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Microsoft

Microsoft Creates Kinect-Like System Using Laptop Speaker & Microphone 169

Posted by samzenpus from the echo-of-the-future dept.
MrSeb writes "Microsoft Research, working with the University of Washington, has developed a Kinect-like system that uses your computer's built-in microphone and speakers to provide object detection and gesture recognition, much in the same way that a submarine uses sonar. Called SoundWave, the new technology uses the Doppler effect to detect any movements and gestures in the proximity of a computer. In the case of SoundWave, your computer's built-in speaker is used to emit ultrasonic (18-22KHz) sound waves, which change frequency depending on where your hand (or body) is in relation to the computer. This change in frequency is measured by your computer's built-in microphone, and then some fairly complex software works out your motion/gesture. The obvious advantage of SoundWave over a product like Kinect is that it uses existing, commodity hardware; it could effectively equip every modern laptop with a gesture-sensing interface. The Microsoft Research team is reporting a 90-100% accuracy rate for SoundWave, even in noisy environments."

Comment Chose winner with weighted random sample. (Score 1) 457

by starbirdman (#38596116) Attached to: Mathematics Says Romney and Santorum Tied In Iowa

Hold a popular vote and then select from among the candidates randomly, weighted by their popular vote percentages.

In a two candidate race that both get 50% of the vote, the electorate has essentially said "We don't clearly know who's better." So flip a coin and go with that one. In a three way race where the 'spoiler' candidate receives 20% of the vote, select him as the winner with a 20% probability.

Pros:
* The majority doesn't completely drown out the rest.
* Less susceptible to small counting errors. (i.e. the OP).

Cons:
No chance of this being perceived fair. The conspiracy theorists are going to go apeshit the first time a 20% winner gets elected.

Revision:
Perhaps use a non-uniform distribution to push the percentages further towards the extreme--e.g. a winner of 80% of the electorate should probably be chosen 95% of the time.

Submission + - Rome was built in a day (washington.edu)

Submitted by spmallick
spmallick writes: Researchers at the University of Washington, in collaboration with Microsoft, have recreated the city of Rome in 3D using images obtained from Flickr [ Press Release . The data set consists of 150,000 images from Flickr.com associated with the tags "Rome" or "Roma", and it took 21 hours on 496 compute cores to create a 3D digital model. Unlike Photosynth / Photo Tourism, the goal was to reconstruct an entire city and not just individual landmarks. Previous versions of the Photo Tourism software matched each photo to every other photo in the set. But as the number of photos increases the number of matches explodes, increasing with the square of the number of photos. A set of 250,000 images would take at least a year for 500 computers to process... A million photos would take more than a decade! The newly developed code works more than a hundred times faster than the previous version. It first establishes likely matches and then concentrates on those parts.

The project website is at http://grail.cs.washington.edu/rome/

DISCLAIMER: The primary author of the work Dr. Sameer Agarwal is a co-author and a close friend.
Space

Submission + - New unmanned Japanese re-supply vessel for the ISS (examiner.com)

Submitted by
Joshua
Joshua writes: "JAXA, Japan's version of NASA, has scheduled the launch of its new rocket, the H-IIB, for September 11th, 2009. The rocket will be carrying up the first in a series of unmanned supply vessels for the ISS called the HTV. The new Japanese addition to the international space fleet comes as a huge welcome sign to NASA, who has scheduled the space shuttle to retire in 2010. The HTV will be able to transport vital supplies, equipment, and experiments to the ISS, a job that the U.S. space shuttle has been doing largely up until now. Yearly launches for the H-II2 and HTV are scheduled between now and 2015. Until NASA can finish the next generation Ares I rocket, which isn't likely to be finished before 2017, taking astronauts into space and to the ISS will likely become the job of Russia."

Submission + - Swine Flu Outbreak at PAX (penny-arcade.com)

Submitted by
whisper_jeff
whisper_jeff writes: "There's been a confirmed outbreak of Swine Flu at PAX. Those who attended and are feeling under-the-weather after the con should not write it off as a typical convention cold and go see a doctor to make sure, just in case."
Science

"Overwhelming" Evidence For Magnetic Monopoles 256

Posted by kdawson from the go-north-young-man-and-keep-on-going dept.
Thorfinn.au sends along big physics news: magnetic monopoles have been detected at low temperatures in "Dirac strings" within a single crystal of Dysprosium Titanate. Two papers are being published today in the journal Science and two more on arXiv.org, as yet unpublished, provide further evidence. "Theoretical work had shown that monopoles probably exist, and they have been measured indirectly. But the Science papers are the first direct experiments to record the monopole's effects on the spin-ice material. The papers use neutrons to detect atoms in the crystal aligned into long daisy chains. These daisy chains tie each north and south monopole together. Known as 'Dirac strings,' the chains, as well as the existence of monopoles, were predicted in the 1930s by the British theoretical physicist Paul Dirac. Heat measurements in one paper also support the monopole argument. The two, as yet unpublished, papers on arXiv add to the evidence. The first provides additional observations, and the second uses a new technique to determine the magnetic charge of each monopole to be 4.6x10-13 joules per tesla metre. All together, the evidence for magnetic monopoles 'is now overwhelming,' says Steve Bramwell, a materials scientist at University College London and author on one of the Science papers and one of the arXiv papers."
Biotech

