JPL Engineer: Open Source Helps Fix Govt. Procurement
In a published version of his 2006 presentation to a US government system administrators' conference, Jet Propulsion Laboratory software engineer D. J. Byrne writes for CIO Magazine that the cultural synergies between open source software developers and space technology engineers have made it possible for JPL to execute complex software projects that would have consumed considerable engineering time and taxpayer expense if it had to be procured from a manufacturer.
"Planets move; launch windows don't," Byrne writes. "The Spirit and Opportunity Mars Rovers had to go in the summer of 2003 or never. They are simply too massive to throw that far, for that budget, unless the planets aligned just so. (Mars and Earth line up every 26 months or so, but in 2003 they were unusually close together.) Procurement cycles for spending lots of government money can be months long, and they can dominate critical paths...Quickly obtainable FOSS relieves that pressure and gives us some elbow room. Bug fix turnaround times can be critical. If we can fix the source code ourselves, we can keep a whole team moving forward."
SoundExchange Offers 'Small Webcasters' a Royalty Cap Concession
Yesterday, the SoundExchange organization which the US Copyright Royalty Board designated as the handler for performers' royalties, offered "small webcasters" the option of returning to an earlier arrangement, which would cap the amount of royalties it receives from them at 10% of net revenues up to the first $250,000, and 12% thereafter.
The deal may be encouraging to streaming music providers who might otherwise be faced with annual royalty fees that many predict - and evidence compiled by BetaNews appears to confirm - could conceivably usurp their entire revenue stream. It would effectively extend the provisions of the Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002 (SWSA) - which was allowed to lapse in 2005 - until 2010.
Copyright Alliance Director: We're Not Behind Policy Initiatives
Responding to our story yesterday regarding the movement on Capitol Hill to strengthen copyright enforcement through the imposition of performers' copyright fees on both terrestrial and Internet radio broadcasters, the director of the Copyright Alliance, Patrick Ross, told BetaNews it's a mistake for anyone - including us - to attribute certain advocated copyright policies to the Alliance, although they share key members and supporters.
"The Copyright Alliance has taken no position on any specific policy initiative to date, including radio performance royalties," Ross wrote. "The Copyright Alliance is a very, very broad coalition of organizations that are bound by copyright, from artists' groups and unions to corporations and trade associations, from professional and amateur sports to music, movies, video games, photography, graphic art, book and magazine and newspaper publishing, business software and, yes, broadcasting. Our focus is on a broader educational mission of copyright as an engine for creativity, jobs and growth."
Microsoft's Ward Ralston Details GUI-less Windows Server
INTERVIEW While the fundamental changes to Windows' core architecture were first seen by the general public last January with the release of Vista, the impact those changes will make to how businesses work will be felt later this year, with the release of Windows Server 2008.
The way time slices for processes are allocated, the way errors and exceptions are handled, the way the system recovers from faults - the situations that may benefit Vista users on occasion, could make a tremendous positive impact on servers that handle skyrocketing IP traffic, especially with voice and video becoming more commonplace.
Radio Expert: Performance Royalties Could Usurp 100%+ of Net Income
Last week's announcement of the formation of a US-based content industry activist organization called the Copyright Alliance was greeted with a flurry of positive press, echoing the sentiments of influential congressmen such as the chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee handling the Internet and IP matters, Rep. Howard Berman (D - Calif.). In an environment where patent reform is at last being debated seriously, "stronger copyright protection" has also become a rallying point for lawmakers.
But a Los Angeles Times story published yesterday revealed that the Alliance, which Rep. Berman supports, has as its key mission to establish a system of rates which both terrestrial and Internet-based radio stations would pay as performance royalties, to a group representing the recording industry and recording artists.
Why Are So Many Web Ad Companies Merging Now?
Just a few months ago, with Microsoft's Web services division still waning in comparison with its others, speculation began on whether it was gearing up to address that problem by purchasing an existing ad brokerage. The focus centered on DoubleClick, one of the oldest and most reputable display ad providers on the Web; and before too long, Google responded to that speculation by pre-empting a Microsoft takeover. That started a tidal wave of major players playing catch-up, including Yahoo's acquisition of Right Media a few weeks later.
Last week, amid speculation that Microsoft was scrambling to acquire 24/7 Real Media, another ad services firm, it was pre-empted yet again, this time by established advertising agency WPP Group. So Microsoft ended up spending its $6 billion late last week on aQuantive, which not only has its own digital marketing division (Atlas) but an online ad agency (Avenue A | Razorfish).
'Tiny Bubbles' Could Empower IBM's Next-gen Power6 CPU
While IBM today unveiled a new dual-core Power6 processor for its new System p570 server, resulting in what the Transaction Performance Processing Council confirmed to be the best performance score per core recorded thus far, a manufacturing advance still in the works there could give its next generation Power6 even higher performance on account of improved signaling.
The advance was poorly explained by the general press a few weeks ago: In actuality, it's a manufacturing process that enables vacuum gaps to form in specifically designated segments of chips, reducing or replacing the need for microscopic glass insulators around copper wires. The tiny bubbles, or "airgaps" as IBM calls them (even though there's no air in a vacuum), serve as a far better insulator. In so doing, they improve the signaling ability of chips - by their very presence, enabling them to be sped up.
