A desktop style keyboard is the "best" keyboard. If you really need a good one then you may as well bring a desktop keyboard with your laptop.
Beyond that it comes down to personal preference and how you type. Just go into multiple computer stores and test different laptop models to see how you like the keyboards.
In may ways this is like asking what the "best" car is without knowing anything about your personal preferences, style, usage, etc.
I will grant you, C++ has a steeper learning curve than most languages, but the performance of the code you can write in C++ is vastly superior to all languages except maybe C. There are constructs I can create with template metaprogramming that even C cannot match the performance of. Proper use of the STL allows you to minimize the need for memory management, but like any C derivative, the option of going all pointer-fu is there if you need it.
In all, C is a language for professionals, C++ is a language for experts. Everything else is for amateurs.
I'm guessing that you are only referring to higher level languages by this comment. But just for the the record, Assembler gives you better performance than C and C++.
Before the cloud, people used to put their own servers in server rooms. That's the interface to manage your machine from outside.
This doesn't prevent a system from coming into your environment already compromised. That, to me is the scary part. Your order could be intercepted and compromised or compromised at the vendor before shipment. And there is no way to scan the subsystem for threats.
That seems patently absurd. This is 2017, when printers are all but obsolete, for ANYTHING. Who prints photos anymore? Who prints ANYTHING anymore? Seriously, a 10" tablet does everything paper can do and more.
There is just no need for this senselessness.
I'm assuming that the astronaut's haven't switched over to using tablets for their manuals/work instructions. Perhaps it has something to do with batteries always dying, or being dead, when you need it the most...
On earth, it's usually not a big deal if your tablet dies while following a set of instructions to do maintenance on your car, for example. You just stop to charge the tablet then get back to it in an hour. However, if the battery dies during a space walk maintenance it could cause a lot of problems, even if it is the tablet the guy in the cabin is using.
So, yeah, I can see them still using paper... It's not as absurd as you think it is, if you really think about it for a minute.
And (T_T) looks more like a whoosh face than a crying rivers face.
I'm thinking that if you have been exposed to Anime then you would figure these out. But otherwise, yeah, the meaning isn't obvious without a cultural reference.
Wait what? There's still backwards countries where you're allowed to smoke indoors in a company building?
*mind blown*
Yes, it's called Las Vegas...
We were in Vegas this fall for touristy stuff (grand canyon, hoover dam, etc.) and to enjoy the warm weather. Living in the Boston area where smoking isn't allowed in bars, I'd forgotten just how horrible the smell of smoke was. It just hits you like a wave when you walk into any of the Casinos. I would have thought that they would have, at least, upgraded their air ex-changers and filters to handle it a lot better.
That's a lousy way to eat the creme filling. Open the oreo, use a clean knife to scrape the filling, put the cookies back in the package. Not only is it hygienic, it's much faster and in the end you get to bite into a big blob of awesome-tasting sugar.
I prefer the chocolate wafers. I've often thought that they should just sell the chocolate cookie part as Oreo cookie wafers. Of course, I'm a big fan of chocolate. Sugary creme, not so much....
We now have a grammar nazi post on the front page. Slashdot has really evolved, from the nascent grammar troll posts, through the mercurial grammar nazi years, to a full fledged front page grammar post.
I'm going to continue to say Daylight Savings Time, because that is how nearly everyone says it, and alter the language irrevocably. In 50 years, hopefully we will have done away with daylight savings time completely and this topic will be dead, but if we have not, Daylight Savings Time will be the correct way to say it.
It's like my pet peeve, the term "offside" in sports has morphed to become "offsides"... Now even the veteran sports announcers are using it. Like it or not, its become part of the vernacular so we are stuck with it and may as well get used to it.
I take my kids to the real IMAX in NYC a few times a year. Worth it for the $22 average ticket price if you reserve good seats. Rarely just go to a regular theater
I have a Showcase Cinema Deluxe near me and in a lot of ways it's better than the local IMAX. The only thing the IMAX has over is the larger screen and the rumble seats. With 4K digital projectors and Dolby Atmos in upgraded theaters, IMAX has lost much of it's edge.
I don't know if there's a objective way of determining who has the worst winters.
I never thought too much about Toronto winter weather other than it was bad until we relocated our company headquarters to another part of Ontario where they thought they had the worst weather in the northern hemisphere although it was positively mild when I compared it to what I've put up with in Toronto. They closed down schools with 4" of snow - just about anywhere else I've been (with the exception of Georgia where 0.5" of snow is seen as the coming of the apocalypse), that's nothing to get excited about.
