Microsoft's Vision Of Future Workplaces 575
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft unveils their new office of the near future in a swanky center in Redmond. Inside this article you will find clear evidence of institutional navel gazing like never before and a staggering ignorance of current technology (much of this seems retreaded) not to mention actual business needs or wants. Want proof? How about: '"Surround sound is going to be increasingly important in future offices," says group marketing manager Tom Gruver in leading a tour of the new facility.' Right. More chestnuts inside."
surround sound? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:surround sound? (Score:2)
You would think that they would start naming their technologies w/$'s after them instead of #'s.
Re:surround sound? (Score:5, Funny)
They didn't say "Star Wars themes", they said "Star Wars style effects".
You know how computers in movies and on TV always make whizzy bleeping noises whenever they do anything? Well, Microsoft have recognised that computers in use tend to be quiet, and so are taking steps to rectify that.
Presumably, their next step will be to change text output, so that text is displayed at a rate of a few characters per second, again accompanied by suitable sound-effects. Oh, and make it so that passwords can be guessed by a bright kid after a few tries...
(oh, wait --- that last feature is already in place in many offices)
Re:surround sound? (Score:5, Funny)
They have this already. It's called Microsoft Office X. I swear to God it is on by default.
Re:surround sound? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:surround sound? (Score:2, Funny)
I'd just be happy if I didn't have to listen to the moron in the other aisle whistling to himself at odd moments. That is so much more distracting than mere Abba when you're trying to work out something in your head and get it into the code.
OK, I'm done venting now.
Re:surround sound? (Score:3, Interesting)
Want proof? How about: '"Surround sound is going to be increasingly important in future offices," says group marketing manager Tom Gruver in leading a tour of the new facility.' Right. More chestnuts inside."
At face value this does sound really dumb. But if someone could build a "wave cancellation" device that listens to the sounds coming into my cubicle...and then transmits that same sound 180 degrees out of phase towards me, thus turning my cubicle into my own private quiet space...I would be very very happy glad for it.
Re:surround sound? (Score:3, Funny)
You mean so that you can't hear the fire alarm? Great idea!
Build it yourself and you might just earn yourself an honourable mention in the Darwin awards [darwinawards.com]
Re:surround sound? (Score:2)
"IAN!"
"WHAT?"
"I CAN'T CONNECT TO THE INTERNET!"
"I KNOW, I'M WORKING ON IT!"
"OKAY, GIVE ME A YELL WHEN YOU'RE DONE!"
"WILL DO!"
oh jeez. I got the stupid lameness filter. Yes, I know it's like yelling, that's the point!
You're 110% right, Microsoft doesn't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
And what's the deal with the video / audio emails? I can guarantee you that they will not catch on. (anyone own a video phone?) Email is great because -we don't- have to listen or see each other. People like it because it is impersonal, you don't have to rush your thoughts, etc etc.
And then there is the data transfer wireless mouse. Now there's something that I'll break or misplace. Whatever happened to networks? It's easier to drag and drop a file over to someone... why should I walk over to someone's office with my mouse? That's idiotic.
It's like MS just doesn't "get it." Moreover, I don't mean to preach, but companies like Apple do (to some extent) "get it."
I mean, why make wireless data mice. Why not work on zero-config wireless networking (like OS X supports now)? And why annoy the HELL out of coworkers with dolby 6.1 "you've got mail" sounds. Why not work on soft silent visual cues insead (ie OS X can do a subtle 'pulse' of a users display instead of using alert sounds)?
The only thing I want from that artical is that monitor
Re:You're 110% right, Microsoft doesn't get it (Score:5, Funny)
And what the fuck is the go with the "click" sound in internet explorer? My mouse, it has plenty of audible and tactile feedback when a button is pressed. I don't need a "click" from my speakers when I click with my mouse. Not to mention the fact that even on my 1.7 GIGAHERTZ machine, the "Start Navigation" click is often a good half-second behind my real finger-on-the-button click.
Fucking clicks from your speakers when you press a mouse button. If that isn't redundant fucking bloatware, than I don't know what is. What the fuck were they on when they thought that up?
