i learnt to program at school from a Ph.D computer scientist. We never even had computers in the class. We learnt to break the problem down into sections using flowcharts or pseudo-code and then we would translate that program into whatever coding language we were using. I still do this usually in my notebook where I figure out all the things I need to do and then write the skeleton of the code using a series of comments for what each section of my program and then I fill in the code for each section. It is a combination of top down and bottom up programming, writing routines that can be independently tested and validated.
"Maybe he uses DC fast charging too much. Those chargers put a tremendous strain on the battery and regular use will quickly degrade its life. They're for occasional long-trip recharges."
Actually, that's not true. Fast charging every day may reduce the battery capacity by 1% per year at worst. There's an example of a LEAF used as a taxi which was fast charged multiple times a day and covered 130,000 miles before it lost the first battery bar. In fact, the observation seems to be that age is the killer so a car will lose capacity whether you use it or not, and in fact leaving the car charged to 100% or run flat (not that the car lets you do that) for long periods are what will damage the battery most. The early batteries also suffered in hot climates but the recent lizard batteries are much better. My own battery actually increased in capacity after a long hot run with three fast charges in a single day.
There's no reason to fear using the car regularly, or using fast charges. Also, replacement costs for the batteries are coming down considerably too and there's an opportunity for aftermarket upgrades with new technologies. The newer NMO battery cells which are planned for the next gen LEAF will allow a 60kWh battery to fit in the space of my 24kWh battery more than doubling range assuming someone is able to put them on the market for the older cars which would be a potentially large market anyway. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my car, doing long trips and using the fast charger network happily without producing any emissions (my country is largely run on non-fossil produced power.)
He doesn't think he can do 50 miles on a single charge in a LEAF? The battery must be desperately sick for that to be the case. My 2015 doesn't even have the 30kWh battery and it can easily do 84 miles at highway speeds even with hills and stuff. 50 miles is no trouble at all even if I turn off all the energy saving stuff. Even if I only charge to 80% rather than all the way to 100% it will still easily do 67 miles. The EPA 75 miles a charge is pretty pessimistic in reality and is based on the average between a 100% and 80% charge and is for high speed driving. At lower speeds my car will do 100 miles without issue.
I'm trying to remember the last programme by ITV that I regularly watched. Last time I looked it was a bunch of generic cheap reality crap. I guess there's Downton Abbey but that's done now. Seriously, ITV made its bed and is now complaining that people don't want to watch crappy shows that get broken up every few mins by adverts. What a shock. The problem for ITV isn't the time the programmes are on, but rather VOD services such as iPlayer meaning people don't sit in front to the TV any more at a specific time and they definitely don't want to watch adverts. ITV Player is a joke by the way. Netflix and iPlayer. Job done.
"I saw a chart somewhere and basically there is 0 incentive to subscribe if you're not in North America unless you have a VPN to make it appear that you are."
It isn't about the volume, but rather the quality. The thing is, US Netflix has terrible documentaries and I like documentaries so even if I lived in the US, I would prefer the UK version. Documentaries on US Netflix are so frequently those dumb ones that go "Aliens!....pause for ads.....before the break, aliens!" and that is simply brain damaged. So no, being in North America isn't really the only reason to have Netflix.
"ICE engines are amazing now with computer control. I have no desire to stop shifting mine.:)"
I've been driving cars for 35 years, mostly manuals, mostly petrol although I did own a 6 speed diesel once. I've taken petrol engines completely apart and rebuilt them. You could say I'm a bit of a petrol head. And yet, last year I took a test drive in a Nissan Leaf which is frankly a pretty cheap little car. That thing runs like it is a Rolls Royce. Incredibly smooth, with a really sudden and direct throttle with no lag whatsoever. Sure, the range isn't great but It took a look at my current petrol car and I only do mostly short journeys well within the range of the Leaf and if I need to go further I can always rent. I was convinced and I've bought a brand new Leaf. Petrol cars and the ICE are dinosaurs. They're slow, unresponsive and wasteful. Even the whole range and fuel thing is a non-issue for the vast majority of users because, while most people think they need to be able to drive 300 miles all the time, they don't. I fill my car up once a month and I do around 300 miles a month in it. That means each week I do about the range of the Leaf and the Leaf is always fully charged and ready to go. Plus, I have rooftop solar so the usual argument that I'm just moving the pollution to the power station doesn't hold because my car is going to use 100% renewable fuel. I've switched power companies to a carbon zero supplier that buys my excess power and also has a good plan for people with solar and EVs. This is the future. The ICE has had its day. It was fun, but oily and dirty and I'm happy to move on.
