With many, many new features Sun VDI 3.1 launches today.
Some quick links:
As we say – The best VDI ever!
SunniesElsewhere
The best photo I've ever seen of a StorageTek unit:
"An automated magnetic tape vault at CERN computer center, seen on September 15th, 2008. The tapes are used to store the complete LHC data set, from which a fraction of the data is copied to overlying disk caches for fast and widespread access. The handling of the magnetic tape cartridges is now fully automated, as they are racked in vaults where they are moved between the storage shelves and the tape drives by robotic arms. (Claudia Marcelloni, Maximilien Brice, © CERN)" via The Boston Globe
This and other awesome photos have been posted to twitter over the weekend, because the Large Hadron Collider was finally switched on – and will produce tons of data about zillions of hardly existing particles. Yet another special form of virtualization!
Here are the slides and some references for my closing talk at Swiss Intranet Summit in Zürich.
"And now to something completely different". This famous line from Monty Python comes to mind whenever you click on a hyperlink that links to a PDF or ODF document. In order to indicate the type of the link I'm using icons by adding some lines to the stylesheet. Here is the code for GullFOSS, that you can copy and paste into your blog's stylesheet or CSS file without any modifications:
/* add odf icons for those links */ a[href$=".odp"] { padding-left: 17px; background: transparent url(http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/resource/design/odp.gif) no-repeat center left; } a[href$=".odt"] { padding-left: 17px; background: transparent url(http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/resource/design/odt.gif) no-repeat center left; } a[href$=".ods"] { padding-left: 17px; background: transparent url(http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/resource/design/ods.gif) no-repeat center left; } a[href$=".odg"] { padding-left: 17px; background: transparent url(http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/resource/design/odg.gif) no-repeat center left; } a[href$=".pdf"] { padding-left: 16px; background: transparent url(http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/resource/design/pdf.gif) no-repeat center left; }
Finally an example. The PDF at the bottom of Bill Verplank sketches metaphors gets the PDF icon from the style statement above.
I quote a Press Announcement from Nov-10
OpenOffice.org Clarifies Status of the "OpenOffice Mouse
The OpenOffice.org Community and WarMouse today issued the following statement to clarify the relationship between the two organisations
(PRWEB) November 10, 2009 -- Contrary to recent press reports, the OpenOffice.org Community has no plans to ship a multi-button office application mouse by February next year. The "OpenOffice Mouse" demonstrated at the Community's Conference on 4th November will be produced by WarMouse, an independent company with no business relationship with either the OpenOffice.org Community, or with Sun Microsystems, the owner of the OpenOffice.org trademark.
Louis Suarez-Potts, OpenOffice.org Community Manager
Theodore Beale, WarMouse Lead Designer
I am glad that today is 11-11, in Germany the begin of the "Närrische Zeit" (please comment if you know how to translate). That means that I do not have to write a rant about the potential bad impact the OOMouse can have on OOo.
Dear users, you do not need this 18-button mouse to use OpenOffice.org efficiently because OpenOffice.org is so complicated. No no! Please consider this mouse only if your hand has 13 extra-fingers or more.
(via) – sorry, too few fingers.
World Usability Day 2009 is Thursday this week. The topic in 2009 is Designing for a Sustainable World. Hence check worldusabilityday.org for an event nearby – easy and CO2-friendly to reach.
Editor's picks (that's me):
- WUD Prague with the Sun NetBeans UX team and the special guest Mr. Sun A11y Peter Korn.
- WUD Hamburg with a special session on sustainability.
This is a recipe how to export a VirtualBox desktop out of VDI 3 to a destination Solaris VirtualBox host. It is based on Dirk’s procedure and contains some modifications to make it work for me.
1. Tell the iSCSI initiator on the destination VitualBox host to accept static iSCSI connections:
iscsiadm modify discovery --static enable
2. Find out the IQN of the iSCSI target of the desktop to export. The easiest way is to look at the desktop as it is registered on the VirtualBox host. Here you can use the command:
VBoxManage list -l vms
It will show also the IQN and the host of the connected LUN. An IQN looks like this:
iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:c856c247-you-do-not-have-to-read-this-9318dd9d6b48
3. Mount the LUN into your destination VirtualBox host:
iscsiadm add static-config <IQN>,<IP>
The IP is the IP of the storage server – it is not its host name.
4. List the new target
iscsiadm list target -S
The last line contains the important output: OS Device Name, e.g.:
/dev/rdsk/c2t600144F04AD2FA0C0000144FEDF91800d0s2
5. Make a raw copy of the content:
dd if=/dev/rdsk/c2t600144F04AD2FA0C0000144FEDF91800d0p0 of=/var/tmp/image.out
Note, replace the s2 at the end of the raw disk name with p0. Don’t ask why. And you will have a lot of time not to ask why because the copy operation takes quite some time.
