Comment: Re:Ultima Online started development in 1995 (Score 1) 194
Meridian 59 was before that. The 59 comes from 1995 backwards and that's when it was released.
Comment: Re:Data corruption? (Score 1) 191
Yeah, and that was my initial concern too once I saw this other person's information on my account. I checked my iTunes purchase history though, and there haven't been any purchases made other than my own.
Comment: Data corruption? (Score 5, Interesting) 191
This may be unrelated, but yesterday I noticed that my iTunes account had became corrupted with someone else's data. My first name, last name, address and registered CC number became someone else's info. Had I not noticed, I would have been making charges against this other persons account.
Maybe someone wrote one messed up database query and screwed up a massive amount of people's payment association. Some users are starting to notice they have someone else's info and are going on a buying spree. Or people are just making their normal purchases and are unknowingly charging other people's accounts, like I almost did last night.
Comment: I doubt this (Score 1) 121
I live in Sandy, UT and the ONLY way to get over 22Mbps is to get Comcast's Extreme 50/10 package which is over $100 a month and it only became available 3 weeks ago. While the median income here is 80k/ year and plenty of people can afford it, I doubt 50% of the 100k people here upgraded to that package in the last 3 weeks.
In Sandy, Comcast has 3 subnets you can get assigned to. One of them would only result in 40/6 speedtest results and would never result in uploads over 7.5Mbps. While connections through another gateway would result in 62/12 results. So I changed the Mac address on router until I got connected to the good network. So I've run a few hundred speed tests in the last week. I'm sure others have recently upgraded have been running many speed tests too. As they trouble shoot why they aren't getting the full speed listed they will run even more tests than normal. Which has screwed up the "Average" for results in the area I'm sure.
App Store Piracy Losses Estimated At $459 Million 202
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the arrr-me-hearties dept.
from the arrr-me-hearties dept.
An anonymous reader passes along this quote from a report at 24/7 Wall St.:
"There have been over 3 billion downloads since the inception of the App Store. Assuming the proportion of those that are paid apps falls in the middle of the Bernstein estimate, 17% or 510 million of these were paid applications. Based on our review of current information, paid applications have a piracy rate of around 75%. That supports the figure that for every paid download, there have been 3 pirated downloads. That puts the number of pirate downloads at 1.53 billion. If the average price of a paid application is $3, that is $4.59 billion dollars in losses split between Apple and the application developers. That is, of course, assuming that all of those pirates would have made purchases had the application not been available to them for free. This is almost certainly not the case. A fair estimate of the proportion of people who would have used the App Store if they did not use pirated applications is about 10%. This estimate yields about $459 million in lost revenue for Apple and application developers."
A response posted at Mashable takes issue with some of the figures, particularly the 75% piracy rate. While such rates have been seen with game apps, it's unclear whether non-game apps suffer the same fate.
Whatever Happened To Second Life? 209
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the i-blame-ralph dept.
from the i-blame-ralph dept.
Barence writes "It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. In this article, PC Pro's Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it's raking in more cash than ever before. It's a follow-up to a feature written three years ago, in which Collins spent a week living inside Second Life to see what the huge fuss at the time was all about. The difference three years can make is eye-opening."
Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.
from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"
US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.
from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.
bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."
Computer Games and Traditional CS Courses 173
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the terrible-terrible-games dept.
from the terrible-terrible-games dept.
drroman22 writes "Schools are working to put real-world relevance into computer science education by integrating video game development into traditional CS courses. Quoting: 'Many CS educators recognized and took advantage of younger generations' familiarity and interests for computer video games and integrate related contents into their introductory programming courses. Because these are the first courses students encounter, they build excitement and enthusiasm for our discipline. ... Much of this work reported resounding successes with drastically increased enrollments and student successes. Based on these results, it is well recognized that integrating computer gaming into CS1 and CS2 (CS1/2) courses, the first programming courses students encounter, is a promising strategy for recruiting and retaining potential students."
While a focus on games may help stir interest, it seems as though game development studios are as yet unimpressed by most game-related college courses. To those who have taken such courses or considered hiring those who have: what has your experience been?
EA Shuts Down Pandemic Studios, Cuts 200 Jobs 161
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the say-goodnight-folks dept.
from the say-goodnight-folks dept.
lbalbalba writes "Electronic Arts is shutting down its Westwood-based game developer Pandemic Studios just two years after acquiring it, putting nearly 200 people out of work. 'The struggling video game publisher informed employees Tuesday morning that it was closing the studio as part of a recently announced plan to eliminate 1,500 jobs, or 16% of its global workforce. Pandemic has about 220 employees, but an EA spokesman said that a core team, estimated by two people close to the studio to be about 25, will be integrated into the publisher's other Los Angeles studio, in Playa Vista.' An ex-developer for Pandemic attributed the studio's struggles to poor decisions from the management."