Windows Vista the last of its kind: Windows will go virtual, Gartner agrees with my assessment that the future of Windows is componentised, virtualized and smaller.
Gartner expects a significant update to Vista in late 2008 or 2009 that will add virtualisation (in the form of a component called a hypervisor) and a service partition.
You read it here first, 4 days ago.
In an effort to re-ignite my first love whilst on my leave of absence – I’ve been looking for a good TRS-80 emulator to rekindle the flames of technical desire. Also over the last 4 weeks I’ve also had a small “side project” watching the goings on in the desktop virtualization space, especially on the Mac. Parallels has been an excellent investment to get Windows XP running on the MacBook Pro; just waiting for the ACPI/Direct3D (or VMWare for the Mac) version so I can run a build of Windows Vista.
Admission #1: the first computer my dad purchased for me was a TRS-80 Model I. Not the prettiest, nor the most powerful of machines – 1.77Mhz with 16Mb Kilobytes (I even accidently put Mb!) of RAM. Welcome to 1981. That’s right, 1981. 25 years/ a quarter of a century ago.
The best emulator for the TRS-80 is written by Matthew Reed. Found thanks to
Ira Goldklang’s TRS-80 web site. So, I have TRS32 running inside Windows XP in Parallels on MacOS X. Shells within Shells.
Admission #2: the TRS-80 we owned stored data onto a cassette, not a floppy disk. Way-back when I was one of those computer-store kids. Thanks to the sales guys at Tandy Electronics/Radio Shack, we’d spend all day sitting on the computers typing in programs and occasionally demonstrating to prospective buyers. As floppy disks were expensive, we didn’t get access to storage – so TRSDOS was not an environment I was ever exposed to. Getting the emulator working involved remembering how to get BASIC working, and learning yet another OS.
Admission #3: I’ve watched zero minutes of Lord of the Rings. Even from DVD. Ever since the school librarian suggested I borrow The Hobbit, attempting to read a single page, and quickly returning the mush – I’ve actively avoided the fantasy genre. World of Warcraft drives me nuts. Sorry Neil and Mark!
Before this dispassion arose, I did get into one fantasy-style game on the TRS-80: “Quest for the Key of Nightshade”. It is strange how you remember names such as these for many years. Last week I found a version of the BASIC program, originally typed all the lines from a computer magazine into Basic and saved to cassette, on Ira’s website. From memory, this was written by a Canadian programmer and won “TRS-80 game of the year 1981” in some US magazine and was reprinted in 1982 by Australian Personal Computer.
The screen dump above is from this game. Ahh, the fond memories of our first loves.
Microsoft is on the cusp of shipping a whole forest of new products. Vista, .Net 3.0, Office 2007 and *.live.com stuff than you can poke a branch/stick at. All of which presents Microsoft with some tall challenges. How does a single tree get noticed? How does the world find the saplings that are going to be the next Sequoiadendron giganteum? Does the forest work together as a cohesive eco-system?
Today, thanks to Microsoft Australia’s, Frank Arrigo, I attended the Blogger’s Brunch. Great of Microsoft to reach out to a section of the local technology blogging community. None of the attendees (except Angus Kidman and Nic) are famous in the blogosphere, but on the internets – noone knows you are an Australian.
Whilst having been a Microsoft customer since 1984 (Microsoft Basic 1.0 on a Macintosh 128K – and the box is in storage somewhere), I am a relative noob to “marketectural” Microsoft. The speak is strangely familiar to my ears.
The following are some random thoughts and un-expressed questions from this morning’s session:
In summary, I groked that Microsoft groks (sorry, Heinlein) the world as it exists today. Ensuring that no trees are felled in the rush to market is going to be an interesting challenge.
History revisionists state that Apple had to buy NeXT as they could not write their own pre-emptive/protected memory OS.
Apple A/UX 3.0 integrated the best of System 7 and Unix. Maybe not the latest Unix available at that time, nor on the fastest hardware; nor with the best driver support. But it rocked for its time.
From memory, Apple needed to created A/UX to permit their hardware to be sold as “POSIX” compliant to US DoD. With more internal, less “not-invented-here” thinking – the need to have a bogus OS (Copland) and the ultimate reverse take-over by NeXT could have been avoided.
Virtualization
VMWare and Xen seem to be talking to each other again. So Xen is “piggy in the middle”?
Good news for customers is that an standard way of instrumenting virtual environments has been decided; and the freedom of choice prevails.
Turning Japanese
In Japan, 100Mbps Fibre to the Home, for a mere US$36 per month, apart from 100Mb/s and VoIP. No wonder Australia’s Telstra is reticent to install fibre-to-the-home in Australia. It is not all well in Japan; the government seems to have regulated NTT’s ability to charge for bandwidth use. D’oh.
The Tubes are Tied
Blocked Tubes of the Internets
David Brent Management Training videos – of the same ilk as the John Cleese post Fawlty Towers management and sales training films on the 1970s – shows Microsoft UK has a sense of humour.
And way more important, is an English sense of humour.
It is obviously internal only: talking about Microsoft Values – in a very indirect and humourous way. How this leaked I do not know, and I am sure that it breaks a bazillion copyright and internal rules.
I wonder if head office signed off on the content. Somehow, I think this one slipped through the cracks.
Technorati Tags:
microsoft, david.brent
The Adobe Online Store, Australia and New Zealand is now open with virutally all Adobe products available.
Macintouch readers have reported on the performance of the new Mac Pros, and specifically how Photoshop CS2 performs under Rosetta vs. old Power Mac G5s.
Technorati Tags:
photoshop, adobe, technology, apple, macpro
The world is a dangerous place, with a whole bunch of eejits. Sadly, the impact of no laptops on planes will have a serious impact on business travel. It shouldn’t, but it will.
Many senior executives use this “down time” to catch up on emails and sort out their presentations/spreadsheets/reports. For many, this time is the only time execs have to be offline. In the office, or at their destination the time is spent with staff, meetings and customers. Not hunched over a QWERTY keyboard.
I think the impact on technology may be different.
Imagine Business Class with a personal in-seat laptop, with web browser and live internet connection. As their the business traveller has their normal laptop securely locked up in baggage, hopefully on the same plane going to the same destination, this in-seat laptop is their only means of working.
Web access to email has been around for some time. Desktop applications on the web is emerging. Using such tools as forthcoming in Windows Live and Zoho may just find another niche. The challenge for these vendors and IT is to securely connect applications to sensitive data.
Now we just need some forward thinking carriers to implement both high-speed internet and the browser hardware.
Stuff to read:
CNet Ajax Spurs Web rebirth for desktop apps
Technorati Tags:
technology, laptop, plane
Joel on Software, one of the top ten blogs on the web follows the life and tribulations of CEO Joel Spolsky and his company, Fog Creek Software.
The movie/DVD, Project Aardvark, 12 Weeks with Geeks is an excellent view into a modern software company as you follow interns through the creation and release of Fog Creek Copilot.
In recent days, Joel has been over-simplifying management into what I classify as the push, pull and mingle methods:
Mingle: The Identity Management Method
What Joel hasn’t talked about is Leadership.
In truth, good managers are using a combination of all three of these all of the time. Managing and motivating employees is one of the most difficult skills to learn. Once mastered, you are leading.