6. Convert the raw image into a VDI file:
VBoxManage convertfromraw /var/tmp/image.out /var/tmp/image.vdi --format VDI --variant Standard
Dirk’s convertdd was not available on my Solaris machine, but VBoxManage convertfromraw does the same.
Last but not least it should be mentioned that all this is obsolete for VDI 3.1. We have added a function to export a VirtualBox desktop directly from the Sun VDI administration:
Manchester – Leeds – Camberley, Surrey – London – Coventry – Edinburgh
Sun's Desktop Virtualisation Roadshow is coming to the United Kingdom.
Overview – Agenda – Dates and Registration between now and Feb 2010.
Here is yet another wonderful reason why booth #415 is hot at EDUCAUSE 2009 in Denver.
[Image taken from Project Wonderland v0.5 User Preview 2]
A special talk on Wonderland by Kevin Roebuck is on Thursday 2:20pm - 3:10pm (Korbel Ballroom 3B): Sun Microsystems, An EDUCAUSE Gold Partner - Project Wonderland and the Age of Immersive Education
See also Dirk’s posting on Sun VDI for the Education Market.
Picks from the conference schedule:
- Seminar 03T - Sun Microsystems
Tuesday 8:00am - 2:30pm (Off-Site Tour)
- Virtual Desktops: 60 Percent Cheaper, but Are They Worth It?
Gerard Flynn, Thomas Hoover
Wednesday 3:50pm - 4:40pm (Korbel Ballroom 4A/B)
- Deploying and Managing Desktop Virtualization for University Students and Faculty
Jeff Cunningham
Wednesday 4:55pm - 6:10pm (Hall F, Table 65)
- "I'm Thin and Green": Reducing the Desktop Carbon Footprint While Offering Anywhere, Anytime Computing Services
Richard Toeniskoetter
Thursday 8:10am - 9:00am (Korbel Ballroom 1E/F)
- It Is About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright Right
Lawrence Lessig
Thursday 9:30am - 11:00am (Wells Fargo Theater)
- Sun Microsystems, An EDUCAUSE Gold Partner - Project Wonderland and the Age of Immersive Education
Kevin Roebuck
Thursday 2:20pm - 3:10pm (Korbel Ballroom 3B)
A couple of slides to show the architecture and new features of Sun VDI 3.1:
View more presentations from mprove.
// republished by Tanweer Ahmad
// backlink from Sun System News, 3-Nov-2009
>>> Fwd >>>
Der Dokumentarfilm »Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work« wird auf der 13. GI-Fachtagung »Informatik und Schule – INFOS 2009« an der Freien Universität Berlin aufgeführt. Gezeigt wird der Film an der FU am 21. September 2009 um 18:00 Uhr im Hörsaal 1a der Rost-/Silberlaube, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, Berlin-Dahlem; im Anschluss findet eine Diskussion mit den Filmemachern statt. Der Film gehört zur Eröffnung der Konferenz, die ihr 25-jähriges Bestehen in Berlin begeht. Und er passt zum diesjährigen Motto: Zukunft braucht Herkunft.
Der 80-minütige Dokumentarfilm von Silvia Holzinger und Peter Haas porträtiert den deutsch-amerikanischen Informatikpionier und Gesellschaftskritiker Joseph Weizenbaum. In Berlin geboren, verließ Joseph Weizenbaum Deutschland 1936 und kehrte nach über 60 Jahren dorthin zurück. Der Film ist zugleich die erzählte persönliche Lebensreise des 85-jährigen „Rebellen“ und die Geschichte einer Jahrhunderterfindung, die des Computers.
“Der Film eröffnet gleichsam unsere Konferenz, die ihr 25-jähriges Bestehen in Berlin begeht. Er passt zum diesjährigen Motto: Zukunft braucht Herkunft” sagt Bernhard Koerber, Leiter der Tagung vom Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaften und Psychologie, der die Filmemacher an die Freie Universität Berlin eingeladen hat.
Von Joseph Weizenbaum heißt es, er habe das Geschichtenerzählen in die Wissenschaft zurückgebracht. Im Film erzählt der alte Herr, der unter Informatikern zur Kultfigur geworden ist, sein Leben in Anekdoten und Exkursen. Er berichtet, wie er zum Professor am renommierten Massachusetts Institute of Technology ernannt wurde und wie es zu »ELIZA« kam, seinem wohl bekanntesten Beitrag auf dem Gebiet der Informatik. Der Zuschauer erfährt auch sehr Persönliches über den Gesellschaftskritiker und nimmermüden Mahner.
