5 ms·

So many cool things come from Microsoft that lack the story and passion of some of the more well-known open source projects. It's truly disappointing.

by nopal 16y ago

sushilchoudhari 16y ago
That is so true. I also did not understand what the real world application around this technology would be. Any ideas there? Something that can be understood in not so layman terms :)
- rglullis 16y ago
  A few ideas that come to mind: 1) A distributed wikipedia/dbpedia. Instead of fighting with deletionists, one would just run its own node of the graph database, and keep/merge/sort changes that they see fit. 2) Recommendation engines that are seeded with the user data, at the edge. For instance, instead of me having to upload my song library to Apple or having a last.fm scrobbler running, I would able to have a "Genius" feature without ever having data leaving my computer. If I want to get my friends' recommendations, I could just add them as peers. 3) A medical expert-system that can analyze my medical records that I hold, instead of one central place. Instead of trusting something like Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault to keep the data safe, I can be the only one with access to it, and only talk to my doctor if this system triggers some sort of alarm.
  - sushilchoudhari 16y ago
    Thanks for the detailed explanation !
- neutronicus 16y ago
  This is a perfect fit for something like Diaspora.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    But only if it's open source, portable and scalable.
kakuri 16y ago
Why is it disappointing? Microsoft has become a company that produces technological advances as a side-effect of their primary goal, which is making money. They are not really interested in sharing, or promoting innovation - they are interested in generating lock-in, collecting licensing fees, and stamping out the competition. What I find truly disappointing is that there are so many brilliant, creative people letting their work be owned and controlled by companies like Microsoft. Open source projects get admiration and passion because they are OPEN. The top priority is to share the discovery or creation and promote productivity and innovation among others.
- neutronicus 16y ago
  Microsoft Research has contributed a lot to GHC.
- scottchin 16y ago
  Actually, my understanding of Microsoft Research is that their main focus is on promoting and sharing innovative ideas. A MSR researcher's performance is reviewed based on academic publications and the amount of impact that their work has on the communities in which their work lies. If their work happens to help one of MS's products, then that is a bonus. That's what I've been told at least by someone who works for MSR in Seattle. In fact, some of the most passionate people in my field of study (I'm a graduate student in electrical/computer engineering) work for MSR.
  - sukuriant 16y ago
    I honestly didn't know the exact goal of MSR. That's incredibly pleasing to hear.
  - dschobel 16y ago
    ^^ this. I didn't known about MSR until I became a grad student in comp sci and started seeing the name pop up time and again in the literature whether it was graphics, computer vision, AI, etc etc. If you like computer science, you like MSR. (Plus, they gave the world F# and C# which are an oasis in the world of enterprise development) http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=microsoft+research&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5 http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=microsoft+research&#3...
barista 16y ago
I don't get why the passion and a story matters really. What I feel bad about is that they make these cool projects that rarely ship as part of a real product that peopole buy. What use is this database if its not going to make my search results better or make my computer be a little smarter...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
_ques 16y ago
You want a story, here's a passionate story! MSR Asia is based in Beijing and is one of the fastest growing research outfits in the world. They're slowly showing up all over the place in the CS world, and this is just one of the examples. Consider Microsoft Academic Search. It BLOWS AWAY Google Scholar, Citeseer etc. in terms of features. Once they attain coverage parity, there is reason to use anything else. Academic Search, Trinity, and similar projects out of MSR Asia seem to be directly having impact in Bing. In a matter of a short few years, you're looking at a barebones search engine (Live.com) building an R&D infrastructure, with prototypes, and production modules feeding into what is now a pretty rocking search engine. [Example of Academic search integration with Bing: http://www.bing.com/search?q=donald+knuth http://www.bing.com/search?q=donald+knuth , scroll to bottom -- page also shows Freebase integration in middle] Ironically, Microsoft is playing David in the David vs Goliath story here, and the passion is showing in terms of the ecosystem of computing projects and products that are making it into Bing. If you want to look outside of Bing, consider the Kinect effort. Did you know that the _hardware_ ships with mathemetical models built at MSR, trained using Dryad? (Dryad is an MapReduce competitor out of MSR) The training is the "secret sauce" and why you don't have to spend days calibrating the Kinect. None of this is privileged information -- you just have to follow the hyperlinks :) The open source world is built on collaboration and sharing, and hence the "story" is the backbone of most work. But that doesn't mean other people don't have stories and passion!
- protomyth 16y ago
  Side note: If you go back to the Bill and Steve interview from D5, listen to Mr. Gates mention the tech of kinect years before the product. It is interesting how much MSR jives with that talk.
- mhansen 16y ago
  Searching http://www.bing.com/search?q=donald+knuth http://www.bing.com/search?q=donald+knuth, I see the freebase integration, but I don't see anything other than search results and ads at the bottom of the page. What am I looking for?
  - _ques 16y ago
shriphani 16y ago
Yeah they should have put a video of the researcher against a milk-white background with inspirational music and while they visualize a subgraph we get to hear the climax of a coldplay song. Disappointing indeed.

