YouTube makes own 'premium' | The Columbian

Machinima This image released by the online Machinima network shows a scene the Premium episodic series "Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn." Machinima has grown into one of the most successful networks on YouTube.

By JAKE COYLE, Associated Press

Saturday, March 30, 2013

NEW YORK -- Machinima, the sprawling digital gaming network, could hang a McDonald's-like sign outside its Los Angeles headquarters: More than 37.4 billion videos served.

That's how many views the Machinima network has generated. And it all started with one video.

Allen DeBevoise and his brother, Philip, acquired Machinima Inc. in 2005, but didn't start developing it on the then-nascent YouTube until 2007. One of its first series came from a user named "SodaGod." The series, "Inside Halo," served as a center for enthusiasm for the popular science fiction video game franchise. Six years later, Machinima has grown into one of the most successful networks on YouTube, a gamer hub composed of a little expensively produced original programming, and a whole lot of user-generated videos.

While the land rush to stream "premium" original content is drawing an increasing number of video professionals to the Web, YouTube's swelling multichannel networks are finding success with a more organic, bottom-up approach.

"The programming model of the future, where I think Machinima plays in, is in connecting that whole relationship, where we don't think of it as either being user-generated or as being traditionally made by a professional creator," says DeBevoise, chief executive of Machinima. "We think it's a continuum and they both co-exist in the same world."

Machinima, Maker Studios, Fullscreen and others have assembled broad networks, each encompassing thousands of YouTube creators. They're dependably ranked among the most-viewed destinations on YouTube in comScore's monthly online video rankings. In February, Fullscreen drew 36.8 million unique viewers, 30.5 million tuned into Maker, and Machinima, with a leading 61.4 minutes per visit, had 21 million viewers. Each network averages around 2 billion views a month.

You could say that they're like the NBC, CBS and ABC of YouTube, but the more appropriate comparison might be to media parent companies. Only rather than having a few dozen cable networks under their global umbrella, they have 5,000 to 10,000 YouTube channels.

"We see ourselves as kind of the next-gen Viacom," says George Strompolos, founder and chief executive of Fullscreen, a company with 150 employees founded in 2011. "We think we're at the beginning of the opportunity to build a large-scale, sustainable new media business on the Internet."

Much of the conversation about online video has lately been dominated by Hollywood digital productions. But for every "House of Cards" on Netflix, there are dozens of less noteworthy attempts to bring television-style content to online video. These upper-echelon YouTube networks are interested in high-quality programming, too, but their model is more of a hybrid that places pricier productions atop a pyramid of user-generated videos.

"We feel like 'premium' is so subjective," says Danny Zappin, chief executive and co-founder of Maker Studios, which uses two production studios and 300-plus employees to assist YouTubers in production and marketing. "What is premium? For us, we feel like it's an engaged audience who has a personal connection to the person they're watching. To us, that's more premium or more valuable than, say, high production value or a mainstream celebrity. You can't have just one or the other. You've got to have both to really work on YouTube."

Maker, Machinima and Fullscreen operate in different ways, but they and a growing number of YouTube networks all take the philosophy that there's strength in numbers. By gathering thousands of channels together, all -- at least theoretically -- benefit from shared production tools, greater exposure and ultimately, hopefully larger advertising dollars.

Source: http://www.columbian.com/news/2013/mar/30/youtube-makes-own-premium/

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The Chilling Effects of the DMCA

Stacked CDs

Photo by Fuse/Thinkstock

It was hard to believe, but the student insisted it was true. He had discovered that compact discs from a major record company, Sony BMG, were installing dangerous software on people?s computers, without notice. The graduate student, Alex Halderman (now a professor at the University of Michigan), was a wizard in the lab. As experienced computer security researchers, Alex and I knew what we should do: First, go back to the lab and triple-check everything. Second, warn the public.

But by this point, in 2005, the real second step was to call a lawyer. Security research was increasingly becoming a legal minefield, and we wanted to make sure we wouldn?t run afoul of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. We weren?t afraid that our research results were wrong. What scared us was having to admit in public that we had done the research at all.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people were inserting tainted music CDs into their computers and receiving spyware. In fact, the CDs went beyond installing unauthorized software on the user?s computer. They also installed a ?rootkit??they modified the Windows operating system to create an invisible area that couldn?t be detected by ordinary measures, and in many cases couldn?t be discovered even by virus checkers. The unwanted CD software installed itself in the invisible area, but the rootkit also provided a safe harbor for any other virus that wanted to exploit it. Needless to say, this was a big security problem for users. Our professional code told us that we had to warn them immediately. But our experience with the law told us to wait.