Fuck Microsoft. Fuck them with the rough end of a pineapple for shit like that.
What should we expect... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What should we expect... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another example is DirectX - they kept plugging away at it. Now it has surpassed OpenGL in terms of functionality and is the place where new technologies appear first.
Another example will be the Xbox. If Sony, et al are grinning now then they won't when XboxII comes out.
Microsoft can afford to play follow the leader - they have the money and the bloody minded resove to catch up from the rear.
* - haven't tried 1.1 or 1.2a yet
Re:What should we expect... (Score:5, Funny)
They prefer to do it this way - because it's much harder to shaft people from in front.
Re:What should we expect... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what I find so fascinating about the whole MS thing - by and large, they're a bunch of highly effective morons. Obviously, there are some very intelligent coders in there (there'd have to be to get that mess known as windows to run on anything), but by and large their strategy is totally reactionary, and all they seem to know how to do is totally whack competitors. Nothing original or useful.
Yet look at their position in the market. I find it incredible.
-- james
Why am I forced... (Score:3, Interesting)
In the 1960s, Ford said we'd be driving atomic-powered cars in 20 years. In the 1930s, just about everyone assumed we'd all have our private helicopter or airplane by 1980. (Imagine the air congestion and accidents with that...soccer moms flying their SUV-copters.) And we're still waiting on our Mr. Fusion powerplants...
Yogi Berra said it best. "It's tough to make predictions. Especially about the future."
Cheers,
Ethelred [grantham.de]
Microsofts Vision of the Near Future (Score:3, Funny)
Na, more like "Metropolis" or "Brave New World" (Score:3, Interesting)
Quoth the article: Instant-messaging buddies are grouped to reflect their hierarchy in the company, or where they're logged in. E-mails, instant messages and Web pages can be grouped into "Info Clusters" and then e-mailed or quickly turned into a Web site.
Nah, this is more like "Metropolis" or "Brave New World" -- where everyone knows their place in the Great Corporation, and the technology is there primarily to enforce that hierarchy (oh, good Ford!).
Maybe MS should have been more honest and obvious and referred to the managers in the "widget factory" as Betas, with the bosses Alphas. And handed out lots of soma. Orgy-porgy...
So much for the Internet flattening out society. Looks like MS wants it to be the tool for The Man to keep us peons where we belong.
Cheers,
Ethelred [grantham.de]
Multi headed monitors (Score:2)
This one they show is great, because of the shape and not having to have separate monitors. Very nice.
What's the advantage? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What's the advantage? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What's the advantage? (Score:2, Interesting)
When debugging, I had the code on the main screen, the game on another one, where I could see if the drawing routines were behaving correctly and finally I had another (smaller) screen with the documentation. When you program something on MS Windows, you really need to have the docs handy. Yes, their APIs are awful and they usually change things around.
OFFTOPIC: I once was assigned a digital video related project, and during the six months the project lasted, MS changed the name of the APIs we were using three times: ActiveMovie -> DirectMovie -> SomethingMovie, I can't remember. It drove me nuts!
Re:Multi headed monitors (Score:3, Interesting)
So when did this all happen?
1992.
Re:Multi headed monitors (Score:2)
More Chestnuts? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a pointless article.
Re:More Chestnuts? (Score:2, Insightful)
The copy/paste from computer-to-computer in the manner discussed (just keep dragging, your mouse ends up on the other desktop) would be nice, as long as the mouse was suitably accelerated. I'd hate to drag my arm across half my desk to get the pointer off the edge of that gigantic monitor onto my laptop's desktop. There also needs to be position sensors on the laptop/desk so that my laptop's desktop and computer's desktop "connect" at a point that corresponds to their actual relative physical positions.
Either that or a fixed "wormhole" that mousing into pops you over to the other desktop. And tell me again why that's much more efficient than (or even much different than) showing the laptop's HD in a window on my desktop's monitor?
--JoeRe:More Chestnuts? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm
Interesting line (Score:2)
I would of guessed the opposite from Microsoft.
Gruver says... (Score:4, Insightful)
And that, my dear friends, is what will decide its success. Ever-increasing workloads and unreasonable expectations of "productivity" from cost-cutting employers mean there's a good chance the above statement will come true, even if the rest [of the vision] doesn't.
Re:Gruver says... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gruver says... (Score:3, Funny)
And I'll play with whatever electronic gadget
So, yeah, anybody who's a slave to their phone (that is, anybody who sees it as SOMETHING THEY NEED as opposed to a tool that makes life easier WHEN I WANT IT TO) is obviously an unhappy person.
It's the mindset, not the tool.
My fave bit (Score:2)
Hahahahah! The idea that it would be really hard to copy info between 2 computers unless you can drag from one desktop to another! Even in Windows you can just open 2 explorer windows if you REALLY REALLY HAVE TO use drag 'n' drop to copy files.
Stuff like the quote from the article is like some myopic future gazing from ancient SF, where they "solved" problems of the future using an extended version of the current method- i.e. The way people in the future will save space with books is that they will keep all their books in a warehouse many miles from their house and be able to teleport the volume they require from the warehouse when they want to read it...
graspee
Re:My fave bit (Score:2)
The idea that it would be really hard to copy info between 2 computers unless you can drag from one desktop to another!
Believe it or not, this is a feature I would use. Right now, copying a file between two computers involves: 1. launch an ftp server, 2. copy the file to ftproot, 3. run my script which automatically logs into said server, 4 type "get ". It's not super-inconvenient, but definitely not as easy as a laser pointer drag and drop.
-a
Re:My fave bit (Score:2)
Re:My fave bit (Score:2)
Sure there are other ways to move files around (hey, use Zmodem if you want!) but in general, easier is better.
Clueless (Score:5, Insightful)
Your choice, Mr. Anderson:
- Receive your message via some old Gleep rattling on about the weather, his latest aches and pains, finally getting to the point 13 minutes into the message..., or
- Skimming the email until you get to the part that matters, reading it quickly and then hitting a ^D to send it to hell.
Well, Mr. Anderson, which is it? Listen to 5 messages an hour (if you're lucky), or processing 30 emails in the same amount of time? Where do you want to go today, Mr. Anderson?My name is Neo!
THUD.
No I want this (Score:5, Funny)
"HARD TEEN ANAL SEX WITH ANIMALS!
CUM GET YOUR HARD TEEN ANAL SEX WITH ANIMALS!"
Won't spam be fun then.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Clueless (Score:5, Informative)
Simple (Score:3, Funny)
You listen to it once, making a note of the time elapsed when you heard an interesting bit. Then you go back to the start and skip to the bits you made a note of.
Geez. Is it that hard
Re:Clueless (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Clueless (Score:2)
Along with the voice message I believe it comes with a summary like who's it from and so on. The additional information is kind of like a caller ID for messages that you can choose when you want to list them, and as a bonus you could even store them easily for later, great way for blackmail...
Re:Clueless (Score:2)
the truth is... (Score:4, Funny)
2.) Soon, the voice file will not be in a seperate file; one will only have to click on the e-mail to hear it
3.) Microsoft will see that people are tired of sending e-voice#-mail with delays between them, so they create a technology to allow them to connect and talk to each other instantly
4.) Microsoft realizes that it can create a product for e-voice#-mail which is much smaller, so it does
5.) Microsoft discovers a way for e-voice#mail to be exchanged over regular POTS wires
6.) Microsoft releases the their latest innovation...the telephone
The telephone: the next stage of computing
Soo BPOD? (Score:3, Funny)
"booo-beee-BEEEEE! WE're sorry! This phone has caused a core dump and will now be shut down. Good bye!"
bloody fookin' 'ell.
Re:Clueless (Score:2)
People are also missing the corporate angle to the voicemail/e-mail thing. It will most likely be streamed to you from a central messaging server so bandwidth utilization will be spread more evenly.
POP3 it won't be.
Favorite quote from the article (Score:4, Funny)
And I'm sure they are going to need much larger dumpsters to hold all the bullshit coming out of Tom Gruver's cube.
If there's anything that I ask of people in the offices next to mine, it's that they keep their stereos down below setting '11'. Yessir, that's the number one thing to bitch about in offices in the 21st century.
