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+ - Netflix on Chrome - still platform restricted->

Submitted by SupaSaru
SupaSaru writes "Netflix previously announced they would be leveraging HTML5 rather than Microsoft's Silverlight technology to deliver content to users.

As a result, the Netflix application for the Chrome Web Store has been released: with a serious oversight. There is still no support for Linux other than Android and ChromeOS. While the ChromeBook, Windows, Mac and Android users aren't complaining (and often disappointed by outcries for Linux support), there is clearly a precedence being set.

Google's support of an application listed as a "web app" that doesn't function on an OS that Chrome works on questions the concept of the Chrome Web Store entirely: is this only a market for ChromeBooks? Is it realistic to expect more vendors to offer "web apps" with outlandish restrictions on platforms and previously existing software?

Google's commitment to interoperability and the Linux community clearly stops at the dollar: in other words, the equivalent outlook of both Apple and Microsoft."
Link to Original Source

+ - New Treatment for Leukamia exceeds expectations

Submitted by parallel_prankster
parallel_prankster writes "In the research published Wednesday, doctors at the University of Pennsylvania say the treatment made the most common type of leukemia completely disappear in two of the patients and reduced it by 70 percent in the third. In each of the patients as much as five pounds of cancerous tissue completely melted away in a few weeks, and a year later it is still gone. The results of the preliminary test “exceeded our wildest expectations,” says immunologist Dr. Carl June a member of the Abramson Cancer Center's research team. Using a modified, harmless version of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells. These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells. After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients."

Comment: Re:That was your first mistake. (Score 1) 3

by SupaSaru (#36762436) Attached to: Best Buy Mobile's Product Replacement Plan
+1 for amazing obvious advice. :) ... but you forgot to knock the Dell Streak. :\ The question isn't that their service is poor - we already know this. Best Buy, Fry's, Microcenter, etc are all the same when it comes to these matters. My question is - is Best Buy intentionally misleading customers about their Repair Center being in Texas when it's actually outsourced overseas?

+ - Best Buy Mobile's Product Replacement Plan 3

Submitted by SupaSaru
SupaSaru writes "In a recent fiasco purchasing and using a PRP (Product Replacement Plan) through Best Buy for a Dell Streak, it seems I've encountered (surprise!) a few discrepencies.
In short, I was told it would take 30 days to repair the phone. It has now been 36 days since the phone was returned to the store. Best Buy claims they have sent it to a company in Texas that they cannot contact except by email. The supposed reason for the 36 days is that 9 days are "uncounted" while the phone was in transit to Texas.
After 3 hours on the phone, the only information they can give me is that the company is named "Jibil."

Is anyone aware of a cellular phone repair center in Texas named Jibil? I can find plenty of references in New Delhi for businesses named Jibil — is Best Buy covering up that they outsource repair of cellular phones to India?"

Comment: Fedora should be mandated (Score 1) 261

by SupaSaru (#31924334) Attached to: Good, Portable "Virtual" Linux Distro?
Because of the prevalence of Redhat Enterprise Linux in the enterprise, you would be doing your students a huge disservice not to at least highlight the fact that they can get RHEL Desktop for $30 at an academic rate (server for $60). Fedora is a great substitute, and I believe version 13 and above will be a hybrid ISO image - that is, the ISO image can be either written to CD or laid on to a thumbdrive with no additional steps. In addition, there's GUI tools for Linux and Windows to perform this step. Don't get me wrong - I'm a Debian user myself, and there is definitely much to gain from Slackware and even Gentoo - but the *primary* distribution you should put your students on should be RHEL/Fedora and use RPM for managing packages.

+ - Blizzard Making $2.5 Million/hr on Virtual Pet?->

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes "Yesterday, Activision-Blizzard released the Celestial Mount, a ride-on virtual pet for World of Warcraft. The price: $25. Blogger Peter Smith does the math:

According to a post at WoW.com (a blog devoted to World of Warcraft, not the official site), at one point the purchase queue hit 80,000 (and the post keeps being updated to bump up that number). But from reading the comments, people are reporting numbers as high as 130,000 and saying it only took about 25 minutes to get through it (even though a 7 hour wait time was being reported). This is all clearly hearsay at this point, but let's play with the numbers a bit. To be conservative we'll use a queue size of 100,000 and a real wait time of an hour. That would mean Actvision-Blizzard are hauling in $2.5 million/hour for an item that costs them pennies to produce (basically the cost of processing the user's credit card and the bandwidth it takes to download the mount) once the cost of designing and implementing the item is covered. And potentially they could be making as much as double that.

