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Ready to use your voice and hands to control your PC? How about a virtual orchestra or a flying quadrocopter?
Microsoft Research this morning is officially expanding the Kinect motion sensor beyond its Xbox 360 game console to traditional Windows machines. The company is releasing a development kit that students, researchers and other noncommercial software developers can use to create Windows 7 programs that sense their surroundings and respond to voice commands and gestures.
The beta release of the free Kinect software development kit, or SDK, could fuel the grassroots Kinect applications that have until now been considered hacks. Microsoft says it’s also working on a version of the SDK for commercial software programs.
Over time, the move by Microsoft could help the motion sensor find a place in such settings as kitchens, doctor’s offices or auto repair shops, where grubby hands or sterile gloves make a keyboard and mouse difficult or undesirable to use.
The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a starter kit for applications developers that includes APIs, sample code, and drivers. This SDK enables the academic research and enthusiast communities to create rich experiences by using Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect sensor technology on computers running Windows 7. Learn more >
The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes the following:
* Drivers, for using Kinect sensor devices on a computer running Windows 7.
* Application programming interfaces (APIs) and device interfaces, together with technical documentation.
* Source code samples.
...
License and privacy statement
* Kinect for Windows SDK from Microsoft Research is for non-commercial use only. By installing, copying, or otherwise using this software, you agree to be bound by the terms of its license. Read the license.
* This beta software uses the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP), which automatically sends to Microsoft information about your hardware and how you use this software. This information is not used to identify or contact you. Learn more.
If you can sell otherwise civilized nations on the benefits of 'ethnic cleansing' for political or religious reasons, imagine how much easier it will be to get them to do it once those bloody "outsiders" are accused of "taking" the dominant tribe's food!
I can hear it now: "My fellow (insert collective name)! The time has come to make hard decisions and stand firm in a course of action. We do this, not by choice or out of malice, but to ensure the survival of our people. We do this not for ourselves. We do this for our children!" (Then comes a meaningful pause as the speaker closes his eyes, and appears to gather strength. He opens his eyes and looks directly at the somber crowd for a long poignant moment. Then, with a sad but resolved sigh, he raises his eyes towards the heavens.) "May god forigive us - and let history judge us." he intones. There is a silent moment before the cheering begins - and then grows louder.-40hz (June 16, 2011, 09:53 AM)
Been practicing that speech have you? (hehe j/k)-Stoic Joker (June 16, 2011, 10:19 AM)
...the Bandar-log began, twenty at a time, to tell him
how great and wise and strong and gentle they were, and how foolish he
was to wish to leave them. "We are great. We are free. We are wonderful.
We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and
so it must be true," ...
...and whenever a speaker stopped for want of breath they would
all shout together: "This is true; we all say so."
Brothersoft has the V2.1 freeware edition if you're comfortable grabbing something from Brothersoft.-40hz (June 15, 2011, 07:02 PM)
I would probably feel better about getting it from PC World.-app103 (June 15, 2011, 09:28 PM)
@40hz: Yes, I agree about it being a good thing.
As I said above:Better that than to just bury it.
Oh dear - you spotted some cynicism in what I wrote?!-IainB (June 15, 2011, 07:01 PM)
Now... I can go the f**k to sleep...
-Renegade (June 15, 2011, 04:26 PM)
@40hz:[/b] If your optimistic thinking and your faith are rewarded in the fullness of time and shown by events to have accurately predicted the future for REXX, then that would run contrary to IBM's past corporate behaviours and strategems.-IainB (June 15, 2011, 04:28 PM)
) In most modern operating systems, including Windows, application programs and many system processes always reference memory using virtual memory addresses which are automatically translated to real (RAM) addresses by the hardware. Only core parts of the operating system kernel bypass this address translation and use real memory addresses directly. The virtual memory management component of the operating system maintains the tables used by the hardware to provide the mapping of virtual addresses into real addresses. A small amount of RAM is used by those parts of the operating system that can not be paged out (for example, the virtual memory manager) and is thus not available for assignment to virtual memory.
The key point here is that Virtual Memory is always in use, even when the memory required by all running processes does not exceed the amount of RAM installed on the system.
There are several advantages to Virtual Memory implementations with per process virtual address spaces, some of which are:
- Application writing is simplified. The application developer doesn’t have to worry about how much RAM is available or what addresses are available to it. The application writer (and compiler) knows that every application will get its own set of virtual addresses (called an Address Space) that it can use any way it wishes (except for the portion of the address space reserved by the operating system) without regard to what other applications are doing.
- The system is more robust and secure because applications can not overwrite or read memory belonging to another application – there is no addressability to another application’s address space.
- Management of RAM allocation to processes is centralized in a core part of the OS. The algorithms used by the Virtual Memory management part of the OS have a long history, are well understood, quite sophisticated and highly optimized. The knowledge and skills required to do this well are very specialized and not usually present in application developers whose focus is on the application/business requirements.
A process is essentially, the combination of:
- Some executable code
- A virtual address space
- One or more threads of execution.
The only way to increase the size of the virtual address space for a process beyond 4 GB is to use 64 bit hardware with a 64 bit version of the operating system and application built for the 64 bit instruction set.
The nub of it is, that no matter how much physical RAM is in the computer, the amount of memory available in the process’ private part of the virtual address space in 32 bit Windows implementations is limited to:
2 GB - without the /3GB switch - this is the normal, default maximum private virtual address space
Nostalgic thoughts from having briefly used REXX under MS-DOS/4DOS.
Well done to IBM for giving up yet more superb software to the public domain - even though it is software that is arguably fading into obsolescence or is already obsolete.
Better that than to just bury it.-IainB (June 15, 2011, 02:19 AM)
(Don't you just hate it when you've set something up but can no longer remember why or what for? Happens to me all the time.)
who used to justify their percentage because of the mechanical reproduction costs they incurred by printing, binding, and shipping books.-40hz (June 13, 2011, 07:24 PM)
Not true -- it's always been a small part of publishing costs (10-15 per cent)-johnk (June 14, 2011, 05:38 PM)
The lion's share of the money still goes to the publishers-40hz (June 13, 2011, 07:24 PM)
Not true -- the biggest share goes to the retailer.-johnk (June 14, 2011, 05:38 PM)
Blast from the past. I haven't kept up with Rexx since my OS/2 days...-wraith808 (June 13, 2011, 02:22 PM)
No-one likes DRM, but at least it means authors get a few bucks for their work.-johnk (June 13, 2011, 05:59 PM)
