Spying on the spyware makers | Tech News on ZDNet

Spying on the spyware makers | Tech News on ZDNet: "When testing spyware and adware, Edelman isn't about to sacrifice his own Windows XP computer. So he uses the VMware utility to create a virtual Windows box. "

Steve's Commentary
This is a bit of a tangent to the article, but go with me on this... There is an emerging technology for virtualizing servers using software such as VMware, Virtual PC/Server and others. The researcher in this article uses it to create a test bed for new software downloads that are potentially fronts for spyware/adware. This type of software is also used in many data centers to quickly deploy new dedicated application servers and better utilize the processing power of their hardware. Products like these are very exciting when you consider the possibilities they bring to the future of computing.

Simply put, these products allow a single "physical" computer to be divided into one or more "virtual computers". Pair this with a future scenerio with ubiquitious Internet access and/or ubiquitous computing and you can start to imagine the potential.

1. My Virtual PC on the Internet
If Internet bandwidth continues to rise, it could be possible to have a personal virtual computer stored on an Internet server that you could access from anywhere. This would allow people to leave their laptop at home, but still have access to everything on it. In fact, a person wouldn't necessarily even have to have their own hardware. They could go to a computer at work, in a cafe, at the library, or even a public kiosk, and access their own person virtual PC. It would work in a way that is similar to today's pcAnywhere or VNC. Perhaps it could become such a commodity that companies like Yahoo start to offer a "My Yahoo" version of virtual PC that you can sign up for for free. This could be like today's free email accounts that get paid for with advertising.

2. My Virtual PC keychain
A slight variation to the above scenario would be to carry your virtual PC with you on a personal data storage device like a flash drive, or iPod.

These scenerios are even more exciting when you consider how ubiquitous computing, utility computing, and advancements in display technology could add to the mix. They could bring processing power and an intuitive interface to your virtual computer through your ambient environment. You could run your virtual computer at various levels based on the capability of the hardware that is available to you. (See how Longhorn is already planned to do this to some extent in the article "Longhorn will run on some older PCs too" by ZDNET).

This may be a bit out there, but the technology is here today to make something like this a reality.