During my christmas vacation now, I just finished reading the book "Five Point Someone" by Chetan Bhagat. Few months back I read the author's (Bhagat) second book "One night@the call centre" and was interested to read his first book "Five Point Someone".

The book is a story on life in IIT campus and what not to do at IIT. Though the story is somewhat usual, the author has a fantastic way of narrating it in first person. Certainly a good read to pass time.

Microsoft recently announced their new virtualization technology  "Hyper-V" (codename Viridian) as part of Windows Server 2008 that will replace Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. I wanted to understand the differences between the two virtualization products and how to use Hyper-V. In my search, I came up with the following list of references and understandings.

Rough Technology differences between Hyper-V and earlier products:
One way to think about these new chip technologies is that they introduce a “-1” ring essentially to the usual four rings in the x86 CPU architecture. With the VPC and Virtual Server offerings, they use a trick called ring compression where the kernel of the VM is placed into Ring 1, instead of the expected Ring 0. This is so that the host can absolutely ensure that VMs are running in their own sandbox and can’t gain access to any resources of the host or other VMs. There is something like 14-17 CPU instructions in the x86 instruction set that can’t be executed directly because of sandbox violation. Hence, the need to place the child VM’s kernel into Ring 1 so that the host can place itself in Ring 0 to intercept those calls to protect them directly or to emulate them. By introducing a “-1” ring, the hypervisor lives here and controls the access to the various virtual machines. So, with the introduction of a hypervisor living in ring -1, the need for ring compression of child VMs is essentially removed. At least, this is one way to think about. They hypervisor itself is not a complete OS, per se. The hypervisor is a VERY thin and small, trusted computing base.

Technical References:

• Hyper-V Architecture, API overview from Wikipedia
• Windows Server Virtualization (WSV/Hyper-V) Preview
  
• Hyper-V Documentation from MSDN
• Install Hyper-V Beta
• Step by Step document on Hyper-V
• Installing Windows Server 2008 on Hyper-V
  

VM Additions for Linux

Earlier Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 didn't have VM Additions for Linux, recently Microsoft released fully supported VM Additions for Linux (Download from here).

Though Microsoft Silverlight is a cool technology, it pales in front of Adobe Flash (98% of browsers have it) in terms of availability. It is not an unique MS problem, it is a problem for any new offering when there is an incumbent who has a majority market share. To change this requires education, awareness creation and put it in front of users at many as possible in exchange for an added value to them. I was pleased to see Microsoft doing some steps in this direction (unlike their pathetically nil action to have .NET Framework Runtime in desktops widespread in its earlier days) by having a beta of Silverlight enhanced downloads when people come to MS Download Center site. 

நேற்று பக்ரித் - அலுவலகம் விடுமுறை.  இரண்டு நாட்களுக்கு முன்பே இணையத்தில் பார்த்ததில் பிர்லா மற்றும் அழகிய தமிழ்மகன் போன்ற ஏந்த படத்திற்கும்  இடம் கிடைக்காதால்,  "கண்ணாமூச்சி ஏனடா" படத்திற்கு முன்பதிவு செய்து நேற்று போனோம்.

படத்தில் கதை என்று எதுவும் இல்லை. அடிதடி, கொலை, கவர்ச்சி என்று எல்லா மசாலா சமாசாரங்களைத் தவிர்த்து குடும்பத்தோடு பார்க்க கூடிய ஓரு  முழுநீள நகைச்சுவை படத்தை கொடுத்துள்ளார் இயக்குனர் பிரியா.  படத்தில் பெரியாதாக பேசும்படி எதுவும் இல்லையென்றாலும் படத்தைப் பார்க்காலம்.        

Yesterday I attended a Balanced Scorecard session organized by SPIN Chennai and the speaker was Mr.SUDIPTO MARJIT (Practice Head of QAI Limited).  Before the session my exposure to Balanced Scorecard was limited (or lower), but Mr.Marjit did an excellent job in giving an overview within the 60-75 minutes he had that at the end I felt I know a lot on the topic. Though this is a theoretical topic he made it very lively with his engaging style, with every sentence he spoke we could easily sense his passion for the topic and experiences he has had on ground.

He introduced the need for having something like Balanced Scorecard before going into the actual topic. This approach helped in appreciating this concept better. "Balanced Scorecard, is a world-renowned management technique for implementing strategy and creating a performance management system. Designed by Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton, it has been recognized by the HBR as the leading management tool in the last 75 years"

Two key Areas that Mr.Marjit concentrated on the talk were

• Balanced Scorecard methodology and understanding of a Strategy Focused Organization
• Aligning Strategy through Strategy Maps

I really liked his example of SouthWest Airlines using a strategy map.

