Asmodai - Slashdot User

Facebook Mafiosi Go To the Mattresses vs. Zynga 102

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 17 2009, @12:15AM
from the concrete-galoshes dept.

sympleko writes "Zynga has the lion's share of traffic in Facebook applications, and Mafia Wars is one of their most popular social games. Collapsing under the weight of over 26 million users, Zynga has been scrambling to thwart hard-core gamers who reverse-engineer URLs or script the game to optimize their enjoyment. Many of the workarounds have annoyed users who were accustomed to various game features, and even worse, the hastily-deployed changes have resulted in many players losing access to the game, in-game prizes, or statistics. Fed up with a software company seemingly bent on discouraging people from enjoying their product, a number of tagged players have organized a boycott of all Zynga games. The first 24-hour boycott on Sunday 12/13 resulted in an 11% decline in Daily Active Users, and an emergency thread on Zynga's forums (from which most of the flames were deleted). The current boycott, extending Wednesday through Sunday is being supported by a 428K strong Facebook group. At issue is the social contract between software companies and their devoted user base, as well as the nefarious tactics Zynga has used to raise cash."

Comment: More uses... (Score 5, Insightful) 219

by Asmodai on Friday August 14 2009, @07:19AM (#29063989) Attached to: US Tests System To Evade Foreign Web Censorship

I am sure our Australian friends can make good use of this too in the near future...

What's the best way to recycle old tech in the US? 0

Submitted by Tim Danhamn on Friday November 16 2007, @08:19AM

Tim Danhamn writes "SmartPlanet.com, a green-focussed Web site, has put up an article about the best way to recycle your old tech, including local recycling centers and reusing old technology in other ways. I'm about to upgrade to a new PC and I have a lot of old radios, MP3 players and other electronic goods lying around the house. The article though is mostly about solutions in the UK, so I want to know what the best way to recycle old tech in the US is?"

German amateur cracks WWII mega-code in 46 second 0

Submitted by

JrOldPhart

on Friday November 16 2007, @08:19AM

JrOldPhart writes "Another fiat for the radio/computer geek team! http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071116/wl_nm/britain_germany_codebreaker_dc_1;_ylt=AgP7WztOUETnoN_c56IonDwE1vAI While the re-created Colossus computer ground away, "Schueth's computer program actually managed to crack the hardest part of the challenge — deciphering the code of a Lorenz SZ42 encryptor, which has approximately 16 million million million permutations — in just 46 seconds.""

Ubuntu scores first major pre-installed server win 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2007, @07:26AM

An anonymous reader writes "Ubuntu is extremely popular on the desktop, but it's made comparatively little progress on servers. That's about to change. Dell is expected to announce in the first quarter of 2008 that it has certified Ubuntu Linux for its server lines.
For now, Dell will direct customers who get pre-installed Ubuntu Linux on its servers to Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, and the Ubuntu community for support."

Jun-ichiro 'itojun' HAGINO passes away 0

Submitted by

Asmodai

on Wednesday October 31 2007, @03:41AM

Asmodai writes "According to http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20071030220114 as well as a communication in Japanese by itojun's younger brother, Jun-ichiro 'itojun' HAGINO passed away on the 29th of October at the age of 37.

Itojun, as he was commonly known in the BSD world, was one of the major driving forces behind the KAME IPv6 networking stack which is present in the BSD OSes as well as many other devices.

For more information about itojun, please see his homepage at http://www.itojun.org/"

Googlebot following Gmail users? 0

Submitted by

omeomi

on Thursday June 28 2007, @09:34AM

omeomi writes "I recently set up a script that emails URL's with unique id's to users of a mailing list that I maintain. When users click on the URL in their email, they are directed to a private page on my website, and their username and IP address is logged. However, I noticed that when the user is a Gmail user, their IP address is always followed by a Googlebot-IP address (confirmed with whois). It appears that the Googlebot follows Gmail users when they click on links in their emails. I wonder, what does it do with this information? Is it used only for Gmail-advertising, or are these pages that I've intended to be private and unique being indexed by Google? Has anybody else experienced this?"

FTC report says no need for net neutrality-> 0

Submitted by

bpc123

on Thursday June 28 2007, @09:31AM

bpc123 writes "WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission's Internet Access Task Force yesterday issued its report on broadband competition policy. Entitled "Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy," it follows the agency's two-day public workshop in February 2007 on broadband competition issues.

FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said in the agency news release, "This report recommends that policy makers
proceed with caution in the evolving, dynamic industry of broadband Internet access, which generally is moving
toward more — not less — competition. In the absence of significant market failure or demonstrated consumer harm,
policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area."

To read on, visit http://www.networkoptimizationnews.com/"
Link to Original Source

Candidate thinks like the internet, rises to top-> 0

Submitted by

anti-globalism

on Thursday June 28 2007, @09:22AM

anti-globalism writes "Despite his lack of political and mainstream media mention, according to Technorati, "Ron Paul" is one of the web's most searched-for terms. But the Ron Paul frenzy seems to have sprung from the internet itself. Paul's libertarian message he is against big government, the war, and pretty much anything that costs taxpayers money has attracted a group of anti-establishment, tech-savvy supporters who have taken everyone by surprise. http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/20 07/06/ron_paul"
Link to Original Source

Goodbye 'bloatware' -- hello Web apps-> 0

Submitted by jcatcw on Thursday June 28 2007, @09:18AM

jcatcw writes "Computerworld's review of the best Web apps covers the latest crop of online software packages. Gliffy is a flowchart and diagram application that works exactly like Microsoft Visio. ThinkFree supports word processing, spreadsheets and online presentations but distinguishes itself by offering a spell checker and custom dictionaries. What they like about YouSendIt — more than other options such as DropSend.com and MailBigFile.com — is that it actually works. GrandCentral is an intuitive and Web-enabled alternative to fixed mobile convergence — allowing you to use one unified phone number for work, home and cell phone. Xdrive.com has a service called Web Backup that offers control over online backups."
Link to Original Source