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He made a follow up to the article where he tries to defend himself from the criticisms: http://arst.ch/t80

Ars Technica has a highly-related article

Most PhD students in the sciences (unlike those in other fields of education, such as medicine or law school) are fully funded through research assistantships, teaching opportunities, and fellowships. With so many graduates these days taking jobs they are overqualified for, some educators and economists believe this money is simply being wasted.

Ars has a good article summarizing a comparison study between Theora and h.264. Basically, Theora produces much lower quality videos with larger filesizes and higher CPU utilization when compared to h.264 videos with identical bitrates.

It's a poor article. The Streaming Learning Center study is deeply flawed. See the comments accompanying it. The method Jan Ozer used to encode his videos was woeful.

Let's use a far more practical standard of measurement. Let's compare how H.264 is used by YouTube today to deliver web video:

http://people.xiph.org/~maikmerten/youtube/

Perhaps Ogg Theora has something more going for it than just an open licence.

The obvious reason Microsoft has standardized on h.264 is its support for DRM. However, Ogg Theora is inferior to h.264 by any standard of measurement except for licensing.

Ars has a good article summarizing a comparison study between Theora and h.264. Basically, Theora produces much lower quality videos with larger filesizes and higher CPU utilization when compared to h.264 videos with identical bitrates.

I've heard Theora advocates say "just jack up the bitrates until it looks good - we're in the age of Hulu so no big deal." I find that unacceptable. Theora will have to up its game if it wants to be a true competitor to h.264. All it has going right now is an open license.

Recently I saw that a bunch of stimulus funds were handed out for bringing the nation's electrical grid into the 21st century. A big part of this is using computers to control various parts of the grid, from utility scale substations down into the home with smart meters and smart appliances.

Anytime you take infrastructure and connct it to computers you are opening it up to a whole new set of threats as well as bringing privacy implications.

Here's a couple great articles that go into the details better than I can.

I believe that there is are a couple things that really need to be address for grid security:

- Open protocols and specifications
With all the new technology coming down the pike, all sorts of companies will be sprining up with their gadget or software that will solve some problem. They need to work towards making standards of interoperability so that all these entities could work together.

- Network security
Putting millions of new, network connected, devices out there could lead to a field day for hackers. I believe that they sould quickly develop security technologies that manufactures could then cheaply incorporate into their devices.
A lot of this could be easily (and cheaply) addressed with various communities already out there. For instance, SSL technology has already been built into products like OpenVPN that could easily and cheaply secure huge numbers of smart endpoints.

- Privacy
We need to provide software that is built from the ground up to give uses the privacy that they deserve, while still pushing forward great new technologies.

Recently I saw that a bunch of stimulus funds were handed out for bringing the nation's electrical grid into the 21st century. A big part of this is using computers to control various parts of the grid, from utility scale substations down into the home with smart meters and smart appliances.

Anytime you take infrastructure and connct it to computers you are opening it up to a whole new set of threats as well as bringing privacy implications.

Here's a couple great articles that go into the details better than I can.

I believe that there is are a couple things that really need to be address for grid security:

- Open protocols and specifications
With all the new technology coming down the pike, all sorts of companies will be sprining up with their gadget or software that will solve some problem. They need to work towards making standards of interoperability so that all these entities could work together.

- Network security
Putting millions of new, network connected, devices out there could lead to a field day for hackers. I believe that they sould quickly develop security technologies that manufactures could then cheaply incorporate into their devices.
A lot of this could be easily (and cheaply) addressed with various communities already out there. For instance, SSL technology has already been built into products like OpenVPN that could easily and cheaply secure huge numbers of smart endpoints.

- Privacy
We need to provide software that is built from the ground up to give uses the privacy that they deserve, while still pushing forward great new technologies.

Ars Technica has a very nice response to this: http://arst.ch/722