Over the years I have tried with little success various models of Wireless input devices (Keyboard and Mouse), right from the early Logitech desktop sets. I see only one advantage of a wireless over the wired models is the convenience of giving it to the person on the other side of the table for a quick demo. Most of the wireless models anyway have wires for their base station and you need to keep the base station almost touching the keyboard for any good signal reception.

I am particular about ergonomics and I prefer keyboards that have a natural curve for hand comfort with a good play of the keyboard buttons as I type pretty fast. So when I saw the new "Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000" few months back it seemed to fit my bill - came with a small USB Dongle as a base station and had ergonomic styling. I got the desktop set few weeks back and been using it, but I found the keyboard to be unresponsive most of the times. I was using the native drivers that came with Vista x64 and didn't install the CD that came with the desktop set. As a try, I downloaded and installed the OEM drivers and software from Microsoft site and now it seems to be working perfectly well. The software also gives you additional tabs with customization features in the control panel applets. Download drivers for Windows Vista x64 from here.

One thing I keep wondering, why are the names for products from Microsoft always too long and confusing. Look at the names below, I guess only Microsoft marketing can come up with such creative inspiring names

• Microsoft Natural Wireless Ergonomic Keyboard 7000 (Natural Wireless - hmm, I didn't know all the other wireless technologies we used were all artificial)
• Microsoft Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 7000 (the keyboard was Wireless Ergonomic, but the mouse is Wireless laser - does this mean the mouse is not ergonomic but only laser?)

In MSN today, I saw this article on PARADE Magazine picks its must-have technology for 2007. What I liked about this list was it was yet another list of Mobile Phones & Music Players. Not all of them were exciting, but I learned of few new interesting gadgets: Solar Charger for Cellphones, Biometric Door Lock that opens on fingerprints, HP Presto printer that does email without a PC, Ooma VoIP phone & Smartshopper that records your grocery list and prints it.

The article unfortunately doesn't have links to the product manufacturers so you had to Google for each of them.

I have watched few Hindi movies, main reason being I understand little of the language. Though I can read and write Hindi (since I was in a CBSE school where it was compulsory till 8th standard), strangely I cannot understand the language much.

Last week in NDTV, I saw the coverage of a new movie produced by Sanjay Dutt - "Dus Kahaniyaan". Somehow the idea of 10 different short stories made into one single movie interested me, especially the part "Shabana Azmi" playing a south indian grandmother. So today we went to the movie in Sathyam Cinemas "Season" theatre. Before I say about the movie I liked Satyam's online booking which includes facility to order snacks and softdrinks as well (these are delivered to your seat during interval).

The movie was certainly a different experience, with each director doing their best to set the character, highlight the background and tell the story all in 15 minutes. If you a regular movie goer, don't miss this movie. I saw a good review from Times of India about the movie, which reflects pretty much what I had to say and has said it better.

BTW, at few instances I did ask my wife to help me in understanding of the dialogues

Last month while in the US, I bought this DVD "Uncovered - The Whole Truth About the Iraq War" a documentary picture. I managed to watch this only today.

The picture talks about the false intelligence behind the US war on Iraq. Though the DVD is pretty old (made in 2004), seemed to be still relevant. Since it was a documentary it seemed to be made too academic and it was boring beyond a point. Unless you are going to argue with someone on the subject - you should skip watching this movie.

If your laptop like mine is part of a domain, then updates are likely to be controlled by your IT Team. In our office, our IT team uses WSUS to download the updates locally, test them on local machines and then approve the updates for general consumption across the organization. I am one of the few in the office to use Windows Vista, so these updates are approved at the last and I have to wait. More so, ultimate extras don't flow correctly through WSUS. Since they are controlled by WSUS, even if I am a local system administrator I cannot directly run Windows Update locally or go to Microsoft Update and get updates.

This week one of my IT Engineer gave me a tip. It was to login locally to the machine, using a local machine user name and then use Windows Update. I used it and it worked perfectly. Please be warned that doing updates this way, may not be supported by your IT Team!

I was in lookout today for a small footprint / compact / embedded database engines suitable for .NET applications (mainly web) and found the following candidates. This is just a list compiled from the Internet.

1. Microsoft Access (JET Engine) - Very Popular from Windows 3.1 days due to the fact it is out-of-box in most versions of Windows OS.
2. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express - The plus here is that it is easy to upgrade to full-fledged SQL Server as Express edition uses the same file format and is binary compatible. Also ships with a free management tool "SQL Server Management Studio"
3. Microsoft SQL Server 3.5 Compact - Can be embedded easily with less than 2MB in distribution size. Works with Windows Mobile as well.
4. SQLite - A free / no license extremely lightweight Database engine which is less than 250KB in distribution size. There is no server process that needs to be started, stopped, or configured here. A detailed article here.
5. VistaDB - Quite popular, 3rd party, commercial Database Engine that can be easily embedded. Written in NET Managed Code.

In the above list, other than VistaDB all the other are free (as in free beer) to deploy/distribute.