If I was to rate the winters in the various cities in North America I've been in over the years, I would say that Boston has the worst winters (and, yes, I have been in Michigan).
I grew up in Saint John and moved to Boston. Boston has a mild winter. It's not even close to what northern Maine and New Brunswick gets. That being said, Boston can be a nightmare if a snow storm hits when no one is expecting it. But that's purely because of population density and the number of cars on the road.
Not even all roads in the US: big cities in rush hour, poorly marked rural roads in the rain, etc, etc.
Snow, black ice, obscured lines (mud, snow, etc.), obscured signs (bushes, etc,), broken traffic lights, lane closures and rerouting due to construction (i.e. lane shifts to the other side of the highway - my GPS hates this), and may other situations that are not really edge cases but part of everyday driving.
Because that 25 year old 4-cylinder has terrible safety features.
Well, his car is 19 years old, so lets go with that. 19 years ago we had seat belts, crumple zones, airbags, ABS brakes, and some even had traction control. Those have been the major safety advances.
Most of the rest of the "safety features" like lane departure, rear and front sensors, automatic braking, etc. are almost purely for distracted and poor drivers (People who really should not have a license). Yes, these newer features add to the the overall safety. But if you've been a safe driver for 19 years (the fact that he has owned the same car for 19 years is a good indication) then it's highly unlikely that a newer vehicle would make him a safer driver than he already is.
Remember, it's not the car that you need to trust, it's your fellow driver. Even when full automation takes over some driving situations, you'll still have to trust that "Hal 9000" doesn't have a bug in it's driving routine.... (grin)
Once autonomous vehicles become the norm, liability and legislation will work to prohibit owning the vehicle, due to the fear that consumers won't maintain the vehicles properly (software or hardware), putting others at high risk on the road. Car ownership will become obsolete.
I have to disagree with you here. It might become more expensive but car ownership won't become obsolete. Why? Because some of us tow boats, etc. and generic vehicles do not work for such applications. On top of that, there are going to have to be provisions for classic cars, which won't fit into the self-driving model.
Both of these are at, or near, saturation levels, but Microsoft still dominates on these platforms. Which means that while there will be revenue decline, it will likely be slow and steady.
Server OS market - MS's one bright spot is a bubble fighting a better free alternative
What "better free alternative"? Microsoft has only seen revenue increases as VMs took off. If LINUX is a valid cheap alternative that could save tons of money, why aren't companies replacing their Windows VMs with LINUX VMs? Because it isn't a valid alternative in most cases. In other words, it's hard to run your corporate software on LINUX/UNIX if it isn't written for it... Where it makes sense to do this (i.e. Databases, ERP, etc), it's already been done.
Tablet OS market - does MS even have an offering?
Not really,. Windows 10 and the Surface Pro are the closest but revenue is down across the entire Surface line (they don't break out the Surface Pro figures).
Phone OS market - Yep, that went well for MS
Already written off on the books, no longer relevant to their future financial success.
Office Suite - on life support as on line and free alternatives eat their lunch - anybody write documents?
Outlook - Please somebody put this out of its (and my) misery
The Office Suite is not "on life support". As much as you want to believe that Office and Outlook are crappy products with "free alternatives" that are "eating it's lunch" and that are just as good, that's just not the case. The Integration of the Office Suite, Free/Busy, Skype presence, etc. are what enterprises run on and how they exchange documents with other organizations. Not one product out there offers the same feature set with this level of integration. In fact sales are up this year in this segment.
One of the key segments that you missed is Cloud offerings. Microsoft's Cloud services are driving revenue today.
By all accounts, feel free to do so. But the current overall financial situation is much more complex than presented. For every product where they are seeing declines or write-offs, they have segments that are expanding and growing revenue at a faster pace. Can Microsoft continue this into the future? The market thinks that they can.
Never falling for that bullshit again. What a waste of money and time my HTC Vive turned out to be. Never again.
You are aware of the upcoming VR port of Fallout 4? Or, maybe you aren't into gaming. In which case, yeah, desktop VR is a bit like when Blu-Ray players came out. The hardware is there, but little in the way of content.
FPS Gaming seems to have the most buzz for VR content. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some MMOs adopting it.
