also works in favor of online shopping. What's the carbon loading of people driving individually to a store vs a single UPS truck full of packages delivering to hundreds of households? This isn't the only study on this subject that has been done, and IIRC, the other studies came up with the opposite conclusion.
However, this is the study you can expect to see cited in the mass media.
why bother with crypto on HDs? Simply do as many businesses do. Move your drive image to a server, wipe the drive, reinstall the base OS, and once you're at your destination, open an ssh channel to the server and rsync your data back to the drive. Of course, you might have to rent a colo for a day to get access to a pipe big enough to move that data in a reasonable length of time.
If ctypto use is illegal at your destination, what are you doing there?
when registering a business domain. Use a role ID like "Network Operating Center - [company name]" instead and use network_operating_center@domain.tld or other role-related userID as an e-mail address.
Identity theft aside, when the domain name user ID information is pointed at a specific person, that person might leave the company or die or go to jail, leaving domain renewal warnings or other messages relating specifically to the domain at an address accessible to nobody at the company or even to a disgruntled ex-employee.
is a google stockholder. If RIM shares all consumer Blackberry data on request, people who have reason to care about security who are not running enterprise Blackberry servers will have to shift to android in order to get access to encrypted file / text and encrypted VOIP apps. When I replace my Blackberry, it won't be with a RIM device. People are moving off the platform and this idiocy is going to encourage the move to the exits.
If there's a difference in terms of stability between a Kubuntu desktop, a Debian desktop (ex-user), and a Fedora Core desktop (ex-user), I certainly haven't noticed one, and given that my desktop and netbook both run Kubuntu as does my roommate's 900 MHz netbook, if there were a stability problem, I'd be trying to fix it. I shifted to Kubuntu over driver availability and other convenience issues.
The whole point behind VMs is to make the host as reliable and stable as possible and put the flakier OS and software in a VM so when it crashes and burns, all one has to do is start the VM, not try to rebuild file structures and apps from scratch. Your post suggests you're not quite clear on the concept.
Unless you honestly believe that "Son of Vista" is more reliable and stable than Linux. In which case, I recommend you get help from a competent mental health professional.
speaking as someone who actually took programming classes on those things back in the 1960s, I'm not at all sure one can learn anything on those devices other than a better grasp of computing history. How is playing with paper tape going to teach anyone about how I/O works on modern computers?
If one wants equipment with super-slow execution speeds to let people see what's going on (try an oscilloscope as I did to debug a timing loop once), try finding an old Commodore 64 or Apple II on eBay.
Maybe an ad saying you're looking to buy on Craigslist might work. Offer premium prices if you have to, the idea is to offer enough money so people will dig into their garages to look for ancient hardware you need and they don't. Also, talk to some local hazmat-computer recyclers.
I have a Google Android tablet. I can go anywhere on the Web I please and install apps from any site I can download.APK files from. However, I bought it as a development platform for device control applications.
For multimedia, I prefer a netbook (I have an S101) for around the house or a motel room. The keyboard keeps it in one place in an angle suitable for viewing without having to add a stand or a docking device, and netbooks have far better performance than this generation of tablets. If I'm on foot, I'd rather get my content off a small smartphone, hanging a 7" or larger tablet off my belt is a stupid thing to do.
However, the real reason why "the netbook is not going away" is that not all of us are full-time passive consumers of content. Do you write papers for school? Do you create documents for an employer?
Would you rather type a bunch of pages on a real keyboard that does not take up screen real estate or on a virtual keyboard that takes up a third of the screen better used for document? I'm working on a patent application, and I frequently edit it via remote control from my netbook to the desktop where the file is. Speaking as an Android Tablet owner, I regard the idea of editing a 40+ page document on that tablet as a non-starter and creating one on a tablet makes a typewriter sound good.
The tablet will cut into netbook sales because the people who only want to websurf and run a few apps will buy it. But IMO, the "content-only" user is a lot less common than commonly believed.
The fanboys only want to believe that the netbook is going away because Apple doesn't make one. They're irrelevant, Steve Jobs' vision of a userbase solely composed of consumers of content created by major corporations doesn't fit the real world.
Are you running Vista, or did you totally FUBAR another version of Winblows? My quad core Linux box has no trouble with Flash. In fact, my single-core ASUS S101 netbook has no trouble with Flash. For that matter, Flash runs fine even on the 900 MHz eeePC I gave one of my roommates after I bought the S101.