You're not talking about a single battery, but a bank of batteries. The whole pack comes out of service when too many cells fail but there are still working cells so the whole pack can still work and hold plenty of charge. While it is possible to pull the failed cells and keep a pack in service, the current approach Nissan has been taking is to pull the whole pack mainly because they've got better chemistry in the new packs but they do require you to trade in the old pack and they're using them as commercial solar storage.
"EV batteries last a couple of thousand cycles at the most. Which might be 5 or 10 years worth of driving. After that they are recycled into stainless steel pans and other items that aren't batteries."
Actually, EV batteries that are replaced still have about 70% capacity and move onto productive lives as solar storage batteries which doesn't need anything like the capacity a car does. For example, Tesla sells their powerwall which has a capacity of 7kWh but a typical spent car battery is still going to have more than double that (e.g. a Leaf battery will have dropped to around 18kWh once from 24kWh once it is replaced)
I've got an EV, and roof mounted solar. For the amount of driving I do (about 200Km a week) an EV is perfect and I make the fuel. There's no transporting, storage or anything. I make the fuel and it goes into the car's battery ready with a full charge any time I need it. Hydrogen is just another way to keep us paying for fuel. If I need to go further than 150Km and there aren't fast charge stations at the destination or along the way, I'll rent a petrol car. Hydrogen is not the future.
While an AMD chip can run x86-64 code compiled for an Intel processor, it isn't surprising that the code doesn't perform as well since a lot of optimisations relate to features of the specific chip. You can't use a precompiled binary across all chips and expect them to be useful other than to say one chip can run that binary quicker than another. I remember years back having some code that was optimised for the Intel PIII and when that same code ran on the AMD Opteron it was slower despite the Intel running at a clock speed of 1.4Ghz and the AMD running at 1.7. Once I went in and had a look at the ASM I could see why - the AMD had a 64 bit bus and the code was using instructions which weren't as efficient on AMD's chip as a result of this. Once I realised that, I rewrote that section of code to account for this and the AMD ended up being 30% quicker than the old code when I rewrote four lines of C. Compiler optimisations only go so far but you still have to be aware of the underlying chip if you really want to get the most out of it.
Personally, I'm really into documentaries and the likes. The problem is Netflix US has all these utterly terrible american style docs which stop every five minutes to recap due to ad breaks which aren't there (in case you haven't seen them, the streamlined Mythbusters are a joy if you know where to get them because they chop out all this crap)
Anyway, Netflix UK has a lot more really good documentaries and since they're for UK viewers, particularly the BBC where there aren't adverts, you get a solid hour of really good information rather than 'Aliens' almost immediately followed by 'Before the break, Aliens'.
If Netflix can switch to a global model all the better but for now I have little choice but to pay a little extra to enable me to fully utilise the service because if I was stuck with the US version I don't think I would care enough to pay the monthly subscription.
I've been doing projectors since the mid 1990's after I saw one in the Smithsonian showing the asteroid scene from Empire and was wowed by the scale of the image. The quality (NTSC) wasn't so great but there were ways even then to improve it with line doublers and scalers plus using LaserDisc instead of VHS.
