I’ve posted a number of times on what I consider are unfair business practices of Microsoft and how it destroyed Netscape. I recently found an old Time magazine article about this, and thought I’d share it.

This article discusses how Microsoft was able to quickly disable Netscape and place Internet Explorer as the defacto Internet Browser. Microsoft’s dominance shows the true power that they have.

I remember back then everyone complaining about how buggie IE was. Whenever I turned someone on to Netscape Navigator they raved about it. However, I’m only 1 person. For the millions of people who were just learning about the Internet and logging on for the first time that little logo that said “The Internet” was where they went. This was usually right next the “Inbox” icon that loaded Microsoft’s email program. (Sorry, I don’t remember if it was called Outlook at the time or not.)

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,985115-1,00.html

You can read the article “Winner Takes All” here.

You can read my other thoughts on this subject:

http://www.vi411.org/2006/07/11/microsoft-compete-with-vmware-ha.html

http://www.vi411.org/2006/07/25/micro-source-vs-open-source.html

http://www.vi411.org/2006/09/19/virtually-unstoppable.html

Apple is wasting no time combating Windows Vista. Today the released a new commercial in their successful “Mac & PC” commercials. I think this is absolutely brilliant!

CNN just posted a very interesting article about the Bush administration applying pressure to mislead the public about the effects of global warming.

“Among those scheduled to make comments were two presidential hopefuls — Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Barack Obama, D-Illinois. Both lawmakers favor mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, something opposed by President Bush, who argues such requirements would threaten economic growth.”

This just makes me mad! Too many politicians are afraid to take a stand. Take coal for example. Coal is extremely messy to burn, and yet 50% of the electricity generated in the Us is from coal burning plants. Any politician who would take a stand against burning coal would be faced with great opposition from the Coal industry. They would distort facts about global warming, scare those who work and live in coal mining regions, and attack the politician on a personal level. I know that you might not think of the Coal lobby as being very powerful, so let me repeat myself: 50% of the electricity generated in the US is from Coal burning plants. That’s a lot of coal being bought and sold.

The simple fact is, environmental science helps the economy. It’s been a fact of history, new technologies in general promote economic growth. One industry may die, but a new one (or more) takes it’s place.

Example: US car manufacturers can’t sell their products in many foreign countries because they are not “clean” enough. Better fuel efficiency would allow us to sell cars overseas, which in turn helps the economy.

You can read the article on CNN’s website here.

As the CPU wars heat up with the release of quad core processors, AMD has just announced that their quad core chip will be 40% faster than Intel’s.

To quote an article on http://www.earthtimes.org/:

“AMD said it will be integrating four cores on one processor die, compared to Intel’s approach of packaging two dual-core chips in one package. In addition, there are other properties that offer a more balanced system, including the HyperTransport I/O system, an upgrade of SSE128 instructions that quadruples floating-point performance, a cache memory design that offers both dedicated access and pooled L3 cache access for individual cores, and optimizations of the DRAM controller and the cores themselves.

In terms of performance, these improvements will add up to a 42 per cent projected advantage over Intel’s Xeon 5355 based on the SPECfp benchmark, AMD claimed.”

This is great news. This means we can achieve deeper consolidation ratios, thereby eliminating that many more servers from our environment, and as we know fewer servers mean fewer kWh.

Linux Magazine recently named VMware a top company to watch in 2007. VMware’s press release states that:

“The Linux Magazine 20 Companies to Watch list features the vendors that are making a significant impact on the next generation of Linux and Open Source adoption. Linux Magazine selects companies that have the ability to spur Open Source adoption in all facets of IT, are technology and service innovators and develop practical solutions for the Open Enterprise.”

I have to admit, VMware has worked hard to develop and maintain a good relationship with the open source community.

Read the Linux Magazine article here.

