Alliance for Open Media launched

A very interesting group has formed the Alliance for Open Media launched today. Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Cisco, Intel and Amazon have joined this group to develop the next-generation media formats including audio, video and still image formats. Of course the pressing item is video.

What they are looking for is for a common video format which gets them away from licensing hell.
H.265/HVEC may not be as cheap as the presently used H.264/AVC which requires less expensive licensing. Licensing expenses will curtail the growth and use of low cost and non-commercial streaming. It is the defined objective of the alliance group to produce a video codec that is an improvement over HEVC. It may be noted that many of them have their proprietary codecs. For example the adoption of Google's VP8 made it an issue for Microsoft to join the WebTRC.  Google has  more codecs VP9, VP10.  CISCO and Mozilla have their own codecs.

It remains to be seen how efective this alliance will be as it is still in its formative stage.

You may want to read about the H.264 and H.265 details here.

Trump makes a good point

I am not political in the sense that I am not aligned to any one party. I do believe in a democracy with multiple parties although it may amount to delays in taking decisions. I basically do not favor a two party system and it will be healthy to have multiple parties.

I was listening to Trump this morning  and there was an unmistakable piece of logic in what he was saying. It reminded what my father was saying about getting help. If someone gives you, say $100 be sure he will be expecting $100 plus more from you. Nothing is free. If you are financed by vested interests they are expecting you to pay back in favors.

Trump can say that since he has the resources and probably he does not need money.

Since I like multiple parties to have voice, I am disappointed with him going under the shade of the Republican umbrella. I suppose that is political reality.

Here are some of the pictures from the TV if you missed the press conference. Each picture shows the highpoint of the conference speech.

 

devart ODBC for SQL Azure database

Here are some quick facts about this driver;

Direct connection requiring just TCP / IP and there is no need for SQL Azure Client software. This mode of access implies better performance, reliability and improved deployment process. Packaging of your software lighter.

The current version supports many platforms, Windows, Linux, Mac OS X for both architectures 32bit and 64bit.

Common ODBC interfaces for Data Types and ODBC API functions are supported.

The author has not received any compensation from devart.

More info and download details here.

Besides this ODBC connection devart has many other products:

 

Windows 10 and Java Plug-ins

The Edge browser does not support plug-ins including that of Java. You may need to use another browser. I found Firefox quite easy to use in Windows 10. However Internet Explorer 11 continues to support plug-ins.

Read related FAQ here:
http://java.com/en/download/faq/win10_faq.xml

Searching PowerShell scripts with Script Browser - A good productivity tool

If you install Script Browser from here, searching for PowerShell scripts, several thousands of them from TechNet Script Center becomes a lot easier. You do not have to Google or Bing. What is more it opens up within the scripting environment. You can mark the script you want as favorite and download them. All though Windows 10 is not in the supported OS list, it still works.

Bundled with it you can also try the pilot version of Script Analyzer

Version Details:

PowerShellScriptBrowser00

If you install and still do not find it in the ISE do the following:

1. Start Windows PowerShell with the "Run as administrator" option.
2. Run this command:
Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
You can refer to about_Execution_Policies

When installed you should be able to see the Script Browser in your Windows PowerShell ISE as shown:

You search TechNet resources as shown here (search key NuGet and language PowerShell):