They're turning our dens into the next generation datacenter and personally I won't be happy until our furnace is substituted for radiators that are heat sinks / backplanes for the various 1U * servers I'd like instead of overpriced home automation systems and poor entertainment hardware that is bettered by miles for much less by actual professional production gear and this is how I dream we're going to be able to heat the homes of our elderly people who not too long hence will count among their number this comment author or rather my wife and my ashes after I expire from shock at human kind managing a drinking session in a brewery. But I have hope, sure and certain hope, as my faith's liturgy inters it's believers...(I think of religion like a lost advanced technology that has become entirely misunderstood and its uses forgotten or even despised because maybe like LISP having faith in our fellow humanity is plain hard and involves too many macros. But that's the kit of my digression into that subject, I am merely so deeply worried about global events that I fear a retrograde to exactly what of theology is most abhorrent and destructive though ephemerally consoling. This race of man needs to work afresh to understand anew everything, I believe, and I already think I'm seeing the failures of modern civilisation caused by the passing of the last generation who learned the hardest way to work first towards better life for all and trust that wealth will subsequently follow, instead we're almost entirely product now of gaming the edge cases of capitalism which cases should instead be solved to enable the future to be built)

(preferably the open computing rack spec or maybe something entirely different and more suitably designed. This area is ripe for patents and I'm looking for like minds to establish some prior art in anticipation of bad actors especially the mostly unprofitable energy utilities, and I've legal and development budget carved out of my savings to do so on my hunch I can reasonably ask to be made whole if the product is useful)

* slightly involved investigation showed me I can assemble the most excellent home theater system from pro equipment for plenty less than close to the higher end of consumer systems, while giving my family the facility almost every way equal to a professional post production studio. This isn't Lutron. Lutron don't sell DANTE routing/ volume controls and switching with display to fit into our light switch soffets. But Teac do for a modest sum. DANTE is the most advanced pro audio live audio interface over Ethernet so we'll be able to connect our daughters keyboard music workstation to the DAC in our den, which can record 32 channels of 5Mhz sample sound to SD card, or have a computer patched in by a inexpensive Yamaha PCIe (v4!) card capable of incredible wonders and software process for Dolby and Auro3D (a lesser known but arguably far better surround format originally adopted by Skywalker and big studios and now part of the IMAX 8K spec. This is software processing and we can record as easily as play. We aimed to beat a dealerships quote for a "safely not high end but show off what's possible today not tomorrow please " setup and managed by a pleasant amount.

.... all I have written looks like prime Azure/IoT candidate income sources to my vision of the not distant future. Of course Microsoft is bold. How can you be anything but hold at trillion dollars scales? How can you move the needle unless you're playing with a big stack? I amuse myself with thoughts about splitting Microsoft's businesses now and separating cloud from on premises lines. This makes sense to me as a business decision that would help the company to thrive whilst enabling the less connected economic world to access software systems that aren't subsidies for the cloud computing competition. I think Azure is a better standalone business than integrated. This may require a long term investment from shareholders. But our 401ks need genuine growth stocks. The legacy business will serve the world being served by the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation today. That's a sympathy for the good in every way possible that I've thought about it. I would separate the IP and patent portfolio into a trust in recognition of Microsoft business in the OSS world which needs assurance and support but by separating the on premise Microsoft from Azure, the on prem Microsoft can now compete with open source alternatives. Equally this is the open source movements greatest opportunity for all time. Who cares about the Year Of Desktop Linux if Microsoft is abandoning the desktop? We won already. So did Microsoft. Pooh, capitalism is about growing pies for real? Hand me my defibrillator!