. So you are as anonymous as I am.
So why not apply that to my post as well instead of judging it by looking at my previous posts? If you think someone gets paid to post on this dying site, you are completely mistaken, at least in my case.
Anonymous users calling registered handles paid shills is exactly like pot calling the kettle black. I dared to put a handle on my post and I am taking the karma hit, while you're just taking potshots while being too cowardly to even register or use your real handle. How can you call into question my comment history while making sure yours is not visible? You're probably a paid Google or Apple shill trying to hide their many postiive comments about them !!!
This space for rent.
Silicone Valley? What is that? A mammary implants mecca?
More importantly, where is it? Perhaps a google maps link, good sir?
I would and always will give precedence for individuals comments over corporate public relations. I read them quite simply as ex-insider frustration, nothing more and nothing less. These people are not burning bridges, they are expressing what would need to change for them to return. Once you have left a company why maintain that companies Public Relations (PR=B$) charade, why not critique it.
You whole point of being subservient and servile to corporations once you have been employed by the them is pathetic. FUCK EM, hate the company you work for, if it rocks your boat, publicly tear em a new one, whether you are currently working for them, you have quit or you are already working somewhere else. Gees, what the fuck, corporations are not gods we must fucking worship.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Are you insane? This is leaps and bounds better than the stuff you find in streetview. They extract common objects out of images and move them out of a 2D plane and into the 3D space. If anything, this would be amazing if added to streetview.
I was going through some of the new synths, and I truly felt like I was walking through a 3d environment.