Such encoding schemes have existed for years - in fact the startup I was at in 2001 could do it. The watermarking in use is not v1, in reality it's roughly v5 and the product of millions (if not hundreds of millions) in research over at least a decade. When my old company was in talks with a few labels at that time, they were loooking at both downloadable and CD schemes. In neither case were they seriously considering a per-user watermark, because the watermark application was computationally intensive enough that it was roughly realtime to the playtime of the track in question. This made application at download time problematic, and introducing into manufacturing a no-go. Of course the increase in computation power in the last ~7 years may have changed this, and I was only involved with one possible watermarking method...
Apples and oranges - here's a breakdown of what the comparable products are:
Virtual PC Express (replaced by Virtual PC as of yesterday) ~= VMWare Player
Virtual PC ~= VMWare Workstation
Virtual Server ~= VMWare Server/VMWare GSX
There isn't really a comperable Microsoft product to VMWare ESX, though Virtual Server does have a similar feature set (just done in a much different way. The real MS competitor to ESX is Windows Virtualization, which will release shortly after Longhorn, which is built using a hardware hypervisor.
There was a time when the performance difference between VMWare and their MS comp products was enough to justify the additional cost, but the gap has closed considerably. At this point, properly configured systems running each are going to perform essentially the same (there are things each do better than the other).
Mostly true, though:
1) Connectix had only released a user-level product (what became MS Virtual PC), their server product (what became MS Virtual Server) was still in early beta at the time of the purchase.
2) They didn't buy Connectix. They bought most of the useful tech and hired away many of the useful employees, but not the company itself.:)
While I'm not part of the team, I do use VS on a regular basis and have a bit of insight on this topic.
First off, a little about how Linux support is accomplished. Virtual Server and Virtual PC use a package of "additions" which are installed in the "guest" virtual machine for performance and useability optimizations. The additions are basically device drivers optimized for for the virtualized hardware used inside the "guest". WIth luck and persistance, you've always been able to run Linux under VPC and VS, as the virtualized hardware is pretty much lowest-common-denominator stuff. The recent announcement was around both support and the fact that additions were created and released for a list of about a dozen popuplar distributions.
A little known fact is that the development and support of the additions was outsourced. This was mainly done to avoid "polluting" the VS/VPC products with GPL and other Open Source licenses that require re-released of derived code. The same company which created the additions is also the one doing the support - when a customer calls with a Linux issue, Microsoft supoprt just passes the call on to the support company, with the charges being under the Microsoft support model. This sort of thing isn't unusual. What *is* unusual is internal Microsoft employees can't even use the additions, as installing them requires kernal code in the virtual machine, which is against their anti-pollution policy.
As far as the support level, it's essentially the same as for Microsoft's own OS, with the "commercially reasonable" caveat, which basically measn they reserve the right to stop if the time/resources required to run down the fix is unreasonable. What "unreasonable" means is of course subject to interpretation...
I call BS on "no Porche" quote
on
Defining Google
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The article includes
"If anybody got a Porsche or a Ferrari right now at Google, they'd probably be drummed out of the company," observes John Battelle, an author and entrepreneur who has been following Silicon Valley companies for 20 years.
I call BS. Google is opening a new campus in Kirland, WA (another Seattle burb, next to Redmond) in an effort to poach as many devs as possible from Microsoft. My wife was out driving near there and saw a brand new Mercedes SL500 (about $90k) with the license "GOOGLE1".
On the stereo DoS theme, a minifridge, microwave, and 3-4 toast ovens. If the @ss next door is using CDs instead of MP3s, you can run them all at once and take out the power. Your MMV depending on how your dorm is wired, but it did wonders for my little brother.
I've tried it a few times now as well, hoping each time it would be better. It's not. My biggest complaint is not the fact that it takes 4 days to get here (Minneapolis), but that it takes 10 DAYS for them to recognize the disc as being returned. That means the max I could rent in a month was 6 - not really worht it for essentially a 2 week turnaround after the first selections.
