- IBM and Oracle agree to Java pact , New York Times Bits Blog
- Telnet like tool for HTTP
Via Nat’s Four Short Links at O’Reilly Radar. He remarks it looks like a useful teaching tool, which it no doubt is. I think it actually has more utility than just pedagogy. A lot of application development consists of plumbing together HTTP based services and having something a little more friendly than telnet and wget to explore and test is very useful for that end too. - Is passing query string data in referral URLs a privacy violation?, Techdirt
- IBM’s plans for the Cell processor, Slashdot
- Microsoft patents GPU-accelerated video encoding, Slashdot
Tag: IBM
feeds | grep links > Desktop 3D Scanner, 64-Bit Flash for Linux, Diaspora Releases Source Code, and More
Another day of light posting between mental heavy lifting while coding for $employer and burning much of my usual end of day hour on a personal hacking project. The latter is an itch that had started to drive me insane, automating my podcast feed management to both reduce the amount of manual work around that task in my podcast work flow and to move the step entirely over to Linux. I’ll post more details of how I manage this later, including links to source.
- Makerbot 3D scanner
Bruce Sterling at Wired points out a new offering from the desktop printing and home fabrication innovators at Makerbot, a desktop 3D scanner. While it is likely to have similar limitations as its printer counterpart, it along with free and open source 3D design software completes the trifecta for not just ginning up your own tangible parts and goods but to designing and customizing them in the first place. - 3D printing commercial air craft parts, Make
- IBM patents choose your own adventure movies, Slashdot
- Adobe releases 64-bit Flash, including Linux version
I’ve only had some minor trouble with Flash under Linux but this beta, as Slashdot points out, should eliminate all kinds of jiggery-pokery most 64-bit Linux users have to go through. I wish we didn’t have to keep supporting Flash, either with official builds or via free and open one offs but for online video it is still effectively king. - Diaspora releases source code
The link is directly to their site which also includes a simple screen shot. I haven’t had time to download and test but have read elsewhere that this is really pre-alpha quality code. I would suggest holding off unless you are willing to help test and maybe even send along patches. - Law suit over another post-cookie tracking technique, Wired
feeds | grep links > State of WikiLeaks’ Site, What to Expect in Firefox 4, and More
- WikiLeaks site in disrepair?
This Wired article by Ryan Singel is little better than a litany of breakages on the site. Despite the lurid lede, he doesn’t indulge in much speculation and actually concludes that a bump up in fund raising may be all that is needed to set things to rights. - WikiLeaks’ response to Wired
Posted via Twitter but lacking any more detailed explanation. The short message was that the site is being upgraded to deal with growth. The only link is to their support page. A more detailed blog post would have gone further. - What to expect in Firefox 4
Glyn Moody has some tantalizing details at Open Enterprise based on a discussion with one of the Mozilla folks. Confirms my recollection of performance, new features like Electrolysis, and an additional category, annoyances. Now I am jonesing for that beta that is almost but still not ready. - Automated language deciphering by AI
- EU consider strong interoperability law for most technology makers
- IBM adopts Firefox as its default browser
Following Up for the Week Ending 6/27/2010
- Why Google’s WiFi data collection was inadvertent
- Google claims WiFi data collection legal in the US
- A crusade against the net’s “regulatory uncertainty”
- Court appoints special master to bring RIAA, Thomas case to settlement
- USCG tries to argue that P2P architecture supports joining suit against 5000 defendants
- Potential opportunity to look at technology used by USCG
- All opposition parties against digital locks in Canada’s C-32
- Music industry demands Google stop linking to The Pirate Bay
- Experts say ACTA threatens public interest
- EU pushes for criminalizing non-commercial usages
Via Wild Webmink. - Scope of monitoring for French three strikes law revealed
- Proprietary vendor steps in to support TurboHercules’ antitrust complaint against IBM
- More pressure, this time at Congresional hearing, to update federal wiretap laws
- A Canadian creator’s response to the label of “radical extremism”
feeds | grep links > Data That Fades, More on the Shift to Parallel Computing, and More
- Researchers urge Google to let data fade away
Via Slashdot. The idea at its core is not entirely new, more of a slightly different tack than outright deleting, or “forgetting” data after a set time span. The attraction in this scheme, and hence increased possibility of Google and others exploring it, is that the data retains some value even as it degrades. - A deeper look at the shift from clock performance to multiple cores
Via Hacker News. This is a pretty deep look into the end of performance gains driven by clock speed and the shift over to adding cores. Of course, the free lunch in the article’s title is the set of easy assumptions inherent in programming for essentially serial architectures. This resonates with the trend I’ve been following that demands that we crack the nut of how to effectively and safely programming concurrent systems. - Build your own tablet for $400
- Filmmakers want a DMCA exemptions, which will be unlikely
- IBM’s question answering system
- Canadian bill proposes cell phone unlocking right
TCLP 2010-06-06 News
This is news cast 215, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.
In the intro, just a pointer to my thoughts on Balticon 44 and a recap on advertising, the badge experiment, and Flattr so far.