I wish Mr. Gruver had said something a little more insightful, such as the "number one thing in offices is a door with a lock". But that doesn't make many headlines.
Re:Favorite quote from the article (Score:2)
If somebody could put together enough microphones, CPU power, bandwidth and surround speakers to teleport a totally lifelike sound field between two conference rooms, that would be awesome. I can imagine a system good enough to break out of the mold of one speaker owning the whole conference call at a time; a really cool system would support the hushed side conversations that happen in real meetings.
view C# on D# (Score:2, Insightful)
D# ? Someone please tell me this is a parody and not real life.
graspee
Re:Bad naming. (Score:2, Funny)
Surely that can't be it... (Score:2)
Surely there *must* be some more new ideas floating round than that - for instance, what about better tools to manage the flood of email people now receive?
Three things (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Surround sound being an important part of an office? If your office is a production studio, maybe - but if your office is a studio, chances are you know more about what you need than a bunch of marketing hacks from MS.
I kind of hope this was a joke that the article didn't quite make clear.
3) The lack of a focus on security - on the one hand, MS might not want to overhype something they've been horribly deficient with in the past. On the other hand, it sounds like even the visitors noticed a lack of focus on secure computing, and I'd be a bit concerned about a company that promotes style over substance as the "office of the near future".
Shameless MS Bashing (Score:2)
Hello.. this is Microsoft. I would be more concerned if they started promoting substance at all. Have you used Windows FisherPrice recently? =)
Surround Sound Makes Sense If You Know MS (Score:2, Informative)
Surround sound makes sense to MSFT employees because most of us [including wet behind the ears college hires like me] have their own office. I love being able to listen to my obnoxious [triplesix.com] hip [nolimitrecords.com] hop [cashmoney-records.com] music [down-south.com] without having to worry about an office mate like I did at internships in the past. However I often find myself wishing for speakers better than the stock, cheap PC speakers than came with my Dell. Surround sound would be way fucking cool.
Of course, this all assumes having your own office. Cubicles or other shared spaces may not be as conducive for surround sound music listening as ones own office but I wouldn't just dismiss it out of hand as you have.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not reflect the opinions, thoughts, strategies or plans of my employer.
MS' Sense of Space (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for the insight... it sounds like a very nice environment you have. However, this simply underscores the problem.
It has been my experience, reflected by the popularity of cultural icons like Office Space and Dilbert, that organizations (both corporate and US Government) tend not to have such a wealth of workspace. The average employee does not get their own office space. They're lucky if they get their own cube. Furthermore, management seems eager to explore ways to further share a shared workspace - witness the interest in "hoteling".
This leads to two points. First, sound is more a disruptive entity than enhancement of this shared space. Secondly, a business is not likely to invest in the extra money for a good set of surround sound speakers to further that disruption.
Scoffing at Microsoft's claims that surround sound will be an important part of the office is not simply dismissing the point out of hand. It is recognizing the current environment. And it might further question whether Microsoft's visionaries are too removed from the reality of that current environment.
I know I'd like a wraparound screen (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that such a thing wouldn't be MS only- it looks like a curved triple size flat panel, and probably just appears to the OS as a single 3840x1024 screen or whatever.
Re:Three things (Score:2)
Sure. And generations of researchers and engineers before Microsoft have discovered that. Sun had an even nicer concept, where your desktop surface itself also was a screen. Every few years, this becomes a "hot idea", and then it cools down again when people look at what it costs to deliver it.
This will, of course, happen sooner or later. But it's the display hardware wizards, not the folks in Redmond that will do it. Who gets the credit is, as usual, a different question.
Re:Three things (Score:5, Interesting)
It is cool. It's also a blatant ripoff of the work Bruce Tognazzini did at Sun: In his "Starfire" movie [asktog.com] (in which we are shown exactly why Bruce should not attempt a career as director) one of the core ideas is the Starfire desktop, a 6-foot wide vertical arc that also sweeps down onto the physical "desktop". While the film is flat, the thinking that went into the world it portrays is excellent, and has stood the test of time quite well.