Tighter Damages Restrictions Sparks Opposition to Patent Reform Bill
For decades in America, claimants in a patent suit have been eligible for treble damages -- three times the assessed amount of the violation -- if a jury can establish that violation was willful on the part of the defendant. Now, new restrictions being proposed to not only the conditions under which treble damages can occur, but also the method for assessing the extent of violation, has raised the ire of lobbying groups following the forwarding of new language in the Patent Reform Bill to the full US House for approval.
As the bill now reads, a judge will make the determination of whether a patent's violation was willful, rather than a jury. Furthermore, the defendant will be entitled to make what's called a "good faith defense:" He can argue, for instance, that a lawyer advised him the patent he may be violating could be deemed invalid if it were reviewed.
Microsoft Claims It's Format-Agnostic in Appeal to Chinese Office Users
A rapidly growing number of modern-era software users in an economically revitalized China has catapulted that country's own state-sponsored XML-based office file format, called Uniform Office Format, into world prominence in just a matter of a few months.
Now, in the wake of Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy's call to consider merging UOF with the other open-source format, ODF, Microsoft revealed yesterday (Monday morning Beijing time) that it had already launched a project with Beihang University to create an open-source, two-way translator between UOF and the Office 2007 Open XML file formats, just two weeks after McNealy's speech.
WinHEC 2007: What Did We Learn Today?
LOS ANGELES - Last Monday, we entitled our WinHEC preview, "Time for Vista to Deliver the Goods." The truth ended up being, although goods were indeed delivered, the surprise was that Vista wasn't the delivery vehicle this time around. Windows Server "Longhorn" got a name, but it got more than that: a mission to change the nature of Windows itself, in both the enterprise and the home.
Without a major new consumer-driven client operating system coming hanging out there in the distance, and with Windows Server 2008 now clearly upon us, this week was the first Microsoft conference in a handful of years not to depend on a truckload of promises of future technologies.
Solid-State Drive Industry Leaders Seem to Be Hedging Bets
LOS ANGELES - A panel of four leading figures in the marketing and engineering of solid-state drives, convening toward the end of WinHEC 2007, appeared to agree that the development of solid-state disk drives and hard drives that use flash memory as intermediate caches, even as flash technologies evolve and NAND prices continue to avoid bottoming out, will never result in the replacement of traditional HDDs for any market category.
A representative of Texas Memory Systems, which produces flash-equipped components for storage, admitted that customers approach his company when they are looking to improve their systems' performance, not storage. That sentiment was validated by three other members of the panel and a moderator representing Microsoft.
WinHEC 2007 Day 3: First Glimpses Inside Windows Home Server
LOS ANGELES - A standing-room only crowd appeared late Thursday morning to see Windows Home Server lead developer Chris Gray answer technical questions on the subject of how the company will make its latest permutation of Windows Server 2003 usable by people who have enough difficulty with their microwaves and universal remotes...and how developers will be expected to help them.
A machine certified to run Windows Home Server is likely to occupy the space of an old Toastmaster appliance, and some early prototype cases actually have the appearance of one. But inside, the machine is expected to support as many as six simultaneous SATA drives, not as a RAID array but as a means for providing home-based video storage of around three terabytes, given the increasing ubiquity of 500 GB hard drives.
Microsoft Introduces New Vista SKU Specifically for Virtual Deployment
LOS ANGELES - In a completely unanticipated announcement made quietly during a virtualization talk here at WinHEC 2008, Microsoft announced a completely new SKU of Windows Vista, to be entitled Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD). Its purpose will be to enable Vista to run within an enterprise exclusively as virtual machines, managed centrally using System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
Under the new system, a thin client logging on will request a VM image from SCVMM. Based on the user profile it pulls up from that logon, SCVMM will then locate the best server on which the image of Vista will be run. Applications licensed to that user will then be run from the VM, as well as the seat for Vista that's licensed to that user. But only a thin virtualization connection package will address that image remotely.
What Happens to Viridian Virtualization Going Forward?
LOS ANGELES - With some of Microsoft's key goals for its Viridian virtualization program having been postponed until a later release -- how much later not having yet been specified -- some of the feature demonstrations of Viridian scheduled for WinHEC were cancelled. Obviously Microsoft isn't pulling back on its commitment to the virtualization concept, but how quickly can the company reassemble its strategy, especially with strong competition from VMware?
At least some answers are coming this morning from Microsoft general manager Mike Neil, who is presenting one of the remaining virtualization sessions to an unusually packed audience for a last-day, early morning session.
Why Can't PowerShell Be the Windows Command Prompt?
LOS ANGELES - Over the past two years, tracking the official status of Windows PowerShell with respect to Windows Server has been, to put it delicately, a juggling exercise. During PDC 2005, for instance, reporters were given official indications from two Microsoft sources that the radically enhanced command line-based management tool would be shipped with the next edition of Windows Server, and would not be shipped with Windows Server, on the same day.
So when recent statements were made by Microsoft officials that PowerShell would be shipped with Windows Server 2008 and included with the new public Beta 3, our initial reaction was preceded by the phrase, "Yeah, right." Although the tool is freely available for download and it has been received by veteran admins with open arms, whether it gets shipped with the operating system itself is actually a more important matter than it may seem on the surface.
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