Category: Computers, Science & Technology

This is a post from the Roku Blog from today:

Roku Blog

“Celebrating 5 Million Roku Players!

In May 2008, Roku launched the very first player to stream entertainment to the television. We called this device ‘the Netflix player,’ since Netflix was the first available channel. For the first time, consumers could instantly stream thousands of TV and movie titles on their televisions thanks to the power of the Internet. With the introduction of that first streaming player, we pioneered the streaming era of television.

Over the last five years, we’ve celebrated many milestones as top brands have joined Roku to stream entertainment to the television for the first time. It’s been exciting to see our customers rejoice as we’ve added channels like Amazon Video on Demand in 2009, HBO GO in 2011 and TWC TV in 2013. And today, I’m pleased to share another milestone: thanks to you, we have shipped our 5 millionth Roku streaming player in the U.S.!

Since 2008, we’ve delivered 8 billion streams of video and music to Roku players. Of course we have a few more channels now – about 750 or so.

What are people streaming on Roku? Tons of TV shows and movies. Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, Crackle, HBO GO and VUDU are all top favorites. Music is extremely popular, and consumers enjoy Pandora, VEVO and Spotify among other choices. News, sports, science and foreign languages from around the world are also big hits.

Did I mention games? In 2011, we introduced casual games to the Roku platform with the debut of Angry Birds, which took the leap from mobile to TV for the first time. Angry Birds remains the most popular game on Roku today – by our count more than 3 billion bad piggies have been eliminated!

Today, 25% of Roku players stream more than 35 hours per week to a TV. According to Nielsen, the average American spends 34 hours per week watching live TV. That means one in four Roku customers are enjoying the vast majority of their TV time with Roku, making Roku one of the most coveted streaming platforms.

What does the future of TV look like? There’s no doubt it will be streamed.

Here’s to the next 8 billion streams!

Anthony Wood”

Microsoft’s typical sorry apps need ton’s o’ security patching this month. DO NOT forget to run your updates!

April’s Patch Tuesday to fix two critical flaws in Windows, IE

“In this month’s roundup of security flaws, Microsoft said it will patch nine vulnerabilities in total, two of them rated ‘critical.’

As usual, little information is provided about the flaws to ensure attackers can’t exploit the flaws in advance of the upcoming release. But in today’s advanced security bulletin, the software giant warns of flaws in both Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office and some of its server software.

The first critical flaw affects all versions of Internet Explorer, including: Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 on Windows XP; Internet Explorer 7, 8 and 9 on Windows Vista; and Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 in Windows 7. It also affects Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 and Windows RT-based tablets.

The vulnerability will fix a flaw that allows a drive-by attack, which hackers can exploit to attack machines running the software using malware-laden websites.

The second critical update affects Windows XP (Service Pack 3), Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) and Windows 7 — but not Windows 8 or Windows RT-based devices, such as Surface tablets. The patch will fix a flaw that allows an attacker to elevate privileges, such as from the more secure ‘user’ to ‘administrator’ privileges, opening up the core system files to attack and thus a greater scope for malware injection.

It’s likely that, in line with previous months, Microsoft may also dish out a number of non-security related fixes to its Surface Pro and Surface RT tablets.

Any machines at home or at work with these affected systems will be patched in just under a week when Microsoft releases the software patches and fixes.

The software fixes will be released on April 9 through the usual update channels, such as Windows and Microsoft Update.”

The NAB is the National Association of Broadcasters. NAB works to ensure broadcasters can operate in a marketplace free of unnecessary regulation, helping to spur the development of new broadcast technologies and services.

The NAB Conferences and Show is being held this year at Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada. Techpodcasts netcasters are covering the Convention floor, and will be interviewing exhibitors that will be displaying new broadcast technology innovations and content. It is going to be a great show, and we will have LIVE coverage all this week using LiveStream and TPN!

Stay tuned for great information and what new in the broadcast industry! Live coverage starts tomorrow! Watch the right hand column of our website for continuing coverage as it happens!

Apache has released an Open Source meeting platform ties into Asterisk PBX.

Apache OpenMeetings hits first Open Source Top Level Project Release

“There is alot of excitement in the open source community about the emerging WebRTC standard that will enable browsers to become full real-time communications tools.

It’s important to remember though that there are other open source tools and efforts that are already somewhat mature to enable open source real time communications via a browser. Though OpenMeetings (unlike WebRTC which is plug-in free) can and does benefit from the use of plugins (esp SWF/Flash).

This week the Apache OpenMeetings project released version 2.1 of its open source web conferencing platform. The OpenMeetings 2.1 release is the first release of the project since it graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a top level project, in December of 2012.

