Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

I've read a few early reviews and everyone that experienced this system seems to be raving about it. The images in the ARS piece are pretty amazing. Could be quite exciting!

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/ ... al-real/1/

But it's Microsoft, so they'll screw it up (son of Kinect).

I thought we learned from Google Glass that all this stuff accomplishes is to make people into oblivious, insufferable assholes?

I hope they get better at making their SDKs better coincide with product launches (like the Band, still no where in sight). Though I do love the new universal app model, makes selling my boss on making a Windows Phone version mute since it's just a few tweaks of the UI here and there.

I hope to see more cool tech like this from them at BUILD in April.

commodorejohn wrote: I thought we learned from Google Glass that all this stuff accomplishes is to make people into oblivious, insufferable assholes?

Key difference here is that this is intended for home / desk use. NOT to be worn while walking around outside.

Looks good enough for me to spend my own money on. But then again, I also have a kinect, zune, xbox360, so I might be a bit of a "fanboi"

Don't understand the kinect hate? Pretty amazing stuff out there that people are doing with it, even if most of us only use it for games.

This makes glass, oculus etc old hat. If it works as well as the reviewers say and the video suggests, I'm in, as is the rest of the fam.

The terrain mapping capability and placement of holographic objects on it in real time is amazing. And you essentially get real time texturization of reality and then some.

guardian452 wrote: Looks good enough for me to spend my own money on. But then again, I also have a kinect, zune, xbox360, so I might be a bit of a "fanboi"

Don't understand the kinect hate? Pretty amazing stuff out there that people are doing with it, even if most of us only use it for games.

I don't hate Kinect. Kinect had some real possibilities. And if Microsoft ever realizes any of them, it'll be awesome. Until then, well.

Am I the only one who has read RISKS Digest? The potential for abuse here is kind of amazing.
Just move his glass coffee table 18 inches to the left...
Who would I trust with this thing? Not Microsoft.

ClassicHasClass wrote: I don't hate Kinect. Kinect had some real possibilities. And if Microsoft ever realizes any of them, it'll be awesome. Until then, well.

To be fair, Kinect has been used not just by Microsoft, but in hundreds of other projects. The kinect API and books like Kinect hacks have allowed universities and developers all over to use it for what they wish. Microsoft shouldn't have to realize every possibility... Developers can/are doing that with Kinect.

Just take a look at http://www.kinecthacks.com/

robespierre wrote: Am I the only one who has read RISKS Digest? The potential for abuse here is kind of amazing.
Just move his glass coffee table 18 inches to the left...
Who would I trust with this thing? Not Microsoft.

Well, I just got done reading Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom, which is hundreds of pages of dense language, sparse on ideas, identifying all the various disaster scenarios with innovations in A(G)I. Chalk up my cavalier attitude to the burnout I've experienced thanks to the consumption of this tome, but technological advancement really won't be stopped. There are privacy and even existential concerns, but there is no way you can guarantee everyone will abide by any limitations on technology. It's a bit of the same argument that drives the impossibility of a totally nuke free world. I say I have none. Do you trust me? Trust is expensive in these scenarios.

Coming back to hololens, given that stuff like this will happen regardless, who would you rather trust? Apple, facebook, google, nsa? Open sourcerers? When compared with google/facebook personal information exploitation & stalking and Apple totalitarianism, Microsoft is hardly the evil empire it was accused of being in the 90s and early 2000s.

commodorejohn wrote: I thought we learned from Google Glass that all this stuff accomplishes is to make people into oblivious, insufferable assholes?

With apologies to the NRA, technology doesn't make people assholes, people make people assholes

sgifanatic wrote: ... there is no way you can guarantee everyone will abide by any limitations on technology.

Mom Nature will be taking care of that real quick-like

hamei wrote: Mom Nature will be taking care of that real quick-like

She's had her chances... but she continues to give her children the benefit of doubt.

sgifanatic wrote: She's had her chances... but she continues to give her children the benefit of doubt.

As far as I know, the fat lady has not finished singing yet.

