keeping simple

Category: software business

  • Meaning of concurrent programs and IP

    Most of the new draft of the Concurrent Programs paper has to do with trying to specify problems and solutions in synchronization via an atomic “compare and swap” operation. Even these operations are surprisingly complicated once put under the microscope – or not so surprisingly complicated if you think about the details of using or…

  • clouds versus pcs

    George Gilder had an article in Wired on data centers as clouds. My instinct is to dismiss anything Gilder writes because of his track record of wacky ideas (e.g. feminism is destroying civilization and supply side economics makes sense). But, in this article, Gilder reports on some smart people. The sheer massive use of electrical…

  • linux kernel

    From LinuxDevices Every Linux kernel is being developed by nearly 1,000 developers, working for more than 100 corporations. An average of 3,621 lines of code are added to the kernel tree every day. A new kernel is released approximately every 2.7 months. Since 2005, the kernel has grown at a steady pace of 10 percent…

  • who should control the internets

    Op-ed in the NYTimes from Damian Kulash Jr. of Ok-Go We can’t allow a system of gatekeepers to get built into the network. The Internet shouldn’t be harnessed for the profit of a few, rather than the good of the many; value should come from the quality of information, not the control of access to…

  • end to end design versus BOM design

    Grossly simplifying, some products are Bill of Materials (BOM) products and some are Designed products. BOM products come to market via a process of generating a parts list and then integrating. In place of designers, BOM products have buyers and integrators. In place of innovation, BOM products have standards. The standards are preferably “industry standards”…

  • Sorcerers apprentice at ATT: Security and privacy and reliability collide again

    AT&T considers reading all the packets that cross its lines. Quite an interesting proposal. Tim Wu’s take The prospect of AT&T, already accused of spying on our telephone calls, now scanning every e-mail and download for outlawed content is way too totalitarian for my tastes. But the bizarre twist is that the proposal is such…

  • Google’s engineering culture

    Article in the New Yorker on Google contains a fascinating description of a product design meeting: Page and Brin had wanted an upgrade of an existing product, and they were unhappy with what they were hearing from the engineers. At first, they were stonily silent, slid down in their chairs, and occasionally leaned over to…

  • Cell phone handsets and linux and software value

    Update at the end. Two FSMLabs alumni are leading the charge for Linux handsets in two different companies. Jason Whitmire is now GM of cell phones for Wind River. Jason’s blog is here and a Linuxdevices article discusses his first post which concerns the, well, machinations of Google and the two big cell-phone consortia Limo…

  • Hollywood writers are smarter than programmers

    The strike in Hollywood is about royalties. The writers, who are used to getting a share of the royalties on their work, want to keep getting royalties on work shown on the internet. The producers are making the claim that since they give away views on YouTube and other internet sites, you know free content,…

  • OpenBSD developer notes king’s clothing is “virtual”

    Theo de Raadt explains why virtualization does not improve security. How about this: to improve security, you have to have a secure design, a marketing buzzword won’t do the trick. Anyone who has seriously looked that the current generation x86 virtualization hardware knows that it does not provide clean separation or levels of security. It…