The idea came to light about 6 ~ 8 months ago. Speaking to ‘Insanity’, he suggested – nay, encouraged – to write up a full outline of the what, when and how.

• What does the program do.
• When does it do it.
• How does it do it.

Or, otherwise known as a Functional Specification and a Technical Specification.

In researching ‘guides’, Joel Spolsky – famous for his various books and his site Joel on Software, I found this guide on Functional Specifications.
There are four parts to it, and I highly encoursage reading. It’s definitely helped me kick start my write up.

Managing this cluster means using the VMWare vSphere Client, which is fine. It’s a brilliant tool! Worth every penny. There’s just one thing that really, really, really bugs me, and after almost 6 months of using it every day, I’m still falling in the same trap.

Take a look at the following login screen for the vSphere client. Don’t linger, just take a glance. After all, it’s just a login screen:

Now, for someone who logs into dozens and dozens of things (apps/websites) every single day, a login screen is very standard. So what I see when I log in, is actually this:

Time to play spot the difference. Can’t be bothered? OK, here’s the big difference:

This difference is HUGELY important. Especially considering the vSphere domain is different to my local domain, so this option actually destroys my login. And it’s incredibly annoying, because:

1. The “Save my credentials” button goes on every single other login dialogue box I’ve ever used has been replaced by something that’s quite the opposite

2. After you’ve already typed your (in my case, very complicated) username and password

3. It deletes your username and password that you just typed in

And by the time I remember, it’s too late, I’ve already hit ENTER, and I have to wait 15 seconds for the login to fail just to be dumped back at the login prompt without any username or password.

What it SHOULD look like is:

This way, you’re doing things in a flow and order that makes sense, and nobody will ever wonder why vSphere wiped out their session credentials instead of saving them.

(just to be clear, not providing any option for saving your vSphere credentials is quite sensible. That’s not my issue here).

One of the things I really wanted to demonstrate was the compatability mode, showing how old programs can be forced to run in a environment that pre-dates Windows 7.
It’s quite useful for older programs that worked fine under Windows XP, but seem to struggle / have issues (for whatever reason) under newer Operating Systems.
So, I hunted around my office, and found a copy of Lotus Smart Suite 9.6.
I figured that since this program came about in 2000/2001 it should break enough to require Compatability Mode.

However, sadly (or goodly, as it may be) it didn’t need to. When installing, I did have to run the setup.exe as an Administrator (because otherwise it couldn’t write to the registry). It prompted that there was an incompatability with Lotus 1-2-3 printing certain formats, but you clicked through that, and it installed OK. And then – it ran fine. No problems.
I even tried an old version of Winamp. That worked fine too.

I’ve only ever had to force Compatability Mode for playing older games, and they work fine under that.
I’m keen to find an actual program that WONT work in Compatability Mode, and that requires the Windows 7 Professional ‘XP Mode’ Virtual Machine.

So far, all I can say is that Windows 7 is freakin’ awesome.

I must warn, the sound quality is VERY dependant on your network speeds and CPU loads at either end.  If you are running a lot of programs on either the server or the client, the sound will be erratic.  See the bugs on the pulseaudio website.  I was unable to get the sound to run very smoothly for any length of time on between two Ubuntu VM’s on pulseaudio version 0.9.19-0ubuntu4.  The specific bugs are:

• http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/670
• http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/477

Either way, it is a fun exercise in pulseaudio configuration.  In order to demonstrate this I have set up two Ubuntu VM’s using VirtualBox on a local network.

Graphical Setup

The first step is to install the tools we’re going to use to configure this. Install PulseAudio Device Chooserm PulseAudio Volume Control and PulseAudio Preferences. Select these items from the Ubuntu Software Centre. You can easily reduce the list to these items by searching for pulseaudio in the search bar as shown in the following screenshot:

Screenshot of Ubuntu Software Center installing Pulseaudio

Once this is installed, you can launch it by selecting it from Applications menu.

Open the Pulseaudio Device Chooser

This will put an audio plug icon up near the clock. Left-click (or primary click) . Select “Configure local Sound Server” and change to the Multicast/RTP tab in the Preferences window:

PulseAudio Preferences

Server Computer

The first computer set-up will be the server. This is the computer you will be controlling & playing the sound from. On this computer you will need to open up rhythmbox or your chosen audio program that supports pulseaudio output. Totem or VLC also fit this prescription.

