It seems that Microsoft these days does nothing but make idiotic business moves. At one point Microsoft thought they had the entire computer ecosystem on lock-down, but things are changing rapidly. Major threats to Microsoft include the Open Source movement and Google. Microsoft's mainstay is by far the Windows operating system. Windows these days survives often not due to the fact that it's excessively innovative or well functioning, but rather because everyone is used to it. Its 16 year+ history has a lot to do with its success.

I was playing around with using KVM because I have used Xen and I was wondering about KVM. I have headless servers which I use to play around with this stuff and they don't have X installed on them. So I tried the standard method and that doesn't work because KVM automatically assumes that it should run SDL. The alternative is to run VNC. The version of KVM that ships with Gutsy is broken and does not properly handle VNC, therefore you have to get the latest from the repository and compile it yourself. Afterwards run the system.

I am leaving out all the steps for howto affectionados:

Microsoft Live platform: Bill Gates outlines the Microsoft Live Platform, while bits rain down on other platforms.I am a technically adept user. I have been using Windows since Windows 3.0. I remember the entire progression, 3.1, 3.11 for Workgroups, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, and it kind of ended there for me. These days I find myself absolutely disgusted by Microsoft. From the AutoUpdate system which I feel like I am selling my soul to use, to their restrictive licensing, to the threats from BSA, to how difficult it is to upgrade Windows versus something like Ubuntu, my relationship with Microsoft is strained. Further, I don't feel like I can trust Microsoft, even if I pay them. I think that much like IBM and the Nazis, if an authoritarian government comes after you, Microsoft will be the first company to sell you and your data out.

Further, I don't think that I and Microsoft can have a forward facing relationship. As a developer, I abhor the Microsoft platform. It's expensive, it doesn't scale without significant cost and I have to ask Microsoft each time I want to do something. Compare that to something like Linux where I can do whatever I want, I can deploy 10,000 clusters tomorrow and Linux Inc. isn't going to say a damn thing to me, other than awesome, can we write a case study? Investing time learning Microsoft technology from the perspective of the end-user or the developer seems less and less beneficial.

I maintain an array of Ubuntu powered servers. I like to be cutting edge and therefore I use the latest release, though I usually wait a bit to upgrade. So I finally decided that I would upgrade the Edgy servers to Feisty. It shouldn't be all that hard, but you really can't predict everything that's going to happen, especially if your hardware tends to be on the new side. So I ran the upgrade and the box seemingly died, I can't ssh to it. So I hook up a head and see what's going on. It seems that it can't find the hard drive.