The law that we feared, the DMCA, was passed in 1998 but has been back in the news lately because it prohibits unlocking cellphones and interferes with access by people with disabilities. But its impact on research has been just as dramatic. Security researchers have long studied consumer technologies, to understand how they work, how they can fail, and how users can protect themselves from malfunctions and security flaws. This research benefits the public by making complex technologies more transparent. At the same time, it teaches the technology community how to design better, safer products in the future. These benefits depend on researchers being free to dissect products and talk about what they find.

We were worried about the part of the DMCA called 17 U.S.C. ? 1201(a)(1), which says that ?No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under [copyright law].? We had to disable the rootkit to detect what it was hiding, and we had to partially disable the software to figure out what it was doing. An angry record company might call either of those steps an act of circumvention, landing us in court. Instead of talking to the public, we talked to our lawyer.

This wasn?t the first time the DMCA had interfered with my security research. Back in 2001, my colleagues and I had had to withdraw a peer-reviewed paper about CD copy protection, because the Recording Industry Association of America and others were threatening legal action, claiming that our paper was a ?circumvention technology? in violation of another section of the DMCA. Later we sued for the right to publish these results?and we did publish, four months later. We had won, but we had also learned firsthand about the uncertainty and chaos that legal threats can cause. I was impressed that some of my colleagues had been willing to risk their jobs for our work, but none of us wanted to relive the experience.

Alex had dealt with his own previous DMCA threat, although this one was more comical than frightening. After he revealed that a CD copy protection product from a company called SunnComm could be defeated by holding down the computer?s Shift key while inserting the disc, the company had threatened him with DMCA action. Given the colorful history of the company?it had started corporate life as a booking agency for Elvis impersonators?and the company?s subsequent backtracking from the threat, we weren?t too worried about being sued. Nevertheless, it showed that the DMCA had become a go-to strategy for companies facing embarrassing revelations about their products.

What was Congress thinking when it passed this part of the DMCA? The act was meant to update copyright law for the 21^st century, to shore up the shaky technologies that tried to stop people from copying music and movies. But the resulting law was too broad, ensnaring legitimate research activities.

The research community saw this problem coming and repeatedly asked Congress to amend the bill that would become the DMCA, to create an effective safe harbor for research. There was a letter to Congress from 50 security researchers (including me), another from the heads of major scientific societies, and a third from the leading professional society for computer scientists. But with so much at stake in the act for so many major interests, our voice wasn?t heard. As they say in Washington, we didn?t have a seat at the table.

Congress did give us a research exemption, but it was so narrowly defined as to be all but useless. (So perhaps we did have a seat?at the kids? table.) I?ll spare you the details, but basically, there is a 116-word section of the Act titled ?Permissible Acts of Encryption Research,? and it appears to have been written without consulting any researchers. There may be someone, somewhere, who has benefited from this exemption, but it fails to protect almost all of the relevant research. It didn?t protect Alex and me, because we were investigating spyware that didn?t rely on the mathematical operations involved in encryption.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=a8f3c9e152953a18b0b979c238b8987e

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Jim Carrey Fights Back Against Fox News Vitriol

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/jim-carrey-fights-back-against-fox-news-vitriol/

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Razer Edge Pro

Razer is a well-known name in the gaming community, with its green glowing snake logo stamped on all manner of mice, keyboards, and other specialized peripherals. But Razer's newest toy?the Razer Edge Pro gaming tablet?is way more than a mere plaything. First announced as "Project Fiona" back at CES 2012, this unique device has been designed to be the tablet for PC gamers. It has been tweaked and polished over months and months of refinement with feedback from pro gamers and enthusiasts alike. Boasting a dual-core Intel Core i7-3517U Ivy Bridge processor with 8GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GT 640M LE graphics card with 2GB of dedicated memory, the result is a potent Windows laptop with more graphics and gaming chops than most laptops?and easily topping tablets like the Microsoft Surface Pro?and a playing experience that brings the game closer to you while letting you take the game wherever you want to go. The Edge Pro is the rare device that reimagines what the PC experience should be and delivers something that's not just different, but better, putting a full-fledged Windows experience into a more portable design, with the hardware to use it on the go, at your desk, or in the living room. That it's made to let you game anywhere just makes it a lot more fun.

