http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/xbox-one

The Xbox One simultaneously runs three separate operating systems. First comes the tiny Host OS, which boots the machine and then launches two other hard-partitioned systems: the Shared partition, an environment that runs any apps (Skype, Live TV, Netflix, etc.) and helps provide processing power for the Kinect sensor and its gesture and voice controls; and the Exclusive partition, which is where games run. Because of the way memory is apportioned in the Shared partition, you can switch between apps with little to no load times, and even snap them into another app or game to use both at the same time.

And its built by Dave Cutler, Hoi Vo, among others.

http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-xbox-one-whats-windows-got-to-do-with-it-7000015684/

In an under-the-hood architecture panel following the Xbox One reveal, Boyd Multerer, Director of Development for Xbox, confirmed that the team started with Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor in building the Xbox One operating system. Multerer said the team stripped out all the general-purpose "goop" to create an OS that allowd two virtual machines to run in side-by-side partitions. One of the partitions runs apps; the other runs games. 

"David Cutler built the hypervisor that does the switching back and forth," Multerer confirmed.

I wonder if we can get more insights about this at BUILD, or if not, maybe Channel9 can do something ?

Do you know something like this will be available for all TechED attendees?

Any Pacific IT Pros out there? Anyone in #thekrewe from the bay area?

The real solution is that we want the application and data as physically close to the user as possible to get the best performance and best experience. Now you can't always get the app on their device and have to move back to the browser, but you want that host be also physically close to be cost effective. Ie. Internal users on the local LAN stay there and external user to the cloud server. But ouch, that's a lot of code, infrastructure and money, especially for a small app.

So, finally to the point. Why can't we have tools that reverse the scale out concepts to scale down to 1? Ie. Everything is plural. Code that uses all the CPU cores by default but can be configured to scale down to 1, applications that runs on multiple machines or works through multiple sub services which scale down to 1, data store that runs on multiple devices which can be scaled down to 1.

Is this a functional vs imperative vs actor based development? Or NoSql vs Relational vs Graph database data stores?

So is this an impossible dream? The cloud in its current form for non-large apps doesn't look cost effective, but like with MvvmCross, could we have as much of the app and core/cached data as close to the user and service out the other parts plus major data store as steps away? That to me would handle ALL types of future application development. This would stop the cycle of, let's build small quickly and cheaply and rebuild to scale out when needed (while trying to keep the original alive).

What if; start the app, installed locally? Download or call logic service/browser. Need data, is local? Check local store, else check server store, else check cloud store. Maybe like how the PC data works by calling further down the stack. Any thoughts?

Due to some rather strange circumstances, we will be flying in to Atlanta, and driving a rental from there to New Orleans.

We have 2 days to complete the drive, and really want to experience the southern USA on this road trip.

Any suggestions on great sights, routes, things to do or places to visit along the way? All suggestions are welcome.

Always interested in where the next years will be.

This is my 20th!  I missed the first one in Orlando, but have been to every one since.

Orlando wins for hosting the most - 7 (93, 97, 00, 05, 07, 08, 12)

New Orleans is second at 6 (94, 95, 98, 02, 10, 13)

LA - twice (96, 09)

Dallas - twice (99, 03)

Atlanta - twice (01, 11)

San Diego - 04

Boston - 06

Interesting to see how it has changed over the years - anyone remember the first couple years where you got the "Telephone books" with the PowerPoint's from ALL the sessions printed out!

A variety of bag styles over the years.

It was interesting to walk by the "museum" at the 20th anniversary last year - looked a lot like my closet with all the old bags and conference t shirts - LOL.

IMO one of the best additions was the hands on labs area.

Quality of food varies - but I believe that is more on the hosting facility.

One thing is always constant - lots of walking!

here's an excerpt:

When I followed many methods of connection between old SDK version and Emgu wrapper, my code is always given errors, for example, ToBitmapSource()  is not identified. I could not convert colorimage of kinect into Image<> of Emgu type.

I think that Coding4fun.toolkit's latest version is also not working with Kinect SDK v1.7.

Please help me how to deal with this problems.

In case you missed the Keynote, here is the two minute overview:

That the keynote is going to include some content on what's coming in the Windows 8.1 update.  We've also been told that 8.1 will be officially announced (or at least the preview) at the Build conference later in the month.  My question...are we going to get any content in the sessions on Windows 8.1 (or the corresponding Server 2012 update release)?  It would be extremely disappointing to go to TechEd only to miss out on all of the new content because TechEd came a couple weeks earlier than Build.

Let the anticipation begin.

My money is still on the new Xbox being named simply "Xbox".

I am new to programming and I don't know any thing about it, Can I still learn Windows Mobile development through these tutorials?

Any suggestion regarding prior knowledge of any programming language?

Thanks in advance!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/04/12/why_pc_sales_are_declining_old_pcs_still_work_just_fine.html

tl;dr: PCs have reached good enough. A decent computer from 5 years ago will probably run productivity software today just as well as it would have done then (my office PC, for instance, is running Office 2010 on XP). There's nothing to be gained by upgrading for most users so they don't. Hence PC lifespans are greatly increased.

I must say, I think there's probably some truth in this. For many people we've reached the point where upgrading will not offer enough tangible benefit to be worth the cost so they either upgrade infrequently or not at all. Probably, although he doesn't touch on this, we've reached a point where the market is saturated - the majority of new sales today will be upgrades/replacements rather than completely new adoptions. This drop in growth of the userbase manifests itself as reduced sales, but is to be expected.