Thushan Fernando Uncut

It only feels like last week that I mentioned the beta release of VirtualBox 3.0, Sun has released the final version of the much anticipated v3.0!

As mentioned earlier, this release is super exciting for the simple fact that it has SMP support – a maximum of 32 virtual CPUs (but relax, you shouldn’t assign more than what you can afford – or the number of cores you have!). VMWare still only supports a maximum of 2 virtual-cpus (this _may_ change in VMWare 7.0!), another feat is the hardware 3D (Direct3D/OpenGL)  support for guests.

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

• Guest SMP with up to 32 virtual CPUs (VT-x and AMD-V only; see chapter 3.7.2.2 of the user manual)
• Windows guests: ability to use Direct3D 8/9 applications / games (experimental; see chapter 4.8 of the user manual)
• Support for OpenGL 2.0 for Windows, Linux and Solaris guests

In addition, the following items were ?xed and/or added:

• Solaris hosts: allow suspend/resume on the host when a VM is running (bug #3826)
• Solaris hosts: loosen the restriction for contiguous physical memory under certain conditions
• Mac OS X hosts: ?xed guest PAE
• Linux hosts: kernel module compile ?xes for 2.6.31 (bug #4264)
• VMM: ?xed occasional guru meditation when loading a saved state (VT-x only)
• VMM: eliminated IO-APIC overhead with 32 bits guests (VT-x only, some Intel CPUs don’t support this feature (most do); bug #638)
• VMM: ?xed 64 bits CentOS guest hangs during early boot (AMD-V only; bug #3927)
• VMM: performance improvements for certain PAE guests (e.g. Linux 2.6.29+ kernels)
• VMM: some Windows guests detected a completely wrong CPU frequency (bug #2227)
• VMM: ?xed hanging and unkillable VM processes (bug #4040)
• VMM: ?xed random infrequent guest crashes due to XMM state corruption (Win64 hosts only)
• VMM: performance improvements for network I/O (VT-x/AMD-V only)
• GUI: added mini toolbar for fullscreen and seamless mode (Thanks to Huihong Luo)
• GUI: redesigned settings dialogs
• GUI: allow to create/remove more than one host-only network adapters (non Windows hosts)
• GUI: display estimated time for long running operations (e.g. OVF import/export)
• GUI: ?xed rare hangs when open the OVF import/export wizards (bug #4157)
• 3D support: ?xed VM crashes for client applications using incorrect OpenGL states
• 3D support: ?xed memory corruption when querying for supported texture compression formats
• 3D support: ?xed incorrect rendering of glDrawRangeElements
• 3D support: ?xed memory leak when using VBOs
• 3D support: ?xed glew library detection
• 3D support: ?xed random textures corruption
• VRDP: support Windows 7 RDP client
• Networking: ?xed another problem with TX checksum of?oading with Linux kernels up to version 2.6.18
• NAT: ?xed “open ports on virtual router 10.0.2.2 – 513, 514” (forum)
• NAT: allow to con?gure socket and internal parameters
• NAT: allow to bind sockets to speci?c interface
• PXE boot: signi?cant performance increase (VT-x/AMD-V only)
• VHD: properly write empty sectors when cloning of VHD images (bug #4080)
• VHD: ?xed crash when discarding snapshots of a VHD image
• VHD: ?xed access beyond the block bitmap which could lead to arbitrary crashes
• VBoxManage: ?xed incorrect partition table processing when creating VMDK ?les giving raw partition access (bug #3510)
• VBoxManage: support cloning to existing image ?le
• OVF: several OVF 1.0 compatibility ?xes
• OVF: ?xed exporting of disk images when multiple virtual machines are exported at once
• Virtual mouse device: eliminated micro-movements of the virtual mouse which were confusing some applications (bug #3782)
• Shared Folders: sometimes a ?le was created using the wrong permissions (2.2.0 regression; bug #3785)
• Shared Folders: allow to change ?le attributes from Linux guests and use the correct ?le mode when creating ?les
• Shared Folders: some content was incorrectly written under certain conditions (bug #1187)
• Shared Folders: ?xed incorrect ?le timestamps, when using Windows guest on a Linux host (bug #3404)
• X11 clipboard: ?x duplicate end of lines (bug #4270)
• X11 guests: a number of shared clipboard ?xes
• Linux guests: Guest Additions support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11
• Linux guests: new daemon vboxadd-service to handle time synchronization and guest property lookup
• Linux guests: implemented guest properties (OS info, logged in users, basic network information)
• Windows host installer: VirtualBox Python API can now be installed automatically (requires Python and Win32 Extensions installed)
• USB: Support for high-speed isochronous endpoints has been added. In addition, read-ahead buffering is performed for input endpoints (currently Linux hosts only). This should allow additional devices to work, notably webcams (bug #242).
• USB: ?xed error handling for some USB dongles
• Web service: ?xed inability to handle NULL pointers for object arguments, which are valid values for a lot of APIs, in both the raw and the object-oriented web service.
• Web service: object-oriented bindings for JAX-WS did not exhibit interface inheritance correctly, ?xed
• Web service: added support for IDisplay and IGuest interfaces, which were previously unavailable
• Registration dialog uses Sun Online accounts now

Why keep reading, upgrade dammit!

