Mail Service Costs Netflix 20x More Than Streaming 473

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 19, 2011 @03:12PM from the costly-snail dept.

Jake writes "Netflix currently pays up to $1 per DVD mailed round trip, and the company mails about 2 million DVDs per day. By comparison, the company pays 5 cents to stream the same movie. In other words, the company pays 20 times more in postage per movie than it does in bandwidth. Doing some simple math, Netflix is spending some $700 million per year in physical disk postage. Rising content prices are offset by declining postage fees for the company, as more and more users choose the streaming-only option. Furthermore, subscriber revenues will continue to increase as Netflix increases the size of its streaming library."

Star Wars Coming To Blu-ray In September 419

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday January 07, 2011 @10:45AM from the start-saving-your-credits dept.

wiredog writes "A bundle of all six movies will sell for $139.99, while sets of the original three films, and the three prequels, will go for $69.99 apiece. Obsessive types can pre-order them on Amazon now. Han shot first!"

LimeWire Lives Again 278

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @09:12AM from the there's-a-lesson-here dept.

Slayer Silver Wolf writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "'On October 26 the remaining LimeWire developers were forced to shut down the company's servers and modify remote settings in the filesharing client to try to harm the Gnutella network. They were then laid off. Shortly after, a horde of piratical monkeys climbed aboard the abandoned ship, mended its sails, polished its cannons, and released it free to the community.' And so, LimeWire Pirate Edition (LPE) was born. Based on the LimeWire 5.6 beta that was briefly released earlier this year and then withdrawn when Lime Wire LLC lost its lawsuit, LPE is now in the wild. In many ways, it is better than the version killed by the RIAA."

Adobe Releases New 64-Bit Flash Plugin For Linux 240

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday September 16, 2010 @07:57AM from the flash-in-the-pan dept.

TheDarkener writes "Adobe seems to have made an about face regarding their support for native 64-bit Linux support for Flash today, and released a new preview Flash plugin named 'Square.' This includes a native 64-bit version for Linux, which I have verified works on my Debian Lenny LTSP server by simply copying libflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins — with sound (which I was never able to figure out with running the 32-bit version with nspluginwrapper and pulseaudio)."

Duke Nukem Forever Back In Development 356

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 03, 2010 @01:38PM from the yeah-this-again dept.

An anonymous reader writes "'Always bet on Duke.' It seems he was right about himself, at least. The longest, most storied in-development game in history seems like it's finally going to be released by Gearbox Software sometime within the next year. 'According to Pitchford, Gearbox began finishing Duke Nukem Forever in late 2009. "Clearly the game hadn't been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created," he says. "The approach and investment and process at 3D Realms didn't quite make it, and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together. It's the game it was meant to be." The game is currently expected to ship in 2010 although given its history Pitchford is understandably reluctant to be more specific.'"

Open Source PS3 Jailbreak Released 226

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday September 02, 2010 @12:09PM from the out-of-the-bag dept.

tlhIngan writes "Despite all the lawsuits and injunctions by Sony to keep the PS3 Jailbreak out of modder's hands, it appears that a third party has made a clone. The best part is, it only requires a cheap (approximately $40) development board by Atmel, and the requisite software is open-source. Get the Atmel code from GitHub and apply a small patch which will enable backup play (the code by itself only lets you run unsigned code, the patch allows for BD backups). The code is GPLv3. It would be highly ironic if someone ported this to Linux USB Gadgets, then you could use a Linux device to jailbreak your PS3, to which Sony removed Linux functionality. An Android phone would be suitable."

Comment Re:Making the Deal (Score 1) 68

by crispy_one on Monday August 30, 2010 @05:35PM (#33420202) Attached to: HP Snaps Up 3PAR For $2 Billion

You know... "Snaps" and "$2 billion" seem a bit odd to see in the same sentence. That is quite the snap.

