These Things Matter to Me
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Active Window. A poem.
something happened!
i will pulse orange
until you pay attention
with a click.
(on Windows or Linux)
early draft here.
something happened!
i will pulse orange
until you pay attention
with a click.
(on Windows or Linux)
early draft here.
Labels: art, gui, love, poem, sysadmin, ui, user experience, ux, windows
Friday, October 05, 2007
Benchmarking on Windows with ntimer (real talk)
Linux/UNIX has a nice little utility called called time.
Time lets you put it before any other command, and will tell you how long it took to run stuff.
I find it very handy for benchmarking. And as a sysadmin, whenever anybody says something seems "slow," you can keep it real with time:
# time cp bigfile bigfile.copy
Bam! You'll show them slow. Run it on a baseline system. Run it on the "slow" system. That's what's up, thanks, time!
But what do you do on Windows? I had no idea. But the Internet is filled with people like me wondering, "is there something like the time command... for Windows?"
There is my friend! ntimer.exe:
# ntimer.exe [command]
Ntimer.exe unfortunately does not come included with XP. You can download it for free from microsoft.com in a bundle called "Windows 2003 resource kit." It's 11MB, and comes with a bunch of other stuff. The binary for ntimer.exe works fine on XP Professional.
Linux/UNIX has a nice little utility called called time.Time lets you put it before any other command, and will tell you how long it took to run stuff.
I find it very handy for benchmarking. And as a sysadmin, whenever anybody says something seems "slow," you can keep it real with time:
# time cp bigfile bigfile.copy
Bam! You'll show them slow. Run it on a baseline system. Run it on the "slow" system. That's what's up, thanks, time!
But what do you do on Windows? I had no idea. But the Internet is filled with people like me wondering, "is there something like the time command... for Windows?"
There is my friend! ntimer.exe:
# ntimer.exe [command]
Ntimer.exe unfortunately does not come included with XP. You can download it for free from microsoft.com in a bundle called "Windows 2003 resource kit." It's 11MB, and comes with a bunch of other stuff. The binary for ntimer.exe works fine on XP Professional.
Labels: benchmark, linus, ntimer, performance, sysadmin, time, windows
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