So many cool things come from Microsoft that lack the story and passion of some of the more well-known open source projects. It's truly disappointing.

by nopal 16y ago

So many cool things come from Microsoft that lack the story and passion of some of the more well-known open source projects. It's truly disappointing.

sushilchoudhari 16y ago

That is so true. I also did not understand what the real world application around this technology would be. Any ideas there? Something that can be understood in not so layman terms :)

rglullis 16y ago
A few ideas that come to mind: 1) A distributed wikipedia/dbpedia. Instead of fighting with deletionists, one would just run its own node of the graph database, and keep/merge/sort changes that they see fit. 2) Recommendation engines that are seeded with the user data, at the edge. For instance, instead of me having to upload my song library to Apple or having a last.fm scrobbler running, I would able to have a "Genius" feature without ever having data leaving my computer. If I want to get my friends' recommendations, I could just add them as peers. 3) A medical expert-system that can analyze my medical records that I hold, instead of one central place. Instead of trusting something like Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault to keep the data safe, I can be the only one with access to it, and only talk to my doctor if this system triggers some sort of alarm.
- sushilchoudhari 16y ago
  Thanks for the detailed explanation !
neutronicus 16y ago
This is a perfect fit for something like Diaspora.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  But only if it's open source, portable and scalable.

kakuri 16y ago

Why is it disappointing? Microsoft has become a company that produces technological advances as a side-effect of their primary goal, which is making money. They are not really interested in sharing, or promoting innovation - they are interested in generating lock-in, collecting licensing fees, and stamping out the competition. What I find truly disappointing is that there are so many brilliant, creative people letting their work be owned and controlled by companies like Microsoft. Open source projects get admiration and passion because they are OPEN. The top priority is to share the discovery or creation and promote productivity and innovation among others.

neutronicus 16y ago
Microsoft Research has contributed a lot to GHC.
scottchin 16y ago
Actually, my understanding of Microsoft Research is that their main focus is on promoting and sharing innovative ideas. A MSR researcher's performance is reviewed based on academic publications and the amount of impact that their work has on the communities in which their work lies. If their work happens to help one of MS's products, then that is a bonus. That's what I've been told at least by someone who works for MSR in Seattle. In fact, some of the most passionate people in my field of study (I'm a graduate student in electrical/computer engineering) work for MSR.
- sukuriant 16y ago
  I honestly didn't know the exact goal of MSR. That's incredibly pleasing to hear.
- dschobel 16y ago
  ^^ this. I didn't known about MSR until I became a grad student in comp sci and started seeing the name pop up time and again in the literature whether it was graphics, computer vision, AI, etc etc. If you like computer science, you like MSR. (Plus, they gave the world F# and C# which are an oasis in the world of enterprise development) http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=microsoft+research&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5 http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=microsoft+research&#3...

barista 16y ago

I don't get why the passion and a story matters really. What I feel bad about is that they make these cool projects that rarely ship as part of a real product that peopole buy. What use is this database if its not going to make my search results better or make my computer be a little smarter...

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

_ques 16y ago

You want a story, here's a passionate story! MSR Asia is based in Beijing and is one of the fastest growing research outfits in the world. They're slowly showing up all over the place in the CS world, and this is just one of the examples. Consider Microsoft Academic Search. It BLOWS AWAY Google Scholar, Citeseer etc. in terms of features. Once they attain coverage parity, there is reason to use anything else. Academic Search, Trinity, and similar projects out of MSR Asia seem to be directly having impact in Bing. In a matter of a short few years, you're looking at a barebones search engine (Live.com) building an R&D infrastructure, with prototypes, and production modules feeding into what is now a pretty rocking search engine. [Example of Academic search integration with Bing: http://www.bing.com/search?q=donald+knuth http://www.bing.com/search?q=donald+knuth , scroll to bottom -- page also shows Freebase integration in middle] Ironically, Microsoft is playing David in the David vs Goliath story here, and the passion is showing in terms of the ecosystem of computing projects and products that are making it into Bing. If you want to look outside of Bing, consider the Kinect effort. Did you know that the _hardware_ ships with mathemetical models built at MSR, trained using Dryad? (Dryad is an MapReduce competitor out of MSR) The training is the "secret sauce" and why you don't have to spend days calibrating the Kinect. None of this is privileged information -- you just have to follow the hyperlinks :) The open source world is built on collaboration and sharing, and hence the "story" is the backbone of most work. But that doesn't mean other people don't have stories and passion!

protomyth 16y ago
Side note: If you go back to the Bill and Steve interview from D5, listen to Mr. Gates mention the tech of kinect years before the product. It is interesting how much MSR jives with that talk.
mhansen 16y ago
Searching http://www.bing.com/search?q=donald+knuth http://www.bing.com/search?q=donald+knuth, I see the freebase integration, but I don't see anything other than search results and ads at the bottom of the page. What am I looking for?
- _ques 16y ago

shriphani 16y ago

Yeah they should have put a video of the researcher against a milk-white background with inspirational music and while they visualize a subgraph we get to hear the climax of a coldplay song. Disappointing indeed.