Bruce Perens - Slashdot User

Submission + - Red Hat's Secret Patent Deal (gigaom.com)

Submitted by Bruce Perens on Friday November 12, 2010 @12:39PM

Bruce Perens writes: When patent troll Acacia sued Red Hat in 2007, it ended with a bang: Acacia's patents were invalidated by the court, and all software developers, open-source or not, had one less legal risk to cope with. So, why is the outcome of Red Hat's next tangle with Acacia being kept secret, and how is a Texas court helping to keep it that way? Could the outcome have placed Red Hat in violation of the open-source licenses on its own product?

Submission + - Codec2: An Open Source Low-Bandwidth Voice Codec (rowetel.com)

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Monday September 20, 2010 @09:37PM

Bruce Perens writes: "Codec2 is an Open Source digital voice codec for low-bandwidth applications, in its first Alpha release. Currently it can encode 3.75 seconds of clear speech in 1050 bytes, and there are opportunities to code in additional compression that will further reduce its bandwidth. The main developer is David Rowe, who also worked on Speex.

Originally designed for Amateur Radio, both via sound-card software modems on HF radio and as an alternative to the proprietary voice codec presently used in D-STAR, the codec is probably also useful for telephony at a fraction of current bandwidths.

The algorithm is based on papers from the 1980's, and is intended to be unencumbered by valid unexpired patent claims. The license is LGPL2. The project is seeking developers for testing in applications, algorithmic improvement, conversion to fixed-point, and coding to be more suitable for embedded systems."

Submission + - Oracle Sues Google for Infringing Java Patents (perens.com)

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Thursday August 12, 2010 @08:48PM

Bruce Perens writes: "Oracle has brought a lawsuit against Google claiming that Google has infringed patents on the Java Language, presumably in Android. We don't have the text of the lawsuit yet. But there's a patent grant that should allow Google to use Java royalty-free. Has Google failed to meet the terms of the grant?"

Submission + - Mark Hurd is Irrelevant - The Challenge HP Faces (perens.com)

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Tuesday August 10, 2010 @05:16AM

Bruce Perens writes: "Mark Hurd's silly exit has little to do with HP's real problems. As an executive there about a decade ago, I saw a company that was giving up its differentiating value in the name of operational savings, not realizing that a decade later the Golden Goose of creativity would have found greener pastures. But surprisingly, the classic HP tradition of building a great place to do engineering that results in a flood of excellent creative products is being followed..."

Submission + - LCD "engine" for spacecraft attitude control! (www.jaxa.jp)

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @11:08PM

Bruce Perens writes: "Japan's IKAROS satellite, which earlier performed the first successful demonstration of a solar sail, has broken more new territory. Liquid-crystal displays, yes — like in your video monitor — were fabricated into strips on the edges of the solar sail. By energizing some of the LCDs and changing the reflective characteristics of parts of the sail from specular to diffuse, JAXA scientists successfully generated attitude control torque in the sail, changing the spacecraft's orientation."

Submission + - Geostationary GPS Satellite Out of Control (csmonitor.com)

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Sunday May 09, 2010 @06:19PM

Bruce Perens writes: "The Galaxy 15 commercial satellite has not responded to commands since solar flares fried its CPU in April, and it won't turn off. Intelsat controllers moved all commercial payloads to other birds except for WAAS, a system that adds accuracy to GPS for landing aircraft and finding wayward geocaches. Since the satellite runs in "bent pipe" mode, amplifying wide bands of RF that are beamed up to it, it is likely to interfere with other satellites as it crosses their orbital slots on its way to an earth-sun Lagrange point, the natural final destination of a geostationary satellite without maneuvering power.

The only payload that is still deliberately active on the satellite is its WAAS repeater. An attempt to overload the satellite and shut it down on May 3 caused a Notice to Airmen regarding the unavailability of WAAS for an hour. Unsaid is what will happen to WAAS, and for how long, when the satellite eventually loses its sun-pointing capability, expected later this year, and stops repeating the GPS correction signal. Other satellites can be moved into Galaxy 15's orbital slot, but it is yet unannounced whether the candidates bear the WAAS payload."

