65: Thinking Outside the VirtualBox
2010-02-21
Download MP3 For Geekons Episode 65
Pop-Up: VirtualBox
- VirtualBox is an open source virtualization platform developed by Sun (now owned by Oracle) with a proprietary/enterprise counterpart that enables USB pass through, RDP server, and USB over RDP.
- All of the closed source/enterprise features are available for free for personal use (or for $50 for business use).
- I haven't found a way to run a VM as a service, like VMware Server, but with Windows 7 it gracefully groups the application icons on the task bar anyway so it isn't too big of a deal.
- I have been able to successfully have a Windows XP VM get direct access to an obscure USB DRM dongle for some expensive plotting software I have, but still haven't been able to get it to see the COM port the plotter is attached to.
- After fiddling with network settings on a linux box, I've been able to set up a linux webserver VM that works very well and very fast.
- Nothing that I have done with VirtualBox has worked right off the bad, and some of it has never worked for me.
- I love the concept of an Open Source code base with enterprise closed-source add-ons (freemium is a great business model: give away something free then charge for premium features)
- It also has a shared folders feature that allows you to share folders with a Windows VM without using networking. I haven't gotten that to work yet either.
- What does work seems to work very fast without interfering with my main system (I sometimes forget I'm running a VM in the background), but it definitely isn't a product I'd want to use in my enterprise just yet.
- 2 out of 5 stars, free desktop virtualization, but a separate window is always running for each host, and there are no simple ways to gracefully handle OS errors on startup.
Geek-Tweak: Using AutoHotKey to expand abbreviations as you type
- First, download and install AutoHotKey from http://www.autohotkey.com/
- Second, open notepad and type "::btw::by the way" (without the quotes)
- Third, save the file as replace.ahk and double-click on it.
- Now, if you type btw, followed by a space, it will automatically expand to by the way.
- the first part, ::btw::, is the part that matches what you type (or the trigger). the second part "by the way" is what replaces what you type.
- you can put an asterisk after the first colon in the trigger, like this ":*:btw::" (without the quotes) which will make the trigger work even without following it by a space, or other line ending character.
- You can also remove the text after the trigger, and put an open parentheses on the next line, tons of lines of text after that, then a closing parentheses on its own line after your text. That way with a few characters you could type several paragraphs that you use often!
- You can place as many hotstrings with auto-replace commands as you'd like in the file, then use autohotkey to convert it to an executable file. Now you can throw that on a USB drive and use it on all of your computers! (I just put my .ahk files in a dropbox folder to put them on all my machines)
- Apple users can also check out text expander, which can also replace text with images and links.
- This is only one of several autohotkey uses, so definitely check out their website to see what else you can do!
View-Source: Jesus asks the Microsoft Developer for some source code
- Jesus was heading down Interstate 5 from Vancouver on his way to OSCON in Portland and stopped by the Microsoft campus in Redmond.
- He saw a kernel developer there and asked if he could peek at some of the code. The developer was bothered that Jesus was asking for this, and he asked Jesus why he was asking for code, since he was headed towards OSCON he was obviously one of those open source hippie types.
- Jesus told him that if he knew the gift of God, and who it was that asked for the code, then he would be asking Jesus for some code.
- The kernel engineer pointed out that he had no servers with him to house code, and besides, how could his code be better than the Windows code repositories that have made billions per year for nearly a decade?
- Jesus replied, "whoever uses your codebase will need to buy upgrades, but whoever replicates my git repo will never need to go looking for code again. It will create a distributed node on their network, providing access to source code for everyone around them."
- The engineer was enticed and asked for access to Jesus' repo.
- Jesus told him to go get his senior manager, but the man told him he didn't have a senior manager at the time.
- Jesus said this was true, that he had bounced from team to team, and was now not currently assigned to a manager.
- The engineer knew nobody could know this, and said he thought he was some sort of prophet. He also said that they coded in Redmond, but the open source guys say you can only code in Portland.
- Jesus told him that there will come a time that they would code neither in Redmond nor Portland. That true software is run by the Open Source nerds, but the day is at hand that true developers will commit code in spirit, because God is spirit and anyone who developes for hHim must develop in spirit and truth.
- The engineer said he knows that the Messiah is coming and would say such things, so Jesus was blunt and said "yup, that's me!"
Key Verses: