I noticed that all the authors are Chinese. You would almost get the impression that research (in hard sciences) in the USA has been taken over by Chinese.

Yes, almost like claiming that you have violated the copyrights by copying the words "to be" from the works of Shakespear.

Aside from the fact that it is a linear problem to solve (simple polynomial if you add lens correction), you also need a good feature extractor to create a 3D model from a set of 2D pictures. There are some excellent packages for doing 3D reconstruction, but they also come with a high price tag. There are some free implementations as well, but they are not very good.

Is seems to be an interesting solver, but you have to add a lot more for building an application for 3D reconstruction. I wonder if Google is going to release the software behind PhotoTour as well. And preferable for Windows.

An important factor in the current evolution of mankind is improved healthcare. Now that healthcare is improved, many more people survive their childhood, which actually mean that we as a species are becoming weaker and weaker. It seems that intelligence is a negative selection factor, because people with a high intelligence tend to have less children (or non at all) than people with an average intelligence. When healthcare improves even further, the effects may become even stronger. Who knows in 200 years we will not be able to walk anymore and all sitting in personal cars for most of our lives.

I understand that the results returned by Google are already customized to the user.

The subject says it all.

I believe that this technique already has been implemented many years ago in a jet-fighter simulator.

I wonder how facebook handles requests for data about foreigners? I wonder if that data is also protected by the privacy laws of the USA or that they can just provide that without a court order.

Just a week ago, the Slashdot item Alzheimer's Transmission Pathway Discovered reported that Alzheimer was caused by the spread of the tau protein gone wrong. How is this to be interpretted in the view of the above new item?

Most projectors can estimate the distance to the wall and also know the tilt, so I think that the alignment is not the problem. You know, even if the images are not perfectly align, our eyes will correct for that quickly. You also don't need special reflective screens, because circular polarization is used and that is pretty stable as compared to horizontal and vertical polarization. Because of this, it is even possible, with mirrors, to create one beam leaving the lens of the projector. I think that the biggest problem is that it will be twice as expensive and twice as bulky compared to a normal 2D projector.