On the server computer you will want to “Enable Mutlicast/RTP sender”. If you want to play the sound out this server computer’s speakers, select “Send audio from local speakers”. If you want to be more specific about what is sent, I would recommend you select “Create separate audio device for Multicast/RTP”. For my setup, I want to be able to send only music to the stream when I want it, so I am going to chose the second option.

Client Computer(s)

The client computers will all need to be set up with the “Enable Multicast/RTP receiver” option enabled. Assuming the networks are working properly, you should immediately start hearing music on all the client computers!

Manual Configuration

If you don’t have the benefits of a running Xserver, or want to configure these settings to work on a headless machine, you will need to be manually configuring the pulseaudio config files. The pulseaudio config files are stored in /etc/pulse/system.pa if you’re running in daemon mode, and /etc/pulse/default.pa if you’re running in a per user setup (this is the default method in Ubuntu). I’m going to write this assuming you are using daemon-mode, so we will be editing /etc/pulse/system.pa.

Server Computer

To setup the server computer, you need to edit the configuration. In a terminal or on a console with admin access type the following:

sudo nano /etc/pulse/system.pa

In this file, find and uncomment the lines that look like:

load-module module-null-sink sink_name=rtp format=s16be channels=2 rate=44100 description="RTP Multicast Sink"
load-module module-rtp-send source=rtp.monitor

(If these don’t exist, just add them to the end of the file)

Once this is done, restart the pulseaudio server by running:

sudo /etc/init.d/pulseaudio restart

Client Computer(s)

The client computer will be done by editing /etc/pulse/system.pa (alternatively, you can copy this file to ~/pulse/default.pa). Edit this file by typing:

sudo nano /etc/pulse/system.pa

In this file, find and uncomment the lines that look like:

### Load the RTP reciever module (also configured via paprefs, see above)
#load-module module-rtp-recv

Again, if this doesn’t exist, just add them to the end of the file.

Once you’ve saved this, apply the changes the same way you did previously… by restarting pulseaudio:

sudo /etc/init.d/pulseaudio restart

Once again, assuming the network is behaving correctly, you should be hearing sound out both ends.

Troubleshooting & More Information

Troubleshooting guides are well written on the pulseaudio site. If you have any issues I would suggest reading the wonderful article at http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/HowToListenToTheRtpStream. The key thing is to check that you can see the broadcast packets (see the tcpdump section in the article).

Another good tip is to start the pulseaudio server in non-daemon mode. This will allow you to see and interact with the pulseaudio from the command line. To do this, stop any existing pulseaudio servers with the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/pulseaudio stop # in system or daemon mode or

pulseaudio -k # for single user mode

To start pulseaudio server, run the following:

sudo pulseaudio --system -Cv # in system or daemon mode or

pulseaudio -Cv # for single user mode

Take note of any errors you see when starting this. Once the server is started, you can list the modules loaded by typing the following in the pulseaudio console:

list-modules

For more information on how to load modules see http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/Modules, and specifically http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/Modules#RTPSDPSAPTransport.

More information about the commands that can be run in the pulseaudio console, see http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/CLI

He made a single point that I thought relatively brilliant:

Where is the Microsoft personality?

In summary, he’s referring to how Apple has played the marketing game brilliantly. It’s never been afraid to push itself. They make snide (albeit true) comments about the PC and Windows systems in their I’m a Mac advertisments.

Steve Jobs is a passionate man. A little too passionate at times, if the rumours are to be believed. However, if you have a dream – a goal – and have no burning passion, the likelihood of reaching that dream is slim-to-none.
Whilst I’ve had my fair share of Apple related problems (From a hardware – and always a hardware level), they’ve always sold themselves as being ‘better’.

And, as basic psychology tells you – if you’re told something enough, you’ll start to believe it.

Sure there are forums, and groups out there that criticise Apple because their iPhone blew up, or because they wont replace the casing that seems to crack from normal use over time – but these people bought an Apple product – either to be different, or because they firmly believed that the product was superior in some way.

