ndogg writes "Netflix now works on Linux... sort of. The folks at iheartubuntu have figured out a way to get Netflix to run on the Windows version of Firefox using Wine (with a number of custom patches) and Silverlight. They plan on releasing packages for it all soon. Currently, it seems they have only had success with 32-bit, while compiling for 64-bit is tricky."

theodp writes "Ever get carded by your FedEx guy? You will. Several writers at GeekWire had just unboxed, uncorked and polished off their first bottle of Amazon wine, only to have their buzz killed by the need to cover Steven Sinofsky's unexpected exit from Microsoft. With the caveat that per-order shipping charges will discourage those watching their pennies from ordering single bottles of inexpensive wine, GeekWire gave the overall Amazon wine buying experience a thumbs-up." Since Amazon-owned Woot's been selling wine for a while, it may be a stretch to call it new for Amazon, but their main site is known to many more people.

Tator Tot writes "Grape pomace, the mashed up skins and stems left over from making wine and grape juice, could serve as a good starting point for ethanol production, according to a new study (from the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry). Due to growing interest in biofuels, researchers have started looking for cheap and environmentally sustainable ways to produce such fuels, especially ethanol. Biological engineer Jean VanderGheynst at the University of California, Davis, turned to grape pomace, because winemakers in California alone produce over 100,000 tons of the fruit scraps each year, with much of it going to waste."

madsdyd writes "I am a long-time user of Linux (since 1997) and have not been using Windows since 1998. All PCs at home (mine, wife's, kids') run Linux. I work professionally as a software developer with Linux, but the Windows installs at my workplace are quite limited, so my current/working knowledge of Windows is almost nil. At home we have all been happy with this arrangement, and the kids have been using their Nintendos, PS2/3's and mobile phones up until now. However, my oldest kid (12) now wants to play World of Warcraft and League of Legends with his friends. I have spent more hours than I like to admit getting this to work with Wine, with limited success — seems to always fail at the last moment. I considered an Apple machine, but they seem to be quite expensive. So, I am going to bite the bullet, and install Windows 7 on a spare Lenovo T400 laptop, which I estimate will be able to run both Windows 7 and the games in question." Read on for more about the questions this raises, for someone who wants to ensure that a game-focused machine stays secure.

wiredmikey writes "Sam Kass, White House Assistant Chef and the Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives, after much buzz, today released the recipe for White House Honey Ale and White House Honey Porter, two brews made right on site at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. According to Kass, the White House Honey Brown Ale is the first alcohol brewed or distilled on the White House grounds, as far as they know. "George Washington brewed beer and distilled whiskey at Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson made wine but there's no evidence that any beer has been brewed in the White House. (Although we do know there was some drinking during prohibition)," Kass wrote in a blog post. The recipe can be found here along with a short video 'Inside The White House Beer Brewing' which shows the brewing in process. Your tax dollars hard at work yet again!"

Qedward writes "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has objected to a variety of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) ranging from .porn and .sexy to .wine and .bar and .bible, according to records of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The organisation said in June it had received 1930 applications for gTLD 'strings,' of which 911 came from North America and 675 from Europe. Saudi Arabia's Communication and Information Technology Commission, the IT and communications regulator, has objected to the .gay string and asked ICANN to refuse the application for the new gTLD. 'Many societies and cultures consider homosexuality to be contrary to their culture, morality or religion,' CITC said. 'The creation of a gTLD string which promotes homosexuality will be offensive to these societies and cultures,' it added."

An anonymous reader writes "While President Putin was touring the area of Seliger Youth Forum, Marat Karatov demonstrated what can only be described as a fair amount of daring when he called out to the president and requested to present ReactOS to him. Putin agreed, and the project has now presented ReactOS to two successive Russian presidents. Putin responded to the presentation by stating he would think on it."

dartttt writes with word that "Blizzard has banned all Linux users who are playing Diablo III on Linux using Wine." Reader caranha adds that these users have been flagged as "using cheating programs," and that replies from Blizzard support staff so far have upheld these bans. Update: 07/03 16:57 GMT by S :An official response from a Blizzard Community Manager indicates they don't ban people for using Linux. As with most reports of game bans, we have only the word of random gamers that they were banned for the reason they say they were banned.

cold fjord writes "Red wine is a popular marinade for meat, but it also may become a popular treatment for creating iron-based superconductors as well (Link to academic paper): 'Last year, a group of Japanese physicists grabbed headlines around the world by announcing that they could induce superconductivity in a sample of iron telluride by soaking it in red wine. They found that other alcoholic drinks also worked — white wine, beer, sake and so on — but red wine was by far the best. The question, of course, is why. What is it about red wine that does the trick? Today, these guys provide an answer — at least in part. Keita Deguchi at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, and a few buddies, say the mystery ingredient is tartaric acid and have the experimental data to show that it plays an important role in the process. ... It turns out the best performer is a wine made from the gamay grape — for the connoisseurs, that's a 2009 Beajoulais from the Paul Beaudet winery in central France.'"