My buddy has the Occulous Rift and it works quite well. I'm thinking, though, that it's probably better to wait for Gen2 hardware. The theory being that they will have fixed any bugs, made everything lighter and easier to use, and there will be much more content.
When did the word "dongle" become a synonym for "adapter" instead of referring to a hardware copy protection device? Who made this decision, and why wasn't I sent the memo?
When laptops started requiring RJ45 adapters because they didn't have any built-in. For example, in the late 90's some Toshiba laptops required ethernet adapters and people (users) started calling them dongles so IT support had to as well... In other words, this usage has been going on for a long time.
"Most notably, in 2017 Google will reach 100 percent renewable energy for our global operations—including both our data c"enters and offices. That means that we will directly purchase enough wind and solar electricity annually to account for every unit of electricity we consume, globally. This shift in our energy strategy didn’t just significantly reduce our environmental impact. By pioneering new energy purchasing models that others can follow, we’ve helped drive widescale global adoption of clean energy."
A better headline would have been, "Google will Repurpose Enough Renewable Power To Cover 100% of Its Non-Renewable Usage", but just trying running that one past the PR guy.
How about: "Google Operations reaches 100% renewable energy usage through purchased offsets"
You seem to be in this weird divide where you care just enough to buy moderately expensive stuff, but don't care enough to do it properly.
I use bluetooth headphones when I walk around town and commute and exercise. They're ultra convenient, and that's what I want at that point. (And in fact, for $25, these little headphones last 8 hours and sound just as good as any earbud-type headphones that I've used up to around $150. My Shure SE425s were better, but eventually they gave up the ghost because some rain blew into them during a particularly bad outing.)
At my desk, my phone is on a dock. The Apple lightning dock has an audio out, and that goes to a small powered mixer, which then goes to some nicer headphones. If I were really going to do this properly, I'd buy myself a little amplifier.
I don't understand how you can complain about audio quality, when even at your desk when you're driving your headphones from a DAC that costs 30c. (To be fair, Apple's DAC has been of surprisingly high quality in their phones with headphone jacks. It might be cheap, but you can actually do a lot worse.)
You're trying to play both sides against the middle. Do you care about audio quality or not? If you do, there's still plenty of ways to accommodate that, and some of them don't require the audio-out jack on a phone. If you don't, why are you whining?
I agree that you get get much better quality with a dedicated quality DAC vs the built-in cell phone DAC (similar argument between the motherboard on-board sound and a dedicated sound card or external DAC). However, most external DACs are not portable in the sense that you can walk around with them while listening to music as they need to be powered. From a walking around perspective, they don't fit into the picture (which is where I was coming from). But yes, if you want a much better experience at your desk, an external DAC is the best way to accomplish this.
The point is that you can get better quality sound out of the built-in DAC + wired headphones than you can with the same DAC + Bluetooth. And while Apt-X improves the bluetooth experience a bit, it still lags behind wired connections by a noticeable margin. That's all I was commenting on.
As for how people listen to music, everyone is different. Most today prefer streaming. And for most, Bluetooth is good enough.
Wow, overreact much... You took my comment that the audio quality is better out of a headphone jack and then went nuclear.
If you consider my comment to be "going nuclear", then you need to get out more. Maybe visit the Hiroshima museums. But, of course, my response was pretty clearly not limited to just your comment, but to the entire argument going on about sound quality from cellphones. Sometimes it isn't all about you.
But some of us prefer at least a good CD like experience (which cell phones do provide),
Sorry, but CD isn't the standard of quality. Not standard CD.
whether it's walking on the street or riding a bus and bluetooth just doesn't deliver yet.
Nothing will provide "CD quality" sound when you are walking on the street or riding a bus. That's my point. That's why arguing about how to get there is a waste of time.
So, just because there are situations where the ambient noise floor is too high we shouldn't care about the situations where it's quiet?
AptX is better than the current codecs used for Bluetooth but it doesn't give you analog quality.
This argument over audio quality from a cellphone is pretty funny. You folks are all novices. I'm a purist. I have a cellphone I built out of vacuum tubes because nothing beats the audio warmth you get from a vacuum tube amplifier. I power and charge my cellphone using a cable made from deoxygenated 8 gauge copper wires, because the oxygen in normal cables interferes with the highs and the high-current capacity of big wire can power the transient demands of good bass.
