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VMware: Another Netscape?
An anonymous reader writes "
This CRN article states that Microsoft is about to buy Connectix and enter the server consolidation market. Connectix makes virtual machines products that compete with those of VMware. Quote: 'The technology will be integrated into the Windows code, sources said.' Will Microsoft be able to pull this one off? Will their virtual machines run operating systems other than Microsoft's?"
...now we can have a tail-recursive win32 delay loop.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
if virtual pc will be suspended for the mac.
are they more concerned about stopping adoption of os x, or more concerned about selling windows licenses to mac users?
What will happed the Connectix's products for the Macintosh and OS 2?
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Will VPC make it out alive? Not that it matters much anymore, it's cheaper to buy a x86 box today then to pay for windows let alone VPC.
Microsoft To Buy Connectix To Enter Server Consolidation Market
Assimilation to be announced Thursday
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
If you are running 50 instances of NT Server on a single box, how many NT licenses do you need?
Wouldn't this violate some of the provisions of the anti-trust ruling in the US, especially as the article says they're planning on integrating it into the Windows codebase?
Does any one want to run some other OS in a buggy OS
such as Micorosofts?
And therefore will it even matter?
why would you want to do this? By the time you pay for the vmware software, each license, and a machine big enough to run the disparate servers, you aren't saving any money. I know, I did a cost/benefit analysis of it for wor.
It's most likely desireable because they want to be able to run partitioned servers, much like one can do now with VMWare. Of course, I'm sure they won't mind 'embracing and extending' the product out of Mac-Space. It is probably the core virtualization technology that they are after though.
Better check out the Bochs project as mentioned here
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
Since Virtual Machines are so popular, and the ability to run separate instances of an OS is so useful for developers, this will be a really good addition to anything they do.
that they're just trying to find some way to make it look like typing "ls" on a Linux shell gives you a BSOD.
Embrace, buy out, destroy competitors.
Hopefully VMWare will break the trend.
Get your own free personal location tracker
According to MacCentral. This could be good for the Mac, meaning the development team would have more access to Windows code and be able to guess how things are working less. Or it could be bad. And I have no idea what to think. Microsoft still makes money off of the license that goes with the sale of VirtualPC.
Virtual worms taking advantage of virtual exploits via virtual bugs on virtual servers.
Where to you want to go today?
Trolling is a art,
Of course MS will buy one of the implementors of this kind of technology. Look at Citrix. Of course, it will run well, 1 or 2 versions later. Of course, it will NOT run other OSes as well, or even at all. There will be undocumented hacks, which might make it work better.
The problem is that MS stuff doesn't run on anything but x86 these days. I want a real hardware platform, like IBM makes, where I can carve out a few LPARs on a 32-way box with 8GB of RAM. Then I'll run Windows200x on it, with my other OS in that. Real hardware redundancy, etc.
Using Linux as an example--
Its far better to run Linux and Win-in-VMWare (free + VMWare) than MS and Linux-in-its-VMWare-clone. Do you trust MS stuff to be the core OS?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
But at least you got first reply to second post. Good for you.
Instead of:
"...Microsoft is about to buy Connectix and enter the server consolidation market."
Doesn't the author mean to say:
"...Microsoft is about to buy Connectix and enter the server decimation market."
Caution: Contents under pressure
This could be bad. Connectix makes Virtual PC, a program that allows Mac Users to use Windows programs without having to buy hardware and get locked in.
Would Microsoft do anything to make that particular program dissapear? Let's just say that this does not make me comfortable. Regardless of any spin MS might try to put forward.
Kalen D'arrie
Does this mean they will be like "Netscape", making each generation of their product worse and worse until it becomes unusable?
Comparing this to the browser battle isn't a good example. I doubt that MS will allow other OSs to run, thus VMWare will still have the market for running Non MS OSs on Win2k/XP. Plus, I doubt that MS will offer any functionality where you can run a MS OS on top of a non MS OS (although they may, since they'll still sell licenses in that situation), thus VMWare keeps that market too.
VMWare isn't going away. They just may take a hit on the running multiple Windows on Windows market.
mmm, very well...Blue Screens for none!
Very well....blue screens for some, horrible security holes for others!
Whatever.
Doc
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
They happen to be two different companies...
VMware
Connectix
Who cares if the vms run other operating systems besides windows. I mean sure, if it ran linux/unix/os2 or somethign like that it would be pretty awesome. Bit if they put one in that can run DOS reliably and effectively I'm down. It's tough to play dos games since they usually require a seperate dos gaming box. If they do it right, with win 3.1/dos vms it will totally rock. Adding other stuff like linux is just icing. I mean I've already got Cygwin, DOS is what I want.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
hiya
I wonder if microsoft could pull off making VMware with it's JIT work nicely on PPC architecture
with PPC being so simple and straightforward MIPS I wonder how hard it'd be to do on x86...
then they could boast that OS X ran faster under windows than on mac hardware
(with the caveat that you had to BUY windows and CONNECTIX.... and of course a machine rated at a clock speed 3x that of a mac)
I wonder who will be the first to lose their job when the .NET Server crashes, thereby taking down dozens of virtual machines.
I sometimes run VMWare on Linux, but that's just to play Ultima 7. Can't say Linux ever crashed down from under my Avatar. Win2K actually did, using the same VMware version.. ominous at best. I'm not touching it with a 10 foot pole!
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
'The technology will be integrated into the Windows code, sources said.' Will Microsoft be able to pull this one off? Will their virtual machines run operating systems other than Microsoft's?
This is most likely Microsoft's response to Solaris Containers which are expected to be shipping in Solaris 10. Of course, both of these are simply implementations of ideas pioneered by IBM with VM/CMS.
The VM approach makes a lot of sense even if you only plan to use it to run multiple copies of the native OS within them. The advantages are twofold. Firstly, it prevents one malfunctioning application from impacting other applications - even on Unix this is a serious problem, since one process can devour the CPU, memory, disk space, etc. Secondly, it allows resources to be redistributed or added on the fly, especially if your VM is seamless enough to span nodes.
While it saddens me to see yet another monopolistic action from M$, several clients and friends could benefit from being able to run Linux & Solaris from their Windoze machines. It would certainly assist in my ability to educate them to the power of *nix. And that familiarity, eventually, would permit a not-insignificant percent of them to take the leap to Linux, especially since some of them are non-profits who are tired of paying ever more fees to the Empire. So go ahead, Redmond: integrate this new tool into Windows.
;-)
I'll stick with VMWare, however, so I can run Windoze inside of Linux and close any Xwindow showing the BSOD.
What's wrong with this? Now maybe we can finally get a PlayStation emulator built into Windows.
One of the advantages of VMWare is that you can run an unstable OS (Windows) on a relatively stable platform (Linux). If the guest OS dies, just restart vmware.
Windows isn't stable enough to be a host OS, and with more and more features being included in the base OS (next version will have a SQL server, and now, a built in virtual PC), it won't become more stable anytime soon.
Je ne parle pas francais.
Forty-Eighth Post! Yeah! Eat it!
Meecrusufft Tu Booy Cunnecteex Tu Inter Serfer Cunsuleedeshun Merket
Ecqooeesishun tu be-a unnuoonced Thoorsdey
By Poola Ruuney, CRN
Redmund, Vesh.
11:28 EM IST Ved., Feb. 19, 2003
Meecrusufft pluns tu teke-a a geeunt leep intu zee serfer cunsuleedeshun spece-a thees veek by unnuoonceeng zee ecqooeesishun ooff furtooel serfer sufftvere-a cumpuny Cunnecteex.
Zee sufftvere-a geeunt, vheech is ixpected tu furmelly unfeeel zee deel Thoorsdey, veell use-a zee technulugy tu elloo coostumers tu cerfe-a oooot moolteeple-a perteeshuns oon a seengle-a Intel-besed serfer, ellooeeng zeem tu roon moolteeple-a instunces ooff a seengle-a oopereteeng system und moolteeple-a vurklueds.
"Zeey see-a a merket in serfer cunsuleedeshun und zeey vunt a peeece-a ooff it," seeed oone-a suoorce-a femeelier veet zee deel.
Cunnecteex, vheech is preefetely held und ves fuoonded in 1988, prufeedes furtooeleezeshun sufftvere-a fur Veendoos-besed cumpooteeng. Lest fell, it loonched a prudooct celled Furtooel Serfer thet ooffffers un interpreese-a-cless furtooeleezeshun sulooshun fur Veendoos-besed serfers. Zee technulugy hes beee in beta testeeng, und Meecrusufft is ixpected tu prudoocteeze-a it und sheep it leter thees yeer effter reeguruoos testeeng.
Furtooel Serfer is a neteefe-a Veendoos-besed serfer eppleeceshun thet inebles coostumers tu roon a veede-a runge-a ooff serfer oopereteeng systems incloodeeng Veendoos, Leenoox, Uneex, OoS/2 und DOS, cuncoorrently oon a seengle-a physeecel serfer, veethin isuleted furtooel mecheenes.
Cunnecteex elsu mekes Furtooel PC fur Veendoos, Furtooel PC fur Mec und Furtooel PC fur OoS/2, vheech elloos coostumers tu roon moolteeple-a oopereteeng systems oon a PC.
Zee technulugy veell be-a integreted intu zee Veendoos cude-a, suoorces seeed.
Heegh-ind Intel serfers frum Uneesys und NEC ooffffer beseec herdvere-a perteeshuns fur Veendoos 2000 Detecenter Serfer, yet zee edupshun ooff smerter, furtooel mecheene-a sufftvere-a veell inhunce-a thuse-a cepebeelities seegnifficuntly, suoorces seeed.
CRN furst vrute-a ebuoot Meecrusufft's iffffurts tu integrete-a sufftvere-a perteeshuning in Veendoos serfer lest spreeng.
"Meecrusufft hes respunded tu a need coostumers hefe-a esked fur," seeed oone-a suoorce-a elsu femeelier veet zee deel. "It veell prufeede-a serfer cunsuleedeshun, sufftvere-a deestribooshun und better defelupment, und zeey ere-a mufeeng tu eddress thet."
Suoorces femeelier veet zee iffffurt seeed zee ecqooeesishun ooff zee technulugy veell ineble-a Meecrusufft tu meke-a its Veendoos Serfer mure-a cumpeteetife-a veet pupooler serfer cunsuleedeshun pletffurms sooch es IBM's zSereees und heegh-ind Uneex mecheenes. IBM's zSereees, vheech roons its oovn prupreeetery meeenffreme-a oopereteeng system vheele-a elsu ellooeeng zee depluyment ooff thuoosunds ooff Leenoox furtooel mecheenes roonneeng vurklueds oon a seengle-a sefer, is beeeng edupted by Vell Street furms mufeeng tu Leenoox und oozeer coostumers luukeeng tu mexeemize-a zee fooll resuoorces ooff zeeur systems.
Zee Cunnecteex technulugy veell elloo coostumers tu roon moolteeple-a vurklueds oon a seengle-a PC und serfer, thoos inebleeng zee fooll uteelizeshun ooff ell system resuoorces oon a Penteeoom-besed PC und heegh-ind serfers,a deefffficoolt chellenge-a und un oobstecle-a tu noo PC und serfer poorcheses, suoorces seeed. It veell elsu elloo cumpuneees tu meke-a zee meegreshun prucess ieseeer seence-a zeey cun roon moolteeple-a instunces ooff zee Veendoos oopereteeng system oon a seengle-a PC und fereeuoos ferseeuns ooff Veendoos serfer sufftvere-a oon Intel serfers.
