If you are a member of the Xbox Preview Program, I recommend you update your Xbox One controllers with the latest preview build OS version 1502.150120 which provides the following updates: – previous controller connections to an Xbox One took 4 5 seconds when powering on a controller, now they should occur in ~2 seconds – the firmware also provides a number of fixes that address issues submitted by customers and preview participants Thanks for helping make Xbox One better and better!

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Microsoft is developing an Azure hosted, paid version of its internal facing Cosmos big data computation, analysis and storage service. I speculated last August that Microsoft was poised to make Cosmos one of its next big Azure service offerings. Based on information shared with me by sources, it appears this, indeed, is happening. Currently, Cosmos is an internal facing Microsoft service only. It Microsoft massively parallel storage and computation service that handles data from Azure, Bing,...

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In today’s high productivity computing environments that process dizzying amounts of data each millisecond, a research project named for “a trillion events per day” may seem relatively ordinary. But when you understand that Trill, a new high performance streaming analytics engine developed by Microsoft researchers, can process data at two to four orders of magnitude faster than today’s streaming engines, well, now you’re getting into wow territory, especially...

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Although Microsoft reported it took an income tax charge due to an IRS audit adjustment as part of its second quarter fiscal 2015 earnings reported on January 26, the company tax battle with the IRS is not yet over. Microsoft reported earnings per share of .71 for its second quarter, which included a two cent negative impact from its Nokia integration expenses, a one cent negative foreign exchange hit, and a four cent income tax charge from an unspecified IRS audit. I asked Microsoft officials...

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During the earnings call, Microsoft said that there are now more than 2 million users testing out the next version of Windows, Windows 10. This represents strong growth of interested users in the platform following the Windows 10 keynote, as it was said on that day that there were 1.7 million users in the Insider program at that time. This means that the Insider group added over 300,000 users in about six days following the keynote. The latest version of Windows 10 contains a plethora of...

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Here are this week’s games and add-on deals on the Xbox Games Store. Discounts are valid now through 02 February 2015. […] The post This Week’s Deals for Xbox Live Members appeared first on Xbox Live's Major Nelson.

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In next generation consoles, Sony has outsold its rivals with its PlayStation 4 game console. Microsoft is a fairly distant No. 2 with the Xbox One. And Nintendo is all but out of the running with its Wii U. But in handhelds, Nintendo is No. 1, and Sony is a distant No. 2. That, in a nutshell, is how the console war has played out. The NPD Group provides retail sales number for the U.S. for new games and consoles, and it disclosed its numbers yesterday. On a worldwide basis, nobody really keeps...

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Microsoft still hasnt gone public with how much it plans to charge its PC maker partners OEMs or customers with Windows 10. But thanks to a document published on Microsoft OEM Partner Center site, we do know how much it is charging PC makers for Windows 8.1 on Intel based tablets. And why Microsoft describes its under nine inch screen pricing as zero dollars instead of free. The Windows 8.1 with Bing SKU requires OEMs to set Bing search as the default though users can still change the default...

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