Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

As someone that runs Internet Radio Stations, the idea of Shoutcast going away is scary, and the idea that Microsoft may buy it is crazy!

Source: Microsoft In Talks To Buy Shoutcast And Winamp From AOL

TechCrunch – “Looks like the llama may not get off so easily after all. AOL yesterday announced that it was shutting down Winamp, media playing software for Windows and Android devices that it picked up through its 1999, $80 million acquisition of Nullsoft in 1999. But today Techcrunch has learned that AOL is talks with Microsoft to sell Winamp, along with Shoutcast, a media streaming service also developed by Nullsoft. We have also learned that AOL has been planning to announce the closure of Shoutcast next week.

AOL has declined to comment for this story, and we are still waiting to hear back from Microsoft with a response. From what we understand, the deal is not yet finalized, with AOL and Microsoft still working out the price. It could also be very wishful thinking from those intent on trying to save both services.

AOL did not give any guidance yesterday on what would happen with Shoutcast.

If this is correct, it would represent an interesting, and strange, twist in the story.

On the AOL side, it’s fairly clear why AOL is closing down Winamp and Shoutcast, and it makes sense why it would want to sell both.

As an owner, AOL has never given much of a strong direction to the products, at a time when other digital music companies have been building up audiences and evolving technologies (although, as we pointed out earlier this week when writing about Rdio layoffs, the digital music business is tough). It has already shuttered and sold off other music assets as part of a bigger strategic shift to focus resources as a web publisher (it owns TechCrunch, Engadget, Huffington Post and a number of other bloggy properties), and as a rich-media advertising network operator across those and third-party sites, with an increasing focus on ad-tech to improve how those ads are delivered and measured.

Yes, music properties could very much fit into that mix, but not without a lot of financial and strategic investment in them.

On the Microsoft side, the Windows giant has had its own setbacks in music (RIP Zune). But it has more recently thrown a lot of eggs into the Xbox Music basket, which works on the Xbox 360, Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Phone 8,iOS and Android devices, offering free, ad-supported streaming, subscriptions, and downloaded music.

Where would Winamp or Shoutcast fit into that mix? While I’m still trying to figure out what Microsoft would do with Winamp, Shoutcast has a platform that acts as a portal to over 50,000 radio stations. This could be one area that Microsoft might want to add to the Xbox Music platform, and which it currently lacks, to complement its Pandora-style personal radio feature.”

HBO GO users can now rejoice! Google Chromecast now supports your HBO GO addiction!

HBO GO now works with Chromecast

“Grab your favorite snack and get cozy on your Iron Throne, because HBO GO has added Chromecast support to their Android, iOS and web app. Now you can easily enjoy ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Boardwalk Empire,’ ‘Girls’ and your favorite movies on your TV by casting from the HBO GO app or website.

To start casting from HBO GO, just check that you have the latest version of the app for Android or iOS. You can also cast from hbogo.com using Chrome browser on your laptop or any Chromebook. The mobile and web apps will be rolling out over the next few days.

Winter is Coming!”

People like personal choice and freedom. Every time a big company, or government, any large entity, pushes something on folks… they get up in arms and take on ‘da man!’

Well, that is certainly happening with Google’s forced integration of YouTube and Goggle +!

Forced Google Plus integration on YouTube backfires, petition hits 112,000

ZDNet – “Google’s war on anonymity during its involvement in NSA controversy has imploded as its move to force YouTube commenters to use Google Plus – and its unwanted ‘real name’ policy – has backfired.

On November 6, Google changed its YouTube property to only allow comments from Google Plus accounts, thus de-anonymizing commenters, as the principal element of its site-wide comments overhaul.

Google’s move to force Plus onto YouTube has outraged the YouTube community – and beyond.

YouTube user fury is fueling this anti-Plus petition with over 112,000 signatures, increasing by the minute. (Update November 17, 10:12am PST: over 167,000 signatures.)

Why am I unable to comment? I have been a YouTuber for 3 years and this is the kind of treatment we ‘originals’ [Before any of the G+ crap came in] receive for refusing to show our name publicly?

We want privacy. I do not want my full name on YouTube. I do not care for Google Plus either so stop shoving it in my face. [Nathan S, UK]”

(Cross-posted from VirtZine) Watch out Google! When you shut off projects like Google Reader, that folks depend on, you run the risk of them developing their own, private Google for home! (Somehow, I don’t think Google is losing sleep, but hey!)

This 23-year-old’s open-source project, a server running on Raspberry Pi

VentureBeat – “For most of us, Google shutting down Reader was annoying. For Jacob Cook, it was a call to arms.

He’s now building an operating system that anyone can use to replace all of the services that Google provides — or any other cloud company, for that matter. Email, chat, file sharing, web hosting: With Cook’s arkOS, you’ll be able to run all of those essential services on a secure, private server in your own home that’s about the size of a credit card.

‘Google, while it is a great service that has done wonderful things for the Web, is showing some troubling signs,’ Cook told me. ‘Their shutdown of Google Reader earlier this year means that none of the services [we] rely upon are sacrosanct if they are not profitable enough for them.’

ArkOS is a Linux-based server operating system that’s designed to run on the popular, diminutive Raspberry Pi hardware. (Eventually it will be able to run on other platforms, such as the BeagleBoard, or even full-size PCs.) Running on top of arkOS is Cook’s open-source Genesis application, which provides a web-based interface for controlling the different services running on your server. Genesis is open source, and all the files are available on GitHub, and you can also download the arkOS files and install them yourself. However, the project is still at an early, ‘alpha’ stage of development, so Cook advises against using it for any serious work just yet.

Cook, who is a 23-year-old university student, has started a crowdfunding campaign to raise money so that he can focus on arkOS full time. He’s hoping to raise $45,000 in the next 24 days, and has already collected $5,645 in pledges from over 100 backers. He has also created a legal entity, the CitizenWeb Project, to be the organization responsible for the project.

In addition to the long-term unreliability of Google’s services — the fact that they could shut anything down at any time if it no longer aligns with their business interests — the recent revelations that the NSA can access so much online data gave Cook’s project an additional impetus. If the NSA is able to extract data from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL, Twitter, and who knows what other services, who can you trust with your data?

‘The idea that the NSA and its global counterparts can have nearly free reign in the networks of these large companies makes users a target,’ Cook said. ‘Moving users out into self-hosted nodes makes sense from this perspective: It makes wholesale data collection many times more difficult. And when coupled with proper cryptography and secure setups by design, it makes NSA-style snooping practically impossible.’

The arkOS project, when it’s complete, will provide users with a small device they could plug into an Ethernet port at home in order to host their own cloud services. There are commercial alternatives, like PogoPlug, but PogoPlug only lets you host your own files — it doesn’t provide a comprehensive suite of Internet services, like website hosting, chat, email, and so forth. ArkOS will provide those services, with customizable levels of security so you can control who gets to access each one.

Other secure open-source operating systems exist as well, most notably Tails, which gives you a secure desktop environment to do your business. (It, too, is based on a version of Linux, and is pre-configured to use a range of secure applications, and relies on the Tor network for secure browsing.) But Tails is a desktop operating system, while arkOS is for servers.

‘If you host your data with arkOS then access it on your other computers with Tails, it’s a winning combination,’ Cook said.

Another potential limitation: Most home Internet service providers optimize their services for download speeds, not upload speeds — so you can stream video to your TV just fine, but hosting a big media library on an arkOS server might result in very slow performance if you’re trying to access it from outside your house. To address that, Cook said he’s working on ways of hosting arkOS remotely, through providers like DigitalOcean, so you could run an arkOS server in a data center but still have total control over it yourself and manage it through the same web interface.

Cook hopes to have the framework stable enough to use by March, 2014, and will continue adding features for the next year.

The project is based on his own experience as a Linux hacker and IT administrator as well as his academic interest in computer security. He admits that he doesn’t have deep cryptographic knowledge, but as he’s not building a new crypto system, that’s probably not a big problem. He’s also attracted a few people to contribute to the open-source system, but for now he seems to be the primary driver of it.

He may be just one young coder, but then Linus Torvalds was just a lone coder once, too.”

One Million PS4’s Sold Within 24 Hours!

Apparrently, they have a winner! Who said the game console is dead?

Sony sells over 1 million PlayStation 4s

“Sony’s PlayStation 4 is off to a hot start. Consumers in North America bought more than 1 million PS4s within the first 24 hours of the new $399 home video game console going on sale Friday. That’s the fastest start for a PlayStation system so far.

Shuhei Yoshida, president of Worldwide studios for Sony Computer Entertainment, posted the news on Twitter Sunday.

As often happens when a mass release of a high-tech product occurs, a few consumers get a lemon. Some PS4 owners reported that their new console would not output video and had a flashing light, entertainment news site IGN.com reported.

‘A handful of people have reported issues with their PlayStation 4 systems,’ Sony said in a statement to IGN. ‘This is within our expectations for a new product introduction, and the vast majority of PS4 feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We are closely monitoring for additional reports, but we think these are isolated incidents and are on track for a great launch.’

And the highly publicized release of PS4 attracted the attention of some thieves. Two men were arrested in Bakersfield, Calif., after robbing a customer of a PS4 outside a store, Yahoo News reported. And in Hutchinson, Kan., thieves broke into a home and took a PS4 in the early morning hours Saturday.”

Yes, you read that right! The premiere new gaming console runs FreeBSD under the hood. Win!

Sony’s new PlayStation 4 and open source FreeBSD: The TRUTH

The Register – “Sony has confirmed that its newgasmic game console the PlayStation 4 – on sale today in the US – uses a modified version of the open-source FreeBSD operating system.

In a license page on Sony’s Japanese site the company lists the software used by the PEW-PEW-PEW machine, and Unix-derivative FreeBSD features prominently. The PS4’s Orbis OS is based on the tech.

Speculation had surged in June that Sony had loaded a modified version of FreeBSD 9 onto its console after images leaked online of the console’s development environment. Sony’s no stranger to the open-source world: it’s PlayStation 2 programming kits were Red Hat Linux machines, although it’s infamous for dropping Linux support for the PS3.

The confirmation is arguably another win for the open-source world, and lines up with game vendor Valve’s plan to bring a console into people’s living rooms running a Linux-powered SteamOS.

Besides the daemon-logo’d FreeBSD kernel and related components, other open-source software used by Sony’s entertainment box includes OpenSSL, Protocol Buffers, Webkit, jQuery, and Lua. The FreeBSD software license allows the OS’s source code to be used freely by anyone provided acknowledge of the project’s copyright is noted in the product’s documentation along with the distribution terms and conditions.

Nintendo also uses open-source software in its Wii U games console alongside its proprietary Internal Operating System. Microsoft, on the other hand, appears to prefer purely its own home-grown code – namely the Xbox OS that was written from scratch for the original Xbox and the Xbox 360. The upcoming Xbox One will use the Windows kernel, Microsoft said.”

I was listening to the radio this morning, and the DJ mentioned that it had just turned: 08:09:10 11/12/13 How cool is that! An alignment of time! Dewd! Now if the planets were aligned at the same time, that would be the Day of the Doctor (Dr. Who 50th Anniversary Special!)