No Visual Studio installed? Not an issue, it comes with the Express edition of VS2010 and Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone as well as XNA and Silverlight tools for Windows Phone and an emulator – all for free too!

For more information, see ScottGu’s great post about it!

Related posts:

1. Channel9: Windows Phone 7 Jump Start
2. Some changes in .NET BCL 4.0
3. Lights Out: Silverlight 3 Beta SDK Released!

Amongst the changes from the changelog:

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

• Following the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation, the product is now called Oracle VM VirtualBox and all references were changed without impacting compatibility
• Experimental support for Mac OS X guests (see the manual for more information)
• Memory ballooning to dynamically in- or decrease the amount of RAM used by a VM (64-bit hosts only) (see the manual for more information)
• Page Fusion automatically de-duplicates RAM when running similar VMs thereby increasing capacity. Currently supported for Windows guests on 64-bit hosts (see the manual for more information)
• CPU hot-plugging for Linux (hot-add and hot-remove) and certain Windows guests (hot-add only) (see the manual for more information)
• New Hypervisor features: with both VT-x/AMD-V on 64-bit hosts, using large pages can improve performance (see the manual for more information); also, on VT-x, unrestricted guest execution is now supported (if nested paging is enabled with VT-x, real mode and protected mode without paging code runs faster, which mainly speeds up guest OS booting)
• Support for deleting snapshots while the VM is running
• Support for multi-monitor guest setups in the GUI for Windows guests (see the manual for more information)
• USB tablet/keyboard emulation for improved user experience if no Guest Additions are available (see the manual for more information).
• LsiLogic SAS controller emulation (see the manual for more information)
• RDP video acceleration (see the manual for more information)
• NAT engine configuration via API and VBoxManage
• Use of host I/O cache is now configurable (see the manual for more information)
• Guest Additions: added support for executing guest applications from the host system (replaces the automatic system presimparation feature; see the manual for more information)

Download from VirtualBox or get the Windows build. I’m really hoping the good Oracle keeps VirtualBox open, this is one kickass bit of kit.

Related posts:

1. VirtualBox 3.2.0 Beta 1 Released!
2. Sun ushers in VirtualBox 2.1 with cool new features!
3. VirtualBox 3.1 released!

I’m one of those who love the ribbon UI, its made things easier for me (helps that I really wasn’t a heavy MSFT Office user back in the days). Now everyone’s getting on board the ribbon train, even the beloved WinZip!

Don’t forget the Office 2010 Movie from last year.

Related posts:

1. Microsoft releases Silverlight 2, and OpenOffice 3.0 goes out the door!
2. Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta Download
3. Hot Panties: ASP.NET MVC Released!

As I’ve come to realise, because of the way Solaris works in general, you can have multiple (isolated & secure) Zones for each application service exposed by the server – eg. one for Tomcat, one for Glassfish, maybe both Apache 1.3.x and 2.x, MySql, Postgres etc. Whats more, you can limit how much resources these Zones can utilise. They all have their own configuration including network routing (coupled with OpenSolaris Crossbow) and you can make for one kick ass setup that won’t break another area of the operating system.

In the Zones.

Here’s a guide on setting up a new Zone in OpenSolaris, configuring it and booting it.

Me Against the Music, its all in the global zone

When we first install OpenSolaris we’ve already got ourselves into a zone (the parent to all other zones) which is known as the global Zone.

You can find this by trying out the following to list all the available zones on a virgin install of OpenSolaris.

opensolaris# zoneadm list -vc
 ID NAME             STATUS     PATH                           BRAND    IP
 0 global           running    /                              native   shared

The output will be something like above. Now we can go about creating ourselves a zone for playing around in.

When working with zones, we only need to worry about three commands (damn I love that!). The zoneadm command to manage the physical zone, zonecfg command for configuring the zone and zlogin to login to the zone from the global zone.

First we have to do a bit of planning and thinking about what we’re going to do about this zone.