Feenelly, zee technulugy, vheech is ixpected tu be-a integreted intu zee Veendoos cleeent und serfer femeely, veell ineble-a coostumers tu depluy test eppleeceshuns oon PCs und serfers veethuoot interroopteeng zee nurmel oopereshun ooff ixeesting eppleeceshuns. Bork Bork Bork!
</obligatory-microsoft-borking>
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
and let slip the dogs^h^h^h^h lawyers of war
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I wonder if this is part of an attack against Apple?
As those of you not familiar with the Mac Marketplace might not know, Connectix makes the popular Mac application Virtual-PC. Virtual PC allows Apple owners to emulate a complete PC enviornment on their Apple machines, at somewhat reasonable speed.
They seem to have had favorable licensing with Microsoft in the past, as they offer pre-installed images for certain OS systems, such as Windows XP, 2000, etc. While they do (I assume) pay MS for each license, it does help people to break the MS dependance gradually, as they can still run their old applications under emulation.
If they eleminated this crutch for people switching to apple, and then later discontinued Office... Apple would lose most of it's corporate market.
So- As useful as this technology is in the Server market (and keep in mind this is closer to Bochs than VMware), I can see MS execs encouraging this buyout to help keep control over the future of Apple.
Colin
Colin Davis
I think MS's biggest problem is they try to clump too many things into one, that and a companies hierarchy can scale only so much. Trying to add something like this that is extraneous for the most part is just going to screw things up. It's not a criticism of MS, I don't think anyone could do what they are trying to do well. It's simply too much.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Connectix makes virtual PC for windoze and Mac.
This sounds like another way to bully Apple.
Microsoft also announced today that they were buying the country of Argentina, and plan to enter the nation market in competition with the United States.
I personally think this is Microsoft's solution to the "you can only have one version of Internet Explorer on your machine" problem. Has anyone else ran into that problem? It makes it darn near impossible to test web sites with older versions of IE. Microsoft's only proposed solution is to partition your hard drive for multiple Windows installations, and installing different IE's in each one (ludicrous).
I guess this solution will make it easier to run those different Windows installations. Moderate this as funny.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
they SELL windows liscenses??? Gee, and I thought the .txt file with the key in it was included with EVERY copy of windows...
who knew???
of coure, I better not let the BSA hear me say that, they might give me a merit badge in thievery!
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I wonder if MS could make direct hardware access and DirectX support in the virtual sessions. VMware can't do this. With direct hardware access, the guest OS' would be faster
It would be nice to play some old computer games in an older OS and emulating a Voodoo card with my newest video card.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
As stupid as this sounds, virtual machines a la VMware are an inexpensive way to test / debug clustering software, including beowulf.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
After all, each copy of VPC represents another Windows license (for the most part). I would think it would be to their advantage to get as many mac users as possible using VPC.
Or maybe it's just a way to extend the Windows monopoly, and maybe DRM/Paladium/etc. A few years ago, I was in a store where a customer was returning an iMac, complaining that it was constantly crashing. Turned out that the user ran VPC full time, and didn't know what the MacOS was.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
I thought that software was supposed to be buggy, slow, and resource hogging AFTER assimilation by Microsoft...
I wonder whether they will develop versions for other OSes, like Mac OS X or linux, or various other unices, or they're only going to take the "virtual machine over win" sector of the market.
Anyway, I don't think that they're easily going to enter the "virtual machines over other OSes" sector, as it isn't currently one who has much trust for microsoft's products, so I believe that VMware can still survive, unlike netscape. (Also because this is not something like a browser, that just goes on any computer, this is something that is only useful to people that are supposed to be somehow tech sawy.)
it will let Winshit PE(Palladium Edition) run pre-Palladium software.
We all knew M$ wasn't paying their license fees, but wouldn't it be cheaper to admit it?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
A number of things come to mind here.
1. Clearly this anti-trust stuff does not prevent Microsoft from buying up competitors.
2. Given this, what is to stop them simply buying ALL the competition? They're rich enough.
3. Profit for Microsoft.
The only way that Netscape could compete with them was by opening up their source. That's what gives us Mozilla. Could it be that the economy has got so lopsided that the only way to not get bought (or crushed) by Microsoft is to open your code and hope that all the programmers worldwide won't get indidivually bought off the project?
Really, all you free-market guys out there - how does this work? When do we get normality again?
Coincidentally, about 3 days ago I installed Connectix's Virtual PC product. It appears to be very Windows-oriented; Connectix sells licensed "system images" with various flavours of Windows pre-installed. For the purposes of a uni project I tried to install Mandrake 7.2 on my virtual PC, giving it a healthy 64MB of RAM and a 10 gig HDD. The install did pretty well until the X configuration part, when it asked for my video card -- it totally gagged; I mean, what graphics card was I supposed to choose on this virtual machine? Nothing I tried worked, and the install eventually fell over. Apparently VMWare supplies its own drivers for X; I don't know whether connectix does as I ceased experimenting at that point. Anybody else been more successful?
On the other hand, the text-mode stuff worked fine...
This is something that should be integrated with the operating system. I'm dying for Apple to dump money into MacOnLinux, port it to Mac OS X, and make it use a hardware optimized QuartzGL -> NativeOS' OpenGL pathway. Shouldn't even be hard for them. Samuel Rydh just doesn't have that much time in the day.
It'd make me much more likely to buy an Apple desktop, and I'd certainly shell out an extra $100 for the product itself
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Ok, I have no problem with Microsoft buying Connectix. I do have a problem with them bundling it back into the Windows OS code. It seems like Microsoft's usual tactic to take over a market they see someone else do well in (but competitor, integrate into OS, etc). Who should I write to? Judge Kollar-Kotelly, FCC, my Congressional reps?
Well the idea of virtual machines is nice and pretty useful, but then why would Microsoft want to embeded in its Operating System? And why would Microsoft even consider giving such a service for *free*?
I don't think Microsoft would create another "Internet Explorer"-like problem, if it provides such a service it'll probably be additional and cost more money.
"What you 'seek' is what you get!"
...rearchitect Connectix software to make it hostless - similar to VMWARE ESX.
This way, there is no core/host OS. You can run Win32 and Linux independantly - not in a symbiotic mode.
Now, in order for M$ to gain a competitive advantage in this market, how about hosting IBM zOS and OS/390? Solaris? How about supporting 32bit OS on 64bit systems and vice versa? CISC emulation on RISC systems? Etc.
This technology has so many possibilites and so much potential.. so methinks its great that there will be more competition in this game.
So far, microsoft hasn't even tried to add any multi-platform filesystem support, much less operating systems. Besides, what would a windows user want to run? Unix is so standardized, and the only real draw is a good stable os (please, dont try to tell me XP is stable), not the apps. MacOS would be a challege to run, because it's a whole different arcitecture, and Apple will raise a stink if M$ tries that.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
from. html
http://www.connectix.com/vpc5w_screen_linux
[snip]
Virtual PC is the ideal solution whether you want to learn Linux or run popular Linux applications at the same time as you run the latest Windows operating system and applications.
[/snip]
what 'popular' linux applications haven't been ported to windows already?
(excluding windowing environments GNOME, KDE, etc..)
the possibilities for where Microsoft takes this are huge, obviously on the server side but on the client side as well. For instance, if you were doing deployment development, instead of rebuilding a clean machine each time you test an app, just invoke a new Windows process. Of course, it could be a move so that someone running Windows could invoke a Linux process, effectively transforming Linux under its own feet from being a OS to a freeware software product....
First it was failover because you couldn't put more than one server process on a Windows box and get 7/24/365 uptime. They fell over far too often. So run 2 identical boxes and WHEN one failed, the other took over. The large Sun, IBM, and HP boxes can run 64 CPUs without a problem and hundreds of server processes for 7/24/365.25.
But Microsoft wants to say it can do this too. Enter Conectix. Now you can hide those duplicate servers in one box! Yeah, scalable and 7/24/365.25 reliability and your support budget will be really small. I can see the press releases coming out of eWeak and C/Net now.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Could this be a move by Microsoft to buy up the rights to Connectix's Virtual Game Station (a PSX emulator) and port it to the Xbox? I'm not sure if it'd be an advantage or a disadvantage, but they *could* conveniently not get the PSX copy protection to work properly.
Connectix VGS was once the best and most promising of the Playstation emulators, until Sony bought up the company and squashed the project. Does anyone else think this is a factor in MS's decision?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
uhh, yea, its called Mozilla
No sig, sorry.
Or perhaps Microsoft will do something good this time...
Schnapple
Wasn't it M$ who wrote DOS and Windows?
Shouldn't M$ have excellent knowledge of x86 and PC architecture?
Says a lot about their code and engineers. This acquisition is a SLAP right in their own people faces!
BTW: didn't buy M$ Insignia Code years ago whose flagship product at that time was SoftPC ?? Seems that M$ wasn't able to handle and extend the code...
What a luck I don't have to use any M$ products.
Given MS's history, I think it is a safe bet that this will be a _bad_ thing for VirtualPC Mac.
At the very least, I fully expect one to be required to purchase it with a Windows license.
I personally think VPC (all platforms) will go away entirely.
How did this get by the FTC?
Is this the company that made the Playstation emulator?
and
Could I run Windows 3.1 in the VM so I can play some of my old games with sound?
I run Linux at home (as if you couldn't guess by the handle) and the only reason that I ever have to do anything with Windows is because there are a few applications that I cannot yet run in Linux. I want a stable operating system, and if I were to run an OS under another one, I'd run the _unstable_ one under the stable one, not the other way around. As I see it, more of the people who would make use of a vmware-style feature would have this same opinion, so I don't understand who this feature is for.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
VMWare couldn't ever become another netscape.
They sell their software, and people actually buy it.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I don't know what will happen to this product. I suppose it will be bad for a lot of people if it simply goes away. I know that I used it a LOT when I first switched to OS X, but the good news (for me at least, and I suspect for others as well) is that I've hardly used it at all recently. OS X has matured enough, and enough software has become available, that my reason for needing VirtualPC in the first place (to run apps that had no equivalent on the Mac) isn't really there anymore.
The QuickCam XP!
Will their virtual machines run operating systems other than Microsoft's?
At first yes, but with a few bugs which they promise to fix real quick (if you get the Service Pack hotfix to XP, which brings a few other nasties with it, Paladium, Media Player, etc)... but over a year of so they'll quietly drop what they call "support for legacy products" (ie anything not delivering a large profit margin to MS, Windows 95, OS/2 and any OS ending in the letters "ix")... anyone remember the nasty bits of code to deliberately break DR-DOS ??
--
T
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
Microsoft can lic me.
Now I can run all those Linux- and Mac-exclusive games in Windows! Gosh! I mean, now I can play... er... hmm...
