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Virtual insanity

True to Jamiroquai’s lyrics, it seems that I’ve been on an OS installation frenzy.

Virtualization has made it so easy to test different OSes. Right now I got 2 variations of each of the three OSes – namely Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu. Each having a working image, and an image from when I first installed them (base installation). This should make it easier for when I bollocks any of them up and need to “reformat.”

Add the default OS (OSX) and that’s seven OS variations to play with all in all. Here’s what my Parallels folder looks like as of the moment.

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More useful dual-screen tips (Windows)

I can now chuck “calibration loaders” in my startup items (usually added when you install calibration software) in favor for using a powertoy for Windows XP.

It’s called the Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet. It’s free, and it’s designed to enable single-card users to load separate color profiles for multiple displays. The operative term here is single-card because if you have two video-cards, or are on a Mac, then you probably won’t have to worry about this. If you’re on a WindowsXP 32bit machine however, and are using a dual head card which is common in gaming GPUs, then you probably will have to deal with this.

Simply download the applet and install it (requires the .NET framework). It will then be available as a control panel applet as seen in the picture above.

After you add/install/load and set the default profiles you created for each monitor (with whatever calibration software you have), simply create a shortcut with the following target path (make sure you include the quotes):

“:\Program Files\Pro Imaging Powertoys\Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP\WinColor.exe” /L

Save the shortcut, and put it into your startup folder and you’re set. It should load the separate profiles natively on startup.

Now if only they update that to support Windows XP 64-bit.

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Symantec Brings Complaint Against MS to EU

In one of the comments in my past post, the commenter said I should focus more on tech stuff since blogging about the personal stuff can get quite… uninteresting. Although I don’t really understand what her conception of a “blog” is, I would say it was a personal journal unless specified otherwise. But yes, I do like talking about tech stuff too so how ’bout this post to call it even 😉

Symantec Brings Complaint Against MS to EU

linumax writes “Symantec has made a complaint against Microsoft to EC anti-trust regulators over the software giant’s entry into the security market. The “informal” complaint allows the Commission to consider whether or not an anti-trust case is merited. The Commission is the executive branch of the European Union (EU).” From the article: “The news comes on the day Microsoft announced plans to begin offering business users an integrated anti-virus and anti-spyware product called Microsoft Client Protection. A beta version of this product is expected to be released by year’s end. The company is already offering some customers a beta version of its Windows OneCare consumer security software. At issue is Microsoft’s plan to bundle its security software with Windows Vista, the next major version of the Windows operating system due next year.”

via Slashdot

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RE: MS Gadgets and everything else

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has confirmed that they indeed get their ideas from the Macintosh

Q: Some Microsoft critics say that many of the features in “Longhorn” already exist in other operating systems. How do you respond to that?

A: I don’t hear that from enterprise customers. They don’t look at the Mac. They just don’t. Some people will say some of the features are kissing cousins to features they’ve seen elsewhere, and that is true. I’m not apologetic about the fact that we should, in a way that doesn’t offend anyone else’s intellectual property, study and learn and benefit from the work others have done.

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Fanboys, unite!

Slashdot has posted information on a cancelled contest of writing a Mac OSX virus to put to rest the recent debate of OS X being no more secure than Windows.

Now is it just me, or do I feel that people are just too damn defensive of OS X? I mean I love it. I’m using it. I can even claim that it is more “secure” than Windows. But I’ve never in my life assumed that it was invincible. And another thing, since when did it become a Apple vs MS thing again? The whole premise of the contest/post isn’t even valid since it should never had compared the two in the first place.

If I’m not mistaken, the article(s) that triggered this whole debate was from ZDNet (at least as far as [Slashdot]0 was concerned), which can be read here and here. They document Symantec’s claims of OS X’s increasing “attractiveness” of being a malware target.

In no way did I construe the article as trying to suggest any of the OSes being better than the other.

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