Not only is the idea presented there, but there are some clever demonstrations of possible features of such tchnology, for instance: The desktop portion of the display incorporates phototransistors as the 4th element of each pixel. The entire screen is touch sensitive, allowing one to "scan" a document by simply placing it face down on the display and rubbing it with your knuckles. The image then visibly flips to "un-mirror" itself and is OCRed into usable form. Cool. Another neat idea is that of merging touchscreen gestures with the giant Starfire display - for instance, a duplicate of a graphics object in Ashlar Vellum for Starfire is created by touching it with thumb and finger joined, then spreading them apart, creating a selected copy of the object.
The MS center sounds interesting, but it looks to be a simple rip-off of the ideas that Sun first expressed in the Starfire film. (That said, I think Sun wasn't quite ready to deal with a vision so bold, either. One of the interesting things about the film is the implied e-business connectedness that underlies the system. In some ways, it is very much like what we have today with Google and large scale information repository sites.)
This vision still needs to happen. Here's hoping it will...
Re:Three things (Score:3, Informative)
Remember that MS is just now getting around to aping what Tog and Sun were proposing in 1994!
Smoke and mirrors. DRM is their last hope. (Score:5, Interesting)
Like their recent press release for their next generation of vaporware, this looks like a delaying tactic to give the illusion that the company is going somewhere. From that view, at best it can delay an audit until the company can get a world level monopoly (and thus positive cash flow) through DRM. At worst it can postpone the date when the company flatlines, but postpone long enough for major share holders to offload.
DRM is their last hope. It won't help them out of their security and design problems, but it will let them keep dominion of the desktop and keep using that as a hammer. Otherwise, OS X did an end run around them for the desktop. In general, MS products cannot compete on technical merits, especially security, or price. Even Balmer and Allchin now admit it publicly. And it looks like Microsoft is not likely to catch up, either.
Having been found guilty of illegally maintaining a monopoly, MS will no longer be able to rely on purely on existing marketshare either. In fact many key applications types (spreadsheets, wordprocessing, fincancial software) are starting to appear on faster, cheaper, more secure, more easily maintained platforms. Quite a few execs and VPs have been hopping off recently. Bill himself stepped down as CEO the first year Microsoft posted a major loss.
I can see it now... (Score:3, Funny)
Here I am in this next scene, walking to Sue's office delivering her the memo on a Post-It, written in crayon. The Digital "Rights" Management system intergrated at great expense into everyhting from the coffee maker to my car dashboard is fsck'ed up again and the entire office is broken.
Magic Mice? (Score:2, Interesting)
- At one desk, users can move a wireless mouse's pointer from the screen of one computer to the screen of a laptop, with no wire or wireless connection between the computers themselves. That allows copying or moving material between the computers, a task that would otherwise be more difficult.
Does anybody else have difficulties with this particular idea? Since when did the ability to move a mouse pointer mean you could copy and paste?Re:Magic Mice? (Score:2)
win2vnc (Score:2)
I am doing that right now...
win2vnc [hubbe.net]
Visionaries... (Score:2, Insightful)
If by 'visionary' they mean 3d sound, video emails and hierarchical buddies I'd rather have them concentrate on security.
Re:Visionaries... (Score:2)
network mouse (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, that normally is difficult if there is "no connection between the computers". So is the mouse also a base station for wireless ethernet?!?
Re:network mouse (Score:3, Insightful)
ZDNet has an article as well (Score:2, Interesting)
Surround sound & Sircam (Score:2)
oh. that'd be everywhere, then...
Best quote: (Score:5, Funny)
simplifying:
workers e-mail each other...videos of themselves delivering messages... rather than simply writing e-mails..
What? They email each other videos of themselves delivering messages? Is this some dystopian big brother style post office, where you have to keep your supervisor informed about all your work via email? Or is it instead an ultra paranoid method of document authentication?
We must be told!
PS. Yeah, yeah, I know that they meant saying the message into a webcam or whatever, but the above is how I read it first time...