It has been stated that VPC for Macintosh is now under the control of the Macintosh Business Unit. [MBU]
The biggest problem with this, of course, is the fact that Bill and Co. may just decide that the only application that the MBU needs to push out is VPC. This means no more Office X, no more native X applications, just run the Windows version of the app in VPC [slowly and painfully]
Oh man this is bad news. I wonder if the DOJ even cares.
Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
they aren't a monopoly leveraging the desktop dominance into other markets, whew. Oh, wait...
I still say that the Star Trek writers were misquoted. You can't tell me the origional script didn't say, "I am Locutus of Microsoft.."
Johnny has 25 NT boxes and 19 of them have WVMS (windows virtual machine software) running on them. If 7 of those 19 are running WVMS within WVMS and 3 of those 7 are running Win2k Advanced Server, and the other 4 are running WinXP Pro, while the rest of the 19 are using WinME in the WVMS for backwards compatability issues. How many licenses will you need?
Bonus: How much will this cost including the inflation of the economy and of Microsoft's prices by the year 2004?
"Microsoft has responded to a need customers have asked for," said one source also familiar with the deal. "It will provide server consolidation, software distribution and better development, and they are moving to address that."
Obviously, these "customers" have never tried VMware which is one of the best killer apps I have used in a LONG time. I enjoy running W2K in VMware on my Mandrake box here at work. It nice to not have to reboot the entire PC when windows crashes. I can still do other pats of my job while the windows partition is booting. This is just another attempt by MS to own EVERYTHING that they don't already own. Hey MS, leave these guys alone you jerk offs!
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
Don't worry your pretty little head about that, let Uncle Palladium take care of it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
And convince everybody else that, too!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Obviously this is another ploy to charge absurd amounts of money for a JAWV (Just Another Windows Version).
If your goal is run many OS instances on the same hardware (in a production server environment), why don't you just get an IBM mainframe? They are MUCH more reliable than tinker-toy x86 servers, and IBM has made a name for themselves lately selling Linux on their mainframes.
Integrating virtual machine software with the Windows OS sounds like an answer to the wrong question.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
It is kind of curious that Microsoft would choose Connectix's product for its virtualization. For those not familiar with it -- Connectix Virtual PC is a little more elaborate than VMware because it actually emulates the i386 CPU in software. This is why it works, for example, on a Macintosh, while VMware doesn't.
Now, it should be patently obvious that Microsoft doesn't want you running Linux-on-Windows, Windows-on-Linux, Windows-on-Mac, or anything other than Windows-on-Windows. So you have to wonder what they're up to, here.
When you don't have cross-OS stuff to worry about, why emulate the hardware? For that matter, why emulate a computer at all? For Linux-on-Linux applications, you probably won't choose VMware when you can instead run User Mode Linux -- it uses the hardware more efficiently, you can share filesystems between the host and virtuals using NFS, and it runs the host OS's native binaries. I would think Microsoft would prefer to go this route.
Or perhaps Microsoft has finally decided that Itanium is an ongoing disaster and they need an Intel exit strategy? Hmmm...
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Please don't tell me you don't really know the answer to your question...
Those Macintosh and OS/2 versions will be supported "commensurate with their market positions."
That is, the Microsoft Windows XP versions with the new features and bug fixes and x86 performance tuning will be released first.
After you become disillusioned with this treatment you will have properly assimilated the implicit message:
Even people running old flavors of Microsoft's own operating systems can testify to the many little voices that tell them they have to upgrade to XP (or whatever it happens to be at the time).
It's kind of like the way a slinky keeps pulling itself down the stairs, first one end pulls, then the other, and, before you know it, you're all the way down into the basement!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
maybe windows will have decent dos emulation now.
DOS emulation in windows has been about the same since win95: very poor. maybe buying out a company will help them better support their own operating systems.. hey, it's always worked for them before
it's just a totally, completely different product than VPC and VMWare, and people shouldn't be comparing them at all.
Better buy Virtual PC for the Mac while you still can. When Microsoft is done with it, I highly doubt you will be able to run just any windows app on it. You will have to purchase the Mac App for extra $$. I only see microsoft benefitting from this one long term.
This space intentionally left blank.
"'The technology will be integrated into the Windows code, sources said."
.
.
Hmmm... I'm not sure how to go on this one...
Yes folks, finally Windows will be able to emulate windows with only minor problems. .
or
Yes folks, not only will you now be vulnerable to all of the windows viruses and worms but additional vulnerabilities of other operating systems will be bundled into Windows at no extra charge. .
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Connectix would sell out everything they've got to anybody. Corporate whores.
Remember Connectix Virtual Game Station? VGS was the best PSX emulator, with a focus on compatibility over performance. Much better compatibility than bleem or epsxe. Well, they sold that off to Sony, who killed it. Connectix were fully aware that Sony would kill it.
I have no doubts that MS wants to kill Virtual PC for Windows AND ESPECIALLY Mac OS. Apple and MS are fighting a Cold War of their own right now; anything MS can do that will undermine Apple is fair play.
For amusement's sake, I just hope that MS tries to build RAM Doubler into the next version of Windows. The Windows version of that program was so bad that Windows ran slower and had worse virtual memory management when it was installed compared to the base OS virtual memory. I would like to see "Windows Doubled" on store shelves, wouldn't you?
Who wants a massive, clunky-but-cheap windows desktop when I can run VPC on my iBook on a plane?
XP has been VERY stable for me. I've let it run for weeks nonstop while playing games, doing statistics work, and software development (full-blown Windows apps, not college console assignments). All the while, my RAM usage is reasonably low and the OS has never crashed.
That's not the same as saying IE doesn't crash. IE has crashed once or twice in a few weeks, but the OS keeps on chugging. Now, if only they'd remove that STUPID activation scheme...
When they say "the technology will be integrated into the Windows code", do the really mean "It will be assimilated--resistence is futile?" Then will they take the software and stick it full of probes and wires that stick out and flashing lights,calling it code 2342 of adjunct matrix 242?and strut it around like it's Microsofts gift to humanity?
Just wondering
Having run both Connectix's emulation solution and VMWare's true Virtual Machine solution, I can tell you there is no comparison in performance for the Workstation level products -- VMWare is the clear winner. Also VMWare's ESX server platform (based on RH Linux) is the best x86 based, non-specific-HW Platform solution out there for running Windows and non-Windows Operating Systems. VMWare's only real competition from the performance standpoint is Viruozzo from SW-Soft. The caveat with Virtuozzo is that it supports only Linux.
Ok, so, the idea is that Windows will now be able to run software for ANY operating system (that MSFT chooses to support)? So, they get the best of both worlds. If good software is written for another platform then it will run in Win32 w/o recompilation. Seems to make sense.
...MS Money.
So, I can't really see this as a bad thing for other companies (except, of course, for VMWare) a larger market for your software is always a good thing....right?
Lol, well enough of me trying to be my own Devil's Advocate. I wonder when people will wake up and realize that consolidation like this is legimately hurting competition and the MSFT should be restricted from making such purchase. Imagine if MSFT had succeeded in buying Intuit! There would be MS Money and
Just because a company has the money to buy basically anything they want doesn't make it right. grrr...I'll get off my soapbox now.
I saw the article already, but based upon M$ history and the announced integration of yet another application into already bloated and non-secure mess that Windows is, I foresee future news, with a familiar flavor. I.e. "this exploit allows anyone to take over any instance of blahblahblah".
Yeah, they also said they would continue to support Mac computers, but is this something you really want? I couldn't help, but notice a comment that 'they don't intend to kill the software'. Really... It's just one more sword to dangle over Apple, when Steve gets too uppity.
I don't see any long-term winners here, other than those selling Connectix's assets.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This stuff is really cool, and I'm glad the industry is starting to wake up to the possibilities.
I see this as something that's more likely to popularize virtual computer technology, rather than something that's likely to eliminate our options. Obviously, I don't have a crystal ball, and I could be wrong.
I have a box that I use mostly to run VMware client OSs. Linux is my host OS, I have a very sparse and clean linux from scratch system set up on the box. I've got all kinds of stuff stashed away in various VMs.
The great thing about this sort of setup is the flexibility. The client OSs are basically just data files on the host os. If you copy the files, you've backed up the system, or cloned it.
You can move the files to other machines that have different hardware -- you don't have to worry about the sound and video card drivers.
And you can even replace the host OS without being too disruptive. I used to run redhat as the host OS, but I copied off the data files, set up my linux from scratch system, and brought the data files back in. Everything was fine.
The result of this is that the chains of dependency that exist between hardware, operating system installations, and applications become much less restrictive.
Another result is that it's trivial to play with new systems -- I don't run OpenBSD, for example, but everytime they could out with a new one, I install it, just to keep my hand in.
All this is, at bottom, is just a more flexible way of looking at OSs. An OS becomes a blob of data that's easier to move around from one hunk of hardware to another. And it's easier to keep lots of those OS blobs on a given machine.
It's a great way to deal with "staging" servers. You can take a production server (which is really a VM), copy it, and do whatever you want to the copy, without damaging anything. When everything is working properly, you can slide the new server into place. If you need to revert, you can just go back to the old data.
I suspect that this functionality is part of what MS is after.
Really, all you free-market guys out there - how does this work? When do we get normality again?
After the revolution, when we have a government that cares again, at least for a little while.
Like what I said? You might like my music
there will be an open source project called emu86xzilla hosted at emu86xzilla.org?
i don't like style guides
and told me that Microsoft plans to FUD other VMware businesses into an early grave, so that five/ten years from now they can monopolize the emulation industry and make it unfeasible as a alternative to other, more bloated operating systems.
Boy, is he crraaaazy!!
Microsoft is only looking for more ways to slow Windows down so you'll need faster computers.
Will Microsoft be able to pull this one off?
Yes, version 3.0 of this technology will be fabulous, and deliver on all previous claims.
Will their virtual machines run operating systems other than Microsoft's?
No.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
You cannot have a good building without a sturdy foundation. So esentially it is useless technology in the windows world.
Got Code?
From the article:
Virtual Server is a native Windows-based server application that enables customers to run a wide range of server operating systems including Windows, Linux, Unix, OS/2 and DOS, concurrently on a single physical server, within isolated virtual machines.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
From the article
Connectix, which is privately held and was founded in 1988, provides virtualization software for Windows-based computing.
So, don't expect to run anything else than Windows on it, this seems pretty obvious. That said, not that I wanted to anyways.
"Two beers or not two beers. That's the question." -- Shakesbeer
But they'll all be displayed shifted 30 spaces to the left.
KFG
Remeber how they bought the remote access company, then integrated that in the window management apps, and now its illegal to run vnc in winxp?
Well... now theyll make it illegal to run vmWare for windows or just about anything but their emu, on the side theyll kill whatever good patches the vmware ppl send to linux (i dont know how they contribute, but i imagine they have a kernel hacker or two).
And there is fair competition in the minds @ redmond.... and there is bush playing pat on the back with his girlfriends bill and balmer. Talk about the worst of the worst in big corporate orgies.
And here we are trying to make a buck out of what this fuckers leave us.
NO SIG
There are so many things wrong with this idea, namely the affect it will undeniably have on the ratio of windows:amiga users.
Here's a site describing just WHY this sucks.
The biggest thing I find missing from Windows, is the lack of virtual consoles, in particular, the lack of anything like SVGATextMode or the Framebuffer console.