The other issue is that most other non-Apple companies marketing departments don’t know how to sell something with a subtle push. Microsoft has recently sent out advertising posters claiming “Windows Vista: Now Future Proofed“:

As you can see, it’s nothing more than offering a free upgrade to Windows 7 for computers bought between 22nd July 2009 and 31st January 2010.
A similar thing happend before Vista was  released with people who bought computer with windows XP (However, I’m sure many people went back to XP after they found their systems to be inadequate for Vista, or had issues with Vista’s performance and/or operation).

So, tell me Microsoft: Why are you ‘better’ than Apple? Is it because you’re cheaper? Because, if you sincerely believe that – you’re misguided. Apple at least has multi-System licenses for their operating system, because they realise many people have more than one computer.
Microsoft was clever in bringing out a 3-PC License for Microsoft Office Home and Student, but will they do a similar thing with Windows 7? And will it be just as cost effective?

The computer may be cheaper, but the software isn’t.
Apple operates in reverse: It’s software is cheaper, but the hardware isn’t.

So, if the old addage goes “You get what you pay for” – Which is the ‘better’ product?

And at this point in time, there’s a lot of speculation around the ‘hype’ of Windows 7′s ability to perform on older hardware.
Vista suffered from the ‘lets throw more hardware at it‘ syndrome – where you don’t ensure enough backward compatibility, and tried to bring about too much change in one hit.
Funnily enough, many users expect their computer of 5 years to be able to handle the next operating system – not being fully aware of the changes in technology. Which is fair enough – to a point; It’d be nice if users actually read the ‘minimum’ and ‘recommended’ requirements for the program they’re trying to install, and to then follow that thinking, investigate what they have, and then learn a bit along the way.

A lot of people don’t always want to upgrade their system. It’s a comfort thing. They know where their files are. They know how things look, and feel, and where to find elements of the system (control panel, programs, games, etc). Others are willing to throw away a computer that’s two years old (and was top of the line when they bought it) simply because it’s running slow.
What they might find is that they have some virus’s or malware – or just too many programs running, causing the slow down. More RAM and a clean up would help it – but they don’t care. Like many organisations, they just throw money at the problem, and that should fix it.
Right? Wrong.

So, we’re hoping people are going to start appreciating what they have, and maybe take maintainance measures to draw out the life of their computers – Perhaps this is also part of the reason why windows 7 is ‘said’ to be able to work on a:

• 1 Ghz 32-Bit or 64-Bit Processor or higher
• 1 GB of system memory or more
• 16 GB of available disk space
• DVD-R/W Drive

Apart from the ’16 GB’ of disk space, that’s pretty much a standard PC. That’d almost work on my old 900 Mhz Duron – which is 9 years old!
If you have a 40 GB Drive – which many systems come with as a basic setup, especially in corporations- Then that might be starting to get too close. With half your drive spent on the Operating System, you’d be possibly dealing with a bit of a slow system. Possibly.

There are some people (Farseeker, of this site, and more notably – John C Dvorak) who think that the current state of Windows 7 (The beta of which runs quite happily on my EEE 701) is only a facade: That whilst it runs nicely, and efficiently now, the final product will be bogged down with ‘crap-ware’.
And, as John Dvorak happily notes – he feels that the success of Microsoft – indeed, the entire Windows line – is based on whether Windows 7 works – and works well.

I agree – in part – with this opinion. Vista was a bad move by Microsoft. Even they’ve admitted to that. However, whether people like it or not – They still hold the market in most corporate environments. But part of the key to Windows 7 is how it will be priced -  especially given the current ‘economic crisis’.
Windows XP, whilst great for its time – is buggy. More and more security holes / flaws are being discovered, and I don’t think that patching the Swiss-cheese like architecture that is XP is going to work forever.

The real ‘key’ to Microsoft’s success with Windows 7 is two fold.
1. Pricing. They need to price it in such a way that it wont be hideously expensive, but still represent a value for money. Both in terms of features and security. Corporations aren’t going to spend $400 per machine to upgrade. Especially in an environment consisting of 500+ desktops and laptops.
And the average Joey Bloggs isn’t going to upgrade his nicely working year old Vista machine – especially if he’s just layed out a pretty sum for it.

2. Upgrade path. At the time of writing, every indication has said that there’s no way of ‘upgrading’ from Windows XP. The architecture is just too different. However, you *could* go from XP – Vista. Hmm.
Win7 is based on Vista – but I wonder how much of the ‘base system’ they actually changed that you can’t go from XP – Win7.

