Making Money From Open Source

This is the first reasonably coherent effort I've found to explain how one makes money by releasing open source software. I'm not sure it really applies to the little guy, but it seeks to explain how people like IBM and Sun can make money by giving away products like Eclipse and Project Looking Glass

Making Money From Open Source

The End of PC's As We Know Them

Smaller and smaller computers is the current trend (palmtops, cell phones and so forth). The only thing holding them back from being utterly dominant is the awkward user interface - the keyboard/selection devices become hopelessly unusable, and the screens become unreadable.

However, check out this technology

There's no reason they couldn't eventually do this for screens as well.

Java Faster than C/C++

This fascinating article refers to numerous benchmarks and provides sensible academic reasons why Java is as fast or faster than C/C++ in most cases. The most compelling reason is that the JIT compiler knows precisesly what machine it is running on, and can thus tune the code much more effectively than a normal commercial c/c++ compiler. It's almost unfair, really

Java pulling ahead? Java versus C benchmarks

Copyright vs P2P

In a remarkable decision for Peer to Peer developers and users, the USA Ninth Circuit recently ruled in favour of Grokster in MGM vs Grokster

from EFF:

...the Court observed that, in the long run, a competive, unfettered market for innovation ends up helping copyright owners (even if it doesn't help today's entertainment industry oligopolists). In fact, today's ruling will likely be remembered as yet another example of the courts rescuing the entertainment industry from its own short-sightedness. In the words of the Court, "Further, as we have observed, we live in a quicksilver technological environment with courts ill-suited to fix the flow of internet innovation. The introduction of new technology is always disruptive to old markets, and particularly to those copyright owners whose works are sold through wellestablished distribution mechanisms. Yet, history has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine, or an MP3 player."

There is an absolutely fascinating one hour mp3 of the oral arguements from both MGM and Grokster/EFF available here. The arguements are very persuavive from both sides, and very clearly spelt out. It really does make all those endless courtroom dramas you see on TV quite dull by comparison, I strongly recommend downloading and listening to it.

Chess Legend Bobby Fischer Arrested

OK, this isn't exactly new news, it happened about a month ago. But its taken a few twists and turns along the way.

First, lets recap. Back in 1992, Bobby and Boris Spassky had a rematch of their famous 1972 battle. This was held in Yugoslavia. At the time, the USA had imposed sanctions against Yugoslavia, and as a result, issued a warrant for Fischer's arrest. He vanished for a long time, only to resurface in the Philippines after 9/11, to express his delight at the attack at the WTC attack. Not exactly endearing himself to Uncle Sam, then.

Anyway, he was recently arrested in Japan, attempting to travel on his apparently invalid USA passport. Appeals against his deportation are currently underway, although he is now attempting to renounce his US citizenship.

In a recent bizarre development, Boris Spassky has written to President Bush, asking that he too be arrested, and placed in Fischer's cell (along with a chess set).

The End of Secure Transactions Over the Internet?

Some of you may have heard that someone "cracked the system used by secure sites". In fact, what has happened is that someone has managed to produce a "collision" on SHA-0. This means they have managed to generate two different messages that, when they have the SHA-0 hashing algorithm applied, generate the same hash result. The implications are not fully known yet, but note that they are not able to produce a collision message against a particular message. In other words, they can produce a message M and M' where H(M) = H(M'), but can't currently produce a message M1 against your message, where H(M1)=H(your message)

This site explains it as clearly as I've seen so far. It also suggests some of the implications of the results.