Windows Server 2008 On-the-fly Memory Expansion

Since I had a Windows Server 2008 x64 Virtual Machine configured in my VMware Workstation and a Product Key from MSDN that I didn’t use I decided to try one of the cool features Server 2008 brings to a wide variety of new and even some old motherboards out there. I’m talking about its “Hot-add-Memory” feature.

So as I start this Virtual Machine up I have it configured with 1024MB (or 1GB) of RAM (click on image for original):

 

And now I want to expand this Server’s RAM without having to restart the whole system. I honestly don’t know if that’s that common of a use case out there in the real world but nevertheless it’s something that’s possible technology-wise and I think Linux has had it far earlier than Windows so here goes:

 

Hot-Swapping RAM is something that’s also included in more expensive versions of Server 2008 (like Datacenter) but in the Enterprise version which we have here all we can do is expand the RAM, not reduce it (see red box). So I pull the slider up to 2048 MB (or 2GB) to double my RAM and click “OK”.

What happened then wasn’t entirely what I was hoping for. VMware Workstation saved the Virtual Machine’s state first, then the Screen went black for a second and then it came back immediately and everything was exactly as I left it, so I guess this was just a precaution of VMware rather than something that was absolutely necessary. Then it took another few seconds for Windows to recognize the additional RAM and this was what I ended up with:

As you can tell from the red boxes in the first and the last picture (and the immense drop of the blue curve in the last picture) the RAM has been added without any shutdown of the system.

For Companies who need this, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise is definitely not too expensive to buy although it could be cheaper of course. This feature is not exclusive to the latest and greatest hardware either so the additional cost in hardware shouldn’t be too high either. Contrary to a Linux Server it offers an Administrator the possibility of deploying Microsoft Exchange Services natively and it enables them to install the wide variety of Software that’s out there for Windows.

My Desktops

Just something i’ve been wanting to share for some time now.

First up, Windows on a Core i7 with 6GB of RAM:

Next comes my beloved portable, an Aluminum MacBook:

And last a Sony VAIO TX i own since 2005 (Solo Core, 1 GB RAM):

Not included here is my Windows Server 2003. If i find any other computers laying around my house I might just refresh this article.

"Nao" from Aldebaran Robotics

A few days ago some of my colleagues and I took the chance to attend a guest lecture on campus about a robot designed in France due to be released within the next months. His name is Nao and he's intentionally designed to have Manga-Character-like looks.
The entire Computer that does the necessary computations is inside its replaceable head and runs a custom Linux on an AMD Geode processor with 2 Gigabytes of Flash memory and 256 Megabytes of RAM. It is fully controllable over WiFi, yet it only boasts 802.11b which we know only has a theoretical speed of 11 MBit/s. Hopefully they will at least get the G-Standard in there before the final release. It has two Cameras with standard VGA Resolution, one that looks straight ahead and one that looks down to the ground so the robot can identify objects directly in front of him.



To be honest I wasn't impressed too much by what this robot can do but what did impress me was how easy Aldebaran Robotics made it for the end-user slash programmer to work with this robot. You have drag-and-drop based editing of any movements or actions, like talking or listening (or remote controlling something with his Infared-enabled eyes), you want the robot to do and you can then export your work into C++ or Python code so you can work with it natively and refine it for example. I think this is going to be a successful product among the people of its target group, but the question is how large this target group can be at a starting price of 12.000 Euros for one unit.

Chrome OS

I've been one of those who were eagerly awaiting the first impressions of Google's Chrome OS since it was announced some time earlier this year. One positive remark right there can be made because they seem to have been quite eager to get it out there as well. Open Source, so much the better.

I knew that it was going to be a Browser-based OS like none has ever been before but judging by this first release I'm still a bit disappointed.

Chrome OS:

So to the right you see what the login-screen looks like. And "woohoo" you have to log in with your own Google Account. Internet Connection required of course. Pretty nice idea. But while that is handy because it enables you to log in to the same account on different computers you will see later why I dont think it's necessary for now.

