Johnathon Walls - Slashdot User

Submission + - Android Passes BlackBerry In US Market Share

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 02, 2011 @12:16PM

An anonymous reader writes: 69.5 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ending in February 2011, up 13 percent from the preceding three-month period. For the first time, more Americans are using phones running Google's Android operating system than Research In Motion's BlackBerry, according to comScore. Having passed the iPhone in the preceding three-month period, this now means that Android has been crowned king in the US.

Comment Re:Even more interesting (Score 0, Troll) 315

by Johnathon Walls on Monday February 08, 2010 @12:21AM (#31057846) Attached to: Google Airs Super Bowl Ad

Wow, why so aggressive?

I think the point is not "why would anyone ever ask those questions" but rather "why are those questions asked SO FREQUENTLY as to be the most likely phrases to follow the word 'why'?"

Jesus you sound like someone found your google history of "why does my penis look like a vagina".

Blizzard Authenticators May Become Mandatory 248

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 09, 2010 @04:27AM from the gotta-take-off-your-shoes-too dept.

An anonymous reader writes "WoW.com is reporting that a trusted source has informed them that Blizzard is giving serious consideration to making authenticators mandatory on all World of Warcraft accounts. The authenticators function the same as ones provided by most banks — in order to log in, you must generate a number on the external device. Blizzard already provides a free iPhone app that functions as an authenticator. The source stated, 'it is a virtually forgone conclusion that it will happen.' This comes after large spates of compromised accounts left Bizzard game masters severely backlogged by restoration requests."

Doom-Like Video Surveillance For Ports In Development 56

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 17, 2009 @06:48AM from the hurt-me-plenty dept.

oranghutan writes "A research and development group down under is working to develop an advanced video surveillance system for ports around the world that uses video superimposed onto a 3D map. With 16-megapixel high-definition cameras on a distributed (cabled) network and a proprietary system written in a variety of languages (C++, Python, SQL, etc.), the group from NICTA is aiming to allow security teams at the Port of Brisbane — which is 110km long — to monitor shipping movements, cargo and people. By scrolling along a 3D map, the security teams can click on a location and then get a real-time video feed superimposed onto the map. Authorities from around the world with the right permissions can then access the same system. The main difference from regular surveillance systems is the ability to switch views without having to know camera numbers/locations and the one screen view."

9th Circuit Says Feds' Security Checks At JPL Go Too Far 139

Posted by timothy on Saturday June 06, 2009 @05:54PM from the and-you-thought-that-documents-were-sensitive dept.

coondoggie writes with an excerpt from Network World which explains that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals "this week ruled against the federal government and in favor of employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in their case which centers around background investigations known as Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12 (Nelson et al. vs NASA). The finding reaffirms the JPL employees claims' that the checks threaten their constitutional rights. The stink stems from HSPD #12 which is in part aimed at gathering information to develop a common identification standard that ensures that people are who they say they are, so government facilities and sensitive information stored in networks remains protected." At issue in particular: an employee's not agreeing to "an open ended background investigation, conducted by unknown investigators, in order to receive an identification badge that was compliant with HSPD#12" was grounds for dismissal.

Apple Shifts iTunes Pricing; $0.69 Tracks MIA 429

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @09:51PM from the where-it-comes-down-that-is-not-my-department dept.

Hodejo1 writes "Steve Jobs vowed weeks ago that when iTunes shifted to a tiered price structure in April, older tracks priced at $0.69 would outnumber the contemporary hits that are rising to $1.29. Today, several weeks later, iTunes made the transition. While the $1.29 tracks are immediately visible, locating cheaper tracks is proving to be an exercise in futility. With the exception of 48 songs that Apple has placed on the iTunes main page, $0.69 downloads are a scarce commodity. MP