Saw an interesting little story the other day. The people who grow Fuji apples keep thorough records. The average temperature of their little part of the world has risen 2* over the past forty years while the blossoming time has advanced five to eight days per year. As a result, the acidity of the apples has dropped markedly, which destroys the flavor, the shelf life and the resistance to destruction. I vividly remember the first Fuji apple I had, some time before 1980. It was remarkable. Had one a short time ago. It was shit.

Dinosaurs ruled the roost for 200 milion years, yet the walking ones disappeared in the blink of an eye. Something like 40% of all the species in existence have disappeared over the past hundred years.

Have fun with your super-innovative hololens. Damn, you can play such cool games ! Maybe that will be what you can do when there's nothing to fucking eat.

Everybody knows Earth would be much better off without humans. Anyways, now you can have your patented & licensed apple variety if you want eye-popping if a bit hollow tasting apples. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/1 ... n-the-club

Maybe in the post-apocalyptic future only the patent-encumbered and highly engineered varieties will grow at all ?

In related news, were bananas fourteen inches long before 1980 as well? Because, I think it is to the point where it is messing with some old recipes. E.g. a curry or pudding or whatever calls for two, but then you can't taste anything else and the texture is well off. And one fruit is more than one serving nowadays. In fairness, the price hasn't gone up any but you buy a 3 pound bunch of bananas and you get like 5 of them. The organic ones you pay more but you get 8 or 10 in the same weight. Most people don't eat or use bananas by weight but per fruit.

And don't get me started on tomatoes. You gotta grow them yourself or pay $10 at whole foods to get some real fucking tomatoes anymore. So this year I've got some big pots for the balcony. tomatoes peppers (bell, banana, jalapeños..) and some herbs.

(dearest recondas and neko, feel free to move this to another discussion because hamei and me like to talk about it all the time)

Have fun with your super-innovative hololens. Damn, you can play such cool games ! Maybe that will be what you can do when there's nothing to fucking eat.

Maybe Microsoft can make a hololens for our tongues, and we'll all have soylent green through a tube but it will be so delicious! And we can have an itunes library full of different dinners! You an rent an "album" from Chris Ruth's or the Cheesecake Factory! An itunes library full of exotic cars, you just put on your holo-lens, holo-nose, holo-tongue, and holo-suit and get in your self-driving googlemobile (does it actually have to physically move at this point? Or can you just lie in a rack with other human fleshbags?) and rub wheels with Jackie Stewart in a Cosworth DFV !

In all fairness, microsoft comes up with stuff like this all the time. (I was just reminded of how the surface-table was going to take over every nightclub and coffeeshop a few years ago...) I'll believe it when I see it. I don't see how there could be a security issues robes mentioned, from what I can tell you still see everything around you, but it can "project" holographs in your field of vision.

And it's a crying shame, too, because SweeTango is delicious...

Anyway, after arguing about this with starry-eyed "futurists" over on another forum, it's a breath of fresh air to come here and get some good honest cynicism.

I think that back in the '50s the commercial banana was the Gros Michel, which was larger than the Cavendish bananas we have today. It was also sweeter and more tart.

robespierre wrote: I think that back in the '50s the commercial banana was the Gros Michel, which was larger than the Cavendish bananas we have today. It was also sweeter and more tart.

The big deal in fourth grade .. fifth grade ? was a field trip to pier 50 - 52 or somewhere down there, near where the Giants stadium is now, to visit a banana boat from Costa Rica. There were no port-tainers then, the bananas came out of the hold on rubber belts with buckets, then were offloaded by longshoremen. They had hairy spiders, too. The banana boats were fairly small and white and had accomodations for maybe a half-dozen passengers, it seemed like that would be a fun trip. This was about the time Richard Nixon took a tour of the Southern Hemisphere and the residents of ten countries lined the streets to spit on him. I didn't understand that at the time.

In sixth grade (?) the Savannah came to visit. Another field trip, yay ! That was a pretty cool ship.

Once upon a time San Francisco was a real city, with a population of human beings who had real jobs and did worthwhile work.

ISTR bananas, being the monoculture that they are (seeds were bred out of them a long, long time ago), had almost an entire species wiped out due to a disease (banan blight?) and the bananas we eat now are from the species that happened to be resistant, and hence is different. I understand it's not as tasty, but then I don't like bananas at all.