Quick News Links for Week Ending 11/25/2007
- Two year retrospective on Open Rights Group
I remember their founding. Lots of good work being done for sane intellectual property law and open, accountable government. - Comparing pair programming, code reviews
Experience with both would be preferable when reviewing. But maybe the comparison sheds some light on how both practices are helpful in improving. - Researching swarming for faster technology
Isn’t BitTorrent based on principles of swarming? Sounds like the latest in a similar line of research. - Another “open” DRM system
I did not buy it when Sun was selling it who was marginally more credible than this Pioneer spin-off. - FSF release web application specific license
Many web, network applications are modified but not shared by their nature of being remotely accessed. At its simplest, AGPL is for original authors that want to foster community onwards, enforcing sharing even when the executable code is not shared, the usual trigger for GPL’s share alike. - Viewing content filters as immune system out of whack
A good cautionary tale that speaks of the right amount of protection and the costs of undoing a false positive when the automated protections kick in. - Pushing copper based transmissions faster
Improvements using CAT-7 were achieved by modeling the cables very precisely and building custom transceivers that better handling degradation, attenuation as a function of cable length. - German law enforcers stymied by Skype
Not actually asking for decryption keys or back door, but contemplating court authorized spyware searches for stored materials on disk. This is currently illegal in Germany. - Copyright Alliance pressuring candidates for more protection
There may be a silver lining. By applying this pressure, the content industry friendly organization is making this into avoting issue. - UK music retails also pressuring labels to drop DRM
The key to the current tipping point seems to have been the customer convenience angle.