Or is this another ‘push’ to customers to do a clean install? Those of us in the industry know the benefits and ‘psychology’ of a clean install. Things are fresh, and you don’t bring your old garbage to the new house. Microsoft tried the ‘push’ strategy with Vista by forcing people to upgrade their hardware. That went down like the Titanic.

It’ll be interesting to see how much the economy of current times will affect the release and adoption of Windows 7.

We’ve had the credit bubble go *pop*,  the subsequent mass hysteria of everyone pulling money out of investments so fast (thanks to the wonder of technology: High speed Internet and Internet banking) causing entire countries to become bankrupt, and generally society starting to panic and think “Is this the next Great Depression?”.
That question, I’m not in a position to answer – nor is it the purpose of this post. Rather, considering where consumerism has taken technology.

So, there was this lovely scene. Everyone was working for someone, making some money – and then you had these people in the financial sector willing to give out credit to the workers – it didn’t matter how much you earned, you could get a line of credit from as little as $2000, to as much as $20,000. Whether you could repay it or not they wouldn’t care.
Some people don’t really think about that. They just thought: “You beauty, quick money – I can get all those cool things I want” – but don’t really need.

That well suddenly dried up – and the horse drinking from it: no one’s seen him since.
The last 10 years has seen some dramatic growth and change in technology: I point it squarely at the consumer market.

Advertisers are always trying to get the everyday person (consumer) to feel that they need something to fill their otherwise boring life. That new 52 inch Plasma. That 10.2 surround sound system.The latest Mac Book pro. Anything they think will help them get on with everyday life in a more ‘interesting’ fashion.

The huge profits that this generated for the companies allowed them to push Research and Development, to make things better, & to find new technologies. Along the way, the additional hype of a growing energy crisis and shortfalls in resources has prompted certain companies to rethink what resources they are using. Never a bad thing – provided they could come up with a reason why they’re wasting it all on products that in 8 years are going to sit in a rubbish dump.

It’s always a ‘short lived’ focus.

People used to go out every 6 – 12 months and get the newest, greatest digital camera.  People will now stick to the one they’ve got. The number of mega pixels is irrelevant these days. They all do a fantastic job of capturing an image. That’s all it has to do.
People are no longer throwing out computers that are a year or two old because they’re “getting slower”. They’re putting more memory in it, running maintenance procedures, and trying to make it last a little bit longer. One has to wonder how long they’ll really last – but it’s reasonable to expect at least a 5 – 8 year life span.

I’d like to think hope that we’re going back to a different mindset. Sure, the ‘throw away’ society will remain to a degree, but maybe people will hold off on throwing away technology that still works for a little while longer.

No longer are we required to think innovatively to solve problems – we’ve become relient on machines to work it out for us. A classic example was in a historic show I watched a few years back.

Their goal was to try replicate how the Ancient Romans built a huge Dock that went out into a harbour. The difficulty was in creating a machine to place these huge pillars into the water, hammering them down somehow at the right angle, then building the supports and planks on top, move the machine out, rinse-repeat.
These days they’d just use cranes or something to that effect. But the historical team had to resort to innovation- using only materials found in that time period. They worked it out in the end, but it did demonstrate how much our thinking had changed, and our relience on machines became evident.

Things in the Techno World aren’t much different these days. It seems that ‘Hardware is cheap’ = ‘rough enough is good enough’. In a recent Security Now Podcast (185a) the presenters were talking about how in the early days of computing, memory was expensive. They’d constantly be trying to re-write their code to make it leaner and more effecient.
Window’s Vista is a good example of modern day thinking: Just throw more resources at it, it’ll be fine.

Another area that will be spurred on due to recent economic issues is the games industry. No longer can they just turn out ‘crap’, it seems they’ll be focussing on creating more ‘quality’ products, less in ‘quantity’.
I’ve not been much of a gamer in recent years, largely because I didnt feel any of the games looked or felt any different to what’s become the ‘norm’. Even Mirrors Edge was quite disappointing: A case of interesting idea, and good design, but limitations in gameplay, and a story line which weakens as the game continues, leaves you feeling “Why did I bother?”. They couldn’t do that 15- 20 years ago. They had to develop games that would generate continued interest for continued revenue.

Perhaps its nostalgic of me, but I really do believe that things were better in the past. Largely because people have just become lazy and, well, complacent.