The new OpenMeetings 2.1.0 release provides improved integration with the open source Asterisk 11 PBX, which is required on the back-end to fully enable some of the web conferencing capabilities. The improved integration deliver enhanced sound and video.

As a full web conferencing solution, OpenMeetings also has chat capabilities. With the 2.1.0 release private chat amongst web conference users is now supported.”

Two Lucasarts games by Raven have been released to Open Source!

After LucasArts closure, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy go open source

Reported on Ars Technica:
“We’re all still reeling from Disney’s shuttering of LucasArts yesterday, and tributes to the once-indomitable game studio are sprouting up all over the Web. One such tribute sure to bring a smile to programmer geeks everywhere comes from development house Raven, which has this morning released the source code for its two Star Wars titles: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. The two FPS titles were released in 2002 and 2003 and continued the story of Kyle Katarn, the bounty hunter and Jedi first introduced in 1995’s Dark Forces.

‘We loved and appreciated the experience of getting to make Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy for LucasArts,’ noted Raven in a statement. ‘As a gift to the persistently loyal fanbase for our Jedi games and in memory of LucasArts, we are releasing the source code for both games for people to enjoy and play with.’

The two titles were very popular at release, with Jedi Outcast featuring one of the first deathmatch multiplayer experiences set in the Star Wars universe. According to Kotaku Australia, the code released this morning is only for the single-player portion of both games. This is typical of source code releases for major titles, as the networking code used in multiplayer often uses licensed or proprietary chunks of code that cannot be licensed as open source. Both games are available under the GPLv2 license.

We’re working on our own ‘Ars remembers LucasArts’ tribute post, which should be up later today.”

Does Google adopting Blink mean that they are preparing for a “Post-PC” era? Are we already in a “Post-PC” era? And, what about Naomi? (A reference to the old PBS show, “The Electric Company.)

The real reason why Google forked WebKit

“Yesterday came the surprise news that Google was going to kick Apple’s WebKit rendering engine to the curb and replace it with a new open source rendering engine called Blink, based on WebKit.

According to Google, the reason behind the switch is the fact that WebKit has grown too complicated, and making the switch to its own rendering engine will benefit projects such as the Chrome browser and Chrome OS.

‘Chromium uses a different multi-process architecture than other WebKit-based browsers, and supporting multiple architectures over the years has led to increasing complexity for both the WebKit and Chromium projects,’ writes Adam Barth, software engineer at Google.

‘This,’ he continues, ‘has slowed down the collective pace of innovation.’

It seems like Google has given this a lot of thought, and the company believes that it will be able to remove seven build systems and delete more than 7,000 files from its rendering engine compared to WebKit, which means some 4.5 million fewer lines of code.

This has already tempted Opera to adopt Blink.

Now, I’m all for simplification, and getting rid of 4.5 million lines of code from a project is undoubtedly good for stability and security. And, as noted by Barth, having multiple rendering engines will no doubt lead to more innovation.

But there’s more to this switch than meets the eye.

The fact that Google focused on simplifying the WebKit is telling. Sure, Google is interested in adding new features, but in such a multi-platform world, the idea of filling Blink with features that are incompatible with other rendering engines is almost unimaginable.

The reason Google wants Blink is down to one thing — the post-PC era. WebKit is long in the tooth, and is a product of PC thinking. Google wants to change that.

There’s no doubt that Apple has effectively managed the project and transformed it into a capable post-PC era rendering engine, but it is clear that if Google can eliminate 4.5 million lines of code from the project, then there’s a lot of dead wood in there. And while having all that dead wood buried in the codebase might be fine on desktop and notebook systems with a beefy processor and bags of RAM, on mobile systems with limited processing power, storage, RAM and power, a more focused, streamlined rendering engine would be better for all.

Google, it seems, is also very good at optimizing code when it comes to browsers. It’s done an excellent job of the V8 JavaScript engine, creating a fast, capable engine. Given its track record there, it makes sense for the company to take control of its own rendering engine.

Another reason why having its own rendering engine will be good for Google is differentiation. If Google can make Blink significantly better than WebKit (faster, less buggy, safer), then this gives products such as Android, Chrome, and Chrome OS an advantage over the competition. Given the world we now live in, a faster, more efficient, safer browser is something that would be welcomed by many.

Blink could be big for Google.”

Can we trust the InterWebs for doing the Census? For voting? For other really important stuff? Well, after all we trust it for our LOLcats, right?

2020 Census will be done by Internet

“Add paper census questionnaires to the long list of everyday items becoming quaint vestiges of tired technology, like landline phones, television armoires and butterfly ballots.

