In essence, to comply, I’m maintaining everyone’s freedom to act including my own. Cookies (the text files dumped in your computer by your browser) are used to store,,,, well, anything, actually! I could use them to keep my shopping list….
They’re used by Google and other advertisers for advert tracking and by my sites for registration and commenting. I could block registering and commenting, but then, it wouldn’t be very interactive, would it? I note that the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) website has a crap implementation of the directive, in that its cookie message cannot be removed unless you accept cookie use! It takes up nearly a quarter of the screen!
So that’s all I’m saying.
You pays your money (in this case, nothing) and takes your choice. You are implying your consent for cookie use by using my websites.
LSO Super Cookies? Well It was News to Me! I this article in “Windows Secrets” by Woody Leonhard, Eliminate Flash-spawned ‘zombie’ cookies, he describes how they are generated as un-deletable cookies by Flash applications, which compromises user privacy, in the sense that they do stuff to your hard disc and network without your permission! So...
There’s now an official UK Pirate Party. It’s founded on the guiding principles that all art & creativity should be free for people sat in their bedrooms and that those people in the bedrooms should have absolute privacy! True. They want the Swedish model of the convicted file-sharers in the UK. Also, they want Google...
I’ve finally decided to test the next Windows edition, probably to be called Windows 8, although things like that are never certain in Microsoft-land.
Virtual Box
Win8 Dev VirtualBox Installation
I did a Virtual Box install, which is fairly straightforward. There are many tutorials on-line now which show how to do this, so I won’t do a walk-through. I installed the 64-bit version which I downloaded from MSDN using my licence. You can get the installs from the Microsoft Website here, which come in ISO format. You can also find out more from the horse’s mouth here.
You can also set aside a partition on your hard-drive and install to that. However, Virtual Box is the safe way to go should the partition install fail and corrupt your current installation somehow.
What I will say, is to use more memory allocation to the virtual installation than recommended elsewhere or as the default, and to use as many virtual processors as your host machine has.….. My machine is an AMD 955BE, which is quad-core running at around 3GHz. In other words, if you don’t want it to run like treacle, give it plenty processor and memory room; at least the recommended values for Windows 7. You can see all of this in the VirtualBox settings screenshot above.
Fast Install (added 24/11/11))
Windows 7 vs. Windows 8 time to upgrade
Microsoft, on their MSDN blog, have made a big thing about the rapid installation for Windows 8, particularly for the upgrade route. See Improving the setup experience. I can say now that the clean install into the VirtualBox environment was very fast….
Briefly:
You make a virtual machine in Virtual Box
You set it’s parameters – processors, memory size, footprint size, IDE/SATA storage etc
You set the downloaded ISO image to boot from in the settings.
You boot by “Starting” the virtual machine.
You install Windows into the filespace that you’ve previously set aside for it – I gave it a dynamic sized 50Gb.
After that, let windows do it’s thing. It took 10 minutes or so.
Let it reboot.
Win8 Dev Loggged On Screen
Following this, you get a green screen from which country specifics are added, a username and finally, you enter your Live.com identity, if you have one, and if you want to!
Appearance
It’s a big green screen. I don’t have a touchscreen, but it’s obviously designed for one. It has massive buttons to a host of online services like weather & stocks, plus a few to your computer’s functions.
Win8 Dev Logon Screen
If you log off, you get presented with an American Rockies vista of a lonely winding road. Essentially, the entry into Windows 8 is like a smartphone. But what’s it like beneath the surface?
Windows 7 Legacy, and Vista Too!
Win8 Dev Double Click Control Panel Screen
Obviously, this is a development preview release, and we can expect more of the same to come.
Win8 Dev Double Click Explorer Screen
But most work has gone onto the main intro screen because beneath the surface, all the various apps and settings controls are the old (current) Windows 7 interface.
Bizarrely, some screens even have vestiges of the green Vista, notably the main screen itself.
Personally, I think it’s very, very dour. I can’t believe that two years of effort has gone into doing something that Android does on a more than twice-annual cycle….
Win8 Dev Left Corner Hover Screen
Accessing the menus is the most unintuitive thing I’ve seen for ages! Following on from the impressive Windows 7, it’s truly not just a user let-down, but somewhat infuriating as well……. Whereas previously I just typed into the run bar to do almost anything, now I can’t even find programs or files! No doubt there’s a way – but after Win7, it’s not intuitive and not helpful either.
I hope that’s not the end of the run box, because that feature in Windows 7 is awesome.
Control Panel
Win8 Dev Double Click Control Panel Screen
I haven’t checked through many apps (except a few desktop ones like the weird child-like paint thing and the weather which won’t do anywhere except California) but this is the control panel.
Win8 Dev Control Panel More Settings Screen
You then drill-down to get the old Win7 control panel on “More Settings”.