The cost of projection has come down and the quality has gone up over time and I'm now on my fourth projector. They've all been DLP and I typically run them at 100" or bigger. My current one (Optoma HD50) is full HD and 3D. The image (once calibrated) gives a cinema a real run for the money. Add a great surround system and you're rarely going to need to see a film at the cinema for the full effect. Big direct view screens are too full of features, too small unless you pay serious money (I have a 55" 4K set which was OK) and the smart TV features get in the way often, not to mention all the silly image processing that makes the picture worse. If you can spare the space for the screen (mine is ceiling mounted drop down) or have a large white wall available then you can have home cinema on the sort of budget that will only buy you a mid size direct view screen.
I was very close to dropping cash on an XBOne when I heard about backwards compatibility. I've had a 360 since launch and have a pretty large selection of games and my 360 being a first gen lacks modern features like HDMI. Then I looked at the list to see what games I owned were on it. There are two. Sigh. I ended up buying a preowned 360 Elite which has HDMI and moved on. I already have a PS4 and PC so the current gen games are well covered so I don't think there's room for an XBOne until it can realistically cover the majority of my collection, especially Red Dead Redemption since we're never likely to see an HD remake of that.
Really, a goto? That's the best solution to this issue? I can actually read the crap code and while I don't particularly like it since it is assigning the values inside the if statement, that isn't the problem for me. It is the goto. I haven't used a goto in 35 years since I first discovered structured programming and I've been a C programmer for 25 years and while the statement exists in C there's just no need to use it (I never have), especially in this case. The fail_toobig should be a routine that is called rather than a label and there should be an if then else in there too. Linus' code is ugly too. Better than the first one, but still ugly.
"MacBooks obviously have qualities that appeal to people, or they wouldn't sell."
Indeed, and it isn't price. Start with a well built case - I know the guts are the same as any PC but Macs are incredibly well put together compared with the typical cheap PC and to get a PC that competes with a Mac for build quality you actually spend more because those PCs don't sell in the same volume as the Mac does. Go figure, the Mac is cheaper.
Then you add an operating system that is solid and stable and designed for the machine it runs on rather than being a combination of drivers from various vendors to run whatever the currently cheapest components are stuffed into a box all on an operating system that just doesn't know what it wants to be - desktop, tablet, phone. Choose one MS. Seriously, Windows 10 is still a huge step backwards from Windows 7 even if it is better than Windows 8.
The SurfaceBook looks interesting but it isn't reigniting anything. If I want to spend that sort of money, I'm not buying a Windows box, I'm buying a Mac and if I want a Windows box, I'm not paying that money, I'll take the cheapest crap Dell and co are putting out. There's the crux of the problem. All the money is going to Apple even if MS and co are getting the volume. Making little money on high volume isn't a good business to be in because you have a lot of customers to support and insufficient cash coming in to do it. The result is your software appears buggy and you appear unable to deal with it. Sound familiar? Worse, if I wanted something really cheap, I would look at a Chromebook. MS is getting squeezed at both ends and they don't have an answer. Windows 10 certainly isn't it.
We're witnessing a change that has been brewing for a long long time. The roots of things change date back into the 90's and the momentum is now so great that MS hasn't got the power to push back. They can either accept it and restructure around the new reality where PCs and Windows aren't the centre of the computing world, or they can die.
Socialist countries have healthcare freely available to their entire population and social services protecting the disadvantaged and giving everyone a fair shot at life. The US isn't anywhere close to those levels of social support.
I had the pleasure of spending a couple of weeks in Copenhagen earlier this year. The public transport is excellent, there are separate cycle paths with their own traffic lights everywhere, and now you can rent an electric car if you absolutely need one. We used the train a lot and walked around many Km too. It was easy to rent a car when we did need one but if I lived there it is highly unlikely I would want to own one because the traffic is pretty bad and the public transport offered is excellent. The car is such a dinosaur when it comes to getting around a city.