Google Officially Brings Voice To Gmail 179

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 25, 2010 @06:34PM from the talk-away dept.

siliconbits writes "Google has finally added voice support to its popular Gmail email service which means that users will soon be able to call landlines and mobiles worldwide for free or for extremely low prices. The announcement was made at a press conference in San Francisco in front of a few selected press members."

Samsung Galaxy Tablet Coming In September 202

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 24, 2010 @03:30PM from the size-matters dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "The rumors are now reality, Samsung showed the world its first glimpse of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the company's new 7-inch tablet. Samsung Mobile will release more information about the Galaxy Tab on September 2 in advance of IFA Berlin 2010. Tab will run on Android 2.2 and feature full Web-browsing and video calling. The information given by the company implied that the Galaxy Tab will sport an HD screen for video, Flash support, support for e-books, possible GPS navigation, and PC linking."

Windows 95 Turns 15 461

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 24, 2010 @09:43AM from the i-remember-when dept.

An anonymous reader writes "15 years ago on this day, Microsoft's then new Windows 95 was released. Among other things it moved users away from the archaic file manager and program manager to Windows explorer and the start menu. Compared to today's 'social desktop,' I'd much rather have the simpler and more sparse (pre-Internet Explorer integrated) Windows Explorer, though I do not like the (lack of) stability that Windows 95 offers. Of course if you were alive then, you've probably seen the commercials." I fondly recall downloading build after build and installing them. But within months of the official release, I switched to Linux.

Comment Re:No, I don't (Score 1) 591

by crispy_one on Friday August 06, 2010 @09:22AM (#33160586) Attached to: Google CEO Schmidt Predicts End of Online Anonymity

There is almost nobody with my name....but amusingly enough there is someone from almost the same town with the same name.....google away, I am not that guy. Wish I had his money...
It might seem funny now, but wait until thugs beat you up and piss on your rug. That rug really ties the room together.

Dude!

Comment Re:Apple Insider? Pah! (Score 2, Interesting) 154

by crispy_one on Monday August 02, 2010 @10:36AM (#33110066) Attached to: Browser-Based Jailbreak For iPhone 4 Released

Tell me that Steve Jobs did not write this article... http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=258165

A jailbreak for the iPhone 4 has been engineered and released by hackers, meaning that dodgy users can gain access to all kinds of unofficial content.

Girl Seeks Help On Facebook During Assault 417

Posted by samzenpus on Friday July 16, 2010 @11:24AM from the emergency-status-update dept.

A 12-year-old girl who was being assaulted by her mother's ex-boyfriend used some quick thinking by sending a message on her iPod to a friend's Facebook account for help. The friend was able to contact the girl's mother who then contacted the police. 42-year-old Raymond Ernest Cesmat was arrested and charged with two counts of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree. He is being held at the Dakota County Jail on $175,000 bail.

Dragon Age 2 Announced 183

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday July 08, 2010 @12:46PM from the enchantment?-enchantment! dept.

Today BioWare announced a sequel to Dragon Age: Origins, titled Dragon Age 2. They've opened an official site for the game, which shares some vague details and concept art, and promises a trailer in mid-August. The story will apparently span an entire decade and involve a new hero, but it will be located in the same world as the original game. The site says there will be "dynamic new combat mechanics," though the same three basic classes will be available. More information should be forthcoming in this month's issue of Game Informer.

Comment Re:A major security flaw in IE? (Score 1) 318

by crispy_one on Friday January 15, 2010 @10:22AM (#30778532) Attached to: IE 0-Day Flaw Used In Chinese Attack

This is why security is hard: Secure software is perfect software, and we don't write perfect software.

I totally agree with this. The larger problem is when you introduce Joe and Jane new web user to the great tubes of internets and they never update the software that you have written and continue to fix.

This is what adds to the security difficulties. How many computers have you fixed that had the earliest versions of the browsers installed or no updates for the OS installed, because, "it takes so long to reboot!" or "I don't wanna do it, but will continue to do all my shopping and banking on this machine with all the keyloggers, trojans, and other malware installed on it."

Joe web user: "Hey this computer thingee caused my to lose my identity! Computers suck!"