Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Wednesday 6 August 2008, 9:48 AM
The little things that make virtual computing such fun...
At least, that was the plan. Today's DB (and if you haven't seen any of the new series yet, do - Drew and the gang in production have got it honed like a samurai sword) is about virtualisation, so Charles and I have been loading this, running that and generally tweaking the other. I decided to check out USB performance on my home machine, which runs Ubuntu 7.10 natively and XP on top of VirtualBox. I also had a bunch of podcasts downloaded which I thought I might as well slip onto my iPhone for listening pleasure on the number 45 bus.
So what could be more sensible than installing iTunes on the virtual XP? That went well - ah, the delights of seeing software rampage in over the net at 12Mbps - and all was well. Until I plugged in the Jebusphone... and nothing happened. I restarted iTunes, and got error code 0xE8000035. A quick scout around, and it turns out that this is a known bug in VirtualBox, with no fix yet.
Well, I say there's no fix. There's also no feedback in the bug report thread from the VirtualBox developers - with the result that the people there are saying "VMware works. I had to switch."
Four lessons:
1. People who write software that pops up long error messages with hexadecimal in should be hung, drawn and quartered -- if they don't let you cut and paste from the error box. I'm building the gibbet for the iTunes folks.
2. Virtualisation works remarkably well, considering. But it isn't perfect - sometimes, it's an extra layer of complexity in an already insanely complex system
3. It is very good to have public bug reporting systems with discussion enabled. People will work things out for themselves. But if you don't pay attention, the things they work out may actually harm you. Pay attention.
4. I'm not going to be able to listen to my podcasts this morning on the number 45 bus. (As these are the last two episodes of Soldersmoke and the latest from Conversations With Apollo, you'll feel my pain.)
PreviousComments on this post
Hi Rupert!
How do things like media monkey (this one talks to i pods),winamp, and WMP run on the virtual pc?
Would it be worth having a spare generic type mp3 player to avoid such disapointments? I would be sad if I were to miss an episode of science with doctor karl
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/fivelive/drkarl/drkarl_20080731-0401.mp3
I've downloaded conversations with apollo, look forward to hearing this,
so thanks for the link!
Roger, Roger!
MediaMonkey runs fine under VirtualBox, but doesn't see the iPhone. Windows seems to identify it as a generic Apple mobile device, but doesn't mount it properly - so it Just Doesn't Work.
I have other options, of course, but I wanted to make this one work. I'll just keep an eye out for updates to the VirtualBox bug list.
I do like Doctor Karl - but in general, the BBC's science coverage has gone from appalling to non-existent. It's truly heartbreaking when you hit Iplayer and finally dig up the science category (it's not even mentioned on the top level ) to find it labelled 'Science, Nature and the Environment', and that the 40 programmes there are mostly Farming Today and bloody "isn't it nice in the countryside?" hillwalking programmes. You can gorge yourself all night on Make Your Dog A Fashionista MIllionaire and Addicted To Boob Jobs (and I only made one of those up), which sort of thing are categorised as 'Factual' and probably help the BBC meet its public service remit to educate and inform - but science? Science?
There's Patrick Moore and... and... that's your lot, on telly. Radio 4 soldiers on with Material World. But mostly, the BBC has utterly and completely abandoned any attempt to popularise science - at a time when it's having a greater influence on society than ever. And when pseudo-science is given a bye by most of the media...
Get me an axe. A large one. I'm off to see Mark Thompson to demonstrate practical aspects of metallurgy and Newton's laws of motion, as they apply to human anatomy.
I love it!!....physics does have an important role now when it comes
to explaining biology, with all its disobedience to the rules!
There are a couple of other shows on the podcast page for bbc radio. one being science in action, the other one is digital planet.
I know what you mean though, It's a poor showing overall. Their is however just slightly more choice by going through the podcast page.
Conversations with apollo was very interesting, so thanks for that one!