If you're running quad core and have problems with Flash, while Flash has its problems, your machine has a PEBKAC problem, not a Flash problem.
the company I was working for suddenly got paranoid and started cracking down on carrying floppies onto company property because of a network viral infection incident widely believed to be the fault of somebody at C-level.
I brought in a QIC-40 tape cartridge identical to what the company was using for server backup. By mistake, I used the same format for my own desktop backup, I'd bought a cart the night before and forgot to take it out of my backpack when I got home the night before.
The temptation to do an unauthorized backup quickly passed when I realized my employer had nothing worth stealing... their technology was useless even for its intended purpose (including making money, the company folded a few months later), and anyone buying the product was probably an idiot.
might keep some troops alive one of these days. They're in the prime demographic for this kind of game and I predict that lots of active duty soldiers will be buying it. One could hope there's a military discount. Think of it as a "combat simulator troops will voluntarily play on their own time on very sophisticated graphics hardware". A simulator with a "Red Team" option is automatically more useful.
A soldier who's thinking when on convoy "Hmmm, if I were a Taliban, where would I put IEDs on this road?" or "What a wonderful place to put an ambush" because he played the "Red Team" option might outlive one who isn't thinking about things like that.
While video games are not reality, that's the problem with any kind of simulation regardless of who makes it or budget.
If you aren't familiar with that, you can use the above as a search term, including the quotes.
Has the school district hired a good environmental consultant to check the affected schools for bacteriological and/or chemical contamination? Were the affected schools built by the same contractors? Are these schools relatively new?
While microwave radiation may have long-term health risks (as I recall, the results of the studies I've run across largely depend on who's funding them), what's described here doesn't fit anything I've ever observed or heard of in connection with microwave energy. But it does fit contamination problems in buildings. Lots of people have wireless routers, me included and these things aren't going on here or around us.
Do these kids carry cell phones off campus? If microwave energy is bad for them, shouldn't they stop?
Unplugging campus routers sounds like the solution to a PR problem, NOT a health problem.
I've got a netbook and android tablet next to me right now, and I don't have a headache, skin rash, or naus... excuse me, gotta puke!
switched to a *nix with an emulation layer running XP while porting the company flagship apps to *nix. Imagine a M$ OS that's stable, reliable, and until the virus h4xx0rs catch up, largely malware free.
on the latest WikiLeaks info has gone from the DOD's "no big deal" to "threat to American troops".
But anyone who's followed politics for any length of time knows that the average classified document is classified to protect the jobs of bureaucrats and politicians, NOT the American people.
The Obama Department of 'Justice' is far more likely to prosecute whistleblowers than the companies ripping American taxpayers off that they're informing on.
A very large part of the sales appeal of a phone with an aging UI and an "uncool" form factor and a proprietary OS and limited app capability (why yes, I do have one) is precisely because it's "secure". That's why President Obama carries one.
Government and big business sales of the RIM phones are largely driven by "secure", more modern phones with more features and better UIs are available at the same price or cheaper.
Having "just" Saudi Arabia able to read Blackberry messages is like being "just" a little bit pregnant. RIM's product differentiation just disappeared... and by the time two more nations have built in wiretap capabilities thanks to RIM, their major customers will be switching to something else. IOW, they'll have destroyed their basic market for sales of a few thousand SKUs.
This is great news for Apple and Google and everyone making Android phones. If anyone wants to compete in the "secure" government and enterprise market, it's a matter of simply bundling crypto apps into the UI and making the setup easy and automatic.
As for RIM. I hope a smarter vendor picks up the touchpad when RIM goes down... IMO, it's superior to touch screen for small form-factor platforms. With a touchpad, you don't have to try to guess what's under your finger when you push the button.
target for elimination from the Internet, since Wikileaks serves a useful purpose and WaPo's apparent purpose is to spread political propaganda for whoever is in political power just like the rest of the legacy media.
Of course, there isn't a need for government action in this area, all WaPo has to do is annoy the wrong bunch of h4xx0rs.
The "journalist" should be careful what he asks for. If Wikileaks disappears, there's always a chance that he's in the "insurance" file with the rest of the rats. I don't take it for granted that the Manning Afghanistan expose is the only or even the primary content of that 1.4G file, which I would guess to be a compendium of the most embarrassing material they have been able to collect... the kind of stuff that gets politicians kicked out of office or indicted.
