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Comment Re:Netflix (Score 1) 336

Complete guess, but long term it is going to work in Linux through chrome.

It works for chromebooks which are based off of Linux. It appears that they are using Pepper/NaCl api in the chromebooks, so I would wager it is all there, except the DRM.

Per a possibly outdated web page, Pepper is marked as experimental in Chrome, so maybe when that settles down, we'll see it included.

Comment Re:Unions (Score 1) 479

There is way too much pressure on the teachers to take responsibility for their kids. They want the teachers to fill in the parental gap. Long term, that alone is a recipe for burnout. You make some very valid points, but there also need to be some other perspective changes from the administrative side.

My wife's a math teacher, who teaches primarily freshmen, with a high percentage of the classes having kids with learning disabilities. She's got attitude and behavior problems and is consistently sending the same kids to the office. If no action is taken to get rid of problem kids, how does that not engender an attitude of helplessness. If you can't take steps to make your situation better, how are you long term going to be motivated to try new things to get better results.

She's been teaching 5 years. She hasn't broken yet, but were I in her place... I'm not sure I'd be that resilient.

Comment Re:One thing at a time (Score 1) 424

If you do things too well, there will be no impetus for management to change. If you don't have time to correctly fix the problems you are just continuing your pain. Many of those problems/hacks likely exist because the guy before you was trying to get them features as quickly as they wanted and it snowballed on him.

It will likely continue unless you can communicate with management. I personally speak in too much detail for non-technical people and this has been a huge hindrance. If you aren't speaking on their level of understanding, you're Charlie Brown's teacher.

I'm not saying don't put in extra time to fix things. I am saying if they are going to keep expecting you to work miracles, that it's abuse.

People undervalue technical work. You see someone building a house and you know that it is an actual object. It has 3 dimensions. It has running water and can withstand all sorts of weather. You have a visible, touchable result. With IT work, all your doing is typing in notepad or clicking on images to them. You're effectively building an iceberg.

To the non-technical, programs are anthropomorphic. The program thinks for itself and it reasons about a problem on its own. If you're consistently hearing "all you have to do is" after you've already explained what you have insufficient data in order to make a decision, you're not going to make them happy. They will forget your compromise and continue thinking in their terms without any basis in reality. In that case, run.

Comment Novell can't afford it (Score 3, Insightful) 161

No matter how much VMWare is willing to pay, Novell can't afford to lose that part of the company. They are already hardly relevant. They need SuSe and the clout they have to make sure that they have a suitable place to run all of their other software. I'd guess they'd have to get the whole company instead of just the SuSe division.

Comment Re:Nice, but need more info (Score 1) 378

AT&T was supposed to release one(HTC Lancaster) at the end of July, but backed out with little fanfare. I dealt with a Blackberry with a non-working 0 for a month in order to get that one with my upgrade.... only to end up with another blackberry.

I wouldn't count on anything from AT&T until you can see it in the store.
Businesses

Submission + - Is cash no longer legal tender? (uic.edu)

An anonymous reader writes: I attend the University of Illinois at Chicago. Last semester my housing arrangements went smoothly. I put down my application fee, and my deposit just fine, got a room for the semester and life went on. This semester, because there was supposedly a large number of students who did not check into their rooms last semester, we were required to make a $100 prepayment, in addition to the application fee and deposit. No problem, I think, I see the university is trying to make a quick buck off people who don't follow through with their plans. Now I do NOT have a checking account, a credit card, or anything. I am one of the few people who do EVERYTHING in cash. I don't trust the banks, I don't trust credit card companies. I also had a trip planned for out of the country, so I get my cash, and on my way to the airport, I stop by the housing office to make my prepayment. They refuse to take cash. They will not charge my university account (so I can pay the bursar or whoever I need to) in cash, and they want a check or money order. Nowhere in their letter did they say that. I fear out of technicality I am going to loose my housing since I cannot get them their money on time because they do not take cash. Is it legal for a state-owned university, let alone any business to not take legal tender?
Space

Submission + - New Mexico secedes, might declare Pluto Planet

pease1 writes: "Wired and others are reporting for New Mexico, the fight for Pluto is not over. Seven months after a conclave of scientists downgraded the distant heavenly body to a "dwarf planet," a state representative in New Mexico aims to give the snubbed world back some of its respect. State lawmakers will vote Tuesday on a bill that proposes "as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico's excellent night skies, it be declared a planet." Actual wording of the resolution.

For many of us old timers and those who had the honor of meeting Clyde, this just causes a belly of laughs and is pure fun. Not to mention a bit of poking sticking in the eye."
Biotech

Submission + - How A "Superbaby" Is Leading To New Medic

An anonymous reader writes: A baby boy with unusually big muscles — caused by a gene mutation — is leading to new muscular dystrophy drugs. Forbes has the story, from the gene's discovery in mice, then in cattle (lots of beefy breeds have a mutated copy) to the current quest for new medicines, which pits a tiny biotech against drug giant Wyeth.

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0226/074.ht ml?partner=yahoomag
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Possible 25 million year old frog found

dispatch writes: A frog was found that researchers in Mexico City are saying could be 25 million years old! According to the article, "The chunk of amber containing the 0.4-inch frog was uncovered by a miner in southern Chiapas states in 2005 and was bought by a private collector, who lent it to scientists for study." Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though the scientists will be allowed to drill into the rock at the owner's request which means we're going to have to wait a while longer before we can make Jurassic Park a reality...
IBM

Journal Journal: IBM tests prototype system by blasting it with proton beam

In an article at news.com titled IBM's Power6: Bigger iron, lower power, the author notes at the end of the article that "To simulate adverse conditions, IBM runs Power6 systems at the wrong end of a proton beam. The testing showed that a system is able to recover from about 3,400 random software errors before one slips through and causes undetected data corruption..."
It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Amazing Cancer Drug Found; Scientist Annoyed.

sporkme writes: "A scientist was frustrated when the compound she was working with destroyed her sample of cancer cells. Further research revealed that the substance was surprisingly well suited as a cancer treatment. From the article:

"I made a calculation error and used a lot more than I should have. And my cells died," Schaefer said. A colleague overheard her complaining. "The co-author on my paper said,' Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?' I said 'Oh', and took a closer look." They ran several tests and found the compound killed "pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen."
Lab test results on hapless mice have resulted in the destruction of colon tumors without making the mice sick. The PPAR-gamma compound is expected to be especially useful in combating treatment-resistant types of cancer."

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