Here are few things to consider:

• What do you want to run in the zone?
• Will it need networking and have it exposed outside of the machine?
• Where will the zone reside on your disk?
• Would you like to limit the amount of CPUs the zone can see?
• Would you like to limit the amount of RAM the zone can utilise?
• Do you want to automatically boot the Zone when OpenSolaris starts?

For this post, we’re going to create a simple Zone (we won’t install anything).

Toxic Zone

Creating a zone we specify a zone to the zonecfg command.

opensolaris# zonecfg -z toxic

You’ll get something like this appearing because teh zone doesn’t exist, thats fine.

toxic: No such zone configured
Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.

Then you will be inside the zonecfg configuration.

Lets configure this zone to have the following:

• Reside in /base/zones/
• Autoboot with OpenSolaris
• Shared IP of 192.168.0.24 bound to physical interface e1000g1

Follow me:

zonecfg:toxic> create
zonecfg:toxic> set zonepath=/base/zones/
zonecfg:toxic> set autoboot=true
zonecfg:toxic> add net
zonecfg:toxic:net> set address=192.168.0.24
zonecfg:toxic:net> set physical=e1000g1
zonecfg:toxic:net> end
zonecfg:toxic> verify
zonecfg:toxic> commit
zonecfg:toxic> exit

This will create the configuration, verify, write it and exit. You can verify it was created by running the list command again:

opensolaris# zoneadm list -vc
ID NAME             STATUS         PATH
0 global           running        /
- toxic            configured     /base/zones

Its currently in a configured state, you can read more about the Non-Global State Model in the documentation. Next thing to do is to install the zone – this will get the base packages setup and configured for use.

opensolaris# zoneadm -z toxic install

Everytime, boot her up.

Next lets boot this bad baby up.

opensolaris# zoneadm -z toxic boot

Now if we do a list again we’ll see that our state has changed to running.

opensolaris# zoneadm list -vc
ID NAME             STATUS         PATH
0 global           running        /
- toxic            running        /base/zones

Now we have to configure the zone itself – just like a real machine. For this we use the zlogin command to login to the zone console.

opensolaris# zlogin toxic
[Connected to zone 'toxic' pts/5]
Last login: Sat Nov 21 17:52:43 on pts/5
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_127 November 2008
root@toxic#

After that we’re now in the toxic zone. Anything we do inside here, stays within this zone and won’t affect our global or other zones. But before we continue we really should configure our networking.

First lets modify our /etc/nsswitch.conf file with vi.

...
passwd:     files
group:      files
hosts:      files dns
ipnodes:    files
networks:   file
...

Make sure the hosts entry has dns as above. Next we need to configure the nameservers.

toxic# echo 'nameserver 192.168.0.254' > /etc/resolv.conf

That will create a resolv.conf file with the nameserver which you can get from the global zone as it would be different for everyone:

opensolaris# cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 192.168.0.254

Breath on me, reboot the zone.

Now we can access the networking like the global zone. So you can do a package refresh and update-image too.

toxic# pkg refresh && pkg image-update

If it succeeds we have correctly setup our zone and its ready for use – you may want to reboot the zone however. To do this, exit the toxic console.

toxic# exit
logout

[Connection to zone 'toxic' pts/5 closed]
opensolaris#

Then lets reboot the zone.

opensolaris# zoneadm -z toxic reboot
opensolaris# zlogin toxic
[Connected to zone 'toxic' pts/5]
Last login: Sat Nov 21 17:58:44 on pts/5
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_127 November 2008
root@toxic#

Outrageous, removing the zones.

Now how about removing this zone and trying again? First get out of the zone console and back to your global zone. Issue the halt command to shutdown the zone.

root@toxic# exit
opensolaris# zoneadm -z toxic halt

Once stopped simply remove it.

opensolaris# zoneadm -z toxic uninstall
opensolaris# zonecfg -z toxic delete

You can make sure its gone by using the list command. That’s all there is to it!

Now you can consider yourself, In The Zone.