I mean, sure, I can get an XTerm (Rxvt), or I can run in a "dos box" giving me an 80x25 or 80x50 or 80x60 console. But what I want is the ability to have multiple console ttys, the ability to setup the video mode and font so that I can have things like a 1600x1280 text mode with an 8x8 font on one terminal, and a 1280x1024 mode with a 12x20 font on another terminal, and NOT have these terminals be in managed windows. And they need to be just as efficient as the ones I have under Linux.
Why can't I have this? Or can I? If it's something that "Windows can't do", I get a whole bunch of "neener neener points." If it's something that Windows *can* do, I need to know how to do it.
Virtual terminals. Like Linux. With SVGA text modes and user defined fonts. Please.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
With every buyout and merge they examine, they have to come up with all the possible conspiracy theories that could relate to the event, then they have to figure out which ones are likely enough to worry about.
:)
Sounds like good work for Slashdot junkies.
What's this Submit thingy do?
I like my user-mode Linux and/or VMWare or Bochs.
How is this superior to it?
Most of VMWare's money maker market is running *windows* 'server clients' in large data centers, regardless of what we would like to believe. ( face it, Microsoft still holds the majority of the computing market, at least for now )
I really don't think the 'workstation' version is making them a lot of money. its nice, but its pocket change in comparison to selling licenses for the 'big iron'.
If Microsoft attacks the ESX/GSX server market, in its typical fashion of 'forced migration', then it could hurt VMware greatly.
I expect citrix to be on the list of people to force out of business too, for similar reasons. ( yes its a different type of product, but similar in concept that its a 'data center' market that Microsoft will want to keep in-house )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But I know the answer: Zero. You just need one copy of NT Server, bought retail. Use copyright law instead of agreeing to any licenses, and consider the 50 instances to be fair use.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
He's finally working on a way to port the BSOD over to Linux and OSX for us!
they used to be a Mac-only company with quaint products like RAM Doubler and (was it called?) Speed Doubler, to jazz up your System 7 machine. Ah, days gone by...
I guess it's been downhill since they introduced VirualPC *for* Windows, just been itching to seel out to MS (says my paranoia).
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Developers would then have a choice of either making xbox games which would only run on an xbox or ps2 games which would run on either system. Any sensible developer would think: I'll make a ps2 game now.
CVGS could never emulate the PlayStation 2 but only the PS1. Once Sony discontinues new PS1 title licensing in about a year or so, potential Microsoft licensees will have no reason to defect to Sony just because CVGS for Xbox can run 9x% of PS1 games.
Will I retire or break 10K?
First let me say that I really like VMWare. I think they did a fabulous job - it's one of the better-engineered pieces of software that I've ever seen. All the times that I've had the pleasure to use it, it's worked for me without a hitch, despite the subtle complexity required to do an application like that well.
Furthermore, I hope that one day we'll see a real, meaningful government reform at Microsoft that puts them out of the business of "innovating" away various application markets.
My needs for VMs have been sparse. Most often I'm testing something (like an installer) that sprays stuff all over Windows, and it's just simplest to roll it back using the Undoable disk when the test is over. Or maybe I've got some code I want to check out that I consider really dangerous. Once in a while, if I'm stuck running Windows, but I need a Unix service on the network for a little while, I can raise a virtual linux server and keep it running as long as I need it. Far more convenient than hauling out another box.
I can see the attraction in virtual machines. You have so much more control. Bluescreens don't hang everything - only the particular virtual CPU they happen on. And VMWare's code is so freaking efficient, I can play counterstrike with a few of these virtual servers running, answering queries in the background. But it seems silly for virtual machines to become institutionalized in that role. To me, that's evidence of failure in the OS design. You have a reliability problem? Fix it in the OS. You have a control problem - something you wanted a VM and Undoable disks to solve? Add a feature to the filesystem. You have a security problem? Definitely an OS issue.
VMWare et al are great for ad hoc stuff and I think sooner or later most developers would be glad to have it around, but if you plan on running it all the time, in a server environment for instance, then it's just a big kluge. Your OS wasn't _designed_ to run inside itself... it's a big resource waste. Fix the problems in the OS. Compartmentalize, if that's what the environment demands. But don't do it this way. It's just goofy.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Really, all you free-market guys out there - how does this work? When do we get normality again?
A monopoly is a failing of the free market that is acknowledged by all but the most extreme laissez faire free market supporters.
By their very nature, they subvert the free market to their own ends. On the plus side, monopolies usually get fat and lazy, and a disruptive technology wipes them out. It just takes time.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Oh, they'll probably allow other OSes to RUN, just "not as efficiently as Windows-on-Windows." The ad will go something like, "In independently-run* tests, researchers found that exponentially greater performance can be achieved when running virtual servers by staying with Windows."
* Independant test lab is owned by a shell corporation operated by MSN, but it's still independant.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Yes, you can run Win 3.1 with sound in VPC
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
FYI, NT has pretty much always had this; run a dos app in NT, and you get a virtual 386 to run it on. That way, dos app crashes, it doesn't take NT with it.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Now you can hide those duplicate servers in one box! Yeah, scalable and 7/24/365.25 reliability and your support budget will be really small. I can see the press releases coming out of eWeak and C/Net now.
The reality is that if it's scalable, reliable and cheap, no-one will actually care how it works under the hood. Remember that no-one cares about OS reliability and hardware reliability just for the sake of it; what matters is that the application - a database, a web site, whatever - is available to the end user. If it's cheaper to spread it across 5 cheap PCs and reboot them one at a time every day than it is to buy one expensive Sun, then that's what businesses will do.
Why would Microsoft be concerned with supporting something that doesn't exist? There are no operating systems other than theirs...
Microsoft paid my university a visit a few months ago, and I was rather surprised to see that on one of their demo machines they actually had VMware installed, together with all sorts of Unix OSes configured, not something I'd have expected to see.
Yes! Finaly I can run gnu/linux from windows!! Eh, wait.. why would I want to do that?
It's so that customers can run NT4-specific apps under future products like Windows Server 2003. See this eWeek article.
Four months ago, our company tried buying a copy of VMware with WinXP licenced to run in the VM. VMware said that they were working out a new license with Microsoft so they could sell XP and that we should call them back in a couple of months. Our purchasing guy has called them once a month since then and we still can't get it.
Now I know why it's taking so long...
Interesting... they're obviously not going to be running other os'es than Windows but they're clearly going after the serious servermarket (zOs or >=Sun E10K). The only way Linux could compete with this is through UserModeLinux and mosix running (with a friendly gui) on Linux machines. /m
Just my 3c (inflation),
Development will stop for the Mac? What, like the development of Office stopped? Software sold is still software sold...
subject says it all
I do *NOT* want Microsoft to buy Connectix.
I love Virtual PC, I live by it every day. It rocks under OSX, and I have a lot of VPC images containing all sorts of intel-flavoured OS's.
If Microsoft get their hands on VPC, it's game over for VPC/OSX and all those 'other' OS images. Mark my words, it'll take them less than 2 revisions.
I want Apple to buy Connectix. That'd be doper than soap on a rope.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
MS's next acquisition will be the bankrupt regime of North Korea. Imagine MS with nukes...
If you are setting up a virtual domain within this main server running WVMS, you will need at least the 50 licenses for the NT Server product in use...
The real answer and question should be, "How many CALs will one need to configure such a machine?"
That answer would depend upon how you have the machines talk to one another...
By my best MS-Reckoning...
You would need at least 50 CALs per NT License installed upon that one machine... So, in order for each instance to be able to communicate concurrently with each other instance, you would need to have 2500 CALs installed...
Then for each client machine that could potentially connect to anyone of the the single NT Instances built into that main machine you would need a CAL...
So, for every 50 users... You would have to have another 2500 CALs installed on that server...
Holy Cow! MS will rake in the entire current GDP within a few weeks of rolling out such a product! Isn't licensing great everyone?
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
www.notslashdot.org www.kuro5hin.org www.kwizine.net
Interesting. Have you tried it? I've been reading about openMosix lately, and the FAQ says that it will host VMWare. Specifically, it says:
If you intend to run VMWare under openMosix so that openMosix would load-balance several instances of that (yes, that works). But, if you want to run openMosix in several VMWare instances and let these instances load balance (that fails).
The first case works. The latter case does not work because VMware has a bug in its Pentium emulation that makes VMware crash (not openMosix, but the VMware binary) on the first migration.
Since I read that, I've been itching to try an openMosix cluster with VMWare running on it. I'd love to prove that out to our Win-centric server guys here at work.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
news links to this story, as at the time of posting. Argh.
Why doesn't Microsoft quit buying out Apple software companies (like Bungie just to name one of them) then just totally keep it for MS platforms only. I think they are such a wannabe company its sad. They need to stop buying ever technology and actually develop something of there own. Start using there own R & D. Lazy Microsoft. BLEH!!!
For one of our projects we've had to uprgade to XP but third party software for another porject only runs on NT and 2K so we are actually running 2K inside of XP using VMWare.
It may come as no surprise to people that genereal network browsing is much quicker from within the virtual machine.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
The true question is: "will finally their virtual machines run operating systems from Microsoft?"
1) This is not the sort of software that Microsoft is good at. Even though they retained a lot of the engineers and designers from Connectix, Connectix has probably kept a lot of its embedded and processor-level design personnel. It probably won't be maintained as well as it has been.
2) A real advantage of Virtual PC was that it did a lot more than just run Windoze. It could run any of the alternative operating systems or even run them all simultaneously. You can bet it will lose this functionality.
MOD PARENT UP!!!!!!
Connectix has given many talks about the internals of VPC.
VPC running on a PC doesn't emulate most of the time, it runs native. They have to do some emulation in a few routines, but I forget which now.
Anyway, rest assured, if you are running VPC on a PC you are mostly running natively, not emulating.
Actually the virtual PC is a pretty usefull piece of software. You create a new "PC", allocate how much ram and disk space it will have, and boot it up. It boots up just as a normal PC with bios and all. It allows you to use the host PC's CD-drive or you can choose to mount an ISO (for instance the newest bootable ISO of your prefered distro).
Since I started playing around with it I've downloaded and tried a lot of different Linux distros. I set up a virtual Linux server on my laptop, so I would always have my "development server" with me, no matter where I went.
This particular piece of software really got me going on alternative OS'es, just because it is easy and painless to try out new OS'es without wasting your main box.
I was introduced to the program by a die hard MS developer, who actually got into trying out all this Li-nuchs stuff, just because it was easy and would leave his precious windows system running. Now he's beginning to see the light.
I've been playing with User-Mode Linux a bit recently; it's a port of Linux to run on Linux :-) (instead of running on real hardware, it does hardware-ish things via Linux syscalls). It runs as an unpriviledged user, but has its own internal users, permissions, even a root user.
According to Fortune magazine, Microsoft is the 7th most admired company in America. #1 is Walmart.
"All your mullets does belong to us"
219: 50 for each of the instances, 1 for the base server and 168 client access licenses.
Dan
"Will their virtual machines run operating systems other than Microsoft's?"
Err right. Nice anti-MS troll.
"Will MS make an inferior product to VM-Ware? VM-Ware should watch out!"
You guys should be happy if MS makes a Virtual Machine that only runs Windows OS's. It means that VM-Ware has a HUGE advantage over MS.