Article from MSFT PressPass (Score:2)
Wow! (Score:2)
The article... well... isn't. It's an ADD. Take a look at every "article" on MSN. Wake up and watch the Matrix, people, MSN is one big banner add. LOOK AT IT! So is this article. One big add. Puppets pushing Media Player 9 and all the other "extra" features in MSN that you ahve to pay for.
More on the story (Score:2)
Wireless mouse throwing! (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine going mad at somebody and throwing your mouse at him. It will take weeks before you have found your cursor back!
Euh... I have a mouse-cursor on the screen but I don't know who it belongs to..."
Please, stop playing around. Get away from that start-menu!
Don't! DON'T. Don't run winipcfg! I will hate you for the rest of your life!
*** irc-user has quit (Ping timeout)
Funny Terminology (Score:2)
Yeah, I tend to call the stuff Microsoft has already introduced into the market bugs too.
D#?? (Score:2)
Why this is going to be REALLY interesting... (Score:2)
Not many people are properly wired for this InfoTech stuff. A _very_ senior guy at the company I work for emailed me last week because I dropped the "Open Directory Project" into a conversation down the pub. The guy in question knows all about Google, yet he still emailed me with the precise words "What was that URL you told me the other day for 'The Open Directory Project'?".
In a way it's all happening now with Intranets, Extranets and CRM etc. Companies that are created by, or led by people that "get IT" - and have the business genes to go with it - are going to have no problem in this exciting new landscape where new "technology" comes along every 24 hours.
I can't wait
Way to many MS articles lately (Score:2)
Did MS buy
what is it like working form M$ (Score:2)
Hmm (Score:2)
However, some of the described features made me grimace...they are the sort of thing that is almost GUARANTEED to be a security hazard and loaded with bugs.
Video email...sounds good til you realize that means that spammers will be sending 50meg files of porno videos. (porn good...bandwidth wasted because the spammers sent the same video 20 times...bad)
I just flinched when it talked about being able to send spreadsheets to a contact's cell phone or pda. Somehow this doesn't seem like a very safe or reliable method of distributing confidential financial information... (because of the tremendous complexity of the software that would be required to accomplish this means it is likely to have many security bugs)
Surround sound...star wars theme to copy files...lol I bet it even has a subwoofer. Unless you are the only one in the office I don't even need to address the problem here....
The wrap around screen might actually be useful, but it looks like it distorts the image. Pro developers have used multiple monitors for years now.
Finally, the mouse "automagically" moving from screen to screen...sharing network drives is shaky and buggy enough without this extra layer of complexity added in...
Workplace innovations (Score:2)
Virtual desktops are of dubious use, and are more a matter of personal habit- the point of more desktop space is greater visibility, and multimonitor delivers this.
Matrox has always been aware of this need, and has served it well for years. Recently, nVidia has started to catch up, with all new Geforce chips being equipped with multimonitor capability- what facilities the actual OEM's card has is another matter, but the chip at least can handle it, encouraging more manufacturers to make multimonitor parts without having to take a risk on buying lots of multimonitor specific GPUs- so this sort of thing is bound to arrive in an office near you.
With CRTs getting cheaper and cheaper, multimonitor is within everyone's reach without breaking the bank. When flat panels come into their own, we'll get even more capability.
The one change I made to my PC setup that made my computer use more productive was to get a larger monitor. The next best thing I did was to add a second one. Online documentation is no longer a joke- it now lives on monitor 2. Now, every workstation I own has at least 2 screens.
If you've never done multimonitor before, go dig out an old PCI card (unless it's a Matrox card, you'll need to set it to init before your AGP card in the bios) and a random spare monitor, set them up on your machine, and try it. Both Windows and Linux support multimonitor very well (I've used the binary nvidia drivers under linux, and have had a great deal of success with dualhead on one card, and the recent win2k drivers have resolved their old problem with single card multimonitor.)
Anything novel in there? (Score:2)
Multiple people editing concurrently one multimedia document?
Multiple keyboards for one machine, for extreme programming / pair programming, for example?
Desks that are actually the right height?
Wireless monitors & monitor stations? (let's not get into security with that, though!)