Last time I was in the UK, I bought a SIM from 3 and one of the features I didn't realise at the time was that I could use my phone abroad with that SIM exactly as I had in the UK. After I finished in the UK, I flew to Denmark and when I fired up the phone 3DK welcomed me to their network allowing me to use my unlimited UK data and also call and be called from UK numbers as if I was still in the UK. This was amazing based on previous experience with roaming from country to country. I drove over to Sweden and the same thing happened. Now that's all well and good, but what about the US? Turns out, when I landed in LAX, I was welcomed to AT&T's network and my unlimited data continued to work (3G only but still, not bad) and then I flew on to NZ and found myself on 2Degrees and still the phone and data worked. If you're not already with 3, I would strongly suggest switching. You can always buy a local cheap phone in the US for doing calls to US numbers, or do as I did and get some Skype credit which will go over the data.
Another vote for the iPhone 6+. I've actually run it for five days without a charge just to see how long I could make it last. If you really hammer it with games and stuff then you'll chew through the battery but if you use it to make a few calls, do a bit of e-mail and text then it will last a working week. I do carry one of those little extra battery packs just in case and frankly, whenever I have a chance to charge my devices I take it but knowing that my phone always has days and days of power in reserve is so much better than it was with my old iPhone 4.
I've had a 360 since launch (technically three if you count the replacement motherboards) and I would have got the One if it had backwards compatibility, even to the standard that the 360 could play original Xbox games by using most of the on disc assets but having a recompiled native engine for the PPC chip in the 360. This doesn't look quite like that unfortunately but I'll watch with interest as I'm not sure how much longer my 360 will survive and there are still games on it I would like to play through again. If it does support enough of the games I already own (the list currently has none) then I may well add an Xbox One to go with my PS4.
"Of those 1.37 billion web requests, over 58% came from a Windows system. Even Windows 8.1 alone has more users than OS X does in total, and that's one of the most despised versions of Windows!"
Lets think back to 2000 or so when around 99% of web requests were coming from Windows and think about just how far Windows has fallen in that time. While I agree that Mac OS X isn't really setting the world on fire (and I say that as a Mac user) I do see an awful lot of Macs out there and far more than there were in 2000 so Apple has certainly made up a lot of ground. Also, consider that when you're sitting at a desktop you're likely using the web a lot, but a phone is just occasional use so the fact that 42% of web requests aren't coming from Windows tells you a lot about how much kit is out there that is connecting to the internet. The important change since 2000 is that you could barely manage on the web without IE on Windows. I know, I was a Linux user then and browsing was very painful at times. These days, the web is much better to use because it has to handle all these different browsers on phones and alternative desktops. The thing that kept Windows at the top for all of the 90's was the fact that alternatives couldn't get a shoe in the door. These days, it is very easy to drop Windows. If you want a nice desktop, a Mac is a really good place to go because you get a real desktop OS without all that touch screen, phone UI rubbish shoved into it. You want a phone that works well as a phone and has lots of software? Android and iOS have you covered. Windows has lost the software high ground and the only reason it still has 58% of web requests going to it is simply inertia. MS is desperate to slow the slide but it keeps on going down. I've used Windows 10 and I don't see anything there that will stop this process if they can't get devs to actually put out apps that are unique to Windows and attractive. I don't think they can get back to the heyday of the 90's and having lived and worked through it, I don't think they ever should because we're in a much better place today with real choice. MS should be happy that they still have any customers under the circumstances given just how badly they treated everyone when they were on top.
Microsoft heard about this halo effect around the iPod and now iPhone bringing people to the Mac and totally misunderstood what it meant. Hence, Cortana and Spartan.
I don't care what they name it but it will definitely have Microsoft..... in the name and as others have said, they'll likely stick with the Spartan branding and maybe even pile on the 'Halo' theme even more. Pity Halo itself is a smoking shell these days. Halo 4 was just sad.
