Systems software technology and business
Simple point that is widely ignored: you need hard real-time capability to offer any meaningful “soft” real-time. Let’s suppose you say that you can drop up to N frames a minute or K< N frames over any 10 second period from a nominal H>N frames per minute feed. This is a typical soft real-time [...]
If even 20% of what Peter Gutman says is so, then I’ve been optimistic in my assessement of DRM.
Docomo is using Microsoft DRM products in its phones so that customers can move protected “content” between phones and PCs under control of the DRM software. The goal here is to generate a network effect so that it becomes difficult to find content that is not under such a scheme or devices that will [...]
(rewritten for clarity Aug 21, 22, 2007)
Changing interfaces of GPL software is permitted under the GPL. The license specifically permits anyone to make any changes in the code. There is no limitation concerning the intentions of the coder or the desires of the code “maintainer”. The entire project of marking certain interfaces in [...]
Suppose that we said each year, each person named as an inventor or each company or person named as an assignee on a patent qualified for a rolling fee. Say $200 for the first patent, $1000 for the next, $5000 for the third and $25000 for the fourth – 200×5^N. Nice and simple. And to [...]
I’ve been complaining about the security implications of DRM and “trusted computing” and “safe boot” for some time now. Susan Landau points out that the expansion of wiretapping has the same effect.
Such threats are not theoretical. For almost a year beginning in April 2004, more than 100 phones belonging to members of the Greek government, [...]
Patent1
Patent2
Nonstop kernel.
Suggestions? Something brilliant must have been discovered in 20 years? No?
Visting LinuxWorld in San Francisco reminded me that one of the advantages Apple has in the cell-phone market is that it can set design goals to be “what people who buy cell phones want”. While you might think this would be the obvious choice, many players in the market are trying to build what the [...]