Signed and encrypted documents, changes, and messages? What about that whole DRM thing? Left and right hand at MS marketing not talking? (they are pretty big)
These are things I want and would pay money for.
Corporate Slavery (Score:2)
Who *wants* to have work follow them everywhere they go? Get up.. there's the boss on the computer waiting for you to get out of bed. Try to escape? Nuh uh.. the toaster has a few voicemails waiting for you before breakfast..
Run out the door to the car.. that's ok.. everything was forwarded to your dashmail while you were unplugging the toaster since you didn't verify it was read before it was unplugged. All this time your cell phone is going off because someone thinks their current thoughts are more important than yours. Meanwhile you're probably being tracked by marketing droids to see if they can sell you a product that will somehow get you out of bed, dressed and to your corporate shackles quicker, after all it's not you that matters.. it's the almighty dollar.. which you are making for someone else and the marketing people want some too. you're just a simple consumer after all aren't you?
Cell phones, pagers, voicemail.. bah I say. If you want to get ahold of me it's your job to track me down not my job to have every available tracking device at your disposal.
Thanks, but no thanks.. you can keep your integrated office far away from me.
Most vociferous? (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine what that would do to slashdot. Getting moderating up for larger and larger fonts?
Bill Gates' Mole Man Army (Score:2)
DIGITAL PANTS ACTIVATE
For those who don't get it. [mp3s.com]
so disappointing (Score:4, Insightful)
- being able to move the mouse pointer between computers (assuming these are separate computers, not just multiple monitors); I assume this indicates some sort of network-transpart clipboard (and that the user is signed onto both computers). cool, that.
- the larger, semi-circle screen - mostly for the cool wraparound aspect (semi-inevitable considering increasingly thin monitors and e-paper (somewhere) down the line, though).
Otherwise, it sounds like they're just hashing out more variations of video/audio conferencing - whoop-de-whoo.
There seems to be a problem of understanding the _purpose_ of business communication, vs. just the _forms_ of communication. Video and audio voicemail are high-bandwidth, low content, and do little to guide the sender towards composing a coherent message. When using text, OTOH, we are often forced to skip the details and focus on the meat of what we intend to say.
However, neither of these formats truly _aids_ us in the actual composition of our thoughts - one can easily compose a syntactically perfect text message with zero content - and this is even easier in audio/video formats.
A spreadsheet and a database are useful in that they assist use in ordering large amounts of quanitative data; unfortunately, we have few tools that assist us in bridging the gap between quantiative data and qualitative data, in other words, making our intent clear while exposing the reasoning behind it.
Step-by-step-"Wizards" are a (mostly) futile stab in the general direction of this, tending to assume a very rigid result (as well as presuming that we know the final format of the ends result from the start!); what we need instead are tools that allow us to begin very broadly, and then assist us in narrowing our concepts down until we have a clear set of assumptions, observations, related analysis, and conclusions.
Yes, there are many _people_ who are good at this, and there are processes for _teaching_ people to be good at this, but we don't (yet) have automated tools that are good with helping people accomplish this.
And until someone manages to construct the fundemental versions of those tools, we'll have to deal with new versions of tools that make it easier to transfer nonsense back-and-forth, vs. actually developing, refining, and communicating ideas. Anything less than this is just another improved method to pretend that we're in the same room with someone who's not.
Or, God forbid, another variation on Powerpoint (shudder).
Surround Sound IS Important (Score:2, Insightful)
What will be great about these proposed offices is teleconferencing and immersive environments. And that is where surround sound (i.e. directional sound) will be incredibly important. If you are teleconferencing with several people, who will be spread out across a wall or several walls, you need audio to help you figure out who is talking. Without it, things will both feel weird and strain your brain. Think watching a movie with left and right channels reversed and both speakers on one side of your head instead of in front.
The same thing goes for video, BTW. You want eye contact to be there, so when you are talking to person A, you better be looking into person A's camera view.
Access Grid [anl.gov] nodes encourage stereo sound and camera placement in-line with eye contact. Cool concept images and actual working prototypes of an "office of the future" can be seen at the UNC Office of the Future [unc.edu] research site.