"
Link to Original Source

+ - Crytek thinks demos will soon be extinct->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Pretty sure there won't be a Crysis 2 demo, unless it's an EA premium one.

News story:

"The CEO of indie studio Crytek has defended EA's divisive 'premium downloadable content' strategy, while also predicting the extinction of free game demos.

In an interview with Develop, Crytek's co-founder Cevat Yerli said he wasn't sure that a demo of Crysis 2 was going to be released. He also said demos are "a luxury" that becomes "prohibitively expensive" for game studios to make.

He said: "A free demo is a luxury we have in the game industry that we don't have in other industries such as film. Because we've had this free luxury for so long, now there are plans to change this people are complaining about it. The reality is that we might not see any free game demos in the long term."

Crysis 2 publisher EA was recently the subject of much controversy for plans to release premium demos "for $10 or $15" before a game's final release.

That strategy was coarsely criticised across message boards, forums and social networks, yet Yerli believes it has many benefits.""
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Pwahahahaha (Score 1) 425

With the crowd above, that's clearly a silly analogy. Microsoft wasn't involved. Excuse me while I use bash (a knockoff command prompt) to start Xwindows and Gnome (a knockoff Windows 7) and fire up Firefox (a knockoff Internet Explorer) to play Frozen Bubble (a knockoff Minesweeper) while Rhythmbox (a knockoff Media Player) queues up my mp3's (a knockoff of WAV).... or something...

Comment: Re:Pwahahahaha (Score 2, Insightful) 425

.... then you agree that ext3 is an imitation of FAT32? - That is clearly not the case. Mono is a framework that implements the functionality of the CLR much in the same way that systems may implement LDAP. They are not "knocking off" Active Directory by implementing functionality of LDAP, they are building systems to be compatible with protocols, standards, formats and guidelines. Give credit where credit is due - even if you don't agree with the motivation.

Comment: Re:Pwahahahaha (Score 1) 425

Agreed. Mono is an implementation of Microsoft's CLR - not an "imitation" in any way, shape or form. It is an implementation many people worked very hard to maintain in the spirit of Microsoft's announcement of the CLR being cross-platform. Throwing around the term 'imitation' is an insult. Calling it an imitation is analogous to saying ext3 is an imitation of FAT32.....

Comment: Re:Two quick points (Score 1) 117

by SupaSaru (#31583486) Attached to: Recommendations For C++/OpenGL Linux Tutorials?
Hi! To go with point 1 - Can you "translate Windows C++" ? If so, you have the answer to a multibillion dollar portability question and the solution as to how to get Linux significantly into mainstream games and other entertainment. Go look into how to create a window in C++. Then look into how to create a window in GTK+. Tell me how good you are at instantly converting these samples while trying to understand how OpenGL contexts and rendering works.

Comment: Re:They are both platform agnostic. (Score 2, Informative) 117

by SupaSaru (#31583314) Attached to: Recommendations For C++/OpenGL Linux Tutorials?
How did this get insightful? Worst comment ever. Do you think OpenGL just has magic platform agnostic Window management? Do you think OpenGL just takes over the whole PC as it's own little domain? Do you think the implementation between each OS is 100% exact? In fact, it's much closer to ignorantly assuming ^handles work "anywhere" because of C++'s "platform agnostic" title. The problem isn't in the tool chain - it's in the rather annoying process of creating rendering contexts for each individual OS - it has nothing to do with his chosen tool chain or "platform agnostic" title. SDL and GLUT alleviate most of the headache in this process.

+ - Recommendations for C++/OpenGL Linux tutorials?

Submitted by QuaveringGrape
QuaveringGrape writes "After a few years of Python I've recently been trying to expand my programming knowledge into the realm of compiled languages. I started with C, then switched over to C++. A friend and longtime OpenGL programmer told me about NeHe's tutorials as a good step after the command-line programs started to get old, but there's a problem...all the tutorials are very Windows-based, and I've been using Linux as my single platform for a while now. I'm looking for suggestions for tutorials that are easy to learn, without being dumbed down or geared towards non-programmers."

Force has no place where there is need of skill. -- Herodotus

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