The Census Bureau already has started offering an Internet option to the 250,000 households it selects every month at random for the American Community Survey. Since becoming available in January, more than half the responses have come in on a secure site that requires codes and PIN numbers.

The bureau expects to use the Internet — plus smart phones and other technologies yet to be invented — for the next decen­nial census, in 2020.

The increasing reliance on technology is designed to save money. The 2010 Census cost $96 per household, including the American Community Survey that has replaced the old long form. That cost has more than doubled in two decades, up from $70 in 2000 and $39 as recently as 1990.

The factors pushing costs higher are unlikely to abate.

Increased diversity means questionnaires and ad campaigns must be produced in more languages. Fewer Americans willingly participate in surveys, making it more expensive to gather statistics about them. And the Census Bureau has been pressured to make its count more accurate, especially for smaller groups of people that tend to be undercounted.

But under prodding by Congress, the bureau is trying to keep the per-household cost stable, though the total cost inevitably will rise with inflation and population growth.

‘Congress has instructed us to find a way to do things for no more money,’ said Jim Dinwiddie, a senior census official who helps oversee the decennial census. ‘So we’re looking at what things we might do that have a dramatic impact on costs.’

Chief among them is using the Internet more. Though 60 other census surveys have an Internet option, the American Community Survey is by far the largest.

The Census Bureau spent two years running preliminary experiments in how people responded to American Community Survey questions on the computer screen. Five rounds of ­testing involved tracking eye movements as people scanned a Web page looking for which answer they wanted to check.

The households selected for the survey still get their first contact the old-fashioned way, with a mailed letter telling them the questionnaire is on its way. Then they receive a letter telling them how to respond over the Internet. If they don’t use that option, they get a 28-page paper form a few weeks later.

The questions are listed on a green-tinted Web page that takes roughly 40 minutes to complete, with 24 questions on housing alone and up to 48 questions about every household resident.

‘There are benefits to doing it online,’ said Todd Hughes, a senior census official working on the American Community Survey, as he illustrated how the computer catches contradictory answers and seeks clarification.

The savings are potentially huge, said Frank Vitrano, associate director for the 2020 Census.

‘It reduces the cost of printing, the cost of postage and the cost of data capture off paper forms,’ he said. ‘And we see it as more convenient for the public.’

Vitrano said other cost-cutting options also are being studied for the 2020 count.

Administrative records, including those kept by the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, may be another source of statistics that the Census Bureau can mine. That could diminish the need for what in 2010 was hundreds of thousands of temporary employees hired to check addresses, make follow-up calls and knock on doors when people didn’t respond quickly after the census form was mailed to their homes.

The bureau also is contemplating a promotional campaign to encourage people to contact the them and pre-register, providing an e-mail address so the questionnaire can be sent electronically.

But in an endeavor as big as a national census, final decisions on design and technology will have to be in place at least two years in advance. That means whatever looks fresh and new in 2018 will look a little stale by census day.

‘The census is always going to look a little out of date,’ Vitrano said. ‘There will be a time in 2017 or 2018 when we have to lock in decisions. Something new will come in 2019, and our technology is going to look obsolete.'”

Eventually, I am going to get an Ouya. But, I wasn’t the first to sign up, so I won’t get one soon. But, at least they are starting to ship!

First Ouya Consoles Shipping to Backers

“The early bird gets the worm, or in this case, the new portable home gaming system. Ouya’s $99 Android-based console is now shipping to early backers, and is expected to hit shelves this summer for all consumers.

Ouya games include action, sports, arcade, and indie, played directly on your TV. Big-name publishers like Square Enix and Namco Bandai have already signed on with the company, which also snagged independent developers like Tripwire Interactive and Adam Saltsman.

The Ouya may seem like the underdog in the established console market, but the little machine is aiming to disrupt the entire home gaming platform.

Industry heavyweight Julie Uhrman took to Kickstarter in July to crowd-fund her project, aiming for $950,000 to get the idea off the ground. She walked away a month later with almost $8.6 million and the support of more than 63,000 backers.

Following an epic Kickstarter run, Uhrman inked a deal with music and entertainment service Vevo, before announcing in February that the Ouya would sell via Amazon, GameStop, Target, and Best Buy.

The system has its own online store, a la Google Play, where gamers can choose from various titles, all of which include a free trial to test the game before purchase.

About the size of a Rubik’s cube, Ouya features a Tegra3 quad-core processor, 8GB of Flash memory, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth connectivity, and an HDMI connection to a TV, with support for up to 1080p HD.”