Design
The Edge Pro is big for a tablet, but it's extremely slim and light for anything remotely capable of serious gaming. Measuring 7 by 11 by 0.8 inches (HWD) and weighing 2.14 pounds, the Edge Pro is significantly thicker than other Windows tablets, like the Microsoft Surface Pro, which is just 0.53 inch thick, and weighs slightly less at two pounds. But for all this heft, you get a lot more in terms of hardware?the Edge Pro and its less expensive standard variant, the Core i5-powered Razer Edge, are also the only Windows tablets on the market today to offer both Intel Core processing and discrete graphics. As tradeoffs go, this is pretty worthwhile.

And let's not forget that even the slimmest, lightest gaming laptops are considerably less portable. Our previous Editors' Choice for portable gaming laptops, the Maingear Pulse 11, is 1.5 inches thick and weighs 3.7 pounds. Razer's own made-for-portability Razer Blade laptop is still 0.88-inch thick, and 6.6 pounds. On top of that, you aren't likely to use the laptop for gaming without at least adding a gaming mouse to the mix, and you'll need to find a table or desk to sit at while you play?but the Edge Pro lets you play anywhere, without needing a mouse for all games.

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On any other system the 10.1-inch IPS display and its 1,366-by-768 resolution would be small and inadequate?though it's the same resolution of the screen on the Maingear Pulse 11?but because you'll be bringing the Edge Pro so much closer to your face, the smaller size and lower resolution aren't much of an issue. For a larger display and higher resolution, the HDMI port found on the accessory console dock does output at 1080p.

On the back of the tablet, which is made of the same cool black aluminum seen on the Razer Blade, you'll find Razer's distinctive logo, with three intertwined snakes that glow green when powered on. When we tested the speaker quality on the Edge Pro, I was surprised by the quality of the sound. While there's no bass to speak of, the sound itself is significantly better than most tablets?there's no buzzing at high volumes, and the sound is fuller than the thin, tinny sound heard on other tablets.

Features
On the tablet you'll find a docking port (which doubles as your power connector), a headphone jack, and a full-size USB 3.0 port. The USB port is easy to spot, because it's the same brilliant green we saw on the Razer Blade. The Razer Edge Pro is equipped with 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 + HS, so it will pair up with any wireless peripherals you want.

Inside, the Razer Edge Pro is equipped with a 256GB solid-state drive, in addition to the aforementioned Intel processor and Nvidia graphics card. All of those heat generating components also require a cooling fan, and this one gets humming pretty early on?it's the only tablet we've reviewed where fan noise is a concern. But that fan is indispensable, as I measured surface temperatures between 114 and 130 degrees at various points during testing and use. It got particularly warm in the upper right-hand corner, but you won't likely be using the tablet alone during the most intense gaming. A lot of this heat buildup is dealt with by using the accessory gamepad dock, shielding the hot surfaces from your touch and giving you two external handles to hold. Handling the tablet won't be an issue while using the tablet on the desktop/console dock.

While the Edge Pro is free of any bloatware or spurious software trials, it does come with Razer's Launcher dashboard for browsing and launching games, and also comes preinstalled with Steam, saving you the step of downloading it yourself. Additionally, the Edge Pro is designed for compatibility with Steam Big Picture Mode when connected to an HDTV through the console dock.

Razer covers the Edge Pro with a one-year warranty, with an extended warranty available ($199.99 direct) to stretch it to two, and also adds a year of coverage for power cable, console dock, and gamepad dock (except battery). Docks and accessories are also covered by a one-year warranty.

While the tablet design doesn't really make for a system you can upgrade and maintain in the same way you can tweak and optimize a desktop PC, Razer tells us that the SSD inside can indeed be swapped out by the user. But tinkerer's beware?doing so will void the warranty.

Our review unit came with two docks, the Gamepad Dock ($249.99 direct), and a desktop cradle called the Console Dock ($99.99 direct). A third accessory?a keyboard for laptop-style functionality?is expected to be available in Q3 of this year, but specific details about features, availability, and pricing weren't available as of this writing.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/5-2kImcMQ9E/0,2817,2417136,00.asp

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Source says Barbara Walters to retire next year

NEW YORK (AP) ? Barbara Walters plans to retire next year, ending a television career that began more than a half century ago and made her a trailblazer in news and daytime TV.

Someone who works closely with Walters said the plan is for her to retire in May 2014 after a series of special programs saluting her career. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Thursday.

Walters, 83, was hospitalized earlier this year after falling and cutting her head while leaving a party in Washington and remained out of work after developing the chickenpox. Largely retired from ABC News already, her main work is at "The View," the daytime hit she created in 1997.