Submission + - Inside Open Source's Historic Victory (tinyurl.com) 1

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Monday February 22, 2010 @12:07PM

Bruce Perens writes: "Bruce Perens was an expert witness in the Jacobsen v. Katzer court case. He tells the story of the legal wrangling that produced a historic victory for Open Source"

Submission + - Open Hardware Radio Manufacturer Acquired (ettus.com)

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Friday February 05, 2010 @02:36PM

Bruce Perens writes: "Ettus Research produces the USRP or Universal Software Radio Peripheral. When used with the GNU Radio software, this device allows the construction of radio receivers and transmitters that are primarily software. It's been used for everything from medical imaging to espionage. USRP is Open Hardware, the design and other data needed to implement it have been published. Matt Ettus today announced that his company has been acquired by National Instruments. Operation will remain separate from NI and Matt says that little will change."

Submission + - Radio Hams Fired Upon in Haiti

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Friday January 22, 2010 @09:12PM

Bruce Perens writes: "A team of radio ham volunteers from the Dominican republic visited Port-au-prince to install VHF repeaters, only to be fired upon as they left the Dominican embassy. Two non-ham members of the party were hit, one severely. ARRL is sending equipment, and there is confusion as unfamiliar operators in government agencies join in on ham frequencies."

Submission + - Busybox Developers Respond to Andersen/SFLC Suits (perens.com)

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @02:48PM

Bruce Perens writes: "I'm the creator of the Busybox program. I have released a statement on the past and current Busybox lawsuits, which do not represent my interest."

Submission + - Stupid Burglar Nabbed by Backup Program (perens.com)

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Wednesday May 27, 2009 @07:14PM

Bruce Perens writes: "A Berkeley, California, burglar engineered his own arrest, and that of his girlfriend, when he stole a laptop and used it as his personal computer. He didn't realize that the laptop had an automatic backup program, and that the photos he took were being copied to his victim's backup repository. Berkeley police recognized him, and his location, from the photos."

Submission + - Swine Flu To Be Renamed - After Colbert! (perens.com) 1

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Thursday April 30, 2009 @11:40PM

Bruce Perens writes: "The World Health Organization will no longer refer to Virus A(H1N1) as "Swine Flu", citing ethnic reactions to "swine", for example among middle-eastern cultures who feel that swine are unclean. Or, is it because meat packers are concerned that people might stop eating pork in fear of the virus? WHO suggests that the public select a new name for the virus. I suggest that we all start calling it The Colbert Flu, after the commedian and fake pundit who asked his audience to stuff a NASA poll so that a Space Station module would be named after him. What can we do to make the name stick?"

Submission + - A Cyber-Attack on an American City (perens.com)

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Wednesday April 22, 2009 @03:44PM

Bruce Perens writes: "Just after midnight on Thursday, April 9, unidentified attackers climbed down four manholes in the Northern California city of Morgan Hill and cut eight fiber cables in what appears to have been an organized attack on the electronic infrastructure of an American city. Its implications, though startling, have gone almost un-reported. So I decided to change that."

Submission + - A Vertical Market Seeks Open Standards (earthweb.com)

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Thursday October 16, 2008 @08:11AM

Bruce Perens writes: "Of all the critical industries crying out for Open Standards, who is campaigning for them in their own industry today? Is it the manufacturers of voting machines, who must establish high standards to safeguard democracy? Or the medical records system vendors?

Nope, it's the makers of casino slot machines.

Bruce Perens writes about how WMS Gaming (Williams, the old pinball manufacturer) has retained him to promote and drive Open Standards in their industry."

Submission + - Microsoft and Apache: What's the Angle (earthweb.com)

Submitted by

Bruce Perens

on Friday August 01, 2008 @01:27PM

Bruce Perens writes: "Microsoft and Apache, What's the Angle? is a piece I've written for Datamation, exploring the new relationship of Microsoft and the Apache project, how it works as an anti-Linux move on Microsoft's part, and what some of the Open Sourcers are going to do about having Microsoft as a rather untrustworthy partner. — Bruce"

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