I wonder what this guy said about the personal computer back in the Altair days... assuming he'd actually heard of it. Probably something on the order of "this will never be a mass market technology" . Digging up what he said about the Internet back in the 1990s might be entertaining.
I checked his referenced studies. Neither is all that impressive and IMO, neither means quite what he thinks they do. With enough money and competitive pressure, I expect to see electrical storage devices far better than current lithium ion off the shelf long before 2020. Would you spend twice as much on a cell phone battery with 5-10x the capacity of your current one>? The market for high-density cost-effective storage is a lot bigger than electric cars... I not only expect to see it available, there will probably be a couple or three different solutions slugging it out in the marketplace.
As for the Deloitte study, of course the only people thinking of buying electric are very high income early adopters. Who bought the first IBM PCs for home use?
When the price comes down, people will buy them when they get word of mouth from other people, when one leaves out the internal combustion engine, one leaves out most of the repair / maintenance / downtime.
And the price will come down if the market is jump-started. The battery isn't the only component of the learning curve worth considering, manufacturing and design experience counts. But as I said, I think the study is unnecessarily pessimistic about how long it'll take advanced electrical storage to get out of the lab... so I expect dollars/kwh stored to drop as well, though perhaps not as fast. I assume that electronic hardware learning curves are among the subjects left out of the reporter's education.
There are a fair number of companies who'd like to derail or delay the transition to electric, most of whom have financial interests in oil and natural gas.
The article is a propaganda piece by a member of the Council for Foreign Relations. It's a sad comment on WaPo that they accepted it for publication, but there are lots of reasons why mainstream newspapers are dying. Lack of credibility is among the most important.
than about the problematic iPad (see also class action lawsuit) itself, i.e. who Apple thinks its customers are.
A tablet is just a tool. Who will want it depends on what they perceive they can do with it.
I've got one. It's an Android-based, and I bought it direct from a Chinese vendor (you'll probably be able to get it retail by Xmas season) because I need it as a development platform for some greentech-oriented controller applications. I paid $133 for it including shipping. I hardly consider myself a member of a selfish elite any more than I consider myself an Apple customer. My tablet has an adaptor for a USB port and wired ethernet... two things you can't plug an iPad into.
from my experience when one is ready to upgrade CPU and memory, it's generally more cost-effective to replace the motherboard as well. Particularly since even if one's CPU socket is compatible with the CPU upgrade, one can bet against the motherboard vendor putting out a BIOS upgrade. And especially since memory goes legacy and gets more expensive after 2 years.
I've had a certain amount of practice with this, I got my current Athlon Agena quad-core 9600 computer with SSD for the OS and apps and a terabyte HD for/home in 1999. Oddly enough, there isn't a single original part left in the system, which started as a K6-350 with a 6G HD.
I think I've managed one actual CPU upgrade in that length of time, and I found out after doing that... that there was no way to get firmware that was actually stable with the new Duron 1800 (replacing a 900) in that motherboard. So I replaced the motherboard.
I'd say don't figure on a CPU upgrade to a motherboard you're buying new now unless you are planning it for the next year and you know the CPU you are planning to replace is already supported in BIOS.
It's when things are not running smoothly that the proper operation of a monitoring and control system is critically important, as the 11 people who died on Deepwater Horizon would tell you if they were still alive to do so.
That'll last as long as a vendor caught with its pants down is looking for somebody to sue to unload their legal liability on.
That would be BP and Transocean as plaintiffs whoever supplied the 'defective by definition' Windows kit on the receiving end.
Given the EULA content, M$ might be a plaintiff given what this is doing for Microsoft's "good name", if not, I'm sure they'll be able to supply expert witnesses.
Sue one vendor into oblivion over using Windows and we might see a rush to the exits by SCADA and medical vendors in favor of *nix... while I agree with the Apple non-fans, I'd feel a hell of a lot safer if a nearby nuclear reactor was controlled via OSX UI than anything that ever came out of Redmond.
While I am dubious as to the suitability of Windows for desktops, speaking as an ex-user posting from a Kubuntu box, with respect to the non-suitability of Windows in applications where failures can get lots of people killed, I stand firmly in Microsoft's corner.
Slashdot Mirror
also works in favor of online shopping. What's the carbon loading of people driving individually to a store vs a single UPS truck full of packages delivering to hundreds of households? This isn't the only study on this subject that has been done, and IIRC, the other studies came up with the opposite conclusion.