Duh.
They bought Bungie and axed Halo for the Mac (I don't care to hear "It's coming soon" because damn it, it's not here and by the time it gets here, it'll be a day late and a dollar short) and now they're buying Connectix?
This sucks. Really bad. Sorry, but I really don't trust Microsoft to suddenly make Virtual PC a whole lot better.
I hope that I'm wrong about this.
why would they try this? Leveraging one monopoly to create another is illegal. Therefore if they succeed, the DOJ gets to try them for anti-trust violations once again. Win, you go to court, fail.. well then you fail.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
IBM. IBM has been banging the server consolidation drum for some time and has been getting some good wins. Got a bunch of exchange servers? Replace them with Domino on one iSeries. Got a bunch of Unix boxes? Replace them with LPARs on a pSeries. Racks of web servers at a hosting provider? zSeries running 100s of Linux instances will clean up that nightmare. Still need a legacy Win server? Jail it up in an iSeries IXS card.
MS is nervous because racks and racks of Win2k server boxes on big KVM switches are a pain in the ass to manage and companies want to consolidate. IBM offers more ways to do it than anyone else in the industry.
MS needs to offer their own server consolidation solution and if someone can build the big Wintel hardware to do it, this will give them the fast track to the software side.
The push will be that MS can consolidate your servers on, say, a big Unisys machine just like big IBM hardware. Plus, you can continue to hire liberal arts majors who took an MCSE class to run it saving the cost of an IGS contract.
For MS, the benefit is continued vendor lock-in.
1. Windows is historically unstable and Linux builds its reputation on stability.
2. Microsoft is anxious about losing more market share to Linux and is trying to both improve its reputation and smear Linux's reputation.
3. "ls" is a simple filesystem call, and if it DID crash Linux, #2 would be achieved.
4. By buying an OS emulator and manipulating it in the right ways, they would be able to have Linux crash when it accessed the virtual disk for the ls.
5. They could then show Linux crashing under these conditions, in a form of FUD, without revealing the way they manipulated the OS emulator.
6. This is funny because (a) it is absurd that Microsoft would go to such transparant, desparate lengths, and absurdism is humorous; and (b), laughing gives people a sense of comaraderie; in this case, it lets us renew our bonds for being supporters of Linux and together make fun of a hated Microsoft for being sufficiently desperate to consider (if not execute) this idea.
7. Hence: ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
I'm typing this in Mozilla as we speak.... Gecko-based browsers are becoming popular (and more populous also w/ deals such as AOL adopting Gecko), so imho it's still a bit early to call the browsers battle lost just yet !
IBM. IBM has been banging the server consolidation drum for some time and has been getting some good wins. Got a bunch of exchange servers? Replace them with Domino on one iSeries. Got a bunch of Unix boxes? Replace them with LPARs on a pSeries. Racks of web servers at a hosting provider? zSeries running 100s of Linux instances will clean up that nightmare. Still need a legacy Win server? Jail it up in an iSeries IXS card.
All true, so let's say Sun and IBM.
Have you looked at what companies actually require for uptime and service availability guarantees?
:)
IBM is famous for their guarantee of 5 nines sevice availability, 99.999% uptime. Look more closely. That is for a limited selection of certified applications only, and only for system clusters. That gives you redundancy for hardware failures that take out a box. Yes, even a $1.5million mainframe box, you want the 99.999%, you do it with 2 mainframes in a failover cluster.
I'm not knocking IBM for doing this, after all, it gives great results. I'm saying don't bash MS for getting reliability by doing the same thing.
Feel free to bash them for making an OS that you can only reliably run 1 server process on though.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
but the company who has to manage 5 machines instead of one might rethink their TCO after all the failed patches, virii, etc turn what they thought was cheaper and reliable into something else.
Unlike IBM's version of this( Linux on the mainframe ) Microsoft still has a problematic core called Windows.
The real threat there might have been Linux running on Connectix but we all know that product will die very soon. Lucky that GNU/Linux on another virtual system will still have advantages over the Windows one.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I'm wondering if this is going to happen (seeing Microsoft 'work' the last couple of .... decades, it won't) if VMWare will eventually go on in an Open Source variant, as the Open Source Netscape version: Mozilla.
MS would be DUMB to drop VPC for Mac.
Think about it: a Windows licence is a Windows licence. MS makes nothing from the hardware. So regardless of whether you've spent $250 on a pieced-together jalopy of an i386-compatible clone or $2500 on a tricked-out Mac, you are still eligible for a copy of Windows.
Following this train of thought, it is in Microsoft's best interests to have VPC for Mac work very, very well, because it expands the installed base of Windows users and makes more money in licences for MS. And it (ugh) ensures the software market that they only need to write a Windows app to have it compatible on every home desktop.
MS's best move would be to improve Mac VPC's performance but not to improve its integration with Mac OS. In fact if I were MS I would probably create a Mac-hardware-bootable VPC that doesn't work with Mac OS.
It's sad, I agree, but it's a more realistic speculation than VPC for Mac just being discontinued. That would only be a detriment to Windows marketshare.
That'll be Palladium, then.
their VM runs other OS's, as long as it won't run their viruses?
Imagine the mess a "virtual" Sapphire/Slammer worm would make.
C|N>K
How about vserver? See: http://www.solucorp.qc.ca/miscprj/s_context.hc
Lots of mac users depend on this software to run a variety of OSs.. I don't use it for windows, becuase it's uselessly slow for almost everything, but it's been great for testing linux configurations and the like. I had hoped to get some RTOS work on it as well, as it's easy to take a bunch of installations with me on my powerbook, even if they are slow.
If this program were open source, one company couldn't come along and buy it up and lock it away, or just plain not support it anymore. You can betcha that those cheap versions of this product with PC-DOS shipping are going to end in a hurry. I've actually USED that OS on VirtualPC, and it was snappy enough to be useful. The program isn't open source, so everyone is SOL. All the WORSE that the buying party is Microsoft - and they have enough cash to do this to whatever company that makes whatever killer app you like. Scarey, huh?
Even if this product continues to be developed, I will have to take a much harder look at where it's going on the mac platform in the future. That's a shame.
Perhaps this will help entrench the mac developers and users firmly in the open source world.
..don't panic
"The technology will be integrated into the Windows code"
Maybe also in consumer Windows? VPC + MS DOS is a nice combination for old DOS games.
I hope MS considers this.
Too bad MS didn't buy Connectix a few years ago.... the world may didn't have to suffer from WinME....
My guess is that MS wants to make it impossible to run anything other than Windows. Remember the hissy fit they had over Java? It was because they were worried that Java in a web browser would become the new operating system, rendering Windows obsolete.
I wouldn't be at all suprised if I found out that MS offered to buy VMWare as well.
By the way, does anyone know how Connectix performs compared to VMWare? The genious of VMWare is that the guest OS is actually running on the raw hardware most of the time, so you get really good performance. I'd imagine Connectix is pretty slow since it's emulating the hardware in software...
Microsoft would have no reason to want to stop VPC users buying windows, at all, no.
However, Microsoft also has no reason to want certain things about VPC to stay the way they are. For example, the fact it is screamingly fast. For a long time, one of the big bragging points mac users had was that we could run windows, *emulated*, at about the speed as a windows machine with half the mhz. (I don't know how current models perform.) That's really, really impressive insofar as emulation goes. Microsoft also has no reason to want VPC to continue to be as clean and effective as it has been.
What i am saying is that people don't come to VPC on a lark: it is an expensive piece of software, and people come to it becuase they need to get something out of it, usually to run some windows-only program. This means VPC's quality can suffer, and Microsoft will have no reason to consider this a bad thing-- at the moment, VPC has no serious competitors, so people will keep buying VPC.
Microsoft also has no reason *not* to stop Virtual PC from being able so cleanly, seamlessly, and easily to emulate, say, Linux. They have no reason to make it easy to run a non-MS operating system on your mac.
There is also no reason not for Microsoft to continue as they have and then, after a couple versions, slowly let wierd bugs, incompatibilities, etc, creep into VPC., until mac users *still* can run windows, but they only do so becuase they need to run windows for some reason-- because VPC has become enough of a pain that the PPC's wonderful talent for emulation no longer seems like much of an advantage over the x86.
Am i saying Microsoft is going to do this? Well.. no. In fact, i don't think they will, becuase macslash is reporting that apparently the VPC team will report directly to the MacBU, not to seattle. This means that they will continue, almost certainly, to make VPC as much a quality product as possible. So there goes that conspiracy theory out the window right there.
However, it does bother me that Microsoft is able to take big, important groups like Connectix and Softway (Interix) and buy them up just like that. Yes, they are buying them for apparently benign purposes. But what it seems like to me is that while Microsoft is not buying these companies so they can quash or disable them, they are buying them so that they can keep their eye on them. Potentially, something like Interix or VPC could become a big stepstone in some kind of major migration away from Microsoft. if Microsoft owns those companies, however, if it looks like such a thing is going to happen, MS can take steps to prevent it, so long as MS always keeps the quality of those companies' products so high that there never is a reason for a competitor to arise. Threat management.
This brings me to my question: how on earth is MS going to make Palladium work with VPC? Palladium becomes pointless unless those keys are kept secret, and if MS embeds those keys into a macintosh executable then extracting them will be trivial. So how is MS planning to make Palladium work in VPC? Are they going to require a PCI card with a palladium chip in it, or what? That would still toss out Palladium's concept of the secure keyboard-to-processor-to-monitor path, but it would at least keep the keys locked safely in silicon. Or, much more likely, are they just going to not let VPC run palladium apps, since the Mac OS is not "secure"?
So, here's a slightly more likely conspiracy theory. Perhaps MS [only partially of course-- i've no doubt they're mainly buying Connectix for the reasons they say they are] likes the idea of buying Connectix because it removes the risk Connectix will attempt to emulate Palladium within VPC? I mean, Palladium is going to be damned hard to crack, but if anyone at this exact moment in time has both the resources and the reason to crack palladium, it's Connectix or nobody. I really haven't the foggiest idea what Connectix was planning to do about Palladium, but they have experience at cracking closed systems-- they reverse-engineered the PSX. That expertise, and a few hours rented time with an electron microscope to pull on the Palladium's keys, and suddenly MS is no longer the sole source or vendor of their Palladium platform.
Would that have actually happened? I have no idea. But it certainly won't now. Maybe not a big deal, but certainly convenient for Microsoft either way, no?
Just like it's "convenient" that Bungie's excellent cross-platform game development library, rather than being sold off with Oni and Myth, is currently buried somewhere deep in the bowels of the earth..
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
365.24ish... although 2000 was a leap year, 1700, 1800 and 1900 weren't. Sorry, it just looks a bit precious. (It works out at 1.00001 uptime...)
Well, if Microsoft is truly dedicated to their new "Security Initiative," they will follow Apple's lead once again. They will do a complete re-write of the OS and use an emulation layer that's built into the OS (cough) Classic Mode (cough) to run older software. I'd love to see a completely open *nix-distro as the core of the OS (re: Darwin), but that's probably asking too much...
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." -Saint-Exupery
VirtualPC was a good idea, and it really did provide value for the people that needed to use it. I see this as a sign that Microsoft is attempting to tighten its grip on the marketplace, and most likely by limiting the options people have over the longer term. Fine. Piss customers off even more. Give them even more reasons to consider an alternative. I'm all for it!
