ShadowRAM: November 28, 2005

Chris Lattner, an Apple developer, recently sent a note to other developers revealing he&'s still working on a new version of the Low Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) instruction set. LLVM uses “RISC-like instructions,” according to the LLVM.org Web site. Wes Felter, a researcher in IBM&'s Power-Aware Systems group, found this odd.

“One might expect that Apple would just use Intel&'s excellent compilers from now on, but apparently they&'re making a big investment in the LLVM compiler infrastructure,” Felter wrote on his blog, “Hack the Planet.”

Speaking of Apple, from now on, you&'ll have to call him “Dr. Woz.” Steve Wozniak, Apple&'s co-founder and a CRN Industry Hall of Famer, is set to receive an honorary doctorate Dec. 10 from Kettering University in Flint, Mich.

Now that the United Nations has gotten behind Nicholas Negroponte&'s program to distribute handcrank-capable $100 laptops to the world&'s poor, some technology users are complaining that Negroponte wants to take steps to keep them out of the hands of the non-poor. The MIT professor has suggested rigging the low-cost notebooks to stop working if they&'re not used for more than a couple of days. That would effectively kill a gray market.

But don&'t fret. Dell, despite getting killed by Wall Street for disappointing investors with its lackluster growth, is still offering its own $499 cheapie notebooks—sans handcrank.

Henry “Dot Bust” Blodget, the former Merrill Lynch analyst, is now blogging at www.internetoutsider.com. And he&'s offering advice (free of charge) on how Microsoft can finally leverage the Web. Short answer: Merge MSN with AOL.

Anyone employed at AOL or MSN who doesn&'t want to see a merger should e-mail Blodget&'s endorsement to management. But they better do it fast. Tipsters tell us Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons was spotted at Microsoft headquarters two weeks ago in Redmond.

By the way, Microsoft filed a patent earlier this month with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a “realtime license enforcement system and method” that might raise a few eyebrows. In its application, Microsoft writes that: “The system comprises a monitoring component for monitoring use of licensed software applications and detecting variations from their respective licensing agreements in realtime. The system also comprises an enforcement component for initiating corrective actions to force users to comply with licensing agreements or deny the user access to the licensed software.”

Sounds like a potent patent, even if it does give the OpenOffice proponents one more weapon in their battle.