• VirtualBox 3.0.0 for Windows hosts x86/amd64

• VirtualBox 3.0.0 for OS X hosts Intel Macs

• VirtualBox 3.0.0 for Linux hosts

• VirtualBox 3.0.0 for Solaris and OpenSolaris hosts x86/amd64

• VirtualBox 3.0.0 Software Developer Kit (SDK) All platforms (registration required)

Enjoy, see the manual online too!

C/C++, Cool Tools, Developer, Kernel / Internals, News & Events, Operating Systems, Software, Tools / Products, Virtualisation, Windows hypervisor, linux, virt, virtualbox, virtualisation, virtualization, vmware

The moment we’ve all been waiting for, Mozilla has released the final version of Firefox 3.5 (which was originally slated to be 3.1). Amongst the highlights include the new Gecko 1.9.1 rendering engine and (from their release notes):

• Available in more than 70 languages. (Get your local version!)
• Support for the HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements including native support for Ogg Theora encoded video and Vorbis encoded audio. (Try it here!)
• Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
• Better web application performance using the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
• The ability to share your location with websites using Location Aware Browsing. (Try it here!)
• Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Support for new web technologies such as: downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage, <canvas> text, ICC profiles, and SVG transforms.

For the developers, the Mozilla developer centre details the changes in this release. But the most exciting is the support for <video> and <audio> elements from the HTML 5 draft and the inclusion of the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.

Download it now!

Beta, Developer, News & Events, Tools / Products, Web / Internets ajax, browser, firefox, html, html5, internet, javascript, json, mozilla, web

I've made a huge mistake

An article in The Age about computer techs and their chosen lifestyle made me realise just what a mistake we’re making.

Long story short: now I run a computer repair business.

Babes, parties, status, wealth – these are just some of the things you’ll be missing out on by becoming a computer tech.

But that’s OK. If you have what it takes to be a computer tech, you will have a genetic predisposition to driving away members of the opposite sex. In fact, members of any sex.

I’m just kidding.

Oh darn, I was just about to enjoy being a techie. But wait he’s just kidding.

How do you know if you have this personality type? If you have more computer magazines than girlie magazines, and if the thought of an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 with 12mb L2 cache running at a clock speed of 2.83GHz and a bus speed of 1333 MHz stirs the kind of feelings usually associated with procreation, you are well on your way to a career in computing.

Uh-oh, this one time, at band-camp LAN camp I was talking about the new Intel i7’s coming up and oh noooooo! Just remembered I also have far too many developer mags lying around and no Womens Weekly nor Cosmopolitan’s. Doom is imminent, it was also a kick-ass game made by those clever folks at id Software who just the other day got bought out by Zenimax Media, they’re also working on Doom 4 powered by the RAGE engine did you know? Doh, I’m digging my own grave aren’t I by going on? I better stop, you just go and read the article yourself before I start admitting to something like my crazy adventures in Linux.

But if your a hottie and you see a computer-techno-nottie, just go and give them a hug. They need it, those tradies, they’ve got their stuff together, so do the sparkies. We programmers, gamers who resort to online dating and wierdly obsessed facebook/twitter stalkers need love too. Who knows, we might even get around to fixing that problem with the mouse moving around the screen all by itself one day.

One things for sure, the future is not set, there is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

Developer, Gaming, Humour, Its My Life computer, Developer, facebook, gamer, humor, Humour, nerd, twitter

Not a good way to end the week, Michael Jackson has past away due to a heart attack and Farrah Fawcett has lost her battle with cancer.

Two very iconic celebrities, I still remember trying to impress the laydees in Grade 2/3 doing the moon walk in primary school. It was always about the music. RIP to both.