Over the years, I have tried with different operating systems (Windows 3.1, 98, 2000, XP, Vista), newer & faster CPUs, different hardware brands (WinTV, Pinnacle, Aver), newer interfaces (PCI, USB) but I was never successful in getting a stable working setup of TV playing in a PC. At one point, it looked like I was having a curse against getting a TV Tuner working on my PC. In all cases my hardware exceeded the manufacturer's minimum required specification. So in the last two years, I have put TV Tuner in my list of technology "hypes" whose time haven't arrived yet.

With this background I tried again and I bought a Pinnacle Hybrid TV Tuner Kit (USB) for Vista during my Singapore trip. The minimum specification said Vista Home Premium/Ultimate (32bit) and it was Certified for Vista, this meant they have drivers for Vista. When I came back to my office, I tried to install it in my Windows Vista x64 Enterprise OS machine with 8GB RAM. I got the beta driver for Vista x64 from Pinnacle Support site, the card got installed but there was no Media Application to play the TV signal.

Windows Vista Enterprise x64 to Ultimate x64
After some search, I realized that I needed either Vista Home Premium or Ultimate because only those two Vista Editions include Windows Media Center that was needed to play the TV signal from Pinnacle tuner. I thought this should be simple, since Vista allows easy upgrade between editions, but it turns out officially you cannot upgrade Vista Enterprise to anything else. I found a hack here to do it, by tricking the setup to treat Enterprise as Business edition. Instead, I decided to reinstall Windows Vista. I did that and got Windows Vista x64 Ultimate working.

Pinnacle x64 Driver from Windows Update
When I now connected the TV Tuner USB Device, Windows Update detected the device, installed the correct driver for Pinnacle PCTV 330e and got initialised. I followed the instructions given in Pinnacle manual, connected the IR Blaster (this sticks in front of your set-top box and replays the IR instructions of set-top box remote) to IR Receiver and then the IR Receiver to a free USB port.
(IR Receiver / Remote sensor receives the signal from the Media Center remote control and relays it to the Media Center PC. When you plug the IR blaster/ control cable into the remote sensor and the set-top box, then the remote sensor also relays the signal from the PC to the set-top box)

Windows Media Center shows only TV Tuner as Signal source
I connected the Tata Sky DTH satellite set-top box's composite video/audio (RCA jack) output to Pinnacle Tuner. I ran Windows Media Center software, unfortunately it detected only the TV Tuner as an input source and refused to recognize the Satellite (Composite) as an available input source. Taking the suggestion from documentation for setting a set-top box from Microsoft site I ensured the IR blaster was connected. Still it didn't detect my composite video signal. For a strange reasoning best known only to Microsoft, Media Center doesn't enable input sources other than TV Tuner unless it detects the IR blaster. But in my case even with IR Blaster installed correctly, it didn't show up.

I tried the TV Tuner in two other Vista 32bit (x86) machines:

• Dell Vostro with 4GB RAM where I had the same problem of not being able to select composite signal source (Dell support said they don't support Media Center with Vostro series)
• Lenovo Desktop (with 1GB RAM) where it worked perfectly. Windows Media Center on first start, automatically detected the IR Blaster (allowed me to even control the Tata Sky set-top box successfully) and let me select composite as signal source.

It looks like Windows Media Center/Pinnacle Hybrid tuner doesn't support more than 1GB RAM for Satellite input. Strange!

I wrote to Pinnacle Support asking them on how to get the product working with Vista x64 Media Center. They said this is a MCE question so you should write to Microsoft. Filling a case with Microsoft PSS which they refused to take it as it is a how-to question and also it is a device capability issue. Writing back to Pinnacle, they promptly replied that the product is not supported in Vista x64 - "The tuner kit for Windows Media Center will only work on a 32 bit version. There is no update for a 64 bit version yet. We are sorry for any inconvenience the product has brought your".  This was surprising as Windows Update has a driver for the product and Pinnacle themselves have a beta driver.

So it was time to ditch Windows Media Center and do it on our own. After some research I found out Nero has a TV Tuner Player software - I am big fan and loyal user of Nero for years. I downloaded the trial of Nero 8 and after few configuration steps I got the device working.

Nero 8.0 configuration with Satellite Signal and Pinnacle Hybrid Tuner
The step to configure involves the following four steps:

Step 1: Launch Nero MediaHome software and then the "TV Wizard"

Step 2: "Pinnacle 330e/880e Device" as Video Device (you will see two entries, the other one is for TV Tuner Signal) and "Composite" as Video Input

Step 3: Launch Nero Home, select Video in Video and TV applet

Step 4: Scroll down and select Composite as the video to play

Finally, you will see this player with signal from Tata Sky working fine:

Note: If you are planning a TV Tuner card for Vista x64, before you buy it please visit the Microsoft HCL site to ensure you buy a hardware that is certified for x64.