I don't know the companies very well, but could this purchase include obtaining some patents, thereby restricting/dominating this area?
I wonder if their motives aren't 3 fold:
1) I do some contract work for a vendor called "Winternals". They make recovery and repair products that allow you to roll back certain Windows files when the OS becomes hosed among other things. I have always wondered why MS doesn't buy some of this kind of technology that makes Windows a little easier to administor. Maybe they want to add the ability to "Roll Back" XP to a last known good state.
2) It doesn't hurt to have another sword hanging over Apple's head - after all, many people switch knowing they have the Virtual PC safety blanket.
3) Unload some of that damn cash.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
other than the random smattering of linux and bsd users who use vmware to run windows come tax season, how many serious vmware licensees actually use it to run different OSes rather than to turn one server into 10 virtual servers running the same OS?
If this year's TurboTax with its nasty DRM runs in VMWare, then you could create a separate VM for running TurboTax, and when you are done, back up the VM disk file to a CDROM and have a restorable installation of TurboTax that could be run on any machine at a later date (as long as it has VMWare).
I used last year's TurboTax in VMWare with no problem, but I've been holding off this year because of the DRM issue. If the DRM'd version runs in VMWare, this could eliminate some of the concerns.
I agree, his broadcasting is excellent. His facts, honesty, and patriotism are questionable, however.
I've used Connectix and VMWare and VMWare kicks connectix's butt. I think Connectix uses a CPU level emulation to run, where VMWare uses a vitual machine. In short VMware run about 95% the speed of the host CPU while Connectix was running less the 50%. I could be different these days. Does anyone have any up-to-date performance information?? VMWare Rules! (Plus it runs on Linux)
For all the Mac paranoid out there, here's another conspiracy theory that will undoubtedly turn up on the rumor sites.
;-)
Microsoft really wants to revive, sell, and support an improved version of Connectix RamDoubler for the latest revision of Mac OS 9. Heck, they might even make it into Microsoft RamTripler (MS Ram*er for short)
Connectix stopped selling RamDoubler and promised to do away with support for it in September 2003. But an killer utility like MS Ram*er will cement the last Mac holdouts to Mac OS 9 and their old hardware.
The conspiracy has widened!
Imagine a beowulf cluster of 64 processor Inthefuturania!
Gets my money, be it Microsoft or whomever.
Can't believe I haven't seen any previous posts ask this question, but what do you think the effect is going to be on the average user who has no use for or interest in a VirtualMachine? I remember serious issues dealing with the awkward integration of IE into the OS. (Okay, so my memory doesn't have to stretch too far for that, but I mean _especially_ in the early days.) Are we going to see a Windows where you have no choice but to run in an emulation layer that is poorly shoved into low-level OS routines?
Chuck
The important question is 'Does anybody care?'. Linux runs just fine on PPC hardware, as do Open and NETBSD (FreeBSD on the way). More importantly a lot of *nix apps compile and run native on OS X. The only real reason for wanting to use an x86 emulator is to run an operating system which doesn't run on your hardware, and software compiled for another platform. i.e. Closed source software. i.e. Windows and windows apps. Does anybody actually use VirtualPC to boot x86 Linux? Are there enough closed source Linux apps (or ones which for one reason or another won't run on OS X / PPC Linux) that this is actually worth anyone's while?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I thought the code to emulate MacOS was in Windows the whole time.
Windows XP running a hidden *virtual* Windows XP session. Vistual session crashes, it won't bring the machine down. How to solve the performance hit? Just wait, 3.06Ghz will soon be entry level.
Seriously, the nice part about it being integrated into the OS would be for compatibility purposes with their own older OS's. Like for instance (God forbid) Win 3.11 for Workgroups, or Win 95, or Dos 4 (lol).
Even BETTER, maybe it will include ALL of the emulation out on the net today... Like MAME and Atari800WinOh, the possibilities! GLAVEN!
Ligaguinggligagiggagoogoogwillgo
Microsoft also has no reason *not* to stop Virtual PC from being able so cleanly, seamlessly, and easily to emulate, say, Linux. They have no reason to make it easy to run a non-MS operating system on your mac.
Actually, they do. Continuing Virtual PC as-is would go a long way towards repairing their lost goodwill with the computer elite, without directly supporting Linux--which would be a death knell for Windows.
Cant just say +1 as most people will say, dont forget you could be using the linux GSX version, or the native ESX version..
But then you have other license issues with VMware's part to deal with...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
you forgot to mention that bsod stands for blue screen of death... windows crashing
...why MS wants this? It's a way to logically partition a server.
You have sysplex on IBM mainframes, now you will have the same capability on Wintel boxes.
It's not about any deficiencies in Windows as some have put forth. It's about moving further towards an enterprise-class server OS. The ability to partition a system into multiple logical systems is something that is done all the time in the mainframe world, and I suspect in the Unix world as well. As a matter of fact, the mainframe where I work has at least three Unix partitions running on it. These are essentially just virtual machines under the base OS (OS/390 I believe).
This is something MS needs as they continue the march to taking over the datacenter. They can't compete with the big boys with this type of technology, hence it is a perfect, if not utterly obvious, acquisition for them.
I personally find VMWare to be superior, but then my experience is not in the server space, it's on a desktop. Maybe this product is superior on a server, I don't know.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Like you can already with VMWare (fantasic app imho, tested 3 Linux distrubtions and FreeBSD without partitioning, or risking any of my data)
or get all you beed of a UNIX-a-like from Cygwin.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Ever tried their support ? They suck. I've been waiting over two months along with a host of others on their support forums for somebody from Connectix to answer a list of problems. They might read the forums but I'll be damned if they actually answer posts there.
See the forum pages at Connectix and read the tales of woe. I've got an HP printer whose software can crash the VPC repeatedly!
/* ICBM Coordinates 32.78N, 79.93W */
VMware ESX is NOT based on Red Hat. It's a proprietary kernel. Red Hat is only used as the Console OS (not the same as a Host OS on VMware Workstation or VMware GSX departmental server). So a Open Source operating system is used to install VMware ESX and boot the system, then it hands over the control of the system to the vmkernel (which is optimized for performance and resource allocation). Because vmkernel is such a specific system, it only supports a limited amount of drivers. Select servers from Dell, HP/Compaq and IBM are well supported. The mother of all servers to run VMware ESX at an enterprise level is the IBM xSeries 440.
The next level of VMware product that is announced is VMware Virtual SMP. This will bridge the gap for enterprises that want to run virtual machines requiring multiprocessing but cannot do this with the current release of VMware ESX.
I truly believe that the VMware solutions are probably the best thing since sliced bread (I'm too young to have lived the MVS-era).
Do you remember the last time when Connectix sold it's Playstation emulator to Sony.
There was lots of talk about how good this would be, since Sony could cerate an official platform for selling PSX games to mac and pc users, since Sony was supposed to lose money on consoles this would make perfect sense. Of course, this did not happen, Sony chose to kill it instead.
Now, why do I get the feeling that the exact same thing will happen again?
Somewhere in the heavens... they are waiting.
I'm graduating from college in May and through a deal my university has with MS I got Windows 98SE, Me, XP Pro for $5 each and 2000 Pro for $15, along with similar good deals on Office...
So if anyone reading this has ties at MS could you *please* push them to buy Connectix soon enough to put VPC6 in my university's computer store for say $5-$10, I would seriously appreciate it... and I'm talking the PC *AND* Mac versions!!
Seems to me they would want any one of those options. Every one of them sends a Windows license fee their way, and now a VPC license fee too.
Also, since Windows only runs on i386 now, they have more incentive to develop and maintain VPC for other platforms. If you've shelled out for a Mac or a Sun box, you'd probably be more likely to run Windows if VPC were available for the machine you already have, instead of needing an i386 PC.
All the companies who trip over their own feet to sell out to Microsoft share the blame. Is it so inconceivable to accept a lesser plateau of profitability, that selling out is the only option? Was it their plan from the beginning, to groom a product in hopes of eventually selling it to Microsoft? "No, we would prefer to remain autonomous and keep 1/2 percent marketshare".
The only business models that are worth considering, are those which either have a lump sum trade to liquate the entire enterprise, or those which promise consistent gains. There is no room for a model that sustains itself without growth. I've never understood why economics dictates that, but, in the business world, you can make a million dollars this quarter, and if you "only" make a million next quarter, you've failed. There's GOT to be a way you can have constant revenue and call it success.
I agree, his broadcasting is excellent. His facts, honesty, and patriotism are questionable, however.
I wholeheartedly disagree. He does have his facts very straight; It's the twisted liberal rhetoric that he reveals. He's quite patriotic - I've never heard him say something anti-american. 95% of the current war protestors are quite strongly anti-american. The remaining 5% are just crazy and/or stupid. His honesty is not in question either. please point out something that he's said that isn't true? Can't think of anything? I didn't think so.
Please get a clue before you return. Or is that asking too much?
Wait a second. I thought one of the reasons for failover technology was to protect against OS and hardware failures. If you put your servers virtually on one machine, you aren't protected when the machine's underlying OS fails, or when the machine's hardware fails.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Almost everyone here seems to be missing the point. This is not for home use. This is not intended for you, Joe Schmoe Windows at Home user to run other operating systems.
This is for the server market. We have an IBM mainframe at work that is currently running approximately 6 virtual machines. Not so that you can play a Windows game in Linux, but so that the mainframe can offer more services. Although I do believe that one of the virtual machines is a fairly standard installation of Linux of some sort, every other OS on the system is a very specifically tailored OS for a specific job. I'm not the administrator for this box, so I can't say too much. But I know that there are specific Tivoli UNIX versions installed, as well as an TSM/ADSM (backup) specific OS.
I think that THIS is what the article is getting at. This is not about you playing Tux Racer on your Windows box.
Sig.i>
Lets face it. it is inevitable that M$ is going to get its ass kicked by the open source community eventually. Could M$ be aquiring Connectix in order to be able to offer people complete opensource compatability tucked away inside of Windoze 200X?
...sooner rather than later. Would make sense that Microsoft would remove emulation proactively by buying out Connectix, since if Apple moves toward a 64bit chip that also had x86 instruction set on it (AMD?) consumers might well migrate towards a "godbox" that ran all Windows and MacOS software. M$ would need to do this to further leverage their installed userbase.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Yes, Mac users have cause to worry about Virtual PC... Halo is a perfectly good example of that. However, my guess is that they are more interested in producing a playstation2 emulator for PC or even XBox. Sony was able to shut down the PS1 emulator, but Connectix didn't have the lawyers then that microsoft has now. -Weasel Boy
Lots of people use Virtual PC to run essential Windows business software because there's no Mca PowerPC implementation.
Now that option is at risk. And is likely to just dry up and blow away as M$ "leverages" its OS across platforms.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
legal attack on already published material pending (possibly)...so download it now!
http://cryptome.org/pacc.htm
Virtual PC is a nice piece of software that sells a fair number of copies, but doubt it's installed on more than 1% of all Macs. Killing or not killing it simply isn't a big deal either way in any Windows/Apple war.
Microsoft has long wanted to be able to have backward compatibility. They have also wanted to be able to re-write their filesystem.. now with virtual machines, they can have both and make themselves incompatible with any emulators (such as Wine and Mac windows emulator) or non-microsoft "blessed" applications. Of course they would run in the "virtual machine" but it'd be slower... AND NO-WAY WOULD NON-MS Operating Systems RUN on it.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I can only see this doing one thing for windows: shutting out competitors. It will likely enable windows to (eventually):
* run PPC/mac applications
* run linux applications
* run win16 applications (or older win32 applications)
* run X or Y applications
* provide a much more productive development environment
Now, everything but that last item would require he augmentation of the code with, say, OS emulators and the linux kernel (which they could 'bundle,' wiht a developer's CD, no? I see no reason why not, but then, I'm not a GNU pro.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
if you run 2 VM's, each running the same OS and same server process then if one goes down the other could be configured to take over. In the world of MS Windows, your OS and app is more likely to fail before the hardware. So there is an advantage in here and Microsoft might be able to say admin costs are consolidated too but I doubt that's going to be reality.
Good point though. The hardware failover goes away in this configuration.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
We are in recession now, which means that stocks are down and small - medium size companies are generally not doing so well. But this is a great time for mega enterprises like Microsoft. They might not like their won stock price, but they love others'; this is a great time for acquisition. If you recall headlines last year and early this year, there were so many acquisitions (by mega enterprises). Big companies are getting even bigger and more powerful. This is not new economy, old economy.
take your heads off of your PCs and see this for what it could really be! yes, m$ wants to run PS 1 roms on the XBOX.
ok, well, maybe not, but its as good a reason as any for their purchase, unless they plan to fuse virtual server with windows just to make extra bloat. hmmm. i keep thinking back to Cartman's trapper keeper. microsoft insorping virtualization. . . . .
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Has anyone considered that VPC will give Microsoft the DOS compatibility that it really wished it could have had in Windows 9X, ME, NT, 2000, and beyond?
This will also give them a stepping stone into supporting x86 processes on 64 bit OSes, a BIG plus!
"The next Windows Server version--code-named Longhorn--will include support for Intel's 64-bit Itanium family, of course, but it will also support 2-4 other 64-bit platforms, including AMD's Opteron, said Brian Valentine. "We will only support high volume 64-bit platforms," he said, alluding to problems Microsoft had supporting alternative architectures such as the MIPs and PowerPC on NT 4. "We will support them fully with key enterprise applications. There may be a slight lag time after the x86-64 release [of these applications], but we will support [the new platforms]." Valentine wouldn't elaborate on which 64-bit platforms Microsoft was currently evaluating."
_ rc1.asp")
(Source: "http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winnetserver
(Yes, I know that Longhorn server is dead...but Blackcomb server could still pull the aforementioned claim off.)
Could Microsoft be planning on using this as a tool to get people to migrate to some oddball 64-bit platform?
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
M$ tried to kill Adobe once, they failed. There are a lot of companies that competed with windows and 'won'.
Besides, a lot of people use VMware on Linux. unless M$ comes out with a Linux version of, um, windows, then VMware will still have most of it's market.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
> 2. Given this, what is to stop them simply buying ALL the competition? They're rich enough.
... were you actually serious?
The fact that they a) are not rich enough, b) wouldn't be after buying those companies, c) would be giving all their cash to companies who could be more focused than this new big monolith. Assuming they regulatory approval (e.g. another Bush administration)
Sincerely
I do not belive it had to go by the FTC since Connectix is a privately held company. Oh well, Bochs here I come!
I'm willing to bet the OS/2 and eComStation version of VPC will be silently snuffed out by the end of the year(if not sooner). These M$ bastards just get more evil by the day. . .
He is not patriotic. Ever heard of the american ideal "I disagree with what you say but I would defend to the death your right to say it." Rush would instead make a stupid name for you to shut you up. That's not patriotic. Disagreeing with you doesn't make one a traitor, but I have heard Rush imply that Daschle, for example, is a traitor. That liberals don't even want what is good for the country, they are not wrong, but malevolent. The man doesn't believe in the American ideal of a great democratic conversation. Your comments on 100% of protesters are, I'm sure, very carefully researched and backed with interviews and statistics, just as Rush's positions always are. BTW: there is no evidence that the Clinton's killed Vince Foster. But he is a hell of a broadcaster, and I enjoy listening to him. But his a satire artist, a political buffoon in the traditional sense, mocking the powers that be, which is great... except now his party is in power, and so that makes him more of a propagandist than humorist.
Why? Why? Why, Bill? You were doing so good earlier today!
In the meantime, I'm this much happier I dual boot.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
'The technology will be integrated into the Windows code, sources said."
Ok... so I can run one instance of linux under the buggy WXP VPC code, requiring a $2000 PC and a $500 license, or I can grab one of the 486s out of the dumpster that I've seen a lot of people throw out and run one instance of linux under that at the same speed...
Hmm... I wonder which I'd rather do?
VMWare will end up like another Netscape because the inherent technology is simple. Microsoft could easily whip up an Internet Explorer (IE) because collecting and processing HTML tags is simplistic. Once IE entered the market, Netscape became deadmeat because of Microsoft Window's dominant presence on the desktop. Microsoft rigged Windows so that Netscape simply cannot run as well as IE.
Like browers, the idea of the virtual machine is simplistic technology. A graduate student at Stanford built Disco, a pre-cursor to VMWare, within the span of about 6 months. In fact, in the ACM paper describing Disco, he explains the relative easy and simplicity of hacking together a virtual machine, compared to hacking the operating system (OS) directly. According to the paper, a virtual machine takes thousands of lines of code, but an OS takes millions of lines of code.
Disco, by the way, was a ripoff of IBM's virtual machines monitor. IBM developed the technology originally and deployed it on mainframes. The idea was ignored until some Stanford student looking to earn a Ph. D. rehashed the idea.
The rule of thumb in evaluating any new technology is the following. If it can be done in a short time within an academic environment, then that new technology is easily replicated by any commercial competitor. Previous examples of this rule are Web browers and RISC processors.
The bottom line is that VMWare is deadmeat.
I can think of a very important thing that this acquisition gets Microsoft. Right now on the server side there is a push towards 64 bit which is going to become stronger with time due to the 64 gig limit for x86. OTOH one of Microsoft's key advantages is the wealth of Wintel legacy code which doesn't run under Windows advanced server (their Itanium 2 product). Connetix sells x86 emulations software that works so well that Connetix + Microsoft OS will run almost every app runs comfortablely on a PowerPC. The same setup should work for Itanium 2.
Bundeling in an x86 emulator with the Itanium 2 product will allow Microsoft to ease their customer's switch to 64 bit hardware and not create a situation where people reevaluate their OS line just because they are ready to switch CPU lines.
i meant THEY got second post, not I.
Ah NM
Nah 1.8 gig isnt bloat ware at all, given XP takes 900meg.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Forget the fear of VPC being dropped for the Mac -- MS makes plent of Mac software. The real fear is that VPC for OS/2 will be eliminated tomorrow!
Just wondering. MS have launched their wireless smart displays. Could they be interested in the technology so that each smart display could essentially become it's own PC? (or at atleast appear to). That way, little jill can be surfing the net and reading her email in her room, whilst dad is doing his tax return in the study. All thats required is 1 PC and 2 smart displays. Wanna bet that would require 3 licences :)
my sig might not be as funny as yours, but at least it's honest!
i think this guy has a good grasp on what is up
When IBM reached the point where they had originally intended to can VM/370, they found the customers would not let them, so they made the best of things and further developed it instead (unfortunately, making most of the source code unavailable in the process).
Come on people, we all know the real reason Microsoft is buying Connectix. They were the ones who made the Virtual Game Station, the PSX emulator for the MAC and PC. Microsoft just wants a PSX emulator for the XBOX.
Profit
Microsoft insiders frequently use the heck out of VMWare. I got the impression Connectix is just starting to go head-to-head with VMWare instead of being totally focused on "Virtual PC for the Mac". VMWare has been making BUSHELS of cash from their core products and those products have been advancing rapidly in terms of usability and stability. (Note: I run three or four VM's at a time in my job everyday. Started with VMWare 2.0) I have been seeing more and more copies of VMWare out there and recommend the product all the time. I figure M$ wants to get a big piece of this virtual machining pie as it must be highly profitable. For now... Once they get in, maybe they can choke the life out of VMWare with low prices for "Microsoft VirtualPC" and then price their own product just a bit less than VMWare's current price levels after VMWare has met with an unfortunate merger into Computer Associates (where old software goes to die as Minasi says).
Another issue here might be M$ Datacentre Server which will soon be running on systems with 128 CPU's. Only a nut would do that with one instance of a Windows Server executing. More likly M$ wants to run gobs of VM's on such systems as IBM has been doing the last few years such as the the IBM Mainframe with 1024 virtual Linux servers running simultaneously.
VMWare, it's been a great run and we will miss you. WAKE UP THE FTC!!!
In principio erat Verbum.
Then talk about many instances in the same machine.
MSFT can't even run one instance good !
GOTO subject:
it was an 1.6g drive; back when that meant something. First thing I did after the initial boot was an ls and the heads on the disk went round and round and then crashed. ...of course, the hd was an extremely el-cheapo POS from egghead computers.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Is there any sanctuary? Typical. Folks with a great product selling out, first chance they get.
I am troll! Hear me grumble!
There is the anti-trust suit but the judges dont seem to care so your probably right.
mean, Palladium is going to be damned hard to crack, but if anyone at this exact moment in time has both the resources and the reason to crack palladium, it's Connectix or nobody.
They are a somewhat major company so the DMCA violation wouldn't go unnoticed. Im not sure they would risk a lawsuit from a much larger company even if they hadn't been bought out.
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
The hardware failover goes away in this configuration.
True...but failover is not the only reason. We were looking into maybe getting the more advanced VMWare version.
The reason is that we have a handful of small machines that don't do very much intensive work (DNS, mailing lists, Remedy (Help Desk), etc...) For various reasons (OS, software versions, just don't wanna put too many eggs in one basket) each of these is running on it's own machine. Some of the above are running on older desktop systems. We'd like to move them to RAID5, redundant power supply, etc... server machines, but then we're just wasting $$$ buying WAY more machine than is needed.
Getting one slightly-larger-than-mininal machine and putting virtual servers on it would be the best of both worlds. As long as the base OS doesn't go down (why would it...just install the bare minimum and VMWare) I'm actually more worried about VMWare itself bombing than the OS or hardware.
Just can't convince people that a) the cost is worth it and b) it's not that dangerous putting all the eggs in this basket.
I know a few former and current MS execs in Seattle. They have told me that MS realizes that OS X has leapfrogged windows and that OS X is now officially seen as a major threat. Still, Office X and other MS apps rake in revenue for MS and help enforce their monopoly. Bill Gates has said in the past that MS continues to make software for the Mac because it is a very profitable business. So the acquisition of Virtual PC could go either way... but now that its in the wrong hands, we should be thinking about creating an open source alternative.
Unless VMWare is planning on stagnating their product, branching out into tons of marginally related ventures, and fucking up standards implementations, I don't see them becoming a netscape.
While MS may have the foot-in-the-door advantage, I'm wondering if the fact that VMWare also supports Linux may help or not.
I know that personally, even though I run XP on my desktop, MSDN subscription, yadda yadda, I would only do something like GSX/ESX on a Linux box.
It will be interesting to see how this goes...I wish them the best of luck.
HELLO
And grand-parent, and great grandparent, etc.
I wonder what the chances are of MS producing a version of Virtual PC for Windows that supports OSX as a quest OS... oh look a cat in hell..
And me also!
This is really fucked up because I just authorized the purchase of 179 VMware licenses for the company I work for. This purchase has gone through today. We paid a ridiculous amount of money. I really hope that VMware doesn't go the way of the dodo or that's what will happen to my job. Shit.
They are a somewhat major company so the DMCA violation wouldn't go unnoticed. Im not sure they would risk a lawsuit from a much larger company even if they hadn't been bought out.
Are you sure about that?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
"large Sun, IBM, and HP boxes can run 64 CPUs without a problem and hundreds of server processes for 7/24/365.25."
Not without failover clustering they can't, and HP/IBM/Sun will be the first to tell you that.
I've never understood why Linux zealots with two desktops at home suddenly think they are experts on enterprise class systems.
Will their virtual machines run operating systems other than Microsoft's?
That's only half the question: will their virtual machine's run on other host OS's other than Microsoft?
That's part of what I really like about vmware - I have a win2k box and a linux box both running vmware and love the uniformity of having (sure the linux version is a bit less user friendly) the same app accross both of them.
Hell, if I feel like it I can shift an entire virtual machine from the linux box to the win2k box (or vice versa) if I don't want to suck up the CPU on the linux box, all I have to do is tweak a couple of parameters in the config - let's see MS's cheap imitation do that!
I wonder what they'll brand the product. Someone mentioned Windows Virtual Machine - but I think that's a bit dramatic. Although, you never know. Why bother porting all your precious .NET class libraries to a different platform when you can just as easily spend a few million on porting your platform+architecture to another platform? This acquisition, although frightening to some of us MS skeptics who own VPC, should prove to be interesting.
It was going to run Windoze insanley fast!
Maybe I'm just optimistic but it looks like a win-win deal to me. Windows users and admins get virtual machines built into the OS, which means they could potentially be more intergrated and better performing with the developers having access to the Windows source code. On the other hand, Connectix is likely to drop support for other OSs than Windows, which means less competition for VMWare.
What the hell? your "bragging" points for owning a mac is so you can run windows? doesn't anyone see the irony in that statement?
It's kind of ironic that your sig mentions Palladium -- It was what I thought of when Connectix came up. If MS wants to have a virtualization system that can run Palladium-enabled OSes in VMs, they need the virtualization system to support Palladium.
And now for the rant. MS is a good business. I have to admit that. They generally make good business moves. Their skirting the edge of disaster with the DOJ seemed risky -- but they pulled it off, much like Hitler up until Poland. MS takes very few risks, in general. They wait, find an impressive company, and buy them out. Good business move, lousy for the consumer.
This has driven me absolutely mad in the past.
Mongomusic used to be the only dot-com to successfully match my favorite artists and songs with similar ones. Microsoft bought it, and not a hint of their technology has been heard of since.
Bungie used to make tons of great games for the Mac. Their storyline was probably the best of any game I've played (as recently as a year or so ago, there was still active discussion among people trying to work out subtleties of the plot). Microsoft bought them. They made Halo...which came out for the X-Box only, despite promises.
Connectix is probably the only systems programming company that I can say flat out that I am deeply impressed with. They've a flair for low-cost, but very technically impressive products. They've rewritten and topped the memory management subsystem in the MacOS (and Win 9x line) with RamDoubler, rewritten and topped Apple's own 680x0 interpreter with SpeedDoubler, produced the QuickCam (a groundbreaking piece of hardware if there ever was one). They've produced an x86 emulator for the PPC with a very impressive M to N instruction ratio (Virtual PC), and now have a competitor to VMware, itself a technically impressive product. And what's going to happen to this kickass company -- one of the few places I'd work at at the drop of a hat? It ends up in the belly of the beast.
Sigh.
May we never see th
With just 365.24 days a year? ROFL!
It's a step towards being more compatible with other software systems. Of course they'll get away with it!
Follow me
...in order to run OS X!!!
It's quite possible to build chips that are virtually impregnable even with a handy electron microscope. Balanced rail logic (where each bit is represented by two electrical signals) is significantly tougher to decode from a scan of the chip than more conventional CMOS elements, and can easily be made resistant to other tricks like controlled power supply glitches...
OTOH, I keep having this sneaking feeling that Palladium sucks rocks technically. I just think that the flaws lie elsewhere...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I wonder how long it take them to break this application.
I works fine now for my girlfriends mac . Ofcourse we got illigal copies of WinBlows to, I'm not going to pay for that braindead OS, no way.
But anyway, this may be the end of the usefull virtual machines. Too bad, it was going the right way before m$ got there filthy grubby longnailed yellow hands on it.
Why can't those *@&^#@ people think up anything themselfes ? Why must they ruin it for us all ?
retep.
I don't trust Microsoft to run their own operating system. Now they're going to try to run others? Wow this sounds like a bad idea.
Here's a thought. Suppose MS decided to port the Win32 API from WNT over to BSD.
.Net for FreeBSD. They could do an Apple, and sell a proprietary GUI on a rock-solid OS core. Bang go the complaints about security and reliability.
They already support
They could then claim to be an "Open Source vendor", whatever that means. They'd become the largest Unix vendor (by license volume) overnight.
But they'd need an equivalent of MS WoW to run existing Win32 software. Since Connectix already has a native version for the BSD-based MacOS X, porting would be pretty straightforward. Maybe they've tried this already on the quiet before agreeing to buy.
They could also quit banging their faces into the ground, trying to migrate Hotmail from BSD to WinXP.
Of course, the really obvious way to fix the problem is to add the capability to the CPU. That would make all the workarounds and tricks unnecessary and there would be no need for VMware. VMware-like capability could be built into ordinary BIOS's or mini-OS's. All Intel or AMD would have to do would be add a self-virtualization mode to the P4 or Athlon, that handled those problematic instructions and registers correctly. They may not have seen the market for this earlier, but it's definitely out there now.
Once upon a time Connectix Developed a PSX emulator for the mac, which they started to port to the PC (it had a court case with Sony and so it was put on hold... IIRC).
One of the selling points of the PS2 is that it plays PS1 games (massive market already), using code that has already been developed by Connectix, MS could have an emulator for PS1 (and possibly PS2) which runs on the Xbox (or Xbox2), if Xbox can play PS games then there is less of a reason to by PS2 / PS3 as opposed to Xbox / Xbox2.
I think it's almost definate that we will see Connectix Technology incorporated into the Xbox as well as windows, in fact this could be more key to the purchase than incorparting VM technology into Windows, although I think having a windows server that could host a bunch of VM's with different OS's is a cool idea.
M$ bought VPC because they got wind that Apple was working closely with them to make VPC the "redbox" under IBM's 970 chip.
Then maybe Apple will have to use Bochs instead. Gives Apple complete control over the end user experience instead of a partner developer.
Suppose Apple took this approach. Take the Bochs code, throw a couple full time engineers at it for six months. Could it be made into an end-user product?
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
and a few hours rented time with an electron microscope to pull on the Palladium's keys, and suddenly MS is no longer the sole source or vendor of their Palladium platform
If each chip has a unique private key, then you've only learned one private key.
I imagine that each chip's unique private key is also digitally signed, with a certificate to proove that it is a genuine private key of a TCPA chip. (Otherwise, any idiot could just generate a key pair, and claim the private key is from a TCPA chip.)
So you obtain the key and certificate of the key's authenticity from inspection of the chip innards. So what? All you can do is emulate the one chip you inspected. You now have thousands of emulators all with identical "tcpa chips". The DRM folks just revoke anything signed with this key. We now all know that key such-and-so has been compromised and used in emulators. All new releases of Snow White will no longer play using that key. Actually, no software will trust the hardware integrity if that is the TCPA chip key.
So now you start all over. Do expensive electron microscopy again to compromise a new key. This is probably far more difficult for you to do than for them to revoke a key. Plus, what you are doing can be legislated to be illegal. Now anyone who owns an electron microscope might be very leary of letting just anyone use it.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
1) Itanic runs 64 bit apps fast, and 32 bit (x86) apps slowly. Would a 64 bit, itanic-native x86 emulator like that from connectix, run x86 apps faster than the "native" x86 support in itanic? Could the support be made seamless, so the enduser doesn't care if they're running an x86 binary or an itanic binary using something based on connectix's product?
2) This kills off the market for a major away-from-microsoft-only migration tool - virtualization products. Sure, microsoft benefits from selling windows licenses in the VM products, but how many of the people buying a virtualization product wouldn't have bought a windows computer instead if they couldn't get the virtualization? And how many of those folks wouldn't then have had the money for a mac, or a sun, or a linux-only x86 computer in addition to the "required" windows box? How many of the people running virtualization products are running microsoft oses only as long as they have to, until they can find workable app alternatives in their OS of choice? In a not insignificant number of cases I bet it wouldn't even -be- their OS of choice, anew or still, if it weren't for the virtualization product. Virtualization products are a large anti-lockin force. Microsoft is anti-anti-lockin.
I wonder why you think M$ will be doing anything with these products.
Once upon a time, M$ allegedly bought some word processors for the Atari ST platform, and people wondered what M$ would do with them.
Well, they never reappeared, and today we know that M$ bought them to kill the TOS/GEMDOS platform for office work so they would only have to support Wintel. Cheaper that way. For M$, that is.
Buying something to bury it is somehow harder in France. We learn in most engineering schools about the French patent law, one article of which states:
:o) )
"If an inventor sells his patents rights and two years later no beginning of realization has started by the acquirer, the inventor becomes again the full owner of his rights".
The legislator estimated that keeping any invention sleeping in drawers would not be a good thing for the public as a whole (What about pressuring your Congressman until such a law is examined in your country ?
(Also, if you work in a Corporation and invent something WHILE YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY INVENTION MISSION THERE, the invention is all yours, with you employer just getting a preemption right if many customers want to buy it - but this is another story)
Limbaugh is fat pride. That's it. He encourages fat people to be self righteous and they're so pathetic they love him like a dog loves sniffin' butt.
ya just gotta love it. Microsoft comes in and says that it's cheaper to run Windows servers and people buy into it. Then they realize that they can't run much more than one server application per Box and end up with dozens of Boxs...
;)
Now, people think it's "dangerous putting all the eggs"( server application consolidation ) in a single basket. That wasn't a problem on OS/2, UNIX, or Linux but then again, Microsoft sells to the PHB and not the technologist. Know wonder our economy is having trouble these days, to much is wasted on paying Microsoft and not enough on innovation, manufacturing, marketing.
The Connectix and/or VMWare solution to this Microsoft Windows problem is much like how that sector handles virus's. Spending more money on products to fix the OS problems and hope the next OS upgrade doesn't cost too much, break too much, happen too soon.
I almost feel sorry for the people who chose to be Windows admins. Almost...
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect the
sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the sunlight that
hits your neighbors' homes, too.
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