Digital Rights Management

I have always been a keen reader and have long awaited the the arrival of the e-Book reader as an alternative to the paperback book. Holidays abroad have always presented a challenge since I have often read for or five books, as well as listened to an audio book or two in the late evening.  The  idea of reducing the bulk of this reading matter has always seemed a desirable goal.

Not surprisingly I was an early adopter of spoken word on mp3 players, and bought a Sony eBook as soon as I felt that there were sufficient choices of suppliers.  I have to say that in all but one respect the eBook has surpassed my expectations.  Reading the screen is a delight since I can set the font size to what suits me for easy reading.

My only gripe is the DRM (Digital Rights Management) associated with some purchases.  If I buy the book, I want to read it.  Like many people I have no interest in breaking copyright or license arrangements.  I'd like to pay, download and read.  A couple of weeks ago I bought five eBooks and tried to download them.  After struggling for a good half hour I realised that to complete the download I needed to click a license agreement button in a pop-up window.  Like all web savvy users, pop-ups are blocked on my computers.

The experience leaves me wondering if adoption of this excellent technology will be hampered by excessive and poorly thought out interfaces to the end user?

A systems approach to website design

Web application site design has come a long way since I made my first attempt in 1995. As with many new techniques or products, there was a certain amount of technical skill required, but anyone with basic programming experience could manage to create a simple interactive site. Plunging in at the deep end I quickly ended up playing around with ways of linking websites to databases.

With such an obvious application it was not long before the creation of complex websites with loads of interactivity became a major business. However, I personally think that the wind is changing again and I wonder how soon before a new wave of companies exploits the new opportunities.

In a systems approach to design, one generally starts from the top and then work down to details. Good principles are to use the biggest building blocks possible and then re-use them if you can.  This principle applies to websites too. It is now generally better to work with a content management system such as Joomla or Drupal, rather than work from first principles and write HTML.  On top of this we are now we are starting to see the building blocks get even bigger with on-line services such as Google, offering really sophisticated systems as starting points which you can then customise to meet your exact needs.

This is good news to website owners as complex requirements can now be more easily incorporated, but perhaps not so good news to businesses that would rather charge for building things from scratch.

Using the cloud

Continuing my thoughts on the cloud I have moved on to thinking about applications.  I have often been asked to write small pieces of software to automate processes that would otherwise have been carried out by hand.  My first commercial program was written in basic and translated a word processor document into a format compatible for typesetting.  For a while I was something of an expert in this process and fulfilled a useful role between authors and publishers.

Such small scale automation has been a recurring theme and often used in a data collection format.  However,  I have become increasingly unhappy about embedding code in documents and spreadsheets because of security reasons, and also the effort of keeping versions of code up to date.

Now enter the cloud.  We are seeing a trend towards using small applications on phones,  web pages and anywhere else that is connected to the web.  These little apps are managed in a variety of ways, but the basic principle is that you can write an app and use it many times.  The inevitable modifications can be managed simply by updating the source code.

As they say, here is one I prepared earlier.  It is a little google gadget to help collect time related information about MCRL's (Manufacturing Capability Readiness Levels) for technology roadmapping. I use this gadget to enhance forms I use to collect data both on and off line.

Living in the cloud

There is much talk these days of  "cloud computing" not all of it by people who have really tried it.  One criticism is about privacy - if you don't know where your data resides, how can you be sure that it is safe from prying eyes.  If you are storing personal data about yourself and others, then clearly you have a responsibility of care with that data.

This got me to thinking about the idea of living with no data stored on any PC, but being able to access it anywhere.  I would be proof against hardware theft, failure and upgrade.   As a real digital squirrel where data is concerned, this sounded a great idea, but how to deal with the data security?  Encryption sounded like an answer, but what a pain having to unlock every file before using it and ensuring it is encrypted afterwards.  What I really wanted is to be able to unlock a secure file space at the start of a session and lock it afterwards.  I haven't taken the plunge and gone fully cloud, yet, but I have realised my goal of living with no data on any computer.  This is how it works.....

I have a 300 GB USB external drive that has been encrypted using Truecrypt.  As versions of Truecrypt are available for  Linux, Mac and Windows (yes I use all three) I am not tied to any particular computer. All my data resides on this encrypted drive which is unlocked using a password I generated at random.  Once unlocked an unencrypted drive is mounted and I use it happily for my entire session.  At the end of the session I unmount it and my data is secure. It is backed up to a similar encrypted disk very, very regularly.

I now feel much more comfortable travelling.  Most of the time I just carry the backed up 300GB drive.  If it is lost or stolen it will probably end up being used as a music store.  I can rest assured that I have done everything possible to protect the data.  When I carry a laptop, it is just a bare system with no data.  Its loss or failure would be irritating, not a disaster.  Upgrading it is really easy.

Of course the next step is to have my primary data store in the cloud.  I'm not quite ready to do this yet, but I find I like the idea.  I suspect it is only a matter of time before the tools to do this become routinely accepted and my encrypted hard drive will be obsolete.

This car runs on code

I was interested to read the article in the IEEE Spectrum "This car runs on code" that suggests that a premium car now uses over 100 million lines of code when running, while the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force front line jet fighter, requires a mere 1.7 million lines.

The hidden story here is that no-one sat down and produced a 100 million lines of unique code to run the car. The code was built up from blocks of code that had already been proven to work and cleverly woven together and installed in the multiplicity devices to produce the finished product.

This now leave me wondering how to manage software in products with long lifetimes? A car may run for 15 years and subsystems replaced several times. With such software complexity will it even be possible to replace parts after six or seven years? Maybe be the end users will have a view on this?

Mobiles take a great leap forward (a matter for UK pride)

Mobiles take a great leap forward is the title of an interesting little article on the BBC News website. The main focus of the article is about the increasing capability of mobile phones thanks to the inexorable increase in power of microprocessors predicted by Moore's Law . As someone who has studied technology trends I have a huge respect to the man who had the insight and courage to make the assertion that the number of transistors that can be built on a chip would grow exponentially. To make that assertion in 1965 when most of us in the UK were watching valve based televisions and listening to transistor radios was truly visionary.

However, nestled inside the article is a statement that ought to be headlined as a matter of UK national pride, especially given the current economic gloom where the news is dominated by the loss of companies which are house hold names. To me it is proof that the UK still has engineering capability that should make us all proud. Perhaps the most iconic product of the new millennium is mobile phone and, I quote: "...More than 80% of the chips inside mobile phones are designed by UK firm Advanced Risc Machines (Arm)...".

Looking to the Future

Almost ten years ago to the day I was part of a small team that help a company to transfer an solid state gyroscope design from the military to automotive domain. The idea behind the work was that accelerometers and gyroscopes could be used as sensors in active suspension systems to improve driving characteristics. Over the years I have watched this technology pop up in all sorts of applications that we never even dreamed of at the time, which leaves me wondering how one can ever really define a "route to market" for a new invention.

I was not surprised to see solid state gyros turn up in high end model helicopters and the like, but their appearance in the last year or so in small indoor helicopters was something of a surprise. Some years ago I was shown a game in a University computing department where the interface was a controller fitted with solid state gyros and accelerometers. Now such controllers are commonplace with game controllers such as the Nintendo Wii.

It is this last application that has really brought home to me the sensitivity of these devices. When ten pin bowling (and I am not very good) I find that I get a spin that causes the bowling ball to veer left at the end of the run. I compensate for this by rotating slightly clockwise. Trying out the ten pin bowling game on the Wii over the holiday period I found that the virtual ball behaved just like the real ball and veered to the left at the end of the run. My on screen avatar (complete with virtual beard) also has to turn slightly clockwise to compensate. Ten years ago I never even dreamed that solid state gyroscope would be a component in a toy. In fact, I am sure I would have been laughed at for even making such a suggestion, but today no-one doubts the size of the market and its potential for growth.

What will the next type of sensor to make the journey from areospace into the games market?