If anyone’s going to the airport, be ready for one long ride, theres a major accident on the tullamarine today and the driver has past away, the car (looked like a Holden Barina or another small car) was a small ball of metal

News & Events

Sun is prepping up the release of VirtualBox 3.0 which should be out soonishly (before the end of the month if everything is on track!). Amongst the top new bits of functionality is the guest multi-processing (SMP) support, you can now offer your virtual machines upto 32 virtual CPUs, which at last count was the highest by any hypervisor (VMWare can offer a maximum of 2). Not only that, but Windows guests get Direct3D 9 acceleration, bi-directional OVF support (still need to sysprep drivers) and OpenGL 2.0 support for Linux, Solaris & Windows guests.

VirtualBox 3.0 Beta 2 was released yesterday, from the Beta 2 forum post:

Changes since Beta 1: (regressions and fixes for new features only; additional fixes below)

• High CPU usage with certain idle Windows guests (e.g. XP SP2)
• Performance improvements for SMP guests
• Reset issues with SMP guests
• Windows 7 x64 boot problems with SMP
• Windows 7 shutdown hangs with SMP
• Hanging VM when unmounting an ISO with SMP guests
• Several OpenGL & Direct3D related fixes

Version 3.0 will be a major update. The following major new features were added:

• Guest SMP with up to 32 virtual CPUs (VT-x and AMD-V only)
• Windows guests: ability to use Direct3D 8/9 applications / games (experimental)
• Support for OpenGL 2.0 for Windows, Linux and Solaris guests

In addition, the following items were ?xed and/or added:

• Solaris hosts: allow suspend/resume on the host when a VM is running (bug #3826)
• Solaris hosts: tighten the restriction for contiguous physical memory under certain conditions
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed guest PAE
• Linux hosts: kernel module compile fixes for 2.6.31 (bug #4264)
• VMM: ?xed occassional guru meditation when loading a saved state (VT-x only)
• VMM: eliminated IO-APIC overhead with 32 bits guests (VT-x only, some Intel CPUs don’t support this feature (most do); bug #638)
• VMM: ?xed 64 bits CentOS guest hangs during early boot (AMD-V only; bug #3927)
• VMM: performance improvements for certain PAE guests (e.g. Linux 2.6.29+ kernels)
• VMM: some Windows guests detected a completely wrong CPU frequency (bug #2227)
• VMM: fixed hanging and unkillable VM processes (bug #4040)
• GUI: added mini toolbar for fullscreen and seamless mode (Thanks to Huihong Luo)
• GUI: redesigned settings dialogs
• GUI: allow to create/remove one host-only network adapters
• GUI: allow to create/remove more than one host-only network adapters (non Windows hosts)
• GUI: display estimated time for long running operations (e.g. OVF import/export)
• GUI: Fixed rare hangs when open the OVF import/export wizards (bug #4157)
• 3D support: fixed VM crashes for client apps using incorrect opengl states
• VRDP: support Windows 7 RDP client
• Networking: ?xed another problem with TX checksum of?oading with Linux kernels up to version 2.6.18
• NAT: allow to con?gure socket and internal parameters
• VHD: properly write empty sectors when cloning of VHD images (bug #4080)
• VHD: ?xed crash when discarding snapshots of a VHD image
• VHD: fixed access beyond the block bitmap which could lead to arbitrary crashes
• VBoxManage: ?xed incorrect partition table processing when creating VMDK ?les giving raw partition access (bug #3510)
• OVF: several OVF 1.0 compatibility ?xes
• Virtual mouse device: eliminated micro-movements of the virtual mouse which were confusing some applications (bug #3782)
• Shared Folders: sometimes a ?le was created using the wrong permissions (2.2.0 regression; bug #3785)
• Shared Folders: allow to change ?le attributes from Linux guests and use the correct ?le mode when creating ?les
• Shared Folders: some content was incorrectly written under certain conditions (bug #1187)
• Shared Folders: ?xed incorrect ?le timestamps, when using Windows guest on a Linux host (bug #3404)
• X11 guests: a number of shared clipboard fixes
• Linux guests: Guest Additions support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11
• Linux guests: new daemon vboxadd-service to handle time syncronization and guest property lookup
• Linux guests: implemented guest properties (OS info, logged in users, basic network information)
• Windows host installer: VirtualBox Python API can now be installed automatically (requires Python and Win32 Extensions installed)
• USB: Support for high-speed isochronous endpoints has been added. In addition, read-ahead buffering is performed for input endpoints (currently Linux hosts only). This should allow additional devices to work, notably webcams
• Web service: fixed inability to handle NULL pointers for object arguments, which are valid values for a lot of APIs, in both the raw and the object-oriented web service.
• Web service: object-oriented bindings for JAX-WS did not exhibit interface inheritance correctly, fixed
• Web service: added support for IDisplay and IGuest interfaces, which were previously unavailable
• Registration dialog uses Sun Online accounts now

As a VBox junkie I’ve moved my lappy to use the 3.0 Beta 1 and Beta 2 releases and Beta 2 1 day into musing seems quite stable.