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i learnt to program at school from a Ph.D computer scientist. We never even had computers in the class. We learnt to break the problem down into sections using flowcharts or pseudo-code and then we would translate that program into whatever coding language we were using. I still do this usually in my notebook where I figure out all the things I need to do and then write the skeleton of the code using a series of comments for what each section of my program and then I fill in the code for each section. It is a combination of top down and bottom up programming, writing routines that can be independently tested and validated.
"Maybe he uses DC fast charging too much. Those chargers put a tremendous strain on the battery and regular use will quickly degrade its life. They're for occasional long-trip recharges."
Actually, that's not true. Fast charging every day may reduce the battery capacity by 1% per year at worst. There's an example of a LEAF used as a taxi which was fast charged multiple times a day and covered 130,000 miles before it lost the first battery bar. In fact, the observation seems to be that age is the killer so a car will lose capacity whether you use it or not, and in fact leaving the car charged to 100% or run flat (not that the car lets you do that) for long periods are what will damage the battery most. The early batteries also suffered in hot climates but the recent lizard batteries are much better. My own battery actually increased in capacity after a long hot run with three fast charges in a single day.
There's no reason to fear using the car regularly, or using fast charges. Also, replacement costs for the batteries are coming down considerably too and there's an opportunity for aftermarket upgrades with new technologies. The newer NMO battery cells which are planned for the next gen LEAF will allow a 60kWh battery to fit in the space of my 24kWh battery more than doubling range assuming someone is able to put them on the market for the older cars which would be a potentially large market anyway. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my car, doing long trips and using the fast charger network happily without producing any emissions (my country is largely run on non-fossil produced power.)
He doesn't think he can do 50 miles on a single charge in a LEAF? The battery must be desperately sick for that to be the case. My 2015 doesn't even have the 30kWh battery and it can easily do 84 miles at highway speeds even with hills and stuff. 50 miles is no trouble at all even if I turn off all the energy saving stuff. Even if I only charge to 80% rather than all the way to 100% it will still easily do 67 miles. The EPA 75 miles a charge is pretty pessimistic in reality and is based on the average between a 100% and 80% charge and is for high speed driving. At lower speeds my car will do 100 miles without issue.
"I was fine after two weeks .. mostly. There are still some people I can't understand...mostly from Hamilton :-P"
That's because they're english.
I'm trying to remember the last programme by ITV that I regularly watched. Last time I looked it was a bunch of generic cheap reality crap. I guess there's Downton Abbey but that's done now. Seriously, ITV made its bed and is now complaining that people don't want to watch crappy shows that get broken up every few mins by adverts. What a shock. The problem for ITV isn't the time the programmes are on, but rather VOD services such as iPlayer meaning people don't sit in front to the TV any more at a specific time and they definitely don't want to watch adverts. ITV Player is a joke by the way. Netflix and iPlayer. Job done.
"I saw a chart somewhere and basically there is 0 incentive to subscribe if you're not in North America unless you have a VPN to make it appear that you are."
It isn't about the volume, but rather the quality. The thing is, US Netflix has terrible documentaries and I like documentaries so even if I lived in the US, I would prefer the UK version. Documentaries on US Netflix are so frequently those dumb ones that go "Aliens!....pause for ads.....before the break, aliens!" and that is simply brain damaged. So no, being in North America isn't really the only reason to have Netflix.
"ICE engines are amazing now with computer control. I have no desire to stop shifting mine. :)"
I've been driving cars for 35 years, mostly manuals, mostly petrol although I did own a 6 speed diesel once. I've taken petrol engines completely apart and rebuilt them. You could say I'm a bit of a petrol head. And yet, last year I took a test drive in a Nissan Leaf which is frankly a pretty cheap little car. That thing runs like it is a Rolls Royce. Incredibly smooth, with a really sudden and direct throttle with no lag whatsoever. Sure, the range isn't great but It took a look at my current petrol car and I only do mostly short journeys well within the range of the Leaf and if I need to go further I can always rent. I was convinced and I've bought a brand new Leaf. Petrol cars and the ICE are dinosaurs. They're slow, unresponsive and wasteful. Even the whole range and fuel thing is a non-issue for the vast majority of users because, while most people think they need to be able to drive 300 miles all the time, they don't. I fill my car up once a month and I do around 300 miles a month in it. That means each week I do about the range of the Leaf and the Leaf is always fully charged and ready to go. Plus, I have rooftop solar so the usual argument that I'm just moving the pollution to the power station doesn't hold because my car is going to use 100% renewable fuel. I've switched power companies to a carbon zero supplier that buys my excess power and also has a good plan for people with solar and EVs. This is the future. The ICE has had its day. It was fun, but oily and dirty and I'm happy to move on.
