news items on cbc.ca cannot be viewed on Linux

[ted leslie]

This pissed me off somewhat.
My first thought was, does it also not play on the PS3.
If it didn't , then the comment about 1% or less would be bogus (well with respect to possible visitors).
My PS3 broke the other day, same BGA solder issue that is systematically nuking all the ps3's :(.
Anyways, can someone with a ps3 try the link?
I have tried in my mint8, and openSuse11.2 and no dice.
There is a crappy work-around posted on the URL (stated in the original post) below.

If it works on PS3, and Win, and Mac, I can understand CBC not wanting to fix it, as it would be 
about 1% give or take. They got a crappy contractor to build it, and they are not likely to be able
to go back now and demand a fix.
I would hope, if other sites are affected that they would build a FF/Chrome extension to essentially
examine the script code and get at the flv, and present it (much like the hack posted). They have extensions 
that do a whole bunch more complex things.

tl


On Sun, 4 Apr 2010 23:45:53 -0400 (EDT)
"D. Hugh Redelmeier" <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> I saw an interesting item on the National Thursday night.  I wanted to 
> send it to my daughter.
> 
> With some difficulty, I found the item: 
>   <http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Canada/BC/ID=1457812038>
> 
> Unfortunately, it would not play without the proprietary Adobe Flash
> plugin.  I don't have flash on my computer because it is the single
> largest vector for malware on the web.
> 
> My daughter does have Flash on her computer but she could still not
> see the item.  Why?
> 
> I tried with the same browser (FireFox with Flash plugin) on a WindowsXP 
> system and the video was viewable.
> 
> After much wasted time, I came across this:
>   <https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/455852>
> CBC videos don't play on a Linux system, even with the required Flash
> plugin.
> 
> Apparently this is a known bug with the CBC website that the CBC
> so far has refused to fix.  See
>   <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.5/+bug/455852/comments/17>
> 
> The web in general, and Flash in particular, is designed to be
> OS-agnostic.  So there is no reason why UberPlayer (the source of the
> problem) should fail under Linux.  Since it is proprietary code it is
> hard for me to determine the coding flaw.
> 
> Surely CBC paid for this code and the vendor should actually be
> responsible for fixing it.  A reasonable vendor would not even charge
> for fixing bugs.
> 
> Could you intercede?  This is blocking my access to news on the CBC
> site and that would seem to come under your mandate.
> --
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-- 
ted leslie <tleslie-RBVUpeUoHUc at public.gmane.org>
--
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