However, this is the study you can expect to see cited in the mass media.
why bother with crypto on HDs? Simply do as many businesses do. Move your drive image to a server, wipe the drive, reinstall the base OS, and once you're at your destination, open an ssh channel to the server and rsync your data back to the drive. Of course, you might have to rent a colo for a day to get access to a pipe big enough to move that data in a reasonable length of time.
If ctypto use is illegal at your destination, what are you doing there?
when registering a business domain. Use a role ID like "Network Operating Center - [company name]" instead and use network_operating_center@domain.tld or other role-related userID as an e-mail address.
Identity theft aside, when the domain name user ID information is pointed at a specific person, that person might leave the company or die or go to jail, leaving domain renewal warnings or other messages relating specifically to the domain at an address accessible to nobody at the company or even to a disgruntled ex-employee.
As for Apple iPhone "crypto":
In google-chrome linux, (v6 beta), minor loss in stability, but overall speed with lots of open tabs improves to the point that it's worth it.
/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome -enable-accelerated-compositing %U
Change the activation command in icon settings to
to try it yourself. Usual disclaimer... if your machine catches fire or demons materialize and eat you after you try this, it's on you.
If there's a difference in terms of stability between a Kubuntu desktop, a Debian desktop (ex-user), and a Fedora Core desktop (ex-user), I certainly haven't noticed one, and given that my desktop and netbook both run Kubuntu as does my roommate's 900 MHz netbook, if there were a stability problem, I'd be trying to fix it. I shifted to Kubuntu over driver availability and other convenience issues.
The whole point behind VMs is to make the host as reliable and stable as possible and put the flakier OS and software in a VM so when it crashes and burns, all one has to do is start the VM, not try to rebuild file structures and apps from scratch. Your post suggests you're not quite clear on the concept.
Unless you honestly believe that "Son of Vista" is more reliable and stable than Linux. In which case, I recommend you get help from a competent mental health professional.
speaking as someone who actually took programming classes on those things back in the 1960s, I'm not at all sure one can learn anything on those devices other than a better grasp of computing history. How is playing with paper tape going to teach anyone about how I/O works on modern computers?
If one wants equipment with super-slow execution speeds to let people see what's going on (try an oscilloscope as I did to debug a timing loop once), try finding an old Commodore 64 or Apple II on eBay.
Maybe an ad saying you're looking to buy on Craigslist might work. Offer premium prices if you have to, the idea is to offer enough money so people will dig into their garages to look for ancient hardware you need and they don't. Also, talk to some local hazmat-computer recyclers.
I have a Google Android tablet. I can go anywhere on the Web I please and install apps from any site I can download .APK files from. However, I bought it as a development platform for device control applications.
For multimedia, I prefer a netbook (I have an S101) for around the house or a motel room. The keyboard keeps it in one place in an angle suitable for viewing without having to add a stand or a docking device, and netbooks have far better performance than this generation of tablets. If I'm on foot, I'd rather get my content off a small smartphone, hanging a 7" or larger tablet off my belt is a stupid thing to do.
However, the real reason why "the netbook is not going away" is that not all of us are full-time passive consumers of content. Do you write papers for school? Do you create documents for an employer?
Would you rather type a bunch of pages on a real keyboard that does not take up screen real estate or on a virtual keyboard that takes up a third of the screen better used for document? I'm working on a patent application, and I frequently edit it via remote control from my netbook to the desktop where the file is. Speaking as an Android Tablet owner, I regard the idea of editing a 40+ page document on that tablet as a non-starter and creating one on a tablet makes a typewriter sound good.
The tablet will cut into netbook sales because the people who only want to websurf and run a few apps will buy it. But IMO, the "content-only" user is a lot less common than commonly believed.
The fanboys only want to believe that the netbook is going away because Apple doesn't make one. They're irrelevant, Steve Jobs' vision of a userbase solely composed of consumers of content created by major corporations doesn't fit the real world.
Are you running Vista, or did you totally FUBAR another version of Winblows? My quad core Linux box has no trouble with Flash. In fact, my single-core ASUS S101 netbook has no trouble with Flash. For that matter, Flash runs fine even on the 900 MHz eeePC I gave one of my roommates after I bought the S101.
