I was once horrifically stung (what I realize was a very long time ago) with an Abit "audiomax" soundcard that came with my motherboard. Quite horrific interference amongst the many problems. In a fit of pique I bought an Asus Xonar that solved all my problems immediately.

Since then, I've been through a few motherboards, but plugged that Xonar in, and it's definitely 'better'

Now if I didn't have that Xonar, then I'd be as happy as the proverbial Larry with my on-board sound I can get today. On-board sound is quite definitely 'good enough' now, but seems a shame for people not to realize (if they care) they can make it a great deal better for a pretty low price.

And, I've carried this card with me for quite a while as my GPUs have come and gone. The price I've paid for my slightly better sound is now practically nothing per year.

I think people still care about sound, but it's just another check-box on your slightly more pimped mobo - in much the same way as a I got a deluxe board with an Intel network adaptor in addition to the Realtek.

It doesn't really matter that much, I don't expect most people to care, but to say that on-board is good enough for all simply isn't true.

My current on-board is wired to my desk speakers for the day to day stuff I want to listen to, and the Xonar is connected to my silly-number-of-speakers gaming headset.

*Pendant-face*
All we have now is stereoscopic TV.

What's going to be nice, is when we can eye-track and overlay this on the source to shift focus (like what we do when we use our eyes normally). Probably not too hard to bolt onto games, but suspect it'll be a while until devices like the Lytro are providing video.

Is what will get me back on a laptop. I have a 'gaming rig'. There used to be all manner of reasons why laptops were worse - screens, speed etc. Now there's just GPU.
I'd love to be able to have a laptop I could lug around, get home and dock with a proper mouse, a proper keyboard and a GPU plugged into a great big monitor.

In this context "peddle" seems pretty appropriate.
We tried to peddle something, nobody wanted.
We reversed our unpopular stance by back-pedalling, and now we're back peddling.


Just whilst I'm on the topic, I'm most narked (and I accept alone), in actually *liking* the original "always-on-in-the-cloud" original XBone pitch.
The kinect can just wither and die though - voice was great. Camera...oh I'm sure it looked great in the pitch.
Media stuff looked pretty damn good when I was convinced they were going to sell it as a cable/ADSL streaming trojan Tivo+ box. I've now no idea wtf they were thinking.
Sell an XBone+ with 1080 games and you can refurb the millions you've sold as leased cable boxes.

that's that the IRS will actually be paying? Yes XP is being deprecated (good thing), yes MS is putting a price on the support of those unable to do so (good thing), no the IRS isn't going to be paying that.

I was running a pair of 6990s (previous gen dual-GPU AMD cards).
Bought the first one when I realized that Bitcoin app I'd accidentally installed a few months earlier on my server had produced something I could flog for 10 bucks and I'd earnt myself a free card. Then used that one to cover the cost of the second one.
Quit mining when difficulty meant I was pulling in less than a BTC a day.. Looking back..

but are they actually using this root certificate to "transcrypt" (or whatever the term is for decrypting your traffic and then re-encrypting it with the desired external certificate) - or are they just adding a new certificate to your machine.
I can see plenty of reasons they'd want to do this - for example just allowing you to connect securely to your internal school webmail without them having to pay somebody else for a cert or getting your browser to bleat about how it can't validate the certificate every time you connect.

yesterday's hardware does what 99% of end users want.
I'm as guilty as the last review-fixated whore in obsessing over the specs of my current and potential future phones - but with the last gen I've hit a realization.
A 1080 screen is more than enough. My CPU and GPU are absolutely fine to run anything I need. Personally (HTC One) I'd *like* to know I could crunch a benchmark faster for my geek pride - but I can't for the life of me see how any phone upgrade costing me £500+ (less ebaying of my old handset) could potentially be worth the money for what I use my phone for.
Even stepping back to my last purchase - the Nexus was by far better value and I was swayed by pretty design (not that I see anything wrong with that). Just in the next gen I've seen so far I can't see anything more than mere incremental spec increase and entirely subjective design improvements.

What Shanghai is going through is that London (and pretty much every participant in the industrial revolution went through) - just this is a bit later.
China will put in place (and actually enforce) environmental controls, and it'll all be fine.

MtGox page seems to be blank currently - but look at source reveals:

"put announce for mtgox acq here"

If this is the norm, then as the OP suggests, something is very very wrong.
Occasionally though, ridiculous hours are required - and I don't have a problem with gritting my teeth and taking it. Moreover I (in retrospect normally) am quite proud of those moments when we "made it happen"
What's more interesting to me is how your employer handles these exceptions. Whilst chatting to future employers, I was quite dismayed by the number that point-blank refused to accept these scenarios every occurred, and therefore saw no reason for a policy on their handling.

He comes out and looks at the foundations another builder left for him to build on, and notices they're already collapsing.
Your brickie tells you that the foundations are duff and any wall he builds is going to fall down whatever he does.
You tell him to shut-up and just build the wall he's paying you to build.
The wall falls down. Whose fault is this?

I've got a TV that I use as a big dumb display, with the items providing my media, hanging out the back of it on wires.
There's a big chunk of manufacturer bullet points in their sales pitch completely ignored - as I'm much happier bypassing them all.
Would be much better if they'd actually built something I wanted into the TV initially.
Better still, if they'd all build something in that was standardized. I get a new phone, I sign in, my profile/apps/etc all magically get pulled down from the cloud. I'd quite like to be able to do this with all TVs I bump into.

Surely it would be better to have a TV, with a built in Chromebox?
As you go up-range on TVs, you get seem to get the same panel, with a prettier frame, and more and more god-awful/useless features.
In the same way the computer invaded my phone, could they please invade my TV?
You suddenly get something supported, that can run cross-manufactuer apps etc - and once you've got a CPU and some storage in there, you can start to bolt the tuner/PVR/Guide etc into the OS. Then add in the Google 'cloud' and you'd be able to sign into your hotel room TV and watch your films, your channels and maybe video-conference to your friends. God-knows if this is the direction of the TV world - but it's certainly not a curved screen, and I'm sure Google would fall over themselves to know what you're watching when you're not in-front of your PC.

wants to lynch him.
Maybe slightly off-topic, but the bit I could never quite understand in the States (and I accept you're a lovely bunch of people with differing views), was how the demographic allegiances are flipped related to pretty much the rest of the world.
Usual (for the rest of us) seems to be that the more affluent you become, the more right-wing your views - "I want to keep my money, not redistribute it to the proles"
The coasts of your country contribute the majority of tax-base to the country, and in return get the centre hoovering up the money whilst whining about 'big government'
Still, I can see the appeal of subsidized living and playing with an assault rifle in your 10-acre back-yard.