Google announces Chrome OS

Google made an announcement we've been expecting for quiet some time now. They will be releasing their own operating system. It is called Chrome OS according to the official Google blog post, but I wouldn't be surprised if they release it under a more attractive market name.

The architecture is pretty simple: Google Chrome web browser running in a lightweight window manager on a Linux kernel. Both x86 and ARM architectures should be supported and the whole thing will be released as open source.

This step is consistent with Google's long term strategy of making the web the new platform and thus making current operating systems irrelevant. The Chrome version for major desktop systems such as Windows or Linux makes a smooth transition from classic operating systems to web based systems possible.

According to Google the Chrome OS is aimed primarily at netbooks but I'm sure this is just yet another step in their long term plans and many other strategic products for the desktop-to-web transition will follow.

VirtualBox 3.0 stable is here!

Last week I wrote about the new beta version of VirtualBox 3.0 with support for SMP. It wasn't really stable. And neither was the second beta.

This week the VirtualBox 3.0 was finally released. It seems to be stable, I haven't seen any bugs or crashes so far.



Unfortunately if your are using Windows XP as guest system you have to reinstall it. Existing installations of Windows XP that you have created using VirtualBox 1.x or 2.x will show only one CPU no matter how you configure your virtual machine. I guess this is rather a problem with Windows than VirtualBox. Windows always have problems if you move your installed system to a different hardware (virtual or real). The linux kernel or any other sane operating system should detect the change from one to two CPUs without any problems.

Unpacking my new T400

Today my new notebook finally arrived:

I bought it at lapstars.de, a small online shop in Germany which offers discounts for students.

Inside the outer box was the original Lenovo box, the receipt and surprisingly a small package of gummi bears! I order electronics from various online stores pretty often but I've never seen this kind of customer care ;-)



The notebook itself is really great. It's always exiting to have a new piece of hardware in your hands.


The first thing I had to do was to wipe the hard drive clean and install a sane operating system. But I will write about it in one of my next posts.

The next step is removing the vista-sticker in the lower left corner. It's not that easy because it's more stable than the operating system itself and I don't want to scratch my new notebook with some tools.

PHP - from bad to worse

Everyone who has ever programmed something in PHP knows that it a) is easy to learn in the beginning and b) will produce totally unmaintainable code in the end. The problem with PHP is that it encourages bad programming patterns. Mixing logic and HTML code is a common practice among many web developers. The lack of debugging and testing tools in combination with constructs such as $$var, global variables and arrays of arrays of arrays make bugfixing extremely painful.

Unfortunately these "features" are also the reason why PHP is so popular among beginners. They might be useful for tools and scripts but they are deadly for larger applications.

The PHP folks decided to add yet another feature that makes coding easier and maintaining harder: the GOTO statement! The evil keyword has finally arrived!

Chain of Lights in Vienna

The results of recent elections in Austria were very disappointing. More and more people are lured by the dark side. Right wing populists are gaining more power using fear and hate as their main weapons. It's always someone else's fault. Blaming the foreigners, homosexuals and the EU for unemployment, crime and the "decline of the society" has worked pretty well in the past few decades in Austria.

Fortunately the situation is not as bad as it might seem. There are still many people who want to live in a tolerant society who appreciate diversity. Even though the right wing populists are supported by about 25% of the voters the number of people who would never ever vote for them in an election is still bigger and is expected to grow after the recent events in the Austrian politics.

Last night there was a demonstration at the parliament building in Vienna. Thousands protested against current developments in Austria. Many think that the right wing extremists overstepped the line.

VirtualBox supports SMP

I've been using VirtualBox for quiet a while now. It's really nice virtualisation software if you occasionally need Windows inside your Linux box but don't want to reboot. It has one big advantage when compared to VMWare Workstation, it's free (either free as in "free beer" or free as in "free speach" depending on the version you choose).

The only drawback of using VirtualBox is that it doesn't support multiple CPUs inside the guest system. That has changed now. The new Beta of VirtualBox 3.0 supports SMP in guest systems.

There are still a few issues. The biggest one is that it doesn't work. At least my existing XP virtual machine is unstable when if I configure it to use more than one CPU. And there are some performance problems.

I really hope Sun will fix these problem in the stable release of 3.0.

MuseumsQuartier protests

In my last post I asked myself whether Facebook activism does make any difference in the real world. Obviously it does!

About two weeks ago the MuseumsQuartier, a complex of museums and other cultural institutions in Vienna, changed its "security policy". This place is very popular among young people who come here to chat, have a beer, make some music or just hang around in this amazing centre of modern culture. According to the new policy I was forbidden to bring your own beer or other alcohol.

Within few days a protest group with over 10.000 people was formed on Facebook. After several other online protests and a "real" demonstration last Saturday the ban of alcohol was more or less lifted.

Mobilising people and organising protests online obviously does make a difference, at least when it comes to drinking.