If you are someone who uses a cellphone as an audio source while you are sitting in your home theater, then you've admitted you don't care about the sound quality and complaining that it isn't perfection is just silly. You're going to buy the components to do the job right. If you are someone who is using the cellphone like the vast majority of people, to provide distractions from having to deal with other people while you walk or ride the bus or drive in the car, then your listening environment is so full of extraneous sounds that you will never get purity in your sound.
And that's why this whole debate over sound quality is silly. Convenience, yes, argue that, but arguing that the high frequency reproduction from your bluetooth earbud while you're riding the bus is clearly inferior to a wired studio monitor analog headphone with 1/4" TRS connector is, well, wasting a lot of everyone's time.
Wow, overreact much... You took my comment that the audio quality is better out of a headphone jack and then went nuclear.
No one is arguing that you're going to get a studio quality experience with a cell phone. And no one is arguing that bluetooth isn't good enough for many people. But some of us prefer at least a good CD like experience (which cell phones do provide), whether it's walking on the street or riding a bus and bluetooth just doesn't deliver yet. And just because you don't necessarily get a great experience in noisy environments doesn't mean that you also want a crappy experience when you're at your desk, or taking a walk in the park, etc.
What a bunch of bunk. Bluetooth audio is fantastic. They've even got lossless Bluetooth audio nowadays (aptX), so there is no quality lost. By moving the audio DAC and sensitive analog circuitry away from the noisy CPU and mass storage, we could potentially achieve even greater Signal to Noise Ratio. The consumer will only have to pay for a high end DAC -once- in his lifetime instead of paying for a mediocre DAC in every phone, tablet, and computer he buys in his life.
Every pair of headphones I buy inevitably ends up breaking a wire internally after so many uses, besides having those wires constantly in the way. Hell yeah I want to move away from the 3.5mm audio jack!
AptX-HD (lossless), from what I read, requires more bandwidth than Bluetooth can provide. If you are using Bluetooth, then you are stuck with AptX (lossy), not AptX-HD. While AptX is better than most of the current codecs, it still pales in comparison to analog.
AC, you are misinformed. Look up aptX -- it's lossless Bluetooth audio, largely based on FLAC compression itself.
AptX still does not have enough bandwidth to provide a high quality audio experience since it has to run over Blutooth so it compresses audio using a lossy codec. AptX is better than the current codecs used for Bluetooth but it doesn't give you analog quality.
Currently running crusty old X79 stuff, a PCIe -> M.2 adapter, running a Samsung 960 Evo 250GB. Pretty sure NVMe just implies a standardized controller interface stitched to PCIe; I've been under the impression that software support is the main issue with it, as it's basically just another PCIe card as far as the hardware is concerned. I see it suggested on the internet (probably old forum posts) that X79 stuff should not be able to use it as a boot device, but my system begs to differ.
The piddly PCIe provisions are a shame though... no improvement (in lane count) whatsoever since they pulled the controllers onto the CPU die (LGA1156, Nehlaem)..
Prove that the PCIe lanes are being maxed out for gaming, daily computing, video editing, etc. and then I'll care. Yes, PCIe lanes matter for specific applications but the vast majority of gaming and higher end enthusiast systems are not maxing out the existing PCIe 3.0 lanes and DMI 3.0 bandwidth.
Current benchmarks show very little difference between SSD and NVMe in boot times and gaming performance. The main difference is transferring large files and loading large files into memory (i.e. video editing). NVMe M.2 drives are also somewhat expensive in comparison to SSD.
I upgraded the NVMe M.2 drive on my Surface Pro 4 to a Samsung 960 Pro while fixing the cracked screen. I bought a PCIe NVMe adapter card to copy the OS from the original NVMe drive to the new one. Windows 10 had no problems accessing it with no third party drivers required. I'm pretty sure that NVMe support will be integrated into Intel motherboard designs through third party controllers.
Basically, it's great that AMD CPUs have higher end features that Intel as it gives us choice and drives competition. But how useful those features are will depend on you use case.
Slashdot Mirror
A desktop style keyboard is the "best" keyboard. If you really need a good one then you may as well bring a desktop keyboard with your laptop.
Beyond that it comes down to personal preference and how you type. Just go into multiple computer stores and test different laptop models to see how you like the keyboards.
In may ways this is like asking what the "best" car is without knowing anything about your personal preferences, style, usage, etc.