»Wir durften unseren Film bislang an mehr als 40 Orten präsentieren. Mit unserem Digitalen Kino in der Hochschule knüpfen wir an eine alte Tradition an und verstehen uns als Kulturbrücke zwischen Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft! Der Film hat seinen Weg in unzählige Schulen, Hochschulen und Medienzentren gefunden«, so Silvia Holzinger und Peter Haas, die für den unabhängig produzierten Film 2007 den Wolfgang von Kempelen Preis für Informatikgeschichte erhielten.
Die Veranstaltung findet bei freiem Eintritt statt, und ausdrücklich lädt die Freie Universität auch interessierte Zuschauer ein, die nicht an der Tagung teilnehmen.
Die Website zum Film bietet viele zusätzliche Materialen zum Download: www.ilmarefilm.org.
<<<<
Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 3.1 (VDI 3.1) is in early-access. Please check out the new version and help us to get the missing bits and pixels into the right spots.
> Quick Overview
> Preliminary Documentation
> Announcement and Download
This article is about reducing complexity with a knife, scissors, and some tape. These tools already indicate that I am talking about RL! Well, in fact you can cut all the wires of your power adaptors to simplify your life, but I do recommending this right now. The problem at hand is a TV remote -- I can hear your aahs! Too many remote controls with too many functions, too tiny buttons, too easy to get lost, confusing labels and to sum it up: not suited to the task. My user population is an 80-yrs old lady with a telly hooked up to the cable; no special equipment like VCR, DVD, AUX 1-3 or SAT. Not to mention HD recorders, or TiVO with timeshift functionality. In my opinion it is even difficult for an educated engineer to use any remote control properly, but at 80 years you come from a totally different background to say the least, and your mental abilities are no longer at 100%. Usage errors are frequent -- and the concept of Undo or Home is not available.
As said, my approach reduces the likelihood of user errors by making dangerous actions impossible to trigger:
http://www.23hq.com/mprove/photo/4903842
I find my design also superior to the competition because in terms of robustness you cannot remove the paper shield by accident.
(also http://om.ly/Ipvj)
Other special remote controls aim to address a limited eyesight of the user by making everything larger:
http://www.23hq.com/mprove/photo/4903784
They shouldn't have stopped here. Clear wording is preferred. But this is no news if you are familiar with accessibility guidelines. On the other hand, this is the first remote that offers a function to call a taxi -- I call that a unique selling point!
I think different shapes of the buttons is also a good idea, because touch becomes more important if you cannot see so well anymore; or if it's quite dark in your living room with the home entertainment system. Though in the example above, channel and volume controls are too similar to get used to them without taking a look all the time.
[originally published as a User Experience Forum Newsletter #28 | Join Xing]
Quelle: www.hamburgs-stadtteile.de
Am Freitag 11.9. laden Silpion IT Solutions und der 13. Stock zur Sommerparty ein. Beginn 12 Uhr Mittags! bis Open-End.
Ach ja, Sun VDI wird auch gezeigt. cu _Matthias.
RAM Mounting Systems, Inc.
(tags: mobile mounting motorcycle gps hardware)
Apple Store – Alstertal
(tags: apple)
MotionX News » MotionX-GPS
(tags: maps mobile iphone geotagging gps software motionx)
chomsky.info : The Noam Chomsky Website
(tags: linguistics activism politics philosophy chomsky media)
We made a present to my parents and it was a visit in Dierenpark Emmen. That is the zoo in the city of Emmen in the Netherlands. It turned out to be quite a nice weekend with many photo opportunities. Here are some results.
Jabra BT3030 Stereo Bluetooth Headset
(tags: bluetooth a2dp jabra headphone)
On August 14 we had a barbecue at our rowing club. I had my new Joby Gorillapod with me and just had to practice with it.
We had a Sunday trip to Hamburgs’s museum ships and a round trip by ferry in the harbor. There were the Vattenfall Cyclassics happening in parallel. So, the ships were less crowded than one would expect on a Sunday.
Our first stop was the Cap San Diego. She is a cargo freighter from the 1960s and [...]
Roadee – Das erste Openstreetmap basierte Navigationssystem für das iPhone
(tags: navigation iphone)
The Voca People | Facebook
(tags: music acapella artist)
AppVee – iPhone app reviews, iPhone game reviews, iPhone apps! – Home
(tags: app iphone mac reviews software apple)
via vimeo.com
Somebody messed with Kunsthalle Hamburg!
Posted via web from Henning’s posterous
Panic – Stattoo – Info that blends in with your Mac OS X Desktop!
(tags: cool software mac)
Railscasts – Free Ruby on Rails Screencasts
(tags: ruby development rubyonrails screencasts tutorials programming video)
Git – Fast Version Control System
(tags: version-control git scm software programming development)
Welcome to GitCasts
(tags: screencast programming development git)