vinn writes "Wine 1.4 was released today and includes support for a wide range of applications, including Office 2010. There are some major architectural changes, including a built-in DIB engine for better graphics display and a new audio stack designed around the newer Vista / Win 7 system and integrated into the native audio system. Almost every other subsystem received substantial updates, including Direct3D, the Gecko-based web browsing components, and better internationalization. The release notes contain more detail and you can download the source code now, or wait for packages to appear soon."

astroengine writes "Chances are, when you pop open a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, you expect to savor certain aromatic flavors, or 'notes,' depending on the wine: fruit forward, perhaps, with hints of pepper and leathery tannins, and just the faintest whiff of... meteorite??? At least that's what you'd savor if you were drinking a bottle of Meteorite, possibly the very first wine on the market aged with a meteorite that fell to Earth from space. It's the brainchild of Ian Hutcheon, an Englishman now working in Chile, who thinks the infusion of a bit of meteorite gives his wine a 'livelier taste.'"

New submitter Temporal writes "Yesterday, Slashdot reported on my LAN-party optimized house. But, lacking from the internet at that time were key technical details: How do I boot 12 machines off a single shared disk? What software do I use? What does my network infrastructure look like? Why do I have such terrible furniture? Is that Gabe Newell on the couch? The answer is a combination of Linux, PXE boot, gPXE, NBD/iSCSI, and LVM snapshots running on generic hardware over generic gigabit ethernet. I have even had several successful LAN parties with a pure-Linux setup, using WINE."

sciencehabit writes "Meet the new flavor of wine: fruity with a hint of fluid dynamics. Oenophiles have long gotten the best out of their reds by giving their glasses a swirl before sipping. A new study has revealed the physics behind that sloshing, showing that three factors may determine whether your merlot arcs smoothly or starts to splash. The researchers also landed on another important discovery: how overly enthusiastic wine swirlers manage to splash their drinks, possibly staining their sweaters."

tearmeapart writes "It may be time again for another discussion/flamewar on the reasons why a lot of us are (still) using Microsoft. The last big discussion on Slashdot was close to 10 years ago, and a lot has changed since then: Windows XP and 7 have proven to be stable (and memories of Windows ME are mostly gone.) There are many more distributions for Linux, especially commercial options. Distributions like Ubuntu and CentOS have made GNU/Linux more friendly. Options for word processing, spreadsheets, etc. have grown. Apple and their products have changed considerably, though their philosophy hasn't. Microsoft Silverlight came and is on the way out. Wine and solutions like Transgaming have matured. So... why are a lot of us still using Windows? What would it take for us to switch?"

With his first accepted submission, tyler.russell writes with a report that the WineHQ database systems were compromised. Quoting the official announcement: "We are sorry to report that recently our login database for the Wine HQ Application Database was compromised. We know that the entire contents of the login database was stolen by hackers. The password was encrypted, but with enough effort and depending on the quality of your old password, it could be cracked. We have closed the hole in our system that allowed read access to our database tables. To prevent further damage we have reset your password to what is shown below. We strongly suggest that if you shared your AppDB password on any other sites that you change that password as soon as possible.". He adds: "A new username and password were included with this email."

An anonymous reader writes "Through some clever patching, OnLive community members have found a way to run OnLive on Linux using Wine. While the fix isn't perfect, this is a giant leap for Linux users wanting to play the latest games without the need for Windows. Linux users can now play several high quality games like the new Deus Ex with very few performance issues and on lower end hardware."

utkonos writes "After decades of pondering, scientists have found the secret to the creation of lager. An elusive species of yeast isolated in the forests of Argentina was key to the invention of the crisp-tasting German beer. From the article: 'Their best bet is that centuries ago, S. eubayanus somehow found its way to Europe and hybridized with the domestic yeast used to brew ale, creating an organism that can ferment at the lower temperatures used to make lager. Geneticists have known since the 1980s that the yeast brewers use to make lager, S. pastorianus, was a hybrid of two yeast species: S. cerevisiae — used to make ales, wine and bread — and some other, unidentified organism.'"

astroengine writes "Great news for astronaut red wine aficionados: the alcoholic beverage can counteract some of the most troublesome physiological effects of microgravity. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on whether or not you have to pilot a spaceship), you have to drink a lot of wine to reap any benefit. These findings are fresh from the labs of French researchers (abstract) who found that by dosing unfortunate rats — hung by their tails to simulate microgravity — with resveratrol (a compound found in red wine), they could help stave off bone density loss and muscle atrophy. Does this mean resveratrol is an astronaut's best friend? Possibly, but judging by the quantities that are needed, it would most likely come in supplement form, rather than 750 ml bottles."

netchaos writes "Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square when China put down student pro-democracy demonstrations 22 years ago." Which is not to say that everything was flowers and wine: "Instead, the cables show that Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters outside the centre of Beijing, as they fought their way towards the square from the west of the city."

Have you ever thought of going on a cruise, but decided your booze bill would be too high after being trapped on a boat with a group of seasick senior citizens for a week? If so, Royal Caribbean has just the packages for you. $49 extra a day will now buy you: unlimited beer and wine that normally sell for up to $10, cocktails, premium liquor brands and a 25% discount on all bottles of wine, glasses of wine over $10 and specialty liquors.