I will grant you, C++ has a steeper learning curve than most languages, but the performance of the code you can write in C++ is vastly superior to all languages except maybe C. There are constructs I can create with template metaprogramming that even C cannot match the performance of. Proper use of the STL allows you to minimize the need for memory management, but like any C derivative, the option of going all pointer-fu is there if you need it.
In all, C is a language for professionals, C++ is a language for experts. Everything else is for amateurs.
I'm guessing that you are only referring to higher level languages by this comment. But just for the the record, Assembler gives you better performance than C and C++.
French fries are german?
There is some debate over whether they originated in France or in Belgium.
Before the cloud, people used to put their own servers in server rooms. That's the interface to manage your machine from outside.
This doesn't prevent a system from coming into your environment already compromised. That, to me is the scary part. Your order could be intercepted and compromised or compromised at the vendor before shipment. And there is no way to scan the subsystem for threats.
Why?
WHY?
I mean, really....
WHY!?!?!?!
1000 pages per MONTH? For WHAT?!?
That seems patently absurd. This is 2017, when printers are all but obsolete, for ANYTHING. Who prints photos anymore? Who prints ANYTHING anymore? Seriously, a 10" tablet does everything paper can do and more.
There is just no need for this senselessness.
I'm assuming that the astronaut's haven't switched over to using tablets for their manuals/work instructions. Perhaps it has something to do with batteries always dying, or being dead, when you need it the most...
On earth, it's usually not a big deal if your tablet dies while following a set of instructions to do maintenance on your car, for example. You just stop to charge the tablet then get back to it in an hour. However, if the battery dies during a space walk maintenance it could cause a lot of problems, even if it is the tablet the guy in the cabin is using.
So, yeah, I can see them still using paper... It's not as absurd as you think it is, if you really think about it for a minute.
I mislabeled both.
wide eyed (0_0) looks far from a deadpan face :-|
And (T_T) looks more like a whoosh face than a crying rivers face.
I'm thinking that if you have been exposed to Anime then you would figure these out. But otherwise, yeah, the meaning isn't obvious without a cultural reference.
Wait what? There's still backwards countries where you're allowed to smoke indoors in a company building?
*mind blown*
Yes, it's called Las Vegas...
We were in Vegas this fall for touristy stuff (grand canyon, hoover dam, etc.) and to enjoy the warm weather. Living in the Boston area where smoking isn't allowed in bars, I'd forgotten just how horrible the smell of smoke was. It just hits you like a wave when you walk into any of the Casinos. I would have thought that they would have, at least, upgraded their air ex-changers and filters to handle it a lot better.
That's a lousy way to eat the creme filling. Open the oreo, use a clean knife to scrape the filling, put the cookies back in the package. Not only is it hygienic, it's much faster and in the end you get to bite into a big blob of awesome-tasting sugar.
I prefer the chocolate wafers. I've often thought that they should just sell the chocolate cookie part as Oreo cookie wafers. Of course, I'm a big fan of chocolate. Sugary creme, not so much....
We now have a grammar nazi post on the front page. Slashdot has really evolved, from the nascent grammar troll posts, through the mercurial grammar nazi years, to a full fledged front page grammar post.
I'm going to continue to say Daylight Savings Time, because that is how nearly everyone says it, and alter the language irrevocably. In 50 years, hopefully we will have done away with daylight savings time completely and this topic will be dead, but if we have not, Daylight Savings Time will be the correct way to say it.
It's like my pet peeve, the term "offside" in sports has morphed to become "offsides"... Now even the veteran sports announcers are using it. Like it or not, its become part of the vernacular so we are stuck with it and may as well get used to it.
I take my kids to the real IMAX in NYC a few times a year. Worth it for the $22 average ticket price if you reserve good seats. Rarely just go to a regular theater
I have a Showcase Cinema Deluxe near me and in a lot of ways it's better than the local IMAX. The only thing the IMAX has over is the larger screen and the rumble seats. With 4K digital projectors and Dolby Atmos in upgraded theaters, IMAX has lost much of it's edge.
There is a great Keepass extension called KeeFox. Which will promptly stop working in a few weeks when Firefox 57 kills off "legacy" extensions.
Kee 2.0 is under development and will allow you to continue using KeePass with Firefox and other browsers. At least that's what is being promised.
https://www.kee.pm/
I don't know if there's a objective way of determining who has the worst winters.
