I created my first virtual machine this week. No I didn’t use the Windows version, nor did I use VM Ware. A friend put me onto Oracle VM Virtualbox. He’d spent some time testing the various products and told me that not only was this one freeware but also had one of the lowest signatures or impact on the host operating system. Or put more simply sucked less resources. Oracle VM Virtualbox is available here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualbox/downloads/index.html. The first thing you should notice is the large, no huge number of operating systems supported. Just about every Linux version is supported in addition to Mac OS X and of course Windows.
I installed under Windows 7 and when it had finished I had the option of building an instance from Win 3.1 to Windows 8 with everything in between. Before you get too excited you will of course need the original operating system install disks or the nearest equivalent. I had an XP SP2 version I had on my old computer so I selected XP and ran through the installation process. Since it was XP about 30 minutes later I had a basic XP instance running in a window on my Windows 7 desktop.
For those that have done this before this is hardly news but it now allows me to use my old scanner that does not have any drivers for Windows 7, Epson, because the instance has full access to any devices connected to my computer, Epson, thus allowing me to reuse my perfectly functional but perhaps deliberately made obsolete scanner from, yes you guessed it Epson.
I was reminded this week how users can come up with some very creative ways to test applications. They have the ability to think up test scenarios that are quite different than the normal processing options. Remember that there is a limit to just how far off normal you should try and support. There is a point of diminishing returns that when reached should not be crossed.
There is a Java based lawsuit going on at the moment between Oracle and Google. New lawsuit, big deal you may say but there are ramifications. If Oracle wins, and particularly in the US environment, the logical extension is that software interfaces and computer languages could fall under copywrong protection. Imagine the cost of development applications if the underlying languages fall under copyright.
Until now only the source code is subject to copyright but not the underlying language and interface. There are treaties and everything. There are also legal decisions (Advocate General Yves Bot - European Court of Justice) that have conformed this e.g. that the functionalities of a program, and the programming language, cannot be protected by copyright. He also said that the source code of a program "may be reproduced in order to ensure interoperability with another program", but only if "certain conditions are met". Fairly clear and not coincidentally forms part of Google’s defence.
The court case is based on Oracle’s claim that Google is infringing copyright by embedding Java into its Android platform. Oracle also suggests that there’s no clear precedent to exclude computer languages from copyright. Oracle argues a lot of other things including using Tolkein’s Elvish language as an example. I started to get a bit fuzzy at that point because their logic stopped making any real sense.
Google’s example made a bit more sense to me. According to the US's Copyright Act of 1976 an “idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery” is not copyrightable, even if it is in an "original work of authorship". A language is something that is used to express a thought, an idea, and application, and so on. Stay with me.
Say someone built a set of APIs that looked like Oracles but did not return the same results. Instead they always returned -1, for everything. They may have the same structure, selection and organization as the Oracle APIs but they would hardly be expressing the combination as Oracle’s product. Oracle’s argument is that the structure alone is enough to provide infringement. If Oracle wins then if someone comes out with a system then copyright will be allowed on the descriptions and implementations of the system (APIs and expressions) enough to stop others from using the same system.
When Java belonged to Sun they didn’t have an issue with Java implementations that did not threaten Sun. The copyrighting process allows for the ignoring of trivial infringements. If Oracle wins then this flexibility vanishes. Of course Google should have licensed Java when they used it and there would have been no issue. Or Google could develop their own language and virtual machine. Since they decided to take the easy, and not quite so legal, approach the losses could be, well everyone. If the copyright system is expanded by this case it will end up in places it really has no right to be in.
Industry News
So Windows 8 will be coming out in three versions. There will be 32 and 64-bit versions of both Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro. Yes, boring. There will also be Windows 8 RT a.k.a. Windows on ARM or WOA. I’ve mentioned this version before. It will come preinstalled on ARM based tablets and PCs with touch screens. No idea on why it’s called RT, but people are guessing things like “real time” and “run time.”
RT will come with touch optimised versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. It will also form the basis of “a new generation of cloud-enabled, touch-enabled, web-connected apps of all kinds.” If it fails I can think if a few other options for what RT might stand for.
So everyone uses the Internet these days right? We would expect a super user country like the US should be right up there in the high 90’s. Nope according to a recent Pew and American Life survey about twenty per cent of Americans don’t use the Internet and don’t want to. Since 1995 Internet usage is up ten per cent from about 78 per cent. This indicates not only a very mature marketplace but also that the remainder are highly unlikely to move, that is at least until they are replaced by a newer generation.
About half of the remainder do not see any relevance in the Internet. Of the rest some find it still too expensive, six per cent are too remote for access and a couple of per cent cannot use it due to physical limitations. The demographic breakdown is not surprising. People earning under $30K, the elderly, those who didn’t finish high school and non-English speakers. Now for the surprise this same group led the way in those who access the Internet with their phone instead of a computer.
Interestingly about 88 per cent of Americans own a mobile phone, 56 per cent own a lap top, 19 per cent own an e-Book reader.
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