VMware is driving the hottest trend in the IT industry today. Therefore I decided to do to a little research in how VMware is being seen in the media. Now, when I say media, I mean mainstream media. Not http://www.eweek.com or http://www.itworld.com/, but CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. So went to each of those sites and did a little search. I decided to search for Microsoft, Linux, and VMware. I choose Microsoft because I knew they were going to have a lot of press.  I choose Linux because I knew there would be some press, but like VMware, Linux is a major force in the It industry, but not a household name.  Here are the results:

http://www.cnn.com/:

VMware: 7 results (Estimated). Most recent: 6/16/2000. Even then the article was more about Linux.

Microsoft: 4503 (Estimated). Most recent: 1/29/2007. No surprise with Windows Vista coming out.

Linux: 1054 (Estimated). Most recent: 1/2/2007. The article is about Novel’s $100 laptop initative.

http://www.msnbc.com/:

VMware: 2 results. Most recent: 1/24/2007. Wait before you get excited. 1 result was from a MotleyFool’s report on EMC, and the other was from a Symantec press release. Both times, VMware was mentioned in passing.

Microsoft: 160821. Most recent: 1/29/2007. Once again, Windows Vista. Also remember, the MSN in MSNBC does stand for MicroSoft Network

Linux: 5130. Most recent: 1/16/2007. The article is about Sun trying to compete with Linux.

http://www.foxnews.com:

VMware: 6 results. Most recent: 1/23/2007. 4 were about EMC, 1 was about Ubuntu, and 1 about the Microsoft XenSource deal..

Microsoft: 5310. Most recent: 1/29/2007. Vista, again.

Linux: 196. Most recent: 1/16/2007. Most of the articles were about Microsoft.

So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that VMware needs to get more coverage. Pacific Gas and Electric announcing rebates for Virtualization should have been headlines in the mainstream media, and VMware’s name should have been all over that.

There are tons of articles about how Vista is going to change things. but what about the most logical platform for running Vista? What about a technology that saves companies thousands of dollars?

Virtualization is revolutionizing the data center and everyone needs to know now. Because mark my words, when Microsoft finally gets the bugs worked out of Virtual Server they will market it. Once that happens, VMware will be mentioned, but only in passing. This will give Microsoft the “perceived” advantage in the minds of those who aren’t educated in Virtualization.

I found this on http://YouTube.com/ and had to post it. It’s a VERY unofficial history of Microsoft. I couldn’t help but post it.

Back in October I reported that VMware had announced that they were going to release a new P2V tool called VMware Converter. Today VMware announced today that Converter is officially available. Their official statements says:

“VMware Converter Starter is available free of charge at www.vmware.com/products/converter. VMware Converter Enterprise is available at no additional cost to VMware customers who have current support and subscription contracts for VMware VirtualCenter Management Server.”

Some of the features include:

Convert to virtualization faster
VMware Converter rapidly improves cloning time though the use of sector-based snapshot copying rather than file level copying. Customize the image of your virtual machines through a powerful scripting tool.
Manage and schedule multiple conversions
Easily manage, schedule, and monitor multiple conversions through the centralized management console. You can even queue up conversions for a later time.
Integrate with VirtualCenter
Convert directly into VirtualCenter 2.0 managed or ESX Server 3.0 virtual machines from the VMware Converter console.
Convert remote servers
Perform remote conversions with zero disruption to the source servers.
Get broad operating system support
Support is available for cloning the most common operating systems including Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4 (SP4 +) and 64-bit Windows Support (Windows XP and Windows Server 2003).

I also have un-official word that VMware is looking to include Live P2V capabilities in the 3.0.1 version. This will be in direct competition with Platespin’s PowerConvert product.

The VMware press statement can be read here.

For more information on Converter 3 go here.

This is a great video I found on YouTube called Punish your Microsoft Developer. Whenever Windows causes an error, the developer who wrote the code gets punished! Check it out:

In the spirit of online demonstrations, here is VMware’s VI 3 demonstration:

http://www.vi3demo.com/