I never thought too much about Toronto winter weather other than it was bad until we relocated our company headquarters to another part of Ontario where they thought they had the worst weather in the northern hemisphere although it was positively mild when I compared it to what I've put up with in Toronto. They closed down schools with 4" of snow - just about anywhere else I've been (with the exception of Georgia where 0.5" of snow is seen as the coming of the apocalypse), that's nothing to get excited about.
If I was to rate the winters in the various cities in North America I've been in over the years, I would say that Boston has the worst winters (and, yes, I have been in Michigan).
I grew up in Saint John and moved to Boston. Boston has a mild winter. It's not even close to what northern Maine and New Brunswick gets. That being said, Boston can be a nightmare if a snow storm hits when no one is expecting it. But that's purely because of population density and the number of cars on the road.
Not even all roads in the US: big cities in rush hour, poorly marked rural roads in the rain, etc, etc.
Snow, black ice, obscured lines (mud, snow, etc.), obscured signs (bushes, etc,), broken traffic lights, lane closures and rerouting due to construction (i.e. lane shifts to the other side of the highway - my GPS hates this), and may other situations that are not really edge cases but part of everyday driving.
Because that 25 year old 4-cylinder has terrible safety features.
Well, his car is 19 years old, so lets go with that. 19 years ago we had seat belts, crumple zones, airbags, ABS brakes, and some even had traction control. Those have been the major safety advances.
Most of the rest of the "safety features" like lane departure, rear and front sensors, automatic braking, etc. are almost purely for distracted and poor drivers (People who really should not have a license). Yes, these newer features add to the the overall safety. But if you've been a safe driver for 19 years (the fact that he has owned the same car for 19 years is a good indication) then it's highly unlikely that a newer vehicle would make him a safer driver than he already is.
Remember, it's not the car that you need to trust, it's your fellow driver. Even when full automation takes over some driving situations, you'll still have to trust that "Hal 9000" doesn't have a bug in it's driving routine.... (grin)
Once autonomous vehicles become the norm, liability and legislation will work to prohibit owning the vehicle, due to the fear that consumers won't maintain the vehicles properly (software or hardware), putting others at high risk on the road. Car ownership will become obsolete.
I have to disagree with you here. It might become more expensive but car ownership won't become obsolete. Why? Because some of us tow boats, etc. and generic vehicles do not work for such applications. On top of that, there are going to have to be provisions for classic cars, which won't fit into the self-driving model.
Desktop OS market - on life support.
Laptop OS market - moribund at best
Both of these are at, or near, saturation levels, but Microsoft still dominates on these platforms. Which means that while there will be revenue decline, it will likely be slow and steady.
Server OS market - MS's one bright spot is a bubble fighting a better free alternative
What "better free alternative"? Microsoft has only seen revenue increases as VMs took off. If LINUX is a valid cheap alternative that could save tons of money, why aren't companies replacing their Windows VMs with LINUX VMs? Because it isn't a valid alternative in most cases. In other words, it's hard to run your corporate software on LINUX/UNIX if it isn't written for it... Where it makes sense to do this (i.e. Databases, ERP, etc), it's already been done.
Tablet OS market - does MS even have an offering?
Not really,. Windows 10 and the Surface Pro are the closest but revenue is down across the entire Surface line (they don't break out the Surface Pro figures).
Phone OS market - Yep, that went well for MS
Already written off on the books, no longer relevant to their future financial success.
Office Suite - on life support as on line and free alternatives eat their lunch - anybody write documents?
Outlook - Please somebody put this out of its (and my) misery
The Office Suite is not "on life support". As much as you want to believe that Office and Outlook are crappy products with "free alternatives" that are "eating it's lunch" and that are just as good, that's just not the case. The Integration of the Office Suite, Free/Busy, Skype presence, etc. are what enterprises run on and how they exchange documents with other organizations. Not one product out there offers the same feature set with this level of integration. In fact sales are up this year in this segment.
One of the key segments that you missed is Cloud offerings. Microsoft's Cloud services are driving revenue today.
Summary of the Q3 2017 results for Microsoft:
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
$600B?? Time to short and profit!
By all accounts, feel free to do so. But the current overall financial situation is much more complex than presented. For every product where they are seeing declines or write-offs, they have segments that are expanding and growing revenue at a faster pace. Can Microsoft continue this into the future? The market thinks that they can.