Next up we have the Chrome Browser which shows up full-screen as soon as you've successfully logged in. The tabs I opened in the second screenshot aren't open at first Login. There's just the Google Calendar and an empty tab as far as I recall. Of course with every Google Service you use the Login-Information needed doesn't have to be entered separately every time. You can for example use Google Reader for RSS Reading, Google Mail for writing Emails and so on. So a colleague of mine dared me to write a Document on this thing and email it to her. Seems quite impossible on a Browser-Based OS with no desktop or additional applications. But in fact it's not that hard. Everybody who used Google Documents before should know that.

You just go to http://docs.google.com and have some basic possibilities of creating and editing Text Documents, Spreadsheets and so on. And as you can see you can then Email it as an attachment in a wide variety of file-formats. Since Chrome OS is only targeted towards Netbooks and those don't feature high resolution screens or highly capable hardware one can argue that this is already more than enough for the average netbook-user.

 With the help of another colleague and trying out random combinations on the  keyboard (banging my head against it for example) I found out how to get to the terminal. You just have to press Ctrl+Alt+T. The Concept of multiple Sessions like normal Linux Distributions have has been dropped. The Terminal goes full-screen and as you can see the "uname" command tells you absolutely nothing about this OS that you shouldn't already know as soon as you're enough of a freak to even bother searching for the Terminal. Other than that it's interesting that the "man" command suggested at the top isn't even available. And I was kind enough to give you a directory listing of the root directory just so this screenshot wouldn't use too little space.

Conclusion:

So while this is a nice Gadget to have it provides the user with absolutely no capabilities beyond what Web 2.0 (as we call it) has to offer. Some might say this is sufficient. I say it's not. Right now it isn't possible to change the Screen Resolution of Chrome OS over the menu and I didn't find any config-files i could edit to change it manually. Now that I "know" that Chrome OS is based on Ubuntu using Gnome (at least that's what I hear) I could try to find the config-file once more. But I'm just not that much of a geek. I feel I have enough of an idea right now of what Chrome OS is going to be as soon as it's finished. In the end it's just another tool for Google to grab its users by the chest and make them be part of their huge scheme of collecting information no matter if it's useful or not. So I think it would be cool to log into the OS without a Google Account. Other than that I have no requests towards the final product, probably because I won't be using it natively anyways.

What sucks Golf Balls through a Garden Hose?

There’s a few things boggling my mind from time to time. For one I am a regular visitor of both thedailyshow.com and colbertnation.com to watch their latest and greatest episodes which have been broadcasted on Comedy Central the day before. As a European Citizen I am not fortunate enough to be able to watch these shows live. On the other hand I read quite a lot of blogs regularly that attract my interest and among those are a few Apple/Mac related ones that show me what I should think about the company that assembled my beloved MacBook.

The 2 topics I want to go into in this post both apply to its title at least to some degree in my eyes. As someone who comes from a country where health care for everybody isn’t just a good idea but an applied concept I cannot possibly wrap my head around the issues this great nation called the United States of America is facing right now just to get a vague idea of what the future of 50 Million (!) Americans without Health Care is going to look like, let alone figuring out a real concept. And as someone who studies the matter this thing called iPhone wants to be a part of I want to provide my personal opinion on what has been happening around this product both since its release and recently.

Health Care:

I do have to say that my knowledge about the subject is solely based on many many Daily Show Episodes and a short documentary I’ve stumbled over on TV lately. I understand however that as much as this Comedy Central footage is supposed to be satire and entertainment it never fails to catch the essential and almost always disturbing truth behind its topics.

In the documentary I mentioned there was a woman who needed a liver transplant because of cancer but she just couldn’t afford one plus she was a single mother of three. Very touching story if someone from an equally structured society were to watch that. For me it was just enraging. Another person in this documentary was some cowboy-ish millionaire who was both a supporter of the Republican party and the US Health Care System, stating that it did not have any flaws at all and that it was necessary for at least some doctors to say “Hell yea, I want to get paid less than I’m worth just so I can help the poor free of charge by limiting my quality of service to the absolute minimum”. Of course he did not say that but I just did. Lots of people who struggle with health problems don’t have any option but to stand in line for free low-quality medical care in this country and to think that this can live up to any standard a rich nation like this one should provide their people is just bollocks.