VirtualBox-3.0.0_BETA2-49051-Linux_amd64.run                         46M
VirtualBox-3.0.0_BETA2-49051-Linux_x86.run                           46M
VirtualBox-3.0.0_BETA2-49051-OSX.dmg                                 61M 
VirtualBox-3.0.0_BETA2-49051-Win.exe                                 67M

Try it out, but be warned its not yet ready for production.

Beta, Cool Tools, Hardware, Linux/Unix, Operating Systems, Software, Virtualisation, Windows

Wow, this is quite disturbing, a video of a kid who just had his WoW account canceled by his mother.

So sore from paintballing on Sunday

Humour freakout, Humour, warcraft, wow

Woo yeah! Partaye! Apple releases the 3.0 firmware for iPod and iPhones today. Go grab it from iTunes or download a copy for your particular setup from Felixbruns site.

Copy/Paste, MMS and tethering… Expect a bit of downtime, the forums are flooded with complaints.

Apple have got the spill on whats new in this release,

Beta, Developer, Gaming, Operating Systems, Software apple, iphone, ipod

Opera has been making everyone itch the past few weeks after announcing that they’re about to announce something radical, revolutionary on the 16th (that was today for us in Australia). Well now we have it, and I’m not too sure what to make of it. Its Opera Unite.

So what is Opera Unite? In a nutshell, Opera Unite is a collaborative technology that uses a compact server inside the Opera desktop browser to share data and services. You can write applications — in the form of Opera Unite Services — that use this server to serve content to other Web users.

Why is this exciting? Well, it allows you to interact with contacts, sharing data and services without the need for any third-party Web sites/applications to be involved at all. Think of the possibilities:

• You could play games and chat to your peers directly using the service
• You could share photos and videos with peers, straight off your hard drive, without needing to use third-party Web applications
• You can work collaboratively with others on files such as data and images (think wikis or drawing applications), and then work with those files offline if you wish, before sharing them again at a later date
• You could even start creating some crazy hacks, like an application that controls a remote car across the Web (I’ve seen a rough prototype in action)

The above is from the Developer documentation, so essentially, the next major release of Opera will ship with a web-server that will allow you to serve up some content and share files, photos and notes. Theres also a primer on the Unite Developer area that helps you build a Blog engine. Theres lots more in their Opera Unite Services catalog.

From what I can gather at this stage, its Opera pushing us to control our content, so we dont need to put our doggy pictures on Flickr, upload your cool videos to Youtube, instead you host your own content.

This all sounds reallly radical and exciting – we’re essentially throwing the word cloud around round about now… But then you realise something. You have to leave your computer turned on for your stuff to be seen to others. Everything is also routed through their Unite Proxy as per the developer documentation.

To me it looks like Opera is trying to grab all this Web 2.0 Social sites by the balls and stick it into a browser – like Flock but lighter. This is exactly the thoughts – plus a lot better analysis by Chris Messner, an avid open-source activist.

Go on, get onboard the rage – download an alpha and try it out. You’ll find alot of people Flocking to it soon.

Whilst on the subject of Opera, whats with them a bit cheesed off at Microsoft’s decision to not offer Internet Explorer 8 for European users – they clearly pushed for it, but now that they’ve got it, they’re not happy jan.

Seems to me that whilst MSFT may have been anti-competitive in the past, the EU is just milking MSFT from its big utter and they want the butter for free. What about Apple, un bundle Safari, get rid of iTunes. I want to be able to use Firefox. OPEN UP THE GOD FAWKING API’s so we can make some decent software for Windows to manage our iPods and iPhones. Why are we locked into using smoking pile of poo that is iTunes? (dont deny it!)

Yes, I have issues. But I digress bashing Apple yet again, go checkout Opera Unite.

Beta, Cool Tools, Developer, News & Events, Software, Tools / Products, Web / Internets apple, browser, opera, press, sharepod, unit, webserver

(Source: XKCD)

Ah the days of dialup porn, and way before my time, the days of ASCII porn on BBS. But just when you think the entire world is turned on by broadband (in the case of Denmark, The Netherlands, Japan & South Korea et al having ridiculous interweb speed) turns out there are still some trying to get their fix on dialup. Indeed, the internet is for porn.

Humour compression, dialup, fetish, pixels, porn, video, xkcd

Jai-ho my web 2.0 pals, its friday!

Developer, Humour android, friday, girlfriend, google, isitfriday, jai ho, latitude, n00bs, sex bot, web 2.0, xkcd