NDAA passed: Internet and Online Streaming Services Emergency Alert Study

Tue Jan 5 19:37:46 UTC 2021

On 1/4/21 9:07 PM, Masataka Ohta wrote:
> but harder to understand for people who lack precise
> knowledge on what computers and OSes are.

Hi, embedded developer here who spends a considerable amount of time writing firmware for "bare metal" systems with "no OS".

I have fairly high confidence that what Mike was referring to was "whatever base level software ships on the doohickey and provides the underlying infrastructure for the user-visible 'apps' that move media from the Internet to the monitor".  Mike, please correct me if I'm wrong.

In that context, it doesn't really matter what the box is running.  Could be Linux, could be Windows, could be QNX, could be a "while(1) scheduler" and some embedded IP stack.  Anything smart enough to fall under the purview of the discussion we're having regarding "streaming services" is going to have some sort of "OS-like" infrastructure that could, if desired, centrally handle these kinds of alerts so that every single streaming "app" doesn't have to concern itself with that.

I can't fathom somebody making a "media streaming device" these days without that kind of separation of duties internally regardless of what actually runs underneath the user-visible application.  It's not that you couldn't but rather that you wouldn't.
-- 
Brandon Martin