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Comments: 15 +-   The State of Social Gaming On the iPhone on Saturday December 19, @12:37PM

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday December 19, @12:37PM
from the mobile-tweet-hero dept.
cellphones
This article at CNet takes a detailed look at the growth of social gaming through Apple's iPhone, a market many developers — and Apple themselves — are still struggling to figure out. The piece also speculates on how such games and networks will continue to evolve. Quoting: "While competition has spawned better features among these services, the future brings a growing need for a more unified network. Even if all these networks begin to become impossible to differentiate, users are eventually going to want a less-disjointed platform when jumping from game to game, and app to app. Thus far Facebook, and even Twitter to some degree have provided that constant, just by giving users a way to log in to these platforms. The unification can shake out in a number of ways though, the most likely of which is consolidation. Open Feint can continue to grow until it's snatched up by a larger company (like Apple). Or it can begin absorbing, or muscling out the other, less popular networks. As mentioned before, Apple plays a big part in this: not only in how it changes the hardware, but also how it continues to evolve the business of the App Store and information sharing between applications."
Read More... 15 comments story

Comments: 150 +-   Verizon Defends Doubling of Early Termination Fee on Saturday December 19, @11:11AM

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday December 19, @11:11AM
from the we-decided-we-liked-money dept.
communications
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Verizon is defending its decision to double its Early Termination Fee from $175 to $350 after being called to account by the FCC. They claim it's because the higher fees allow them to offer more expensive phones with a lower up-front cost (PDF), and they also say that because they pro-rate the fee depending on how much of your contract is left, they still lose money. Apparently doing something about the Verizon customer service horror stories isn't as good a way to retain customers as telling them that they have to pay several hundred dollars to leave."
Read More... 150 comments story

Comments: 106 +-   Insurgent Attacks Follow Mathematical Pattern on Saturday December 19, @09:45AM

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday December 19, @09:45AM
from the news-from-terminus dept.
math
Hugh Pickens writes "Nature reports that data collected on the timing of attacks and number of casualties from more than 54,000 events across nine insurgent wars, including those fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2008 and in Sierra Leone between 1994 and 2003, suggest that insurgencies have a common underlying pattern that may allow the timing of attacks and the number of casualties to be predicted. By plotting the distribution of the frequency and size of events, the team found that insurgent wars follow an approximate power law, in which the frequency of attacks decreases with increasing attack size to the power of 2.5. This means that for any insurgent war, an attack with 10 casualties is 316 times more likely to occur than one with 100 casualties (316 is 10 to the power of 2.5). 'We found that the way in which humans do insurgent wars — that is, the number of casualties and the timing of events — is universal,' says team leader Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami in Florida. 'This changes the way we think insurgency works.' To explain what was driving this common pattern, the researchers created a mathematical model which assumes that insurgent groups form and fragment when they sense danger, and strike in well-timed bursts to maximize their media exposure. Johnson is now working to predict how the insurgency in Afghanistan might respond to the influx of foreign troops recently announced by US President Barack Obama. 'We do observe a complicated pattern that has to do with the way humans do violence in some collective way,' adds Johnson."
Read More... 106 comments story

Comments: 219 +-   Charities Upset Over Chase Facebook Contest on Saturday December 19, @08:29AM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday December 19, @08:29AM
from the could-have-just-used-terms-and-conditions dept.
ssv03 writes "The New York Times is reporting that Chase Community Giving of Chase Bank recently held a contest on Facebook in which users were encouraged to vote for their favorite charities. At the end of the contest, the 100 charities with the most votes would win $25,000 and advance to the next round to have a chance to win $1 million. Initially, the vote counts for each organization were made public, but two days before voting ended they were hidden, and the final totals have still not been released. While Chase had no official leader board during the voting, several organizations were keeping track of projected winners. Those projections were almost identical to the final results, yet several organizations including Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), Marijuana Policy Project and several anti-abortion groups were not finalists. They had been performing very well (some within the top 20) until the vote counters were removed. Chase Bank has so far refused to discuss the issue with the organizations. SSDP has spoken out in a press release (PDF) and is calling for a boycott."
Read More... 219 comments story

Comments: 88 +-   Alien Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon, Dead At 63 on Saturday December 19, @05:34AM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday December 19, @05:34AM
from the fare-thee-well-nostromo dept.
scifi
Dave Knott writes "The notable science fiction screenwriter and director Dan O'Bannon has died at the age of 63. O'Bannon's career began with a writing credit for John Carpenter's Dark Star and he went on the write many enduring science fiction and horror films such as Blue Thunder, Lifeforce, Screamers and Total Recall. He was also an occasional director, whose credits include The Return Of The Living Dead, the campy horror film that made popular the zombie chant of 'braaiiiinnnsss.' However, he will be best remembered as the writer of Alien, one of the all-time classics of both the science fiction and horror genres. O'Bannon died after a 30 year battle with Crohn's disease and is survived by his wife, Diane, and son, Adam."
Read More... 88 comments story

