CITP Blog - Formerly Freedom to Tinker

Category: Uncategorized

  • Lessig on Microsoft and DRM

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    Larry Lessig has a provocative piece in Red Herring on Microsoft’s plans regarding DRM and Palladium. Lessig says that Palladium is not as bad as some people say, and that Palladium may in fact benefit consumers (at least compared to the alternatives). This piece has provoked some really interesting discussion over on Copyfight, Ernie the…

  • China Stops Blocking Google

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    AP reports that China is no longer blocking Google. (Ben Edelman’s site at Harvard confirms this.)

  • Reed: LaGrande Another 432?

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    David Reed has an interesting perspective on Intel’s LaGrande proposal. Reed likens LaGrande to the Intel 432 processor. Few non-techies have heard of the 432, but in the processor-design community the 432 is a legendary failure. As Reed says, the 432 was “Intel’s attempt to create an ‘object oriented’ processor that would embed all the…

  • Intel to Offer "Security" Features in Future Microprocessors

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    Intel is reportedly planning to include security technologies, code-named “LaGrande,” in a future processor chip. I haven’t seen much in the way of technical detail. The article referenced above says: Where Internet security technologies already protect information in transit between a user’s PC and Web sites, LaGrande and Palladium attempt to safeguard information and software…

  • Classic Security Paper, with New Commentary

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    If you’re interested in computer security, check out the new paper by Paul Karger and Roger Schell. Thirty years ago, Karger and Schell wrote a classic paper reviewing the security of the Multics operating system, which was then the state of the art in secure OS design. Their new paper looks back on the original…

  • Economist Article

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    The article on me and my pro-tinkering work, from the June 20th issue of the Economist, is now available on line.

  • Dornseif on Source Code and Object Code

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    Maximillian Dornseif offers another comment on my source code vs. object code posting. He points out, correctly, that we can still define “source code” and “object code” reasonably. We can get some mileage out of these definitions, as long as we remember that a piece of code might be either source code, or object code,…

  • More on Berman-Coble's Peer-to-Peer Definition

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    In a previous posting, I remarked on the overbreadth of the Berman-Coble bill’s definition of “peer to peer file trading network”. The definition has another interesting quirk, which looks to me like an error by the bill’s drafters. Here is the definition: ‘peer to peer file trading network’ means two or more computers which are…

  • China Now Re-Routing Google Requests

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    Reuters reports that, since the weekend, some requests for Google from inside China are being rerouted to other, government-approved search engines. (Link at wirednews.com) UPDATE (3pm EDT, Sept. 10): Ben Edelman now has screenshots of redirected browsers. (Link thanks to greplaw.)

  • John Gilmore on Spam and Censorship

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    Politech has an interesting message from John Gilmore about the effect of anti-spam measures.