Microsoft's *REAL* Vision of Future Workplaces. (Score:5, Insightful)
- Surround sound is an importent part of the workplace, because surround sound advertising embedded in the operating system that must be watched in order to continue to use the system is making Microsoft millions. Thanks to Palladium, there's no way around this.
- You try to copy a snippet from a webpage by simply moving a mouse pointer from your desktop to your laptop, but you don't have permission to copy the snippet from the webpage, and the copy action fails due to DRM.
- A worker tries to email his boss a clip of the broadcast news story about their company, but the embedded watermark blocks him from doing so.
- An email is forward to the CEO's car dash. The CEO's car 'blue screens', and literally crashes, killing the CEO, because for all the Microsoft rhetoric, they are still interested in neither security, nor correctness.
- Two of the six feet of the screen are dedicated to advertising.
Sarcastic? Yes. Overstated? Yes. Am I any more guilty of twisting things then Microsoft in this article? No.It's amazing how hard Microsoft's actual actions are working to block as much of this as possible and ruin it in every way, even as they talk this stuff up.
Home-office? (Score:5, Insightful)
My ass. They can try to blur them all they want, but it will be a cold day in hell before my office is in my home. When I go home, I want to get away from work. My employer gets fully a third of my weekday existence as it is (8 hours of 24), plus occasional weekend work when things get tight. I don't want to go home, only to do more work. That's my time for family, friends, or just plain sitting on my couch in my boxers drinking a beer.
We've been way to permissive in allowing our employers to demand increasing amounts of our time, particularly those of us on salary, who don't get overtime pay. We need to grow a backbone, stand up, and declare, in one voice, "NO MORE!" If we fail to do so, we will all be changing our job descriptions to "wage slave," because that's what we'll be.
MS vs. Engelbart (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider: Douglas Engelbart didn't just come up with wizzier ways to do the same old crap ("Look, this thing AUTOMATICALLY puts the memo in the pneumatic tube FOR YOU!"), he looked at technologies that didn't exist yet and asked "And how could this be used to be more productive".
Ever since seeing that video I have been asking "And where is that sort of demo TODAY?" "What would a demo that is as far in advance of today's state of the art look like?"
It would take ENORMOUS resources to pull off such a demo. It would take an organization that has plenty of R&D money to be able to do that kind of research.
Microsoft could do it - they have the people, they have the money. What they don't have is the vision
My apologies to the various Microsoft employees that read Slashdot, but I assert that MS does not have the vision to create a demo on the scale of the Englebart demo. Englebart's vision was "How can we improve our ability to work on complicated projects", Microsoft's vision is "How do we gain even more monopolies and make even more money". MS employees, this is not a slam against you - it is an indictment of the very top level of management at Microsoft.
And mind you, Microsoft is not alone in this - most companies today are as myopic as a mole in this. They have no motivation to really improve the world, they improve the world only as a side effect of trying to "maximize shareholder value". But the companies that REALLY take off are not the ones trying to artificially inflate their stock price, but rather those companies who's products truly revolutionize the world.
Re:chestnuts? (Score:4, Funny)
Though it might be an improvement.
Re:chestnuts? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:chestnuts? (Score:2)
Re:chestnuts? (Score:2)
Re:What's so crazy about surround sound? (Score:5, Funny)
Surround sound could help...
If I could get the MS Paperclip to speak at me from all directions, I think I could be even more productive at work.
Re:Biometric Thumb readers as security (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Good Lord... (Score:2)
The difference between open-source and proprietary software is that open-source solves problems, while proprietary software also creates new problems to solve that weren't problems to begin with.
Think ISA Plug-N-Play. The user already had to be knowledgeable enough to open the case of their box and install the card, so they were usually already smart enough to set jumpers. People who couldn't do this simply hired someone who could to do it for them. Then PnP came along and made _every_ device impossible to install for _everyone_. Luckily, the move to PCI has made this obsolete.
I remember doing tech support for an ISP and having to help people reload their PnP modem drivers every few weeks or so, or helping them reset settings that PnP screwed up for them. Blech.
Re:d#? (Score:2)
Re:lame (Score:3, Insightful)