Comments: 79 +-   Google Open Sources Etherpad, Piratepad Launches on Saturday December 19, @02:30AM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday December 19, @02:30AM
from the fair-play dept.
Thomas Nybergh writes "The Etherpad code was released by Google under the Apache license a few hours ago. Google's initial plan, after acquiring the service, was to use Etherpad's tech with its new Wave collaboration platform and to shut down the original service entirely. Soon after the Etherpad code was released, the Swedish Pirate Party launched their instance of the service at piratepad.net. An announcement, which also mentions a new Tor node, is published on the party website (Google translation). The original Etherpad service had in a short time become a killer application for collaborative work within at least the Swedish, and according to my personal experience, in the Finnish Pirate Party as well. The Etherpad open source project is available at Google Code."
Read More... 79 comments story

Comments: 41 +-   Caltech Scientists Film Photons With Electrons on Friday December 18, @11:33PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday December 18, @11:33PM
from the tiny-pictures dept.
science
al0ha writes "Techniques recently invented by researchers at the California Institute of Technology which allow the real-time, real-space visualization of fleeting changes in the structure of nanoscale matter have been used to image the evanescent electrical fields produced by the interaction of electrons and photons, and to track changes in atomic-scale structures."
Read More... 41 comments story

Comments: 383 +-   Psystar Not Closing Up Shop on Friday December 18, @08:24PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday December 18, @08:24PM
from the but-i-don't-want-to-go-on-the-cart dept.
business
Despite several sources reporting that post-indefinite-injunction Psystar was closing their doors for good, the company's lawyer is claiming Psystar plans on going forward with PC sales — they just won't be pre-loaded with Apple's OS X. Psystar plans on selling systems pre-loaded with "other operating systems," including Windows, as well as selling their "Rebel EFI software" that allows consumers to load OS X on generic PCs.
Read More... 383 comments story

Comments: 148 +-   Mandatory Use of Open Standards In Hungary on Friday December 18, @06:20PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday December 18, @06:20PM
from the you'll-be-open-and-like-it dept.
government
qpeter writes "Hungarian Parliament has made the use of open standards mandatory by law in the intercommunication between public administration offices, public utility companies, citizens and voluntarily joining private companies, conducted via the central governmental system. The Open Standards Alliance initiating the amendment aims to promote the spread of monopoly-free markets that foster the development of interchangeable and interoperable products generated by open standards, and, consequently, broad competition markets, regardless of whether the IT systems of interconnecting organizations and individuals use open or closed source software. In the near future, in spite of EU tendencies the Alliance seeks to make its approach – interoperability based on publicly defined open standards – the EU norm under the Hungarian presidency of the European Union in 2011. To that end, it will promote public collaboration – possibly between every interested party, civil and political organization in the European Union. What do you think: what would be the best way to cooperate?"
Read More... 148 comments story

Comments: 287 +-   First Look At Latest Ion-Infused Asus Eee PC on Friday December 18, @05:31PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday December 18, @05:31PM
from the its-got-what-plants-crave dept.
intel
MojoKid writes "Atom-based netbooks have come a long way since they were first introduced. 7 and 8-inch netbooks are no longer the norm, and availability of 12-inch netbooks is on the rise. The newest member of the Asus Eee PC lineup is the Eee PC 1201N, and it really stands out in the crowd of netbook in terms of specifications. The machine features a 12.1" HD display, new dual-core Atom 330 CPU, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium, an HDMI output and NVIDIA's Ion chipset with integrated GPU. HotHardware was able to demo the system's ability to handle more advanced benchmarks, thanks in part to the Ion GPU. It's also the first netbook they tested that could actually play older 3D titles respectably. You won't get Crysis running but lighter duty titles can be played back nicely if you tone the details down and lower the resolution. The 1201N also played back 720p and 1080p content without stuttering, and the dual-core CPU allowed enough headroom to multitask while videos were playing."
Read More... 287 comments story
Hand Written Clock
Couple Updates Facebook Status at Altar
Sex Offender Shuffle
Recreating the Matrix In Legos
Poll As 2010 approaches, I expect the next year ...
To be overall better for me than was 2009.
To be overall worse for me than was 2009.
To be neither especially worse nor better than 2009.
I don't condone or endorse your date system.
[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:246 | Votes:11747

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