I installed VirtualBox to run XP and Office so I could use my main Ubuntu box to check Word docs (with all of the nice features like Track Chnages) and large Excel models and shoot them back to my colleagues.  I tried OO but that did not work, esp. with regards to presentation.

VirtualBox is simple to install and runs XP really nicely.  The hardest part is to understand the virtualization concepts (guest, host…) and make sure you do enable USB, sound AND install guest additions.  If you are in search of the right how-to, I would suggest the VirtualBox article in the French Ubuntu Documentation center which, as usual, is fantastic.

It is incredible, actually: XP is easier to run and administer when virtualized on Linux than on its own.   I have access to more graphical options (size of screen) than when it was installed in dual boot on the Ubuntu box which I am writing this post on.  VB can manage the XP disk size dynamically meaning there is little downside to giving XP quite a bit of room as it will be used only when needed….  Finally, XP does not have to be rebooted, as you only load a snapshot of the OS state, meaning it takes about 30 second to launch VirtualBox and start working! Amazing.  It remains to be seen whether it is truly stable or whether I have to "reboot" XP every other day.

I have found the only downside to be those pesky activation processes XP and Office throws at you: I won those copies but MSFT seems to think I need to waste half an hour with support on the phone, just to make sure I did not steal them.

Has anyone out there had a better experience (speed, stability…) with VMWare or QEMU? Should I try them on for size as well?

Deutsche Gramophon just opened their own perfect little shop on the web, though, and they do allow lowly Europeans to get their fill of classical music, DRM-free and ripped to a decent 320.  The only peeve I have is that I am more of an Ogg guy: MP3s, at that rate, tend to sound just as good but are way larger, but that’s OK.

Albums are cheap, too, with old issues priced around EUR10.  I finally got my hands back on Levine’s Carmina Burana, which I had on tape 20 years ago and hadn’t been able to purchase on CD.  I don’t think it was truly OOP, it’s just that I hadn’t been able to track it down again.  Well, I can hear Anderson’s voice in all her crystalline beauty back again!

This has to work.  There is no other way for the music business.  Will the pirates respect that and not flood P2P sites with DG’s back catalog?  In the case of classical music, yes, I believe it should work.  For rock, I remain skeptical.

When I was a VC, I had to interact quite a bit with Silicon Valley (VCs, bankers and entrepreneurs alike), whether as a source of ideas, news, deals, money, you name it.  I of course travelled there quite a few times and loved the weather, the geography and the sense of it being the center of my beloved industry, IT.

Something always bothered me though: as an avowed European player, I always felt quite a bit of haughtiness on the part of the SV people I met.  It was not xenophobia, people in Silicon Valley are *very* open to people from outside the US.  It went deeper than that: if you weren’t part of the Valley scene, you were a bit player and could not understand things as well as people who lived and worked somewhere between SF and San Jose (Jim, Andy, yes, I am talking about you).

I worked out of the Boston office of a large VC fund for a while and it was the same, the difference being that the East Coast VCs actually felt they were better than SV, themselves.

I think this arrogance is exploding on the blog scene, and I think the worst offender is the celebrated Marc Andreessen.  His blog is interesting and Marc is indisputably an industry luminary but sometimes he just goes on and explain how Tinsel Town should be rebuilt on the Silicon Valley image, thus showing to the rest of the world how Silicon Valley has become Hollywood: the same insularity, the same belief they have cracked the code and are the Masters of the Universe whose model can be used to solve all of the World’s problems.  Doesn’t that also remind you of Wall Street in the 80s?

If you want to have a feel where this might lead (beyond the groupthink), read Indecent Exposure : A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street.

Anyway, my biggest surprise is how little changes from 7.04 to 7.10. Gnome 2.20? I could not tell the difference. OO 3.x? I use GNUmeric and AbiWord. Evolution? I use TB and SB… The list goes on and on.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Just my kind of humor. Sorry.

Olivier used to be a very senior executive with Microsoft France, a very important subsidiary for Microsoft as a whole. He is now an adviser for a number of start-ups so can give us an unbiased look at Ubuntu. His conclusions are very interesting and balanced.  Don’t bother with the comments: some are interesting, most are just the usual French Microsoft-bashing that is so tiresome.

I urge anyone with a taste for noisy/indie pop to go out and buy Blonde Redhead’s latest album, 23.  I just stop listening to it: fantastic melodies, quirky arrangements and weird voices (esp. the voice of the female singer, very high and slightly off-key).  It reminds me of the Lush of Split and the ur-masterpiece of noisy pop, My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless.

This album is my first contact with BRH, so let me know if I am a bit late to the party, as I realize they have been around for some time!

In my thirty something mind, it may also signals the return of 4AD, the fabled 90s label.  For a number of years (ever since This Mortal Coil’s Bloood even), they just didn’t surprise me with the groups they signed and the albums they put out (a consequence of Ivo moving from rainy Britain to LA??).  For a spell in the late 801s/early 90s, I would buy every single album they put out, without an exception, so good was Ivo Watts-Russel’s ear!  The strange thing is, 23 sounds 4AD, and the whole album belong with all of the other great stuff Ivo has discovered over the years.  Great work!

I think that Microsoft is still trying to ship an OS that is one-size fits all, i.e works for the developpers, the hackers, the power users and people who just want a box that switches itself on when they push the button to look at something on the Internet. In terms of UI, I just don’t see how it is possible to create a unified system that can fulfill everyone’s needs.

The situation is different for Apple, with a more unified customer base and less stringent demands. The situation is also different for Linux where the hackers and programmers have Gentoo when I have Ubuntu.

When I was a VC, people used to say that the PC industry would have to become a lot like the car industry, that is ship products that just work. The same metaphor could also mean that there should be a diversity of platforms that just isn’t here yet: we are still pretty much in the Ford T era, where everyone can have a different car provided it is a black Model T and everyone can have a PC provided it is running Windows.

Are we seeing a new world where a diversity of OSs mean we have reached some kind of maturity and not everyone is satisfied by the same product? Should Microsoft give up on ubiquity?