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Java Virtualization Windows

Windows XP In a Browser 217

Posted by timothy from the where-it-belongs dept.
An anonymous reader writes "JPC — the pure java PC emulator — has now been upgraded to JPC2, and can run WindowsXP inside the Java Applet sandbox."
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Windows XP In a Browser More

Windows XP In a Browser

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  • Wow, that sounds painful (Score:5, Funny)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Thursday July 21, 2011 @01:01PM (#36836630) Homepage Journal
    I assume this is for those times where you want your Core i7 machine to run like a 486?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JoeDuncan ( 874519 )
      It'll come in handy to run those old DOS games that aren't properly clocked and run *way* too fast on modern machines....

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jawtheshark ( 198669 ) *

        That's /really/ old DOS games (Think Alley Cat [wikipedia.org]), and DoxBox handles those situation just fine. The later Win9x games (not runninig under DOS or the DOS4GW extender) were already correctly time. Well, I haven't ever encountered one that wasn't.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Hatta ( 162192 )

          Even games as recent as Wing Commander II (1991) relied on clock cycles for timing.

        • I can think of one. Grim Fandango has one area that you can't get out of if your processor is too fast. I had to run a program to chew up my processor cycles to get through it.

      • It'll come in handy to run those old DOS games that aren't properly clocked and run *way* too fast on modern machines....

        Or you could just use DOSBox [dosbox.com] for that situation.

    • Since when did 486s use NEARLY that much energy?

      That's nothing 486-like at all!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by sharkey ( 16670 )
      It's STILL faster than Vista, though.

    • I assume this is for those times where you want your Core i7 machine to run like a 486?

      No, it's for when you want to run your core i3 like your roomate's PC in college. You know that roomate. The one who never met a popup he didn't like. The one who thought "internet browser" was the street word for "internet explorer." The one who somehow found a way to stop those pesky updates. The one who thought antivirus software was a condom. The one who from 1 pm to 3am browsed porn in a 3 inch tall window, the only real estate on his screen not taken up by various search helper bars.

    • Yeah, that's pretty much my thinking -- why would anyone want to do this, outside of very specialized circumstances?

      I used virtual machines, of course -- for example, I keep a Fedora 15 install on my Window machines via Virtal Box, and I do run the Win XP that comes with Win 7 Pro. But those are simply conveniences, with only one layer of abstraction, and even with only that, both run highly inefficiently and fail to fully use the hardware I paid for.

      I don't understand why people would buy high-powered equ

    • Geek Tractor Pull.

  • Licensing issue? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xocet_00 ( 635069 ) on Thursday July 21, 2011 @01:01PM (#36836632)
    This has to violate the license terms of XP.

    • Re:Licensing issue? (Score:5, Informative)

      by rbrausse ( 1319883 ) on Thursday July 21, 2011 @01:07PM (#36836702)

      no, according to the EULA [microsoft.com] you are allowed to:

      You may install, use, access, display and run one copy of the Product on a single computer, such as a workstation, terminal or other device (“Workstation Computer”).

      I don't see any rationale why a virtualized environment isn't accepted as a computer - but you need for every instance a own XP license.

      If I remember correctly the EULA of Windows Vista (excluding Ultimate) forbade virtualization.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jeng ( 926980 )

        Didn't MS for a while claim that if you replaced your motherboard you needed a new license?

        Or was that just a myth?

        • MS never made such a "claim". The issue was with Windows validation - if you changed enough minor components, or a major component in your system, Windows would interpret that as being installed to another system. It happened to me once, and a simple 5 minute call to MS tech support cleared it right up. If anyone bought another license in this situation, they really should have called MS first.

          • Indeed, one issue there is that MS charges for support and it was never clear to me whether they'd charge for this particular call or not. Unfortunately, they demand payment whether or not it's their fault.

            In this case their validation program is pretty much completely incompetent to the point that they ought to be paying people to run it. Good luck changing between single and multicore kernels, you'll find yourself in the position where it can't be validated without reinstalling IE, which isn't really docu

            • No, calling MS for Windows validation support was absolutely free, even a toll-free number to call. I suppose it depends on the issue, but validation issues are free support. I have called twice about this issue and neither time did they try to charge me anything.
              • Not only that, but last time this happened to me, I simply did the online re-registration and it went through just fine. No phone call required.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by wootest ( 694923 )

          If you change enough of your hardware, including motherboard, you need to reactivate Windows.

          There have also been weird licensing terms for a number of products (Oracle and certainly Windows Server versions) that don't make much sense or skyrocket when you combine the concepts of actual socketed CPUs vs CPU cores vs virtualized CPUs.

        • Re:Licensing issue? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by pavon ( 30274 ) on Thursday July 21, 2011 @01:38PM (#36837066)

          To add to the above posters, the only instance in which Microsoft might choose to not authenticate your computer when this occurred would be if you had OEM Windows XP license, because you are not allowed to install that on any other computer than the one you bought it on. In practice they were pretty lenient, but the strict terms of the XP license did cause me to avoid it in favor of Win2k.

          • If you've got an OEM copy then it should be pre-activated. If you're not comfortable with that, you can use the key that comes with the computer, and I haven't had any trouble with that beyond what one would have with a regular key.

            • If you've got an OEM copy then it should be pre-activated.