Submission + - How many bits does it take to kill you? 1

Submitted by pegr
pegr writes: Andrew "bunnie" Huang, Reverse Engineer, XBox hacker, and generally smart guy, muses over the H1N1/swine flu virus as only a reverse engineer can: "I now know how to modify the virus sequence to probably make it more deadly." Not that he would, of course. bunnie has consistantly made the esoteric available to us mere mortals, and his overview of the H1N1 virus is a fascinating read from a unique perspective.
Cellphones

Submission + - Why the Google Phone Isn't Taking Off 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Farhad Manjoo writes in Slate that while the iPhone commands nearly 14 percent of smartphone sales and BlackBerry about 21 percent. Android has only 3 percent and that even though it's far friendlier to developers, Android has failed to attract anywhere near the number of apps now clogging the iPhone. Manjoo writes that Google went wrong by giving handset manufacturers and carriers a great deal of control over the design and marketing of Android phones so there is no idealized "Google phone"--instead, Android devices get names like the T-Mobile G1 or the myTouch 3G, and each is marketed separately and comes with its own distinct capabilities and shortcomings. "Outside handset manufacturers lack ambition--none of them even seems to be trying to match the capabilities of the iPhone, let alone to knock us down with features that far surpass those of Apple's device," writes Manjoo. "A smart handset manufacturer could build a top-of-the-line Android device that outshines Apple's phone in at least a few areas--better battery life, a much better Web browser, a brighter or bigger screen, faster or more functional controls ... something that might help Android inspire gadget lust. But so far, that's not happening." John Gruber adds that the goal should be to make a phone that is better than the iPhone. "Carefully select a handful of areas where you can beat the iPhone, and then promote the hell out of these features," writes Gruber. "If your hope is to gain a strong foothold in the market with a sub-par device, you are mistaken. If Apple is BMW, you can be Porsche.""
Networking

Submission + - Network Adapter Keeps Talking While A PC is Asleep (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
Al
Al writes: "Researchers at Microsoft and the University of California, San Diego have developed a network adapter that lets a computer enter sleep mode without disrupting the network connection. The adapter, dubbed Somniloquy (meaning to talk in one's sleep), consists of a gumstix running embedded Linux, 64MB of RAM and a 2G SD memory card, connected via USB. The adapter keeps the network connection going and the researchers have also developed a simplified IM client and bittorrent client that carry out more complicated tasks autonomously, only waking the computer if, for example, an actualy IM is received or a download is completed."
The Military

Submission + - ABL Completes 1st Airborne Test Against Missile

Submitted by
fructose
fructose writes: "The Airborne Laser managed to acquire, track, and illuminate a test missile yesterday. According to the press release, the Boeing team...

"used its infrared sensors to find a target missile launched from San Nicolas Island, Calif...issued engagement and target location instructions to the beam control/fire control system...fired its two solid-state illuminator lasers to track the target and...fired a surrogate high-energy laser at the target, simulating a missile intercept."

The sensors on board the missile confirmed the 'hit.' The next steps will be to test the high power laser at full power in flight and do a complete system test later this year. Looks like the Real Genius fans out there are finally living the dream."
Government

Submission + - $18M Contract For Transparency Website Blacked Out (propublica.org) 2

Submitted by
zokuga
zokuga writes: "The U.S. government recently approved an $18 million contract for Smartronix to build a website where taxpayers could easily track billions in federal stimulus money, as part of President Obama's promise to make government more transparent through the Internet.

However, the contract, which was released only through repeated Freedom of Information Act requests, is itself heavily blacked out. ProPublica reports:

After weeks of prodding by ProPublica and other organizations, the Government Services Agency released copies of the contract and related documents that are so heavily blacked out they are virtually worthless.

In all, 25 pages of a 59-page technical proposal — the main document in the package — were redacted completely. Of the remaining pages, 14 had half or more of their content blacked out.

Sections that were heavily or entirely redacted dealt with subjects such as site navigation, user experience, and everything in the pricing table.

The entire contract, in all its blacked-out glory, is here"
Security

Submission + - Schneier on Self-Enforcing Protocols 1

Submitted by Hollow Being
Hollow Being writes: In an essay posted to Threatpost, Bruce Schneier makes the argument that self-enforcing protocols are better suited to security and problem-solving. From the article: "Self-enforcing protocols are safer than other types because participants don't gain an advantage from cheating. Modern voting systems are rife with the potential for cheating, but an open show of hands in a room — one that everyone in the room can count for himself — is self-enforcing. On the other hand, there's no secret ballot, late voters are potentially subjected to coercion, and it doesn't scale well to large elections. But there are mathematical election protocols that have self-enforcing properties, and some cryptographers have suggested their use in elections."
Space

Submission + - Astronomer Photographs Meteor Thru Telescope (mikesastrophotos.com) 1

Submitted by
Matt Rogers
Matt Rogers writes: "Amateur astronomer Mike Hankey may be the first person on earth to take a picture of a fireball meteor thru a telescope. The picture has been confirmed authentic by numerous professional astronomers and asteroid hunters. This picture could possibly be the first of its kind. Taking a picture of a meteor is a very difficult thing to do, taking a picture of a meteor thru a telescope is near impossible. The hunt is on in southern PA for the meteorites that broke away from this space rock. Using Hankey's picture as well as security tape meteorite hunters have been able to narrow down the crash site to a smaller area. Even with the trajectory roughly determined, professional meteorite hunters think finding these meteorites may be near impossible. However if they are found they will be immensely valuable and could be very large."

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