Never falling for that bullshit again. What a waste of money and time my HTC Vive turned out to be. Never again.
You are aware of the upcoming VR port of Fallout 4? Or, maybe you aren't into gaming. In which case, yeah, desktop VR is a bit like when Blu-Ray players came out. The hardware is there, but little in the way of content.
FPS Gaming seems to have the most buzz for VR content. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some MMOs adopting it.
My buddy has the Occulous Rift and it works quite well. I'm thinking, though, that it's probably better to wait for Gen2 hardware. The theory being that they will have fixed any bugs, made everything lighter and easier to use, and there will be much more content.
When did the word "dongle" become a synonym for "adapter" instead of referring to a hardware copy protection device? Who made this decision, and why wasn't I sent the memo?
When laptops started requiring RJ45 adapters because they didn't have any built-in. For example, in the late 90's some Toshiba laptops required ethernet adapters and people (users) started calling them dongles so IT support had to as well... In other words, this usage has been going on for a long time.
From the Report:
"Most notably, in 2017 Google will reach 100 percent renewable energy for our global operations—including both our data c"enters and offices. That means that we will directly purchase enough wind and solar electricity annually to account for every unit of electricity we consume, globally. This shift in our energy strategy didn’t just significantly reduce our environmental impact. By pioneering new energy purchasing models that others can follow, we’ve helped drive widescale global adoption of clean energy."
A better headline would have been, "Google will Repurpose Enough Renewable Power To Cover 100% of Its Non-Renewable Usage", but just trying running that one past the PR guy.
How about: "Google Operations reaches 100% renewable energy usage through purchased offsets"
You seem to be in this weird divide where you care just enough to buy moderately expensive stuff, but don't care enough to do it properly.
I use bluetooth headphones when I walk around town and commute and exercise. They're ultra convenient, and that's what I want at that point. (And in fact, for $25, these little headphones last 8 hours and sound just as good as any earbud-type headphones that I've used up to around $150. My Shure SE425s were better, but eventually they gave up the ghost because some rain blew into them during a particularly bad outing.)
At my desk, my phone is on a dock. The Apple lightning dock has an audio out, and that goes to a small powered mixer, which then goes to some nicer headphones. If I were really going to do this properly, I'd buy myself a little amplifier.
I don't understand how you can complain about audio quality, when even at your desk when you're driving your headphones from a DAC that costs 30c. (To be fair, Apple's DAC has been of surprisingly high quality in their phones with headphone jacks. It might be cheap, but you can actually do a lot worse.)
You're trying to play both sides against the middle. Do you care about audio quality or not? If you do, there's still plenty of ways to accommodate that, and some of them don't require the audio-out jack on a phone. If you don't, why are you whining?
I agree that you get get much better quality with a dedicated quality DAC vs the built-in cell phone DAC (similar argument between the motherboard on-board sound and a dedicated sound card or external DAC). However, most external DACs are not portable in the sense that you can walk around with them while listening to music as they need to be powered. From a walking around perspective, they don't fit into the picture (which is where I was coming from). But yes, if you want a much better experience at your desk, an external DAC is the best way to accomplish this.
The point is that you can get better quality sound out of the built-in DAC + wired headphones than you can with the same DAC + Bluetooth. And while Apt-X improves the bluetooth experience a bit, it still lags behind wired connections by a noticeable margin. That's all I was commenting on.
As for how people listen to music, everyone is different. Most today prefer streaming. And for most, Bluetooth is good enough.
Wow, overreact much... You took my comment that the audio quality is better out of a headphone jack and then went nuclear.
If you consider my comment to be "going nuclear", then you need to get out more. Maybe visit the Hiroshima museums.
But, of course, my response was pretty clearly not limited to just your comment, but to the entire argument going on about sound quality from cellphones. Sometimes it isn't all about you.
But some of us prefer at least a good CD like experience (which cell phones do provide),
Sorry, but CD isn't the standard of quality. Not standard CD.
whether it's walking on the street or riding a bus and bluetooth just doesn't deliver yet.
Nothing will provide "CD quality" sound when you are walking on the street or riding a bus. That's my point. That's why arguing about how to get there is a waste of time.
So, just because there are situations where the ambient noise floor is too high we shouldn't care about the situations where it's quiet?
AptX is better than the current codecs used for Bluetooth but it doesn't give you analog quality.