Her television career began in 1961 when she was hired as a writer for the "Today" show. She graduated quickly to on-air work and became the show's co-host before leaving in 1976 to become co-anchor of ABC's evening news with Harry Reasoner ? the first woman in such a role for a television network.

The pairing ended quickly and Walters settled into a role as ABC News' cajoler-in-chief, competing ferociously to land newsmaking interviews with heads of state and stars of the day. She regularly did interview specials, including an annual show with the most fascinating people of the year, and was co-host of "20/20" for two decades, much of the time with Hugh Downs.

She described "The View" as the "dessert" of her career, a regular gathering of women chatting about the hot topics of the day and interviewing visiting presidents and actors eager to reach a daytime audience. Walters appeared semi-regularly as one of the hosts.

"The View" faces a transition continuing without Walters and also the last remaining original host, Joy Behar, who recently announced she was stepping down.

Walters underwent heart surgery in 2010, turning the experience into a prime-time special, "A Matter of Life and Death," featuring interviews with fellow heart patients Bill Clinton and David Letterman.

ABC news and entertainment representatives would not comment Thursday and Walters' publicist, Cindi Berger, did not immediately return requests for comment.

It wasn't clear when Walters would announce her plans. Late spring is the time TV networks generally reveal their plans for the upcoming year so advertisers can lock in commercial time.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-source-barbara-walters-retire-next-201952868.html

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The power of the gay kiss (Americablog)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

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Seeing happiness in ambiguous facial expressions reduces aggressive behavior

Mar. 27, 2013 ? Encouraging young people at high-risk of criminal offending and delinquency to see happiness rather than anger in facial expressions results in a decrease in their levels of anger and aggression, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The study, led by Marcus Munaf? and Ian Penton-Voak of the University of Bristol (UK), explored the relationship between recognition of emotion in ambiguous facial expressions and aggressive thoughts and behavior, both in healthy adults and in adolescent youth considered to be at high-risk of committing crime.

The researchers showed it was possible to experimentally modify biases in emotion recognition to encourage the perception of happiness over anger when viewing ambiguous expressions. This resulted in a decrease in measures of self-reported anger and aggression in both healthy adults and high-risk adolescents, and also for independently-rated aggressive behavior in the adolescents.

To modify these biases, participants were shown composite images of facial expressions that were happy, angry or emotionally ambiguous and asked to rate them as happy or angry. This established a baseline balance point of how likely they were to read ambiguous faces as angry. The researchers then used feedback to nudge some of the participants away from this negativity bias by telling them that some of the ambiguous faces they had previously labeled as angry were in fact happy.

In the first experiment in 40 healthy volunteers, this ultimately resulted in the participants learning to identify happiness in these faces rather than anger -- and these participants subsequently reported lower levels of anger and aggression in themselves.

The experiment was then repeated with 46 adolescents aged 11 to 16 years old who had been referred to a youth program, either by the courts or by schools, as being at high risk of committing crime and with a high frequency of aggressive behavior.

Again, participants trained to recognize happiness rather than anger in the ambiguous faces reported less aggressive behavior. In addition, incidence of aggressive behavior -- as recorded independently by program staff in the week before and the two weeks following the training -- were also reduced.

To test this result further, the researchers then ran a different experiment on a further 53 healthy volunteers which did not rely on explicit feedback to change the way participants judged facial expressions.

Previous studies have shown that prolonged viewing of an image subsequently alters the perception of similar images, so one group of participants was shown only angry faces while a control group looked at an equal mix of happy and angry faces.

The researchers found that those shown only angry faces subsequently shifted their perceptions and became more likely to see happiness in ambiguous faces. Again, they also reported lower levels of anger and aggression in themselves.

"Our results provide strong evidence that emotion processing plays a causal role in anger and the maintenance of aggressive behavior. This could potentially lead to novel behavioral treatments in the future," said Munaf?.

In addition to Penton-Voak and Munaf?, co-authors on the research include Jamie Thomas of the University of Wales Institute, Suzanne Gage and Sarah McDonald of the University of Bristol, and Mary McMurran of the University of Nottingham.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. I. S. Penton-Voak, J. Thomas, S. H. Gage, M. McMurran, S. McDonald, M. R. Munafo. Increasing Recognition of Happiness in Ambiguous Facial Expressions Reduces Anger and Aggressive Behavior. Psychological Science, 2013; DOI: 10.1177/0956797612459657

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/D_t658f0cAE/130328080559.htm

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