This week’s security alerts are OS choice does not equal security and an Android rootkit.
In this week’s news Google drops Microsoft for internal use citing security reasons though some are skeptical, figuring out if Wikileaks spun up using documents intercepted from Tor with thoughts from both the Tor project and Wikileaks itself, IBM’s 40 year old Muppet sales films, and a new paper debunks certain suggested advantages of quantum computing.
Following up this week, if you are tired of Facebook then check out a Firefox extension that aims to help preserve your privacy while using it and India tries to gather opposition to ACTA.
[display_podcast]
Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Following Up for the Week Ending 4/18/2010
- NZ backs exclusion of software from patents
- USTR statement on ACTA effectively ties transparency to fulfilling its priorities
- Wellington declaration on ACTA
- Official ACTA draft to be released next week
- USTR confirms public ACTA draft and exclusion of mandatory threestrikes
- Former FCC chief Powell discusses his antipathy for re-classifyingComcast
- IBM amends patent pledge
- Refuting claim that AT&T was ever regulated
- EU to discuss net neutrality this Summer
- FCC chair hasn’t spoken about classification yet
- Viacom releases more documents in case against YouTube
- Update on school spying in Philly suburb
- More pictures turn up in web cam school spying case
- Al Haramain lawyers demand legal fees
IBM May Be Resurrecting OS/2
“Rise from the grave!” (+5 geek points for anyone getting that reference.)
According to Slashdot, what Big Blue is contemplating would indeed be a beastly alteration on its original creation. The revivified operating system would have a Linux core and undoubtedly all of the higher level layers that adherents praised and critics scoffed.
Sadly, the reasoning behind this doesn’t appear to be for the enjoyment of the two people CmdrTaco identifies as haveing used and enjoyed OS/2 (yes, I was one of them), but rather as a drop in replacement for aging installs of the last gasp of the retired platform, still in use inside of the software giant and a few other institutions.
If they do pursue this idea and release it publicly I probably will stand it up on a VM, just for nostalgia’s sake.
TCLP 2010-04-11 News
This is news cast 211, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.
In the intro, thanks to new donor this week, David.
This week’s security alerts are a new site collecting privacy and security info on apps and services and a vulnerability in WebKit’s handling of the blink tag.
In this week’s news reverse engineering facial recognition to develop dazzle camouflage (a story I also wrote up on the web site), asking whether IBM broke its open source patent pledge with their response and clarifying commentary from a couple of knowledgeable folks, a new memory management technique that could boost performance for multiple cores, and contending format shifting a book you own is ethical with supporting and dissenting responses.
Following up this week court rules against FCC in Comcast case barring neutrality regulation on ancillary authority but not through other means and the Digital Economy Bill has been passed including what we should do now.
[display_podcast]
Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
End of Life for the Cell Processor, Debunking the Cat Brain Simulation, and More
- When piracy isn’t theft
Glyn Moody linked to this excellent consideration of some of the rhetoric around the tabled Digital Economy Bill. The Guardian article pulls together much of the objections, dismissing most as irrelevant as it suggests that there is a positive aspect we need to be emphasizing: free access to knowledge as its own normative right. - EC warns Spain over three strikes plan
According to The Register, Viviane Reding is once again surprisingly speaking in defense of consumers, not only advocating for judicial oversight of any disconnection policy but also a presumption of innocence. The article also points out that it may be likely that any such disconnection plan would be for commercial piracy. This is certainly more consistent with Spain’s declaration for access to broadband as a right and its existing levy on blank media. - IBM bringing the Cell processor to an end
I was a fan of this processor at the time it came out. Jon Stokes at Ars paints this as perhaps a consequence of the processor being a bit ahead of its time. He also clearly calls out the few but critical differences between the Cell and later, similar designs that no doubt make chips like Larrabee more approachable to program and ultimately better performing. - Rebutting a public option for media
I don’t often agree very strong with Adam Thierer or the usual suspects at TLF as I am just too darn skeptical of an unregulated free market. However, I think he’s done a fine job taking apart what appears to me to be a very bad idea, Free Press’ suggestion of essentially government run media. I can understand why they proposed such a plan, there simply is no clear resolution for the current situation big media is foundering in but here I have to side with the TLF’s usual view, that innovation will be better served by the market. More than that, the critical role of journalism is a check on the government could be seriously compromised by this public option-like idea. - Criticism of IBM’s announced cat-brain simulation
Judging from the IEEE Spectrum post, there appears to be a history with this critic. That doesn’t make his objections wrong and in the letter quoted, he cites what seem to me to be some pretty compelling details to rein in the announcement back to some version of reality. I’m going to have to go back and see if there was any peer review of the original work or just press releases. - Is Chrome OS about free, ad supported netbooks?
I hadn’t really though about the privacy concerns of Chrome OS until Glyn Moody pointed them out alongside suggesting this theory. I think it is plausible but I’d still pay a premium to be able to control my own software and data as well as to be able to perform tasks that the cloud just isn’t up to yet, like serious multimedia heavy lifting.