This argument over audio quality from a cellphone is pretty funny. You folks are all novices. I'm a purist. I have a cellphone I built out of vacuum tubes because nothing beats the audio warmth you get from a vacuum tube amplifier. I power and charge my cellphone using a cable made from deoxygenated 8 gauge copper wires, because the oxygen in normal cables interferes with the highs and the high-current capacity of big wire can power the transient demands of good bass.
If you are someone who uses a cellphone as an audio source while you are sitting in your home theater, then you've admitted you don't care about the sound quality and complaining that it isn't perfection is just silly. You're going to buy the components to do the job right. If you are someone who is using the cellphone like the vast majority of people, to provide distractions from having to deal with other people while you walk or ride the bus or drive in the car, then your listening environment is so full of extraneous sounds that you will never get purity in your sound.
And that's why this whole debate over sound quality is silly. Convenience, yes, argue that, but arguing that the high frequency reproduction from your bluetooth earbud while you're riding the bus is clearly inferior to a wired studio monitor analog headphone with 1/4" TRS connector is, well, wasting a lot of everyone's time.
Wow, overreact much... You took my comment that the audio quality is better out of a headphone jack and then went nuclear.
No one is arguing that you're going to get a studio quality experience with a cell phone. And no one is arguing that bluetooth isn't good enough for many people. But some of us prefer at least a good CD like experience (which cell phones do provide), whether it's walking on the street or riding a bus and bluetooth just doesn't deliver yet. And just because you don't necessarily get a great experience in noisy environments doesn't mean that you also want a crappy experience when you're at your desk, or taking a walk in the park, etc.
What a bunch of bunk. Bluetooth audio is fantastic. They've even got lossless Bluetooth audio nowadays (aptX), so there is no quality lost. By moving the audio DAC and sensitive analog circuitry away from the noisy CPU and mass storage, we could potentially achieve even greater Signal to Noise Ratio. The consumer will only have to pay for a high end DAC -once- in his lifetime instead of paying for a mediocre DAC in every phone, tablet, and computer he buys in his life.
Every pair of headphones I buy inevitably ends up breaking a wire internally after so many uses, besides having those wires constantly in the way. Hell yeah I want to move away from the 3.5mm audio jack!
AptX-HD (lossless), from what I read, requires more bandwidth than Bluetooth can provide. If you are using Bluetooth, then you are stuck with AptX (lossy), not AptX-HD. While AptX is better than most of the current codecs, it still pales in comparison to analog.
AC, you are misinformed. Look up aptX -- it's lossless Bluetooth audio, largely based on FLAC compression itself.
AptX still does not have enough bandwidth to provide a high quality audio experience since it has to run over Blutooth so it compresses audio using a lossy codec. AptX is better than the current codecs used for Bluetooth but it doesn't give you analog quality.
Currently running crusty old X79 stuff, a PCIe -> M.2 adapter, running a Samsung 960 Evo 250GB. Pretty sure NVMe just implies a standardized controller interface stitched to PCIe; I've been under the impression that software support is the main issue with it, as it's basically just another PCIe card as far as the hardware is concerned. I see it suggested on the internet (probably old forum posts) that X79 stuff should not be able to use it as a boot device, but my system begs to differ.
The piddly PCIe provisions are a shame though... no improvement (in lane count) whatsoever since they pulled the controllers onto the CPU die (LGA1156, Nehlaem)..
Prove that the PCIe lanes are being maxed out for gaming, daily computing, video editing, etc. and then I'll care. Yes, PCIe lanes matter for specific applications but the vast majority of gaming and higher end enthusiast systems are not maxing out the existing PCIe 3.0 lanes and DMI 3.0 bandwidth.
Current benchmarks show very little difference between SSD and NVMe in boot times and gaming performance. The main difference is transferring large files and loading large files into memory (i.e. video editing). NVMe M.2 drives are also somewhat expensive in comparison to SSD.
I upgraded the NVMe M.2 drive on my Surface Pro 4 to a Samsung 960 Pro while fixing the cracked screen. I bought a PCIe NVMe adapter card to copy the OS from the original NVMe drive to the new one. Windows 10 had no problems accessing it with no third party drivers required. I'm pretty sure that NVMe support will be integrated into Intel motherboard designs through third party controllers.
Basically, it's great that AMD CPUs have higher end features that Intel as it gives us choice and drives competition. But how useful those features are will depend on you use case.