I want to see this hacked and be able to connected to my laptop so I can write programs using the Kinect sensor as an input. Think about how wild it would be to write software using a Kinect input as a sensor. For example, you could sit there and wave your hand to move through your email or music or something.
I suspect that Microsoft would love to leverage the Kinect platform as a way to reclaim relevance in mainstream computing. I'm sure that, with enough success, they'll productize it beyond XBox.
I've thought for a long time that a successful Kinect would likely lead to a Kinect-optimized version of Windows.
For a certain definition of "mainstream computing".
Since when is MS' platform a niche and its tools marginal? We just had two front-page stories about google suing the U.S. government for its explicit demand for MS technologies.
This is like saying "Toyota better work hard on autonomous vehicles to reclaim relevance in mainstream auto-mobile industry."
Yea, I knew I'd get stung by this. Should I have gone with "consumer" ? Or "mindshare" instead of "relevance" ?
What I intended to get across was that I think Microsoft would love to use Kinect as a platform to recover some of its losses in the mobile, search, and cloud computing spaces, essentially to establish it as the new Microsoft platform to lock in users.
Not exactly a crystal clear explanation, admittedly.
What you wanted to say is that MS is and has been uncool to developers and no one would touch their shite unless coerced by bills or held captive by an employer visa.
(no need to mince words)
Microsoft Sucks(TM) but they have never been good at, or even wanted, consumer lock-in. Microsoft Sucks(TM) but they're not evil, not by a long shot, or at least not good at it.
To us, developers, they're Useful Idiots[1] who do pro-developer things inadvertently, while trying to be evil. Case in point, they made their entire platform COM-enabled in order to ensure Office interop and "invite" people into VB. Really, they had the Web flashing in bright neon and all the dotcoms of the late 90s for omens, and all they thought was "yeah, the future is MS Office, let's just make Windows super accessible" ..
What happened is that the entire MS platform became "callable" from other stacks and people built their own stacks on top of MS'. Flash, Mozilla, Java, Open Office, VMWare, etc. None of them could have existed if MS was "competently evil" at locking down the win32 platform as Apple is at locking down the iThing.
Really, Microsoft sucks at being evil so bad that they're actually benevolent. If I was Roger Corman, shooting a cheap horror flick, I would yell at MS and tell it to get its act together, or get back to Denny's for their shift (most of Corman's lead actors were wait-staff); that's not a way for a proper villain to behave. Truly, the Eric Cartman of bad guys.
I see more and more people view Microsoft as a harmless, disoriented giant, just like IBM. Thing is, both were actively evil in their heyday. They killed, raped and pillaged until they become granddads and settled.
If modified for close-range operation, it could probably be hooked up to a motorized monitor arm, so that the monitor stays perfectly oriented relative to your face regardless of how you adjust your sitting position or posture.
Comments
I want to see this hacked and be able to connected to my laptop so I can write programs using the Kinect sensor as an input. Think about how wild it would be to write software using a Kinect input as a sensor. For example, you could sit there and wave your hand to move through your email or music or something.
I'm not the only one; Adafruit Industries has a $2,000 bounty for the first Github repo submission that can grab input from the Kinect device and output depth. http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect-proj...
I suspect that Microsoft would love to leverage the Kinect platform as a way to reclaim relevance in mainstream computing. I'm sure that, with enough success, they'll productize it beyond XBox.
I've thought for a long time that a successful Kinect would likely lead to a Kinect-optimized version of Windows.
reclaim relevance in mainstream computing.
For a certain definition of "mainstream computing".
Since when is MS' platform a niche and its tools marginal? We just had two front-page stories about google suing the U.S. government for its explicit demand for MS technologies.
This is like saying "Toyota better work hard on autonomous vehicles to reclaim relevance in mainstream auto-mobile industry."
Yea, I knew I'd get stung by this. Should I have gone with "consumer" ? Or "mindshare" instead of "relevance" ?
What I intended to get across was that I think Microsoft would love to use Kinect as a platform to recover some of its losses in the mobile, search, and cloud computing spaces, essentially to establish it as the new Microsoft platform to lock in users.
Not exactly a crystal clear explanation, admittedly.
What you wanted to say is that MS is and has been uncool to developers and no one would touch their shite unless coerced by bills or held captive by an employer visa.
(no need to mince words)
Microsoft Sucks(TM) but they have never been good at, or even wanted, consumer lock-in. Microsoft Sucks(TM) but they're not evil, not by a long shot, or at least not good at it.
To us, developers, they're Useful Idiots[1] who do pro-developer things inadvertently, while trying to be evil. Case in point, they made their entire platform COM-enabled in order to ensure Office interop and "invite" people into VB. Really, they had the Web flashing in bright neon and all the dotcoms of the late 90s for omens, and all they thought was "yeah, the future is MS Office, let's just make Windows super accessible" ..
What happened is that the entire MS platform became "callable" from other stacks and people built their own stacks on top of MS'. Flash, Mozilla, Java, Open Office, VMWare, etc. None of them could have existed if MS was "competently evil" at locking down the win32 platform as Apple is at locking down the iThing.
Really, Microsoft sucks at being evil so bad that they're actually benevolent. If I was Roger Corman, shooting a cheap horror flick, I would yell at MS and tell it to get its act together, or get back to Denny's for their shift (most of Corman's lead actors were wait-staff); that's not a way for a proper villain to behave. Truly, the Eric Cartman of bad guys.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
I see more and more people view Microsoft as a harmless, disoriented giant, just like IBM. Thing is, both were actively evil in their heyday. They killed, raped and pillaged until they become granddads and settled.
Microsoft did just buy Canesta (http://venturebeat.com/2010/10/29/microsoft-rumored-to-be-bu... ).
If modified for close-range operation, it could probably be hooked up to a motorized monitor arm, so that the monitor stays perfectly oriented relative to your face regardless of how you adjust your sitting position or posture.