The next version of Windows is coming… it is in development now. The code name is “Windows Blue”… there are some basic changes, like smaller tiles in the Metro interface, and Internet Explorer 11, but are we heading toward a desktop-less Windows. My Linux buddy, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, that I have quoted many times before, thinks so! Is it the beginning of the end of Windows world domination?

No Windows desktop mode!? No!

“Summary: The early look at Blue have some Windows experts thinking that Microsoft is getting ready to dump Windows 8’s desktop mode once and for all in favor of Metro. No!

It comes as no surprise to anyone who reads my stories that I hate Windows 8’s Metro interface. I’m not alone. Lots of people hate it. But instead of switching back to an Aero-style interface, perhaps the most respected technical Windows writer out there, blogger Paul Thurrott, looked at the leaked Windows Blue release and thinks Microsoft is planning on dumping Windows Desktop mode entirely. No!

Will Metro be Windows’ only interface soon? Some experts think so.
I’ve thought all along that one way Microsoft could save Windows 8 from its current market malaise if it would make its desktop mode the primary interface instead of Metro.

That isn’t what Thurrott sees happening though. In fact, he sees the exact opposite.

Thurrott wrote, ‘All the action in this build is in PC settings, and if you were looking for any further proof the desktop being eased out going forward, look no further than this. As noted in the previous report, there are a ton of new settings in there now, including many items that were previously only available in the desktop-based Control Panel interface. This is clearly an indication of how we get from here (Windows 8) to there (Windows 9, with potentially no desktop).’ As further proof, he observed, ‘The default apps interface has been completely Metro-ized in this release.’

Some observers, like ComputerWorld’s Preston Gralla, agree with him: ‘There’s a reasonable chance that Microsoft will finally get around to killing the Desktop in Windows 9,’ Gralla writes. ‘With Windows 8, Microsoft did its best to make the Desktop at best an afterthought, relegating it to a tile on the Start screen. Windows 8 has been built for touch and the horizontal orientation of a tablet, and the Desktop has no place in that world.’

Others, such as Byte’s Larry Seltzer, disagree: ‘Can anyone actually believe this? Earth to Paul: The Windows desktop is a major strength of the operating system, ‘especially’ as compared to the competition. There is an ocean of expertise and customized software out there on the Windows desktop, and Microsoft would never alienate these people.’

I’d agree with Seltzer, except… well, Microsoft is already alienating those users. I know some Windows 8 PC users. The majority of them zoom past Metro and get to a normal Windows Desktop as fast as possible. If Thurrott is right, Windows users will be locked into Metro once and for all. That will fly as well as a lead brick.

One source close to Microsoft told me he can’t see Microsoft dumping the desktop anytime soon. ‘There’s the little, itty-bitty problem of hundreds of thousands of desktop applications that will take years, if not longer, to migrate to WinRT API-based apps. Just bringing Office alone to WinRT will be a Manhattan Project.’

Of course, Microsoft does have one way around this problem: Move all its business apps to the cloud and make them software as a service (SaaS) apps. This fits in nicely with Ed Bott’s vision of Microsoft’s future as a cloud-based service provider with its own hardware line, Surface.

If moving its business applications to the cloud really is the plan, then Microsoft could indeed leave Windows 8’s desktop mode behind. I wouldn’t be happy about it, and I don’t see that I’d ever like Metro, but a combination of cloud services and Windows-based devices with Metro interfaces could win for Microsoft.

It’s beginning to look more and more like if you want a traditional desktop, you’re going to need to use Linux. Who’d thought it?

As a long-time desktop Linux user, that’s fine by me, but I wonder if Windows users really want to follow me to Linux, or if they’d rather just have a working, Aero-style desktop instead of a cloud-based Metro device? I’d bet they’d really rather have their fine old desktop anyday.”

This past week the Linux Mint Team released a new LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) for 2013!  Linux Mint is my favorite Linux client distro, and the main release is based on Ubuntu.  This edition is based on “raw” Debian.

Linux Mint Debian 201303 released!

“The team is proud to announce the release of LMDE 201303!

Highlights

• Update Pack 6
• MATE 1.4
• Cinnamon 1.6
• Installer improvements (graphical timezone and keyboard selection, support for installation on multiple HDD, slideshow, webcam and face picture support)
• Device Driver Manager
• Plymouth splash screen

If you’re new to LMDE, welcome to Linux Mint Debian!

LMDE in brief

• Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is a semi-rolling distribution based on Debian Testing.
• It’s available in both 32 and 64-bit as a live DVD with MATE or Cinnamon.
• The purpose of LMDE is to look identical to the main edition and to provide the same functionality while using Debian as a base.”