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Submission + - Why do you want to kill my pet? Zynga to shut down PetVille and 10 Others (techcrunch.com) 1

Submitted by Dr Herbert West
Dr Herbert West writes: Executing the cost-reduction plan CEO Mark Pincus announced in November, Zynga has shut down, pulled from the app stores, or stopped accepting new players to more than 10 games such as PetVille, Mafia Wars 2, FishVille, Vampire Wars, Treasure Isle, Indiana Jones Adventure World, Mafia Wars Shakedown, Forestville, Montopia, Mojitomo, and Word Scramble Challenge.

Comments from gamers on the shutdown notices included things like “my daughter is heartbroken” and “Please don’t remove petville. I been playing for 4 yrs. and I’M going to miss my pet Jaime.why do you want cause depression for me and others. Why do you want to kill my pet?”

For players that have invested a lot of microtransactions and/or time, this comes as a heavy blow. Most readers on /. have become used to game publishers disabling content or shutting servers down with little or no notice-- is this a further sign of things to come, or will this cause enough outrage to reverse the trend?
Piracy

Submission + - Murdoch's Pirates (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: "A Murdoch page-turner

Murdoch's Pirates is an almost unbelievable and meticulously detailed account of how one of the world's biggest media groups created its own security force and what happened when an arm of that force went rogue. This is the definitive story about hacking, about the top hackers, how they differ, how they do what they do and what motivates them and how corporations either employ or attempt to thwart the brightest and the best of these technical geniuses — or pirates, depending on their chosen career path.

"

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Should I consider a Kickstarter (or other) campaign? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
DidgetMaster
DidgetMaster writes: "I have over 25 years experience writing data management solutions — file system drivers (DOS, Windows, OS/2), disk utilities (PartitionMagic, Drive Image), custom file systems and online backup to the cloud. I have invented a revolutionary new data management system that is build from the ground up (block-based management, I/O, and cache). It has a great feature set and it can replace existing file systems and many database solutions. The architecture has distributed properties that will enable it to compete with Hadoop, CouchDB, MongoDB, and other "Big Data" NoSql solutions. A few friends and I are now two years into its development and we have a lot of the features working. It is blazingly fast and is designed to appeal to everyday consumers as well as large enterprises (it scales really well).

My problem: I have run out of seed money (self-funded) and I need to raise capital to get the rest of the features finished in a reasonable time. Most of the finished features are necessary for a consumer product, but the enterprise features need the most work. I am considering starting a Kickstarter (or other crowd-funding) campaign to raise the funds. That can be a good way to get cash without having to give up a huge chunk of equity. On the other hand, if we get a bunch of regular users that need to be supported it may take our focus off the enterprise features (the most fun stuff). If we can find an angel investor, we can work undistracted and get a good enterprise product out in about a year. Anyone wanting to know more can find info and links to video demonstrations at http://didgetmaster.blogspot.com/

What do you think is the best route to raise the funds?"

Submission + - IDE advice

Submitted by eggegick
eggegick writes: I'm an embedded systems software developer, working mostly with gcc, make, various command line tools and lots of (mostly badly written) third party software. I write device drivers, protocols and lots of glue code. I'm interested in learning to work with an IDE to develop some simple GUI applications, hopefully cross platform (windows and linux). I had a brush with Microsoft Visual Studio, and found it a bit thick, and I'm guessing it is not cross platform happy. Any language is fine by me. Any suggestions?

Submission + - A firecracker launching slingshot, start the New Year with a bang (blogspot.ca) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Joerg Sprave is at it again, this time in order to ring in the New Year he`s got something with a bit more bang to it, a firecracker launching slingshot. Being German, Joerg has built a slingshot that will accommodate the largest legal firecracker in that country.

Submission + - What could have been in the public domain January 1, but isn't (duke.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: What could have been entering the public domain in the US on January 1, 2013? Under the law that existed until 1978 Works from 1956. The films Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, The Best Things in Life Are Free, Forbidden Planet, The Ten Commandments, and Around the World in 80 Days, the stories 101 Dalmations and Phillip K. Dick’s The Minority Report, the songs Que Sera, Sera and Heartbreak Hotel, and more What is entering the public domain this year? Nothing.

Comment Re:Facebook IPO (Score 1) 145

by Dr Herbert West (#42423207) Attached to: The L.A. Times Names Its Favorite Flops of the Year
Mod parent insightful-- I think that's a major part of iDevice's success. Don't forget that with iDevices you can't really tinker under the hood to get it working, either-- you have to trust that if you keep tapping the screen eventually something will happen. It's easier to make that leap of faith since "it's easy and just works".

No one will ever say "it's hard to get my microwave working" because at the end of the day, all you have to do is keep hitting buttons and something will eventually get hot.. but I find microwaves' UI to be kind of baffling. "Dinner plate" setting? What does that even mean-- is it the same cooking time for collard greens and corn as for a steak? (That's a real button on my microwave, BTW).

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