These Things Matter to Me
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
JayZ vs. Nas; VMware vs. Parallels. VMware answers Parallels Coherence with Unity. Mac virtualization gets competitive
(No they didn't. No they did not just use C&C Music Factory in this video. They did. )
Aside from the ridic soundtrack, this video is compelling.
Yes, VMware Fusion is already available for free (in Beta). But this video shows features not currently available in the beta that you can download right now. Most notable is that VMware Fusion has responded to and one-upped Parallels Desktop's ability to have each Windows application be its own little window in OS X, rather than have one "parent" window host all guest applications.
Parallels calls this "coherence." VMware Fusion calls this "unity." They're pretty much the same, except that VMware Fusion can have each window appear individually in OS X's Expose feature, something Parallels does not.
That said, Parallels is fully released, and VMware Fusion is not. And the unity feature doesn't exist in the beta that's out. Add to that the fact that VMware hasn't announced how much/ if it will charge for VMware Fusion (its features are positioned between the free VMware Player, and $189 VMware Workstation).
Related: Comments from the Digg people.
(No they didn't. No they did not just use C&C Music Factory in this video. They did. )
Aside from the ridic soundtrack, this video is compelling.
Yes, VMware Fusion is already available for free (in Beta). But this video shows features not currently available in the beta that you can download right now. Most notable is that VMware Fusion has responded to and one-upped Parallels Desktop's ability to have each Windows application be its own little window in OS X, rather than have one "parent" window host all guest applications.
Parallels calls this "coherence." VMware Fusion calls this "unity." They're pretty much the same, except that VMware Fusion can have each window appear individually in OS X's Expose feature, something Parallels does not.
That said, Parallels is fully released, and VMware Fusion is not. And the unity feature doesn't exist in the beta that's out. Add to that the fact that VMware hasn't announced how much/ if it will charge for VMware Fusion (its features are positioned between the free VMware Player, and $189 VMware Workstation).
Related: Comments from the Digg people.
Labels: apple, comeback, expose, fusion, IT, mac, parallels, rivalry, sysadmin, system administrator, unity, video, virtualization, vmware, windows, x76, youtube
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The new Fortune Magazine story on Microsoft, Linux, and Patents. Steve Ballmer, you so crazy! But not in a new way.
Yes, Steve Ballmer has said cruise-azy things about Linux and Microsoft patents. Yes it'd be very disruptive if every corporate, private, and government user of Linux had to answer to Microsof. But this story has nothin' new.
Microsoft talks about patents and Microsoft intellectual property in Linux all the time. It most recently came up in relation to the Microsoft/ Novell deal, when in the aftermath of the Linux community's hostile reaction, and the business community's confused reaction, Steve Ballmer claimed that every user of Linux uses Microsoft intellectual property. And people freaked out. Not because they were surprised that Steve Ballmer would say that, or that they were concerned it was true. Most of the drama was because the person who said that was now an ally of a major Linux distribution (the Novell-managed SUSE Linux), and while people were used to Steve Ballmer saying ridiculous things about Linux, they were not-so-used to Linux companies having scary deals with companies run by people who said such ridiculous things.
(deep breath)
And today Fortune magazine has a relatively in-depth summary of Microsoft's Linux patent claims. It's really not that great of a story, and has some misleading references in it, but it has a dramatic title, "Microsoft takes on the free world," and yet another mention of Microsoft wanting compensation for the intellectual property it claims exists in Linux, "...It wants royalties from distributors and users." But Microsoft has said this before. And Steve still won't say he'd actually sue Linux-using customers:
Here's what the interview should have been:
A commenter on Patent Law Blog, Patently-O:
Microsoft talks about patents and Microsoft intellectual property in Linux all the time. It most recently came up in relation to the Microsoft/ Novell deal, when in the aftermath of the Linux community's hostile reaction, and the business community's confused reaction, Steve Ballmer claimed that every user of Linux uses Microsoft intellectual property. And people freaked out. Not because they were surprised that Steve Ballmer would say that, or that they were concerned it was true. Most of the drama was because the person who said that was now an ally of a major Linux distribution (the Novell-managed SUSE Linux), and while people were used to Steve Ballmer saying ridiculous things about Linux, they were not-so-used to Linux companies having scary deals with companies run by people who said such ridiculous things.
(deep breath)
And today Fortune magazine has a relatively in-depth summary of Microsoft's Linux patent claims. It's really not that great of a story, and has some misleading references in it, but it has a dramatic title, "Microsoft takes on the free world," and yet another mention of Microsoft wanting compensation for the intellectual property it claims exists in Linux, "...It wants royalties from distributors and users." But Microsoft has said this before. And Steve still won't say he'd actually sue Linux-using customers:
If push comes to shove, would Microsoft sue its customers for royalties, the way the record industry has?So there is no new story here. Microsoft has claimed IP in Linux before, and has stopped short of saying what they'd actually do about it before. As a Slashdot commenter said, "
"That's not a bridge we've crossed," says CEO Ballmer, "and not a bridge I want to cross today on the phone with you."
Here's what the interview should have been:
Microsoft: It's a fact that Linux and free software infringe hundreds of our patents.Microsoft still won't say exactly what Microsoft patents exist in Linux, so as outrageous as some of the ideas in the Fortune feature are, they're not new. If there's any info here, maybe it's that Microsoft has now specified the amount of patents, (235), but still not what those patents are.
Journalist: Which ones?
Microsoft: Well, the kernel violates 60, the GUI violates...
Journalist (interrupting): which 60? Where is the list?
Microsoft: I'm not prepared to disclose that at this time.
Journalist: Well this is a big [effing] waste of my time, isn't it?
Journalist: I went through this same dance with Darl McBride. Call me when you have something to say, bye
A commenter on Patent Law Blog, Patently-O:
That's like a poker player saying "I win" without showing their cards (code).Recommended or related:
- Tara Hunt's Okay, we won. But what’s the prize? (especially the part about Non-zero Sum Economics)
- Matt Asay's Making sense of Microsoft's open source fetish
- Robert Scoble's Microsoft about to enter into patent war
- James Turner at O'Reilly's ONLamp Looks like Microsoft is ramping up for Son of SCO (I disagree with the "do or die" part, but he's got some great comparisons to SCO here.)
Labels: business model, fortune magazine, intellectual property, ip, IT, law, legal, license, linux, microsoft, patents, steve ballmer, suit, technology, windows
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Tweetin' Open Source CIO's
451 group industry analyst Raven Zachary tweets from a conference:
And oh yeah, this might me a good time to invite you to add These Things on Twitter.
"CIO personality clearly drives levels of tech adoption - watching three CIOs up on stage have varying levels of comfort with open source."I've been a regular reader of his group's blog, but twitter is a great way to get moment-by-moment feelings and happenings from people, especially people who constantly travel through different spaces, time zones, cultures, and environments.
And oh yeah, this might me a good time to invite you to add These Things on Twitter.
Labels: cio, community, IT, social software, twitter
Monday, December 04, 2006
Parallels to VMware: It's On!
But last Friday Parallels released a new feature that is pretty compelling, and raises the bar for the concept of "abstraction." Rather than having a parent window that hosts all of the guest OS's windows, there is a "coherence mode" option that has each window of the guest OS appear as an individual window in the host OS, making itSO the experience of using an application in the either guest OS or host OS, is pretty darn similar. Certain keyboard commands and drag and drop is supported between the two environments. The video above demonstrates this better than all these words. Check it out!
(demo video via video blogger Michael Verdi and blip.tv)
Wowza... So... Parallels for Mac OS X has been out a for a bit. But it's previously been best described as "...like VMware Workstation for a Mac." In other words, cool, but nothing beyond VMware, and if VMware actually had a product out for OS X, then you'd probably grab that.But last Friday Parallels released a new feature that is pretty compelling, and raises the bar for the concept of "abstraction." Rather than having a parent window that hosts all of the guest OS's windows, there is a "coherence mode" option that has each window of the guest OS appear as an individual window in the host OS, making itSO the experience of using an application in the either guest OS or host OS, is pretty darn similar. Certain keyboard commands and drag and drop is supported between the two environments. The video above demonstrates this better than all these words. Check it out!
Labels: apple, consumer, fusion, information technology, IT, mac, microsoft, os x, parallels, software, sysadmin, virtualization, vmware
Friday, November 17, 2006
We're here to help
Social news site Reddit was recently acquired by (mostly print media company) Condé Nast. In his personal blog (recommended!), Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz describes the how the bigger, more expensive I.T. and facilities infrastructure Condé Nast provides inhibits more than it helps.
... Nobody else seems to get work done here either. Everybody's always coming into our room to hang out and chat or invite us to play the new video game system that Wired is testing. The upside is that while we haven't gotten much of our work done, we have managed to do many other people's. Various folks from around the office have shown up to have us help them with their technical problems, which we usually solve fairly quickly. We joked that we should get transferred to their IT department instead of Web development.
There's a company Internet connection, which routes everything through the IT HQ in Delaware, presumably the better to spy on us on. On Day 1 they took our laptops and "backed up" the drives to ensure they had a copy of all our data. (We scurried to get our MP3 collections and worse off first.)Then they issued us company-approved laptops: terribly-slow iBook G4s complete with Conde Nast desktop and screensaver with spy software pre-installed. When they gave us the machines we didn't even have administrator access on them. The clock was set to the Eastern time zone; I needed an IT department person to change it to show me California time.
The company laptop is necessary to read our company email which, being on a Microsoft Exchange server, requires a special Microsoft email client to read. You also need to be on a company laptop to access the company network, where you can log into a maze of PeopleSoft web sites to file expense reports and change your health benefits.
- related blog post: Tim O'Reilly- The Future Ends at the Firewall
Labels: conde nast, corporate culture, information technology, IT, reddit
