Some days are harder than others...
There good and valid reasons for limiting the initial support for virtualization in Windows Vista, or any operating system.
Please read, http://www.eecs.umich.edu/virtual/papers/king06.pdf which presents discussion and research work opposite malware in virtual systems. From there, please consider getting into the hardware side of it - Intel and AMD both offer a lot of materials relevant to the subject.
As virtualization [in many forms] grows [heterogeneous multi-core processors come to mind as only one example], increasingly complex types of attacks will be mounted against them - and effectively, so.
The issues here aren't about limiting MAC user access to a less costly version of Vista - they are about very important considerations regarding how secure the many different variations of affected hardware architectures - each has their own... AMD, Intel, IBM, etc... and different methods to secure this will apply.
Opposite primary use cases - as there are with business customers and enthusiasts, consumer oriented operating systems are an inappropriate entry point to begin to understand how to secure virtualized systems. I think were progress is made - e.g., with Vista Ultimate editions opposite enthusiasts, there is enough support for virtualization and amongst a community of users best suited to secure such environments. It seems once again, our press and many MAC users, are unaware of, or don't care to consider the facts.
Finally, virtualization is not new at all - it used to be dang near necessary - as small OSes, opposite small, special purpose processors, handled assigned tasks - masters managed these tasks and aggregated results. This was obviated by the evolution of very powerful processors [from our perspective; however, elsewhere, as in Govt. virtualization still rules]. I suspect we'll see this all reverse - as many, purpose built cores on the same CPU using virtualized operating systems running from the main OS [among Vista's best promises for the future] all work together to support some amazing experiences - speech enabled unified messaging... looks like it will be first up [W2K7, E2K7 w/SP1, SP1 and Kernel updates for Vista] - and physics in gaming and entertainment, or physics in CAD design, etc... spatial modeling.... "Man... one's imagination could go nuts!"
"Ya'll see why the MAC/Apple scares me so much? - companies like that want us to stop thinking" "They want us to believe the good guys are always bad and it is all as simple as greed driven marketing... - it isn't" Microsoft and is partners in CS research are doing the right thing here.
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