You're not talking about a single battery, but a bank of batteries. The whole pack comes out of service when too many cells fail but there are still working cells so the whole pack can still work and hold plenty of charge. While it is possible to pull the failed cells and keep a pack in service, the current approach Nissan has been taking is to pull the whole pack mainly because they've got better chemistry in the new packs but they do require you to trade in the old pack and they're using them as commercial solar storage.
"EV batteries last a couple of thousand cycles at the most. Which might be 5 or 10 years worth of driving. After that they are recycled into stainless steel pans and other items that aren't batteries."
Actually, EV batteries that are replaced still have about 70% capacity and move onto productive lives as solar storage batteries which doesn't need anything like the capacity a car does. For example, Tesla sells their powerwall which has a capacity of 7kWh but a typical spent car battery is still going to have more than double that (e.g. a Leaf battery will have dropped to around 18kWh once from 24kWh once it is replaced)
I've got an EV, and roof mounted solar. For the amount of driving I do (about 200Km a week) an EV is perfect and I make the fuel. There's no transporting, storage or anything. I make the fuel and it goes into the car's battery ready with a full charge any time I need it. Hydrogen is just another way to keep us paying for fuel. If I need to go further than 150Km and there aren't fast charge stations at the destination or along the way, I'll rent a petrol car. Hydrogen is not the future.
I haven't use GOTO since 1982. Must be someone else.
While an AMD chip can run x86-64 code compiled for an Intel processor, it isn't surprising that the code doesn't perform as well since a lot of optimisations relate to features of the specific chip. You can't use a precompiled binary across all chips and expect them to be useful other than to say one chip can run that binary quicker than another. I remember years back having some code that was optimised for the Intel PIII and when that same code ran on the AMD Opteron it was slower despite the Intel running at a clock speed of 1.4Ghz and the AMD running at 1.7. Once I went in and had a look at the ASM I could see why - the AMD had a 64 bit bus and the code was using instructions which weren't as efficient on AMD's chip as a result of this. Once I realised that, I rewrote that section of code to account for this and the AMD ended up being 30% quicker than the old code when I rewrote four lines of C. Compiler optimisations only go so far but you still have to be aware of the underlying chip if you really want to get the most out of it.
Personally, I'm really into documentaries and the likes. The problem is Netflix US has all these utterly terrible american style docs which stop every five minutes to recap due to ad breaks which aren't there (in case you haven't seen them, the streamlined Mythbusters are a joy if you know where to get them because they chop out all this crap)
Anyway, Netflix UK has a lot more really good documentaries and since they're for UK viewers, particularly the BBC where there aren't adverts, you get a solid hour of really good information rather than 'Aliens' almost immediately followed by 'Before the break, Aliens'.
If Netflix can switch to a global model all the better but for now I have little choice but to pay a little extra to enable me to fully utilise the service because if I was stuck with the US version I don't think I would care enough to pay the monthly subscription.
I've been doing projectors since the mid 1990's after I saw one in the Smithsonian showing the asteroid scene from Empire and was wowed by the scale of the image. The quality (NTSC) wasn't so great but there were ways even then to improve it with line doublers and scalers plus using LaserDisc instead of VHS.