The 2 “Points of Interest” I spin my thoughts around here are the Health Insurance Companies and the US Military Expenses.

If you want to get health insurance in the US it’s not much different from getting insurance for your car. You have to be perfectly healthy because the insurance has every right to turn you down if they think you won’t make them enough profit, meaning if you look like you could get sick anytime soon you won’t be insured. And if you get sick and they see any bit of proof that you could’ve been developing this medical condition before you got the insurance it’ll be called a “preexisting condition” and they won’t pay for you. Of course this doesn’t end your insurance. You’re still allowed to pay them money for not doing anything if you want to.

What I’m pretty sure had never been mentioned on any TV Station in all of the US though is how the Government’s Military Expenses could be redistributed so much better in this case. If you’re in the US you don’t talk shit about the wars they are fighting somewhere else. Just like you’re better off staying at home if you’re in Iran right now. I don’t remember the figures but those wars cost the US quite a bit of money every single day and to finish my rant about this topic I have to ask, is whining about how they have such huge money problems both concerning economy and health care an acceptable concept for the American people while they are fighting expensive questionable wars elsewhere?

iPhone:

As someone who specializes on Mobile Computing I have more than one reason to be against a purchase of this product. When the iPhone came it I have to admit I was all hyped up as well. I even pre-ordered the first generation iPod Touch when it got announced. I never regret that purchase but for a mobile phone there’s just too many flaws in its business plan.

The iPhone is the manifestation of what makes Apple’s fondness of Digital Rights Management (DRM) both work well and annoying at the same time. With products like the Palm Pre and various Android Devices coming out it raises the question whether it really is better to tell your users distinctively both what they are allowed and what they are not allowed to do. Apple sure does that and it sets boundaries that are often uncertain as to whether something you want to do can be done or not. For example a Software Developer who wants to get his piece of the App Store Cake can write a good piece of code hoping for an income from it but he will never know whether his App will make it into the App Store unless he spends the time on bringing out a working version of it and hope for the best as he submits it to Apple. If they turn it down, he might have wasted his time.

The most popular recent denial of an App was of course the official Google Talk iPhone App which was refused like many others because it provides functionality already inside the iPhone. And although these rejections are most probably rather thanks to Apples Partnership with AT&T than Apple itself it still does not make a bit of sense to me. Apple is a newbie in this market and they won’t have the courage of admitting that. The first generation iPhone was a technologic disaster by any measure and they used lame excuses like “battery life issues” for not using the 3G standard and going for the slower EDGE. They have quite a few guidelines for developers who want to write software for the App Store just because their phone is too slow to work smoothly with software that doesn’t follow these guidelines.

The iPhone OS which I get the chance of using through my iPod Touch has become a lot better since version 1.0 but it’s not necessarily better than any other mobile OS out there now. It finally got MMS capability, video capturing and the much needed Copy-Paste feature nearly any other Smartphone has.

What upsets me so much is that Apple can do all this seemingly without losing a single buck of stock market worth in the process. They can bring out a crappy phone to begin with but wrap it nicely and any fanboy will stand in line to buy it. They can upgrade it to a less crappy phone which implies admitting that the first one was crap and still more people will buy it. No matter how big they fail under the surface, what defines their success is how they present it on the surface and this is where I would like to advise people to take a look at things from a different angle before buying such a piece of hardware and literally trading it in for their soul and some cash.

There’s so many products out there that are both cheaper to buy and get you a better overall experience. Nokia would be my biggest recommendation for anybody seeking a phone right now. Falling for the advantages of the App Store is easy but the pressure under which others have to live because of those advantages is not worth it in my eyes. Apple needs to see that their current plan for a presence in the cellular market is not what people want. Or at least not what they should want.