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This all depends of your definition of computer - being an ISU grad I'm partial to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff%E2%80%93Berry_Computer which predates all of the above. :)
Such encoding schemes have existed for years - in fact the startup I was at in 2001 could do it. The watermarking in use is not v1, in reality it's roughly v5 and the product of millions (if not hundreds of millions) in research over at least a decade. When my old company was in talks with a few labels at that time, they were loooking at both downloadable and CD schemes. In neither case were they seriously considering a per-user watermark, because the watermark application was computationally intensive enough that it was roughly realtime to the playtime of the track in question. This made application at download time problematic, and introducing into manufacturing a no-go. Of course the increase in computation power in the last ~7 years may have changed this, and I was only involved with one possible watermarking method...
Actually, under certain circumstances under XP you can do the "host" OS + 1 VM for free. Any more than that is a license per VM - running or not.
Apples and oranges - here's a breakdown of what the comparable products are: Virtual PC Express (replaced by Virtual PC as of yesterday) ~= VMWare Player Virtual PC ~= VMWare Workstation Virtual Server ~= VMWare Server/VMWare GSX There isn't really a comperable Microsoft product to VMWare ESX, though Virtual Server does have a similar feature set (just done in a much different way. The real MS competitor to ESX is Windows Virtualization, which will release shortly after Longhorn, which is built using a hardware hypervisor. There was a time when the performance difference between VMWare and their MS comp products was enough to justify the additional cost, but the gap has closed considerably. At this point, properly configured systems running each are going to perform essentially the same (there are things each do better than the other).
Not quite, as MS Virtual Server is also free.
Mostly true, though: 1) Connectix had only released a user-level product (what became MS Virtual PC), their server product (what became MS Virtual Server) was still in early beta at the time of the purchase. 2) They didn't buy Connectix. They bought most of the useful tech and hired away many of the useful employees, but not the company itself. :)
While I'm not part of the team, I do use VS on a regular basis and have a bit of insight on this topic.
First off, a little about how Linux support is accomplished. Virtual Server and Virtual PC use a package of "additions" which are installed in the "guest" virtual machine for performance and useability optimizations. The additions are basically device drivers optimized for for the virtualized hardware used inside the "guest". WIth luck and persistance, you've always been able to run Linux under VPC and VS, as the virtualized hardware is pretty much lowest-common-denominator stuff. The recent announcement was around both support and the fact that additions were created and released for a list of about a dozen popuplar distributions.
A little known fact is that the development and support of the additions was outsourced. This was mainly done to avoid "polluting" the VS/VPC products with GPL and other Open Source licenses that require re-released of derived code. The same company which created the additions is also the one doing the support - when a customer calls with a Linux issue, Microsoft supoprt just passes the call on to the support company, with the charges being under the Microsoft support model. This sort of thing isn't unusual. What *is* unusual is internal Microsoft employees can't even use the additions, as installing them requires kernal code in the virtual machine, which is against their anti-pollution policy.
As far as the support level, it's essentially the same as for Microsoft's own OS, with the "commercially reasonable" caveat, which basically measn they reserve the right to stop if the time/resources required to run down the fix is unreasonable. What "unreasonable" means is of course subject to interpretation...
The article includes "If anybody got a Porsche or a Ferrari right now at Google, they'd probably be drummed out of the company," observes John Battelle, an author and entrepreneur who has been following Silicon Valley companies for 20 years. I call BS. Google is opening a new campus in Kirland, WA (another Seattle burb, next to Redmond) in an effort to poach as many devs as possible from Microsoft. My wife was out driving near there and saw a brand new Mercedes SL500 (about $90k) with the license "GOOGLE1".
On the stereo DoS theme, a minifridge, microwave, and 3-4 toast ovens. If the @ss next door is using CDs instead of MP3s, you can run them all at once and take out the power. Your MMV depending on how your dorm is wired, but it did wonders for my little brother.
I've tried it a few times now as well, hoping each time it would be better. It's not. My biggest complaint is not the fact that it takes 4 days to get here (Minneapolis), but that it takes 10 DAYS for them to recognize the disc as being returned. That means the max I could rent in a month was 6 - not really worht it for essentially a 2 week turnaround after the first selections.