The cost of projection has come down and the quality has gone up over time and I'm now on my fourth projector. They've all been DLP and I typically run them at 100" or bigger. My current one (Optoma HD50) is full HD and 3D. The image (once calibrated) gives a cinema a real run for the money. Add a great surround system and you're rarely going to need to see a film at the cinema for the full effect. Big direct view screens are too full of features, too small unless you pay serious money (I have a 55" 4K set which was OK) and the smart TV features get in the way often, not to mention all the silly image processing that makes the picture worse. If you can spare the space for the screen (mine is ceiling mounted drop down) or have a large white wall available then you can have home cinema on the sort of budget that will only buy you a mid size direct view screen.
I was very close to dropping cash on an XBOne when I heard about backwards compatibility. I've had a 360 since launch and have a pretty large selection of games and my 360 being a first gen lacks modern features like HDMI. Then I looked at the list to see what games I owned were on it. There are two. Sigh. I ended up buying a preowned 360 Elite which has HDMI and moved on. I already have a PS4 and PC so the current gen games are well covered so I don't think there's room for an XBOne until it can realistically cover the majority of my collection, especially Red Dead Redemption since we're never likely to see an HD remake of that.
Really, a goto? That's the best solution to this issue? I can actually read the crap code and while I don't particularly like it since it is assigning the values inside the if statement, that isn't the problem for me. It is the goto. I haven't used a goto in 35 years since I first discovered structured programming and I've been a C programmer for 25 years and while the statement exists in C there's just no need to use it (I never have), especially in this case. The fail_toobig should be a routine that is called rather than a label and there should be an if then else in there too. Linus' code is ugly too. Better than the first one, but still ugly.
"MacBooks obviously have qualities that appeal to people, or they wouldn't sell."
Indeed, and it isn't price. Start with a well built case - I know the guts are the same as any PC but Macs are incredibly well put together compared with the typical cheap PC and to get a PC that competes with a Mac for build quality you actually spend more because those PCs don't sell in the same volume as the Mac does. Go figure, the Mac is cheaper.
Then you add an operating system that is solid and stable and designed for the machine it runs on rather than being a combination of drivers from various vendors to run whatever the currently cheapest components are stuffed into a box all on an operating system that just doesn't know what it wants to be - desktop, tablet, phone. Choose one MS. Seriously, Windows 10 is still a huge step backwards from Windows 7 even if it is better than Windows 8.
The SurfaceBook looks interesting but it isn't reigniting anything. If I want to spend that sort of money, I'm not buying a Windows box, I'm buying a Mac and if I want a Windows box, I'm not paying that money, I'll take the cheapest crap Dell and co are putting out. There's the crux of the problem. All the money is going to Apple even if MS and co are getting the volume. Making little money on high volume isn't a good business to be in because you have a lot of customers to support and insufficient cash coming in to do it. The result is your software appears buggy and you appear unable to deal with it. Sound familiar? Worse, if I wanted something really cheap, I would look at a Chromebook. MS is getting squeezed at both ends and they don't have an answer. Windows 10 certainly isn't it.
We're witnessing a change that has been brewing for a long long time. The roots of things change date back into the 90's and the momentum is now so great that MS hasn't got the power to push back. They can either accept it and restructure around the new reality where PCs and Windows aren't the centre of the computing world, or they can die.
"Capitalist societies also lifted billions out of poverty while socialism killed 100 million."
Socialism != communism
http://www.diffen.com/differen...
Socialist countries have healthcare freely available to their entire population and social services protecting the disadvantaged and giving everyone a fair shot at life. The US isn't anywhere close to those levels of social support.
I had the pleasure of spending a couple of weeks in Copenhagen earlier this year. The public transport is excellent, there are separate cycle paths with their own traffic lights everywhere, and now you can rent an electric car if you absolutely need one. We used the train a lot and walked around many Km too. It was easy to rent a car when we did need one but if I lived there it is highly unlikely I would want to own one because the traffic is pretty bad and the public transport offered is excellent. The car is such a dinosaur when it comes to getting around a city.