Related posts:

1. [XKCD] Security, in The Real World.
2. Boffins get 1,000,000 Linux Kernels running as virtual machines!
3. Think outside the box: Getting VirtualBox 2.x running in Jaunty

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK-nMQiLzts

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7szEK7ZFMHU

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAD_Mtk88bg

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGth7i2lCXY

Having used Windows 7 now for close to 2 months I have to say its nothing but pure awesomeness. If you have MSDN there’s no excuse not to try it out. I’ve been too busy to even blog about it

Related posts:

1. Steve Balmer Announces the availability of Windows 7 Beta!
2. Engineering Windows 7: Just a few more changes from Beta to RC
3. Windows 7 Release Candidate Is Available From Microsoft

So I guess you better download it now!

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It’s been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Thats right, whilst many claimed the Google Chrome browser was infact an OS, now the company has come around with an actual OS with the Chrome moniker just to confuse the hell out of journo’s who just didn’t get the difference between a browser and an operating system.

Mind you, I do use Chrome quite a bit, especially not that I’ve switched full-time to GMail, its a great browser – just missing a few addons that Firefox has to really make it shine – like Adblock Plus, XMarks and web developer like extensions.

CNet has an interesting tidbit too. Whats important here is that it will be available for x86 and ARM processors and aims for a different breed of devices to their Android platform. Its based on a Linux Kernel with a new desktop environment (so another Gnome or KDE like desktop environment). As the Google Blog puts it:

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

The idea was mocked by many several years ago, but I guess they had the last laugh now.

Confused about the direction Google is heading? You Are Not Alone, looks like Google‘s Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ telling Microsoft that We’ve Had Enough, that They Don’t Care About Us and to just Beat It. They are Here To Change The World which will no doubt turn into one heck of a Thriller coming up.

I figure most of you would be Speechless by now, some may even be Scared Of The Moon but fear not, they’re working Day and Night to make sure you get One More Chance to get On The Line as soon as your hardware will allow it! Google, you Rock My World. Does anyone even Remember The Time without Google now a days?

RIP Michael Jackson.

Related posts:

1. Ubuntu 8.10: Intrepid Ibex Released!

Forget disabling ACPI and booting with irqpoll, instead you will need to disable the onboard JMicron controller (mine was always disabled!) and make sure if your using a PATA optical drive you use the ICHR7 port – thats the blue IDE port in the middle of the board at the bottom at the picture.

Next in the Main tab

[IDE Configuration]

• Configure SATA As [AHCI]
• ALPE and ASP [Enabled]
• IDE Detect Time Out (Sec) [0]

Then make sure that JMicron SATA/PATA Controller is disabled (in the Advanced -> Onboard Devices Configuration) and re-enable the   ACPI 2.0 Support and ACPI APIC support (in the Power tab).

Related posts:

1. Booting CentOS 5.3 on ASUS P5WDH Deluxe
2. Rebuilding Zeus: Part 1 – Preliminary Research and Installing Ubuntu 9.04 RC1
3. Quick Tip: P5WDH-Deluxe with E6750 with DDR800

Advertisement for a Superhero on Seek.com.au

It was pulled moments after, but being a guy from the internets, it was saved for future amusement. Looks like its for Dargan Financial (from title) Enjoy!

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Read the release notes for the full goss – a small cap:

1. Because we relied on experts of each product to write the text belw, the phrasing throughout the table is not 100% consistent.  Some of the text simply describes a problem that was fixed by SP2, while other text describes the problem and the new behavior after installing SP2.  When reading the list below, please keep in mind that, despite the individual phrasing of each description, all of the issues listed should be fixed in SP2.
2. In addition to the fixes listed below, SP2 contains additional changes which are less visible, but improve various aspects of the product.  This includes reducing the number of crashes, improving security, and fixing other issues that were deemed to be too specific to include in this list.

And grab from the Microsoft download page (99.3Mb)

As always, make sure you slipstream the SP2 into your existing Office 2007 distro for reinstalls later.

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