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Comment Re:Fuck Microsoft Research (Score 1) 361

.NET was pure development project without MS Research Center involvement. It’s heavily based on ideas from systems like UCSD Pascal, Java, etc., so no research was required. It was just a Microsoft response to Java and I’ve heard it is frozen now, meaning ‘abandoned’ in fact.

Microsoft did researched and invented small things like a couple of new convenient mouse shapes and an ergonomic keyboard layout, which is rather facetious for such a huge company.

Comment Re:Fuck Microsoft Research (Score 1) 361

You are right, mouse wheel was invented by a Microsoft guy in 1993 (the story is here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/05/meet-the-inventor-of-the-mouse-wheel.html).
But this was a long time ago. Current Microsoft bureaucratic hierarchy and stiff internal process guarantee that no significant invention can come out of Redmond anymore.

Just answering your next guess in advance: technology behind Kinect was invented and refined by Israel firm PrimeSense.

Comment Re:Fuck Microsoft Research (Score 2) 361

There was absolutely no MS research for Kin.
Kin software was developed by Danger, Inc. and was called Sidekick before the Danger was acquired by Microsoft in 2008 for 500M$. The original development team was pushed out by internal MS bureaucracy and replaced by their buddies, who killed the project.

As far as I know MS research division is a joke. It’s main purpose is to search for a promising start-ups to acquire

Comment Re:Mojo back? (Score 1) 380

Intel, HP and IBM have several large R&D centers in Europe and Asia, so probably they can not be used as sample patriotic corporations. Google really has about 80% of developers in States, but it’s sort of an exception proving the rule.
Anyway these are just two big companies. I worked in two smaller firms that after several attempts found good cheep companies in India and Russia and outsources ALL the development there. Partially this happened because of poor performance, demonstrated by local programmers. A vicious circle as you may see.

I guess until outsourcing is not properly taxed, the American tech mojo will be dwindling. Another option is to open borders and make same laws and salaries all over the planet. Although I’m not sure our future rulers from GOP would like the idea.

Comment Re:Mojo back? (Score 0) 380

Judging from my experience in 30% of cases US team really could keep developing project here by outsourcing only easier and tedious projects parts. It depends on a project, country, team and other specifics. To make a reliable statistics requires a lot of groundwork and companies willing to share the information (which I doubt). In manufacturing area the situation is much clearer because of the labels.
Businesses

Google Tries Not To Be a Black Hole of Brilliance 322

theodp writes "Google says it's declined to pursue awesome job prospects to avoid an over-concentration of brilliance at the search giant. Speaking at the Supernova conference, Google VP Bradley Horowitz said the company intentionally leaves some brainpower outside its walls: 'I recently had a discussion with an engineer at Google and I pointed out a handful of people that I thought were fruitful in the industry and I proposed that we should hire these people,' said Horowitz. 'But [the engineer] stopped me and said: "These people are actually important to have outside of Google. They're very Google people that have the right philosophies around these things, and it's important that we not hire these guys. It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google."'"

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