Desktop virtual machines (DRM bites me,
too) 
(1972) "I can hear the fireworks...
And it's almost Independence Day." - Van Morrison
July 4, 2007 --
I can hear the fireworks.
It is Independence Day.
My LP copy of Saint Dominic's Preview is worn out.
(Apparently the album is not available on CD in the U.S.)
Anyway, my copy is worn out from many playings, but I won't
claim to understand the lyrics.
I know that some people shoot fireworks before the 4th,
but most people hear the fireworks on the 4th.
A friend asked me about desktop virtual machines, particularly
performance of applications running in virtual machines, particularly
playing games and watching videos.
My interest in virtual machines has mostly been in server applications.
Performance in server applications has exceeded my expectations.
For example, as
reported
before, streaming tape performance seems very good.
I was concerned that there might be what some call
shoe-shining,
but see no signs of that.
My initial reaction was that, at least with the VMware environments
I've tried and with very limited experience with Parallels,
desktop application performance should be OK.
I'd already tried playing a video clip with RealPlayer and that seemed
OK.
I never play video games on computers, so I'd need help with that.
But I could try playing a DVD.
I did not expect the efforts to be nearly so trying, but most of the
problems were not related to virtual machines.
The most reasonable experiment seemed to use X Windows for the native
environment on the host Fedora and then have the VMware Server Console
running as a window in the X environment.
The first problem is that Fedora 7 seems to assume more modern monitors than
the 15" Trinitron I had in the closet where the host machine sits.
When I started up X, that CRT complained "OUT OF SCAN RANGE".
Adding a "Modes" line to xorg.conf, even one with unsupportable
resolutions, enabled X to "play nice" with the monitor.
The big struggle was in finding freely available software that would run on
Windows 2000 and play DVDs.
Eventually I figured out that Nero ShowTime, that came with the external
DVD drive, would try to play DVDs.
However, back to virtual machines, the device drivers provided
by Fedora, VMware and/or Windows 2000 do not seem sufficient to
work with the
Content
Scramble System (CSS) Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme used
with most commercial DVDs.
Whenever I would try to play "Jurassic Park" with ShowTime, it would
either simply hang or complain of some CSS problem and then hang.
I have a few non-commercial DVDs. One DVD that my grand-daughter's
other grandfather made of her birthday party plays just fine with ShowTime
running in the virtual machine.
So virtual machine performance passes my test, but this application
(playing DVDs) doesn't seem very usable.
DRM is a controversial topic I normally avoid in my purchasing and thinking.
Except for DVDs, I can't think of anything I purchase that is
encumbered by DRM.
For music, I mostly buy CDs and occasionally purchase an MP3.
The few book or document files I've purchased have been unencumbered.
Except for DVDs, DRM seems to be a collossally unsuccessful commercial
strategy in that it hinders sales.
It is easy to argue that "ebooks" have not succeeded because of the
clumsy DRM, and that online book sources that succeed, e.g.,
Safari, do not encumber with
DRM.
DRM for music seems to mostly frustrate purchase of legitimate copies.
Apple seemingly
recognized
its mistake of using DRM with iTunes and is slowly changing, along
with the music companies, e.g., EMI.
Many people are "up in arms" about DRM.
They've been bitten worse than the little bite I got today.
They perceive (correctly) that the content providers are trying to
take away our rights as consumers of the content.
Though DRM is onerous, on this day it is hard to take that much umbrage
with DRM.
231 years ago a great document and a greater cause established a new
course of history.
Today, we can celebrate that the thirteen colonies declared
our unalienable Right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
coda
The publisher of
Mainstream
Videoconferencing: A Developer's Guide to Distance
Multimedia has assigned copyright back to the authors,
Joe Duran and myself.
We plan to make the full book available here once we work through the
details.