              Only for certain types of OEM copies. OEM copies from large manufacturers such as Dell, Gateway, etc. would usually come pre-activated. However you could also buy OEM copies of Windows which were not activated. (They were supposed to only be sold to end-users with hardware, but a mouse is technically hardware...)

        • Thats only for OEM licenses.

          • Yes, exactly. An OEM license is for the machine it was installed on and that machine only. So the only way to transfer the license is if you are giving/selling the whole PC to someone else.

            What I'm not sure of is the rules on upgrading components. I know switching out the MB or even just the network card* can cause Windows to want to re-activate. Nor sure if enough changes to the original machine invalidate the OEM license.

            * I once had Windows force me to re-activate because I rebooted with the network card

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by bberens ( 965711 )
              That's not true. I purchased my OEM version of XP and it came with a serial cable which the vendor dubbed the "computer." In order to transfer the license legally I'd have to provide the future buyer with the cable.

              • OK, for varying definitions of true I'll accept that but I'm pretty sure that "vendor" broke whatever contract they were supposed to have with Microsoft by doing so.

          • AFAIK that was never true. I think that may have applied to using the OEM key, but any computer purchased with a legitimate license should have come with a machine specific key that you were supposed to use for that purpose.

        • There was a limited number of hardware changes you could make before the online activation would not work and necessitate a call to Customer Service to get an activation code manually. All this really entailed was a 10 minute phone call to a toll free number where you spoke to an Indian guy named either George or Bob and you were good to go. I had to do it many times over the years as I had a 2001-era XP disc that I used across about a dozen builds until I finally got Windows 7 about 2 years ago.

          Updates s

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by blair1q ( 305137 )

        Doesn't say "instance." Says "copy." It'd be hard to have 500 tasks running if you could only have one instance of the task object, e.g.

        My computer is one box full of computer parts, regardless of how it gets configured by software.

        So if I create 500 VMs on one computer and run 500 instances of the Windows kernel, I'm not violating my license, as long as the instances were started from the same copy of the software on the HD.

        Unless the license explicitly says I can't.

    • And if so, well, that's tragic. Really, terribly, depressingly tragic. Or something.

    • Is it safe to assume that MS's lawyers would try to clamp down on this? On the one hand, it doesn't seem like this will be causing MS to lose revenue. Maybe there's a use I'm not thinking of here, but this seems more like a novelty thing than a way to get a valuable product for cheap, I can't see many people buying a computer free of windows, installing linux, and installing this just to run an obsolete OS for free.

      On the other hand, all companies these days seem to think that someone using one of th

      • It's no more a licensing issue than me running XP on Parallels on this computer. In other words, I do need to have a licensed copy of Windows for it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SkyDude ( 919251 )

      This has to violate the license terms of XP.

      XP violates me. Thanks MS.

  • Need to pull the windows OS image files?

  • NSFW? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pz ( 113803 ) on Thursday July 21, 2011 @01:09PM (#36836734) Journal

    When I try to visit the linked page, I get ---


    This Page Cannot Be Displayed

    Based on your corporate access policies, this web site ( http://jpc2.com/ [jpc2.com] ) has been blocked because it has been determined by Web Reputation Filters to be a security threat to your computer or the corporate network. This web site has been associated with malware/spyware.

    Threat Type: Othermalware
    Threat Reason: Hosted on IP controlled by a group or individual known to be malicious.

    If you have questions, please contact your corporate network administrator and provide the codes shown below.
    Notification codes: (1, MALWARE, Othermalware, Hosted on IP controlled by a group or individual known to be malicious., BLOCK-MALWARE, http://jpc2.com/ [jpc2.com])

    That does not inspire confidence.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jeng ( 926980 )

      What program is blocking it?

      After googling a bit it may just be outdated information, looks like the website has changed hands a few times. Currently owned by eMediaTrack, you can also find information about the jpc on their website.

      http://www.emediatrack.net/ [emediatrack.net]

      Oddly their website is a lot more informative than the jpc2.com website.

      • That's a Cisco IronPort [ironport.com] web filter warning. (Speaking of warning, WARNING: Marketing PDF)

        I dunno where that particular device got that "web reputation" record for that particular website. It might be outdated, or GP's company may have some weird fetish about executing code in remote VMs.

    • After seeing one of those companies define a .css file as "hardcore porn" I kinda lost the faith in them a bit.

    • Well, it is a Java applet...

  • the site is very scarce with facts, only a couple of lines in "About". cool project, but a nice example of slashvertisement - we learn _nothing_ about the technology, only that it's SECURE and coded in java...

  • Yo dawg (Score:4, Funny)

    by logjon ( 1411219 ) on Thursday July 21, 2011 @01:22PM (#36836890)
    We heard you like bloat, so we put bloat in your bloat so you can wait while you wait.

  • Not one joke about a basic HTML page with a blue background? Slashdot, you're slipping!

  • So has anyone tried opening XP in a browser in XP in a browser in XP... etc? How many levels can people get it to go?

  • Can this really be called running in a browser? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MikeUW ( 999162 ) on Thursday July 21, 2011 @04:47PM (#36839420)

    If this requires a Java applet to run, then isn't the virtual PC essentially running in the Java runtime environment? Yeah, suppose you can do some stuff to make the browser interact with the VM and vice versa...but I don't think this really demonstrates anything special, other than demonstrating the ability to virtualize a WinXP machine in Java.

    Of course, I haven't read the article...

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