Virtualization: First Step of a Long Walk Called Grid Computing

"Today's virtualization barely permits us to disregard what kind of resources we really have inside our servers. Companies like VMware, Microsoft, Xen, etc., are offering solutions to share (although still not in a dynamical way) CPU power, memory, storage and partially networking within a single server (or a cluster). Companies like Citrix, Microsoft, Sun, etc., are offering solutions to share applications within a single server (or a cluster). If you think these technologies could be just refined and nothing else, think again.

Reconsidering gcjx

Tom Tromey (Red Hat) who wrote the GCJx as a extension to GCC to support Java 1.5 features among other changes has proposed a merge with ECJ, the Eclipse compiler from the Eclipse Foundation. The ramifications of this change are rather interesting.

How to Achieve Sustainable Software Development

Very little software is written once, installed, and then never changed over the course of its lifetime. And yet, the most prevalent development practices used in the industry treat change as an afterthought. This chapter will teach you to not only anticipate change in your software but develop specifically with change in mind. Also, this chapter provides a set of guidelines and formulas to think about when preparing large product teams for the large meetings that move their work forward.

Theoretical Solution to Windows on the Intel Macs

Computer Guru has a theoretical solution to the Intel-Macs-Won't-Boot-Windows problem. All you need, according to him, is a set of Acronis applications, a clean install of Windows XP on another computer, Vista boot files, bcdedit, a Windows Vista DVD, and of course an Intel Mac. Please note that all of his ideas are pure theory, as he does not own a MacBook Pro or Intel iMac. Someone who does should try to verify this.

Jim Allchin Talks Windows Vista

"On Wednesday morning, I met with Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, the man most directly responsible for Windows Vista and Longhorn Server, the company's upcoming client and server operating system releases. Allchin is a soft-spoken, intelligent man with decades of industry experience, the last 15 years of which were spent at Microsoft. I've run into Mr. Allchin at various events throughout the years, but the last time I sat down with him for a one-on-one meeting was in August 2001, when we discussed the then-upcoming release of Windows XP. With Windows Vista on track for a late 2006 release, Allchin hit the road to meet with members of the technical press."

Microsoft’s C++/CLI Language Specification: Objections

Microsoft's C++/CLI Language Specification is an ECMA Standard (ECMA-372) and they are trying to fast track this document to be an ISO standard. The problem is that the language specified is very different from C++ and so is likely to create a great deal of confusion. Details can be found in the UK objections , which suggest that a name distinct from C++ be used for the proposed language.

Errata Articles Are the Current Rage

"Recently, there have been a couple of articles on errata making the rounds, the first on Intel, the second on AMD. They both make my head hurt. A lot. No, not the errata, but the explanations, and lack of understanding of some simple concepts. When the first one, Intel, came out, I was teetering on the verge of breaking out the cluestick, but thought the better of it. When the conspiracy theory second article came out, well time to spring into action, two days late as usual."

Microsoft To Skip Vista Beta 2

Customers and partners who've been holding their breath waiting for Beta 2 of Windows Vista before getting serious about testing Microsoft's next-generation operating system can exhale. There will be no single, catch-all Beta 2 of Vista, according to Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's Platform Products & Services Division. Instead, Microsoft is planning to rely increasingly on CTP builds to get its feedback from Windows testers. Elsehwere, Allchin said you should buy Vista for its security enhancements.

OpenSolaris Licensed Under GPL3?

In a weblog entry, Sun's President Jonathan Schwartz has announced that Sun is looking into applying a dual-license scheme to OpenSolaris-- CDDL and GPL3. "We recognize that diversity and choice are important - which is why we've begun looking at the possibility of releasing Solaris (and potentially the entire Solaris Enterprise System), under dual open source licenses. CDDL (which allows customer IP to safely comingle with Solaris source code) and under the Free Software Foundation's GPL3."

Plan 9 Still Alive

Plan 9 from Bell Labs is still very much alive. They just got an updated website, with easier access to nightly builds. "Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a research system developed at Bell Labs starting in the late 1980s. Its original designers and authors were Ken Thompson, Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, and Phil Winterbottom. They were joined by many others as development continued throughout the 1990s to the present. Plan 9 demonstrates a new and often cleaner way to solve most systems problems. The system as a whole is likely to feel tantalizingly familiar to Unix users but at the same time quite foreign."

Windows XP on an 8 Mhz Computer

This is already a fairly old article, but I'm pretty confident it never made OSNews' front page. In this article, the author proves that Windows XP can be installed, and 'run', on processors with as little as 8MHz. "The target of this project was to find the weakest system where you can run Windows XP. Keep in mind, that Microsoft official requirements are a CPU with 233 MHz an 64 MB of RAM. But that had to be beaten!"

Microsoft Driver Bug Saps Core Duo Power

"Connect any USB 2.0 device to your notebook and lose more than one hour of battery time: Tom's Hardware Guide's tests of a Windows-based Intel Core Duo mobile processor platform revealed a serious power consumption issue that, according to Intel, is caused by a Microsoft driver bug - a bug that has been known by Microsoft for some time, but kept from the public eye until today."

The Future of HTML: XHTML 2.0

"In this two-part series, Edd Dumbill examines the various ways forward for HTML that Web authors, browser developers, and standards bodies propose. This series covers the incremental approach embodied by the WHATWG specifications and the radical cleanup of XHTML proposed by the W3C. Additionally, the author gives an overview of the W3C's new Rich Client Activity. Here in Part 2, Edd focuses on the work in process at the W3C to specify the future of Web markup."

iWeb Review

"I put up my review for iWeb, the newest part of iLife from Apple Computers. My enitre personal page was designed with iWeb and a few royalty free images I found scattered around the web to give it an atmosphere that I haven't been able to create before on my own. To be honest, I'm not big on web developing, so for anyone who wants to just build a small homepage, this is for you."

‘Intel iMac Is Almost as Fast as the Quad Core Power Mac’

MacSpeedZone has benchmarked the new Intel iMac, and they conclude something completely different than MacWorld did not too long ago. "We are pleased to report that our testing results show that the new Dual Core Intel iMac, which clocks in at 2X 2.0GHz is almost as fast as the current high-end Power Mac that has two Dual Core G5 processors running at 2.5GHz." And so it seems people can't seem to come to a consensus on anything related to the Intel iMac. Whether it be speed, or sales.