Last time I was in the UK, I bought a SIM from 3 and one of the features I didn't realise at the time was that I could use my phone abroad with that SIM exactly as I had in the UK. After I finished in the UK, I flew to Denmark and when I fired up the phone 3DK welcomed me to their network allowing me to use my unlimited UK data and also call and be called from UK numbers as if I was still in the UK. This was amazing based on previous experience with roaming from country to country. I drove over to Sweden and the same thing happened. Now that's all well and good, but what about the US? Turns out, when I landed in LAX, I was welcomed to AT&T's network and my unlimited data continued to work (3G only but still, not bad) and then I flew on to NZ and found myself on 2Degrees and still the phone and data worked. If you're not already with 3, I would strongly suggest switching. You can always buy a local cheap phone in the US for doing calls to US numbers, or do as I did and get some Skype credit which will go over the data.
Another vote for the iPhone 6+. I've actually run it for five days without a charge just to see how long I could make it last. If you really hammer it with games and stuff then you'll chew through the battery but if you use it to make a few calls, do a bit of e-mail and text then it will last a working week. I do carry one of those little extra battery packs just in case and frankly, whenever I have a chance to charge my devices I take it but knowing that my phone always has days and days of power in reserve is so much better than it was with my old iPhone 4.
I've had a 360 since launch (technically three if you count the replacement motherboards) and I would have got the One if it had backwards compatibility, even to the standard that the 360 could play original Xbox games by using most of the on disc assets but having a recompiled native engine for the PPC chip in the 360. This doesn't look quite like that unfortunately but I'll watch with interest as I'm not sure how much longer my 360 will survive and there are still games on it I would like to play through again. If it does support enough of the games I already own (the list currently has none) then I may well add an Xbox One to go with my PS4.
Yeah, that's not what "the Halo effect" means Microsoft.
"Of those 1.37 billion web requests, over 58% came from a Windows system. Even Windows 8.1 alone has more users than OS X does in total, and that's one of the most despised versions of Windows!"
Lets think back to 2000 or so when around 99% of web requests were coming from Windows and think about just how far Windows has fallen in that time. While I agree that Mac OS X isn't really setting the world on fire (and I say that as a Mac user) I do see an awful lot of Macs out there and far more than there were in 2000 so Apple has certainly made up a lot of ground. Also, consider that when you're sitting at a desktop you're likely using the web a lot, but a phone is just occasional use so the fact that 42% of web requests aren't coming from Windows tells you a lot about how much kit is out there that is connecting to the internet. The important change since 2000 is that you could barely manage on the web without IE on Windows. I know, I was a Linux user then and browsing was very painful at times. These days, the web is much better to use because it has to handle all these different browsers on phones and alternative desktops. The thing that kept Windows at the top for all of the 90's was the fact that alternatives couldn't get a shoe in the door. These days, it is very easy to drop Windows. If you want a nice desktop, a Mac is a really good place to go because you get a real desktop OS without all that touch screen, phone UI rubbish shoved into it. You want a phone that works well as a phone and has lots of software? Android and iOS have you covered. Windows has lost the software high ground and the only reason it still has 58% of web requests going to it is simply inertia. MS is desperate to slow the slide but it keeps on going down. I've used Windows 10 and I don't see anything there that will stop this process if they can't get devs to actually put out apps that are unique to Windows and attractive. I don't think they can get back to the heyday of the 90's and having lived and worked through it, I don't think they ever should because we're in a much better place today with real choice. MS should be happy that they still have any customers under the circumstances given just how badly they treated everyone when they were on top.
Microsoft heard about this halo effect around the iPod and now iPhone bringing people to the Mac and totally misunderstood what it meant. Hence, Cortana and Spartan.
I don't care what they name it but it will definitely have Microsoft..... in the name and as others have said, they'll likely stick with the Spartan branding and maybe even pile on the 'Halo' theme even more. Pity Halo itself is a smoking shell these days. Halo 4 was just sad.