If you're running quad core and have problems with Flash, while Flash has its problems, your machine has a PEBKAC problem, not a Flash problem.
the company I was working for suddenly got paranoid and started cracking down on carrying floppies onto company property because of a network viral infection incident widely believed to be the fault of somebody at C-level.
I brought in a QIC-40 tape cartridge identical to what the company was using for server backup. By mistake, I used the same format for my own desktop backup, I'd bought a cart the night before and forgot to take it out of my backpack when I got home the night before.
The temptation to do an unauthorized backup quickly passed when I realized my employer had nothing worth stealing... their technology was useless even for its intended purpose (including making money, the company folded a few months later), and anyone buying the product was probably an idiot.
I was there because I REALLY needed the money.
might keep some troops alive one of these days. They're in the prime demographic for this kind of game and I predict that lots of active duty soldiers will be buying it. One could hope there's a military discount. Think of it as a "combat simulator troops will voluntarily play on their own time on very sophisticated graphics hardware". A simulator with a "Red Team" option is automatically more useful.
A soldier who's thinking when on convoy "Hmmm, if I were a Taliban, where would I put IEDs on this road?" or "What a wonderful place to put an ambush" because he played the "Red Team" option might outlive one who isn't thinking about things like that.
While video games are not reality, that's the problem with any kind of simulation regardless of who makes it or budget.
"Sick building syndrome".
If you aren't familiar with that, you can use the above as a search term, including the quotes.
Has the school district hired a good environmental consultant to check the affected schools for bacteriological and/or chemical contamination? Were the affected schools built by the same contractors? Are these schools relatively new?
While microwave radiation may have long-term health risks (as I recall, the results of the studies I've run across largely depend on who's funding them), what's described here doesn't fit anything I've ever observed or heard of in connection with microwave energy. But it does fit contamination problems in buildings. Lots of people have wireless routers, me included and these things aren't going on here or around us.
Do these kids carry cell phones off campus? If microwave energy is bad for them, shouldn't they stop?
Unplugging campus routers sounds like the solution to a PR problem, NOT a health problem.
I've got a netbook and android tablet next to me right now, and I don't have a headache, skin rash, or naus... excuse me, gotta puke!
switched to a *nix with an emulation layer running XP while porting the company flagship apps to *nix. Imagine a M$ OS that's stable, reliable, and until the virus h4xx0rs catch up, largely malware free.
on the latest WikiLeaks info has gone from the DOD's "no big deal" to "threat to American troops".
But anyone who's followed politics for any length of time knows that the average classified document is classified to protect the jobs of bureaucrats and politicians, NOT the American people.
The Obama Department of 'Justice' is far more likely to prosecute whistleblowers than the companies ripping American taxpayers off that they're informing on.
A very large part of the sales appeal of a phone with an aging UI and an "uncool" form factor and a proprietary OS and limited app capability (why yes, I do have one) is precisely because it's "secure". That's why President Obama carries one.
Government and big business sales of the RIM phones are largely driven by "secure", more modern phones with more features and better UIs are available at the same price or cheaper.
Having "just" Saudi Arabia able to read Blackberry messages is like being "just" a little bit pregnant. RIM's product differentiation just disappeared... and by the time two more nations have built in wiretap capabilities thanks to RIM, their major customers will be switching to something else. IOW, they'll have destroyed their basic market for sales of a few thousand SKUs.
This is great news for Apple and Google and everyone making Android phones. If anyone wants to compete in the "secure" government and enterprise market, it's a matter of simply bundling crypto apps into the UI and making the setup easy and automatic.
As for RIM. I hope a smarter vendor picks up the touchpad when RIM goes down... IMO, it's superior to touch screen for small form-factor platforms. With a touchpad, you don't have to try to guess what's under your finger when you push the button.
target for elimination from the Internet, since Wikileaks serves a useful purpose and WaPo's apparent purpose is to spread political propaganda for whoever is in political power just like the rest of the legacy media.
Of course, there isn't a need for government action in this area, all WaPo has to do is annoy the wrong bunch of h4xx0rs.
The "journalist" should be careful what he asks for. If Wikileaks disappears, there's always a chance that he's in the "insurance" file with the rest of the rats. I don't take it for granted that the Manning Afghanistan expose is the only or even the primary content of that 1.4G file, which I would guess to be a compendium of the most embarrassing material they have been able to collect... the kind of stuff that gets politicians kicked out of office or indicted.
He isn't even an economist.