Initial Investigation Ends
Well that’s it for now. To say I’m un-impressed by the big green monstrous front doesn’t give my opinion justice. There doesn’t appear to be an easy way out of the front-screen apps and to have an app made for a 3-inch screen sat on a 23 inch desktop monitor really demonstrates the infantile apps for what they are.
Way back in the nineties Microsoft tried their in-house Microsoft Network (MSN) which was a disc install that gave you a black desktop that gave dial-up access to features giving almost the same as this big green toy-town monster.
Windows 7 Ultimate Install To say that I’m seriously impressed is an understatement! Having an MSDN subscription confers certain benefits, but for most Microsoft stuff that I have to use, it’s usually an exercise in teeth-gritting somewhere from the banal to the infuriating as I plod on through. My personal experience of Vista comes into...
How to Convert a Windows 7 Dynamic Disk to Basic Disk When Microsoft says It’s Irreversible! Firstly, Do Not Dance with the Devil! I made the mistake (again!) of trying dynamic disks with my new Windows 7 installation. I must have been asleep – the use of this system is seriously frowned upon for most...
These shots are primarily for the benefit of my friend.
Virtual Box
Sun’s (now Oracle’s) VirtualBox application allows computer users to run a variety of Operating Systems (OS) on virtually any computer operating system. This is the VirtualBox homepage.
For example:
Windows XP on Mac
Solaris on Windows XP
Windows 7 32-bit on Windows 7 64-bit
This latter example is actually the system that I use to connect to my remote work computing system. (We use a Citrix client which will not upgrade to 64 bit, hence the necessity of running the Citrix program in a 32-bit environment)
The two shots below show Task Manger’s “performance” tab in the two systems. I’m showing this to demonstrate that upping the memory to 12Gb has left Windows the opportunity of using as much memory as it feels, and by not using the pagefile (much, if at all) it’s very fluid in operation now.
This screenshot shows Task Manager in the host Win7-64 system with its 12Gb of memory and four processor cores.
Win64 Processes
This screenshot shows Task Manager in the virtual Win7-32 system running inside a VirtualBox image with the 4Gb of memory and four virtual processor cores that I allocated to it.
Win32 Processes
This screenshot below shows the view across all three screens that I use.
Windows 7 across 3 screens
In the shot you’ll see that I’ve set the VirtualBox image to run full screen on the right-hand monitor. I’ve chosen a different background to emphasise this.
A notable feature of VirtualBox is that I have set the mouse cursor to float seamlessly between the two environments.
Previously, I’ve tried installs of several Linux flavours into their own virtual image areas. These are all removed now, but previously I had several running concurrently – I wish I’d taken a screenshot at that time. To demonstrate the capabilities of VirtualBox, I once had running concurrently these various operating systems inside my Win7 64-bit host:
Windows 7-32 bit
Windows XP version one
Windows XP version two
Ubuntu 10.1
Mandriva 10
Suse 11
Fedora
To enable this all to run in only 4Gb of memory I assigned about 300Mb to each image. They all worked “out of the box”!
Windows 7 Ultimate Install To say that I’m seriously impressed is an understatement! Having an MSDN subscription confers certain benefits, but for most Microsoft stuff that I have to use, it’s usually an exercise in teeth-gritting somewhere from the banal to the infuriating as I plod on through. My personal experience of Vista comes into...
Introduction In the Russian Dolls virtual world of my PC (I’ve currently upgraded to a AMD Phenom II 4x core 955 Black Edition which now allows me to run at least six Operating Systems (OS) concurrently – at the last count!), I have a Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) inside two virtual versions of Windows XP...
What is the Best Backup for Windows in a Small Home or Office?
Which Windows Backup? A History.
Over the years I’ve tried many systems for backing up crucial Windows data. Currently for small-scale backups I use the ubiquitous and almost bullet-proof flash drives, my current one tipping the scales at 8Gb. But for major backups, as the years have passed, I’ve used;
Floppy discs – 1.4Mb
Iomega Zip discs – 100Mb
CDRW – 650Mb
DVD-R – 4.7Gb
Western Digital My Book Home Edition – 1Tb
They all had their problems and limitations. The last one looked good with Firewire, USB2, ethernet & eSATA connections – but it overheated and broke…..
Best Windows Backup!
My current system is from Synology and is a “DS210j – Budget-friendly 2-bay NAS server for Home and Small Business”
I can heartily recommend the thing. It has so much gubbins within it and far exceeds my limited expectations. I installed two green 2Tb drives from Western Digital in mirrored RAID for security and use the auto-backup software provided as well as Windows’ own. This is extremely relevant for the large number of hits I’ve had to this posting where a major part of the problem is the time taken to do a backup! In my case, the 750Gb just takes a few hours to copy across the Gigabit speed ethernet that the unit can use.
