Author Archive

Next Entries »
06 02 2008

Why Linux will not displace Windows

Posted by Wiebe Niehof in General, Linux, Vista, tags: , , ,
I found this post on ZDNET and it totally convinced me! 

===========================

“You are kidding arent you ?

Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services ?That sounds preposterous to me.

If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling computers without a windows. This clearly is not happening, so there must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that windows is more than just Office ? Its a whole system that runs the computer from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to acheive. A lot of people dont realise this.

Microsoft just spent $9 billion and many years to create Vista, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Windows. Apple tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to Intel and Microsoft.

Its just not possible that a freeware like the Linux could be extended to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of windows. Not possible.

I think you need to re-examine your assumptions. ”

http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12355-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=31199&messageID=579806&start=-9530

Comments 2 Comments »

04 06 2007

Microsoft Surface. Want one? Build your own!

Posted by Wiebe Niehof in General

A few days ago Microsoft announced a very cool, promising and high tech table! It’s called “Microsoft Surface”.

If you haven’t heard of it already check out a quick demo of it’s capabilities:

When you search YouTube for a while you will find more great previews of Microsoft Surface like this one, or this on with Bill Gates or this quick review from popularmechanics.com.

But when you search on you will find some other (older) video’s of a similar product from a Mr Han and his company Perceptive Pixel (he also comes back in the review from popularmachines.com).

Ok, so Microsoft isn’t the first one to announce a product like this, they are working on it for a really long time (from 2001) and the product looks great. So their is no reason to become less enthousiastic.

The next questions is: where can I buy this and for how much? Unfortunately you’ll have to wait till at least the winter of 2007 to have your own Minority Report experience. And by then it will cost around the $5000-$10.000.

But thank god for the Internet because their is a cheap way you can build your own Surface. For as little as $10 you can buy an article about how to make your own Low-cost multi-touch sensing through frustrated total internal reflection. Written by the same Mr Han again!

If even those ten dollars sounds to expensive for you, I’ve found an other short description on Tinker.it on how to build your own. This is all you need:

1 panel of plexiglass 8mm thickness
2 strips of IR LEDs (18 LED per strip)
2 sheets of tracing paper
1 projector
1 mirror
1 analog camera sensitive to IR light
1 IR filter for the camera
1 computer

Read the whole article here.

Comments 2 Comments »

27 02 2007

No Charity @ Microsoft

Posted by Wiebe Niehof in Virtualization, Vista

There has been a lot of fuss about Microsoft’s virtualization licensing and distribution policies. The biggest player in this market (and properbly the most affected), VMware, is pissed and posted a whitepaper with their 7 complaints.


 VMware seven objections are:
1) Microsoft offers top virtualization support for only premier-level support customers, inherently limiting the ability for many customers to get technical support for competitive virtualization platforms;2) Microsoft’s “restrictive terms” on the use of published virtual machines, or appliances, is unfair to users. Microsoft, VMware claims, restricts use of VHD formatted virtual machines to Microsoft Virtual Server and Virtual PC only;

3) Microsoft restricts customer choice by configuring its VHD virtual machines to de-activate if they are run on any virtualization offering other than Virtual PC or Virtual Server;

4) Microsoft’s VHD licensing agreement prevents users from converting the VHD format into any virtual machine format, thus preventing compatibility with competitive platform and preventing translations into VMware’s formats;

5) Microsoft’s licensing policies discriminate against use of VMware’s Vmotion and other virtualization management platforms that enable users to move virtual machines from one platform to another. VMware cites one policy that requires “permanent assignment” of operating system licenses to specific systems and simultaneously restricts the movement of those operating system licenses. VMware claims that one policy, for example, is designed to restrict movement of Windows server licenses more than once every quarter.

6) Microsoft imposes significant restrictions on desktop virtualization including the movement of desktop virtual machines, restrictions on OEM versions of Windows, and restrictions on virtualization on Windows Vista. VMware charges that this makes it difficult if not impossible for end users to choose competitive platforms. VMware attempts to back its case by pointing out that VMware once had an OEM license to redistribute Windows in a VMware VM but has not been able to renew that since 2003.

7) Finally, VMware claims that Microsoft’s virtualization APIs for Longhorn are proprietary. The APIs handle communication between Windows and the Microsoft hypervisor. VMware said Microsoft opened up three virtualization APIs last June but they cannot be used by virtualization vendors.

Does this mean we can put virtualization in the same category as the browser and the mediaplayer?…..

Comments 1 Comment »

07 02 2007

VMware DiskMount Utility for everyone

Posted by Wiebe Niehof in Virtualization

The VMware DiskMount Utility allows you to mount an unused virtual disk in a
Windows host file system as a separate drive without needing to connect to the
virtual disk from within a virtual machine. You can mount specific volumes of a virtual
disk if the virtual disk is partitioned.
DiskMount is a command line program called vmware-mount that works similarly
to how you use the subst command on Windows. Once the disk is mounted, you
can read from and write to the disk as if it were a separate file system with its own
drive letter on your network. However, you cannot power on any virtual machine that
uses this disk until the disk is unmounted.
You can perform activities such as scanning a virtual disk for viruses and transferring
files between the host system and a powered off virtual machine.
When you are finished using the mounted virtual disk, delete the mapping so the
virtual disk can be used by virtual machines again.

This tool isn’t exactly new (it get’s installed with VMWare server automatically) but I do find it underappreciated. And so does VMWare. In their new VMWare Workstation 6 (beta now available) they are building it in the GUI. No more remembering difficult command lines! With three simple clicks on your mouse you will have a virtual disk mapping…Virtualization: everybody can do it!

Comments 1 Comment »

Next Entries »