they don't have to trace it. All they have to show is he wasn't following the regulations for financial transactions and that known criminals were using his services.

Wrong meme. whoosh.

I've had issues with a lot of modern onboard good enough integrated sound that have some severe issues, like Toshiba and Dell laptops having serious hard drive access clicks that are impresses on the audio. No audiophile voodoo needed, everyone in the roomcan hear it

Plus, in Amateur Radio, we use soundcard modulation codecs, that the better the soundcard, the better the communications. I hope these come in dongle form eventually.

They have to be re-bought every election cycle

Don't you know the ground rules of baksheesh?

Xcode allows Mac OS X and iOS development for free. It's a public download on the App store.

To distribute apps through the Mac App store, or the iTunes App Store there is a $99 a year developer fee which includes the certificates needed to run your app on other people's computers or iOS devices.

So on a Mac yes, completely free to make apps for your own desktop. (Because you're bypassing binary signing, which is optional on a Mac) On iOS you will only be able to use the simulator until you pay for a dev certificate. This is because of no "side loading".

Now there is a free developer account which gives access to documentation and sample code (and old WWDC videos?), much of which is google accessible but some of which is not. Kids can get the free developer accounts, practice on a simulator and apply to go to WWDC for free (https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/students/).

So long story short. Things are not that simple, it's a nuanced situation, but YES you can start coding iOS apps before you're 18.

The WWDC app requires a dev account because that's pre-release info that requires signing an NDA. That would normally exclude minors, but it works the same way as kids going to WWDC, via sharing a dev account with their parent or guardian. So a grown up gets a dev account, puts in info that it's for their minor child... pays for a dev certificate and a kid can make their own iPhone apps with parent's permission.

Don't diss gold-plated capacitors with wood dampening.

HDMI is digital. The problem with onboard was never the digital part, but the cheap analog parts and the noisy interior of a PC.

"If you're an audio pro and/or you're building a semi/professional audio rig, onboard isn't going to cut it 99% of the time."

True, but you won't be using a Soundblaster either, and that's where the article is wrong.

There are way better cards at lower prices (Xonar, M-Audio)

Which integrated audio is it comparing to?

Let's use Realtek as an example, because they're a very common one. They have a variety of chips, ranging from the ALC231 to the ALC1150,

The ALC231 is rubbish. Four output channels (two stereo outputs), four input channels, and a 97dB SNR on output. But even that is probably enough for most users.

A good "middle-end" chip is the ALC861. That brings you up to 7.1 audio out, and a pile of sound-processing features (EAX, A3D, all that - including Creative's own standards). You still only have a 90dB SNR, but on a clean line that's tolerable. And it's cheap enough to be seen on sub-$150 motherboards.

Their top-end ALC1150 is basically the same, adding a few more output channels for some reason, a second ADC, and a 115dB SNR. That puts you above the low-end SoundBlasters, and within spitting distance of the high-end ones. On an integrated chipset. For anyone not doing professional audio work, that's probably enough. And you can find it on motherboards that cost less than this discrete card alone - sometimes even with advanced features like swappable op-amps.

It gets worse, because the main advantage of a discrete card is the SNR. Problem is, S/PDIF over TOSLINK is becoming a more common feature. And that means your computer's DAC doesn't matter - it's done on the sound system itself. Line noise isn't an issue, because it's fiber-optic. Every single Realtek chip I looked at supported this - probably not every implementation does, but it's something that doesn't cost the manufacturer any more than the cost of the connectors. That's another blow against them.

This isn't like video cards, where integrated can handle light users but any remotely intensive task requires at least a low-end discrete card. Probably not even one in a thousand users will need a discrete sound card - the ones who need more than the low-end integrated chips, like gamers, will be buying mobos that already have a higher-end audio chip.

True, and you'll never get good speakers from Creative. They offer some of the worst sounding speakers I've ever heard. Including those bare speakers from Radio Shack.

In fact, when one speaker blew out on my old PC speaker set (a Harmon Kardon set, I believe), I couldn't actually find anything reasonably priced that didn't sound like crap. So I picked up another one on eBay from a guy who blew out his sub. When they die, I'm going to get an amp and use bookshelf speakers with a real sub.

Yes, a discrete card might have *better* specs (especially analog components, which was a problem on older integrated soundcards), but I haven't felt the need to use a discrete card since my nForce 2 board (Soundstorm).

Besides, it saves me from using Creative's bloatware.

Retaliation for Spying: Germany Asks CIA Official to Leave Country

The USA's response has been something along the lines of "you expected us not to conducting traditional spying activities?"

I have a Pi and a PcDuino v2 and the PcDuino is definitely more capable and doesn't cost all that much more. The Arduino compatbility and WiFi are nice, as is having enough flash on board to boot without an SD card, although I generally use one since they are faster. I use their LinkSprite shield for prototyping things, since it breaks out the IO pins into a nice connector for easy use.