Addendum June 2011: The tool is a seriously capable bit of kit and I cannot recommend it enough. Get one!
It does everything it says on the tin, and more! The whole thing cost me about 200 quid, plus an hour of my time to install.
Even its firewall is more configurable than any router I’ve used! It can be used as a server for FTP or the web. It comes with software for a host of things that mimic Flikr etc but without all the privacy or security issues inherent in off-line storage. It’ll also run with any operating system because it itself is a mini-linux installation as it is, and includes Windows, Apple and Linux applications.
Check it out, straight from their overview page:
Build Your Entertainment Center
Download Station 2 functions as a 24×7 BitTorrent, FTP, HTTP, eMule, and NZB download center. RapidShare and RSS download are now supported.
DLNA Compliant Media Sever ensures compatibility and interoperability between Disk Station and a wide range of DLNA-certified home devices.
iTunes Server provides an easy way to share music and videos with other iTunes clients within the local network. You can create playlists with songs that match the criteria you specified, and best of all, iTunes will update these playlists automatically as you add or delete songs.
Audio Station supports music, Internet radio stations, and iPod playback with connected USB speakers. Web-streaming mode allows your music to be shared with multiple users over the Internet.
Back Up Your Precious Data
DSM 2.2 offers comprehensive solutions for you to back up data stored on Disk Station or your desktop computer to the Disk Station.
Server backup includes two alternatives: Network Backup and Local Backup. Both allow you to back up data in the shared folders and databases. Incremental backup option and flexible schedules are available. All can be easily configured with a step-by-step wizard.
Desktop backup provides Windows PC users with the Synology Data Replicator 3 for backing up desktop data, Outlook, and Outlook Express emails to their Disk Station by choosing one of the three backup modes: Immediate, Sync, and Scheduled backup, while Mac OS X users can use Apple Time Machine backup application to back up their critical data to Disk Station.
USBCopy allows you to quickly back up your data from an USB storage device such as an USB flash or USB card reader to the Disk Station with just one single touch on the front-panel Copy button.
Enrich Your Web Presence
Photo Station 3 simplifies photo, video, and blog sharing over the Internet. The flexibility of photo theme customization, blog layout arrangement, visitor’s privilege setting, RSS feed, and the dazzling 3-dimentional photo browsing with Cooliris make Photo Station 3 your state-of-the-art lifestyle sharing center on the Internet.
Web Station with built-in PHP+MySQL allows users to publish their own websites or install numerous popular open-source programs.
Access With Your iPhone/Mobile Device
The iPhone App DS audio allows Disk Station users to stream music stored on Disk Station with their iPhone/iPod® touch where Internet access is available, while DS photo allows uploading photos from the iPhone/iPod® touch to their Disk Station.
Users with a mobile device running on Windows Mobile® 6.0, iPhone OS 2.2.1 onward, or Symbian OS 9.1 can log on their Disk Station to view photos with Mobile Photo Station and read supported file formats with Mobile File Station where Internet access is available.
Eco Friendly
Eco Friendly
Synology Disk Station is designed and developed perpetually with the concept of energy saving. Compared with average PC counterparts, Synology Disk Station consumes a relatively low amount of power and has the HDDs hibernate when not in use. This not only helps to save energy but also extends the lifespan of the hard disk.
Synology Disk Station truly earns the title of “green product” because of the unique Scheduled Power On/Off feature, and the smart fan design effectively cools down the system with minimum power consumption, yet keeps the system quiet on operation.
Finally, all Synology products are produced with RoHS compliant parts and packed with recyclable packing materials. Synology recognizes its responsibility as a global citizen and is continually working to reduce the environmental impact of the products we create.
How to Convert a Windows 7 Dynamic Disk to Basic Disk When Microsoft says It’s Irreversible! Firstly, Do Not Dance with the Devil! I made the mistake (again!) of trying dynamic disks with my new Windows 7 installation. I must have been asleep – the use of this system is seriously frowned upon for most...
Windows 7 Ultimate Install To say that I’m seriously impressed is an understatement! Having an MSDN subscription confers certain benefits, but for most Microsoft stuff that I have to use, it’s usually an exercise in teeth-gritting somewhere from the banal to the infuriating as I plod on through. My personal experience of Vista comes into...
The Information Tribunal ordered the DWP to name the companies and charities involved in workfare at an appeal hearing this work. A long running war of words has been waging between the DWP and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) ever … Continue reading → […]
The DWP are advertising for a News Manager with experience of ‘crisis management’ to take charge of the endless stream of bullshit which pours out of the DWP Press Office. The advert, spotted by @SmithTonyD over on twitter, explains: “The … Continue reading → […]