I wonder what this guy said about the personal computer back in the Altair days... assuming he'd actually heard of it. Probably something on the order of "this will never be a mass market technology" . Digging up what he said about the Internet back in the 1990s might be entertaining.
I checked his referenced studies. Neither is all that impressive and IMO, neither means quite what he thinks they do. With enough money and competitive pressure, I expect to see electrical storage devices far better than current lithium ion off the shelf long before 2020. Would you spend twice as much on a cell phone battery with 5-10x the capacity of your current one>? The market for high-density cost-effective storage is a lot bigger than electric cars... I not only expect to see it available, there will probably be a couple or three different solutions slugging it out in the marketplace.
As for the Deloitte study, of course the only people thinking of buying electric are very high income early adopters. Who bought the first IBM PCs for home use?
When the price comes down, people will buy them when they get word of mouth from other people, when one leaves out the internal combustion engine, one leaves out most of the repair / maintenance / downtime.
And the price will come down if the market is jump-started. The battery isn't the only component of the learning curve worth considering, manufacturing and design experience counts. But as I said, I think the study is unnecessarily pessimistic about how long it'll take advanced electrical storage to get out of the lab... so I expect dollars/kwh stored to drop as well, though perhaps not as fast. I assume that electronic hardware learning curves are among the subjects left out of the reporter's education.
There are a fair number of companies who'd like to derail or delay the transition to electric, most of whom have financial interests in oil and natural gas.
The article is a propaganda piece by a member of the Council for Foreign Relations. It's a sad comment on WaPo that they accepted it for publication, but there are lots of reasons why mainstream newspapers are dying. Lack of credibility is among the most important.
than about the problematic iPad (see also class action lawsuit) itself, i.e. who Apple thinks its customers are.
A tablet is just a tool. Who will want it depends on what they perceive they can do with it.
I've got one. It's an Android-based, and I bought it direct from a Chinese vendor (you'll probably be able to get it retail by Xmas season) because I need it as a development platform for some greentech-oriented controller applications. I paid $133 for it including shipping. I hardly consider myself a member of a selfish elite any more than I consider myself an Apple customer. My tablet has an adaptor for a USB port and wired ethernet... two things you can't plug an iPad into.
from my experience when one is ready to upgrade CPU and memory, it's generally more cost-effective to replace the motherboard as well. Particularly since even if one's CPU socket is compatible with the CPU upgrade, one can bet against the motherboard vendor putting out a BIOS upgrade. And especially since memory goes legacy and gets more expensive after 2 years.
/home in 1999. Oddly enough, there isn't a single original part left in the system, which started as a K6-350 with a 6G HD.
... that there was no way to get firmware that was actually stable with the new Duron 1800 (replacing a 900) in that motherboard. So I replaced the motherboard.
I've had a certain amount of practice with this, I got my current Athlon Agena quad-core 9600 computer with SSD for the OS and apps and a terabyte HD for
I think I've managed one actual CPU upgrade in that length of time, and I found out after doing that
I'd say don't figure on a CPU upgrade to a motherboard you're buying new now unless you are planning it for the next year and you know the CPU you are planning to replace is already supported in BIOS.
It's when things are not running smoothly that the proper operation of a monitoring and control system is critically important, as the 11 people who died on Deepwater Horizon would tell you if they were still alive to do so.
That'll last as long as a vendor caught with its pants down is looking for somebody to sue to unload their legal liability on.
That would be BP and Transocean as plaintiffs whoever supplied the 'defective by definition' Windows kit on the receiving end.
Given the EULA content, M$ might be a plaintiff given what this is doing for Microsoft's "good name", if not, I'm sure they'll be able to supply expert witnesses.
Sue one vendor into oblivion over using Windows and we might see a rush to the exits by SCADA and medical vendors in favor of *nix... while I agree with the Apple non-fans, I'd feel a hell of a lot safer if a nearby nuclear reactor was controlled via OSX UI than anything that ever came out of Redmond.
While I am dubious as to the suitability of Windows for desktops, speaking as an ex-user posting from a Kubuntu box, with respect to the non-suitability of Windows in applications where failures can get lots of people killed, I stand firmly in Microsoft's corner.
Having an iteration on the desktop might be helpful ... I presume it'll work just fine in Virtualbox.
works just fine and I didn't build it, I bought it direct from a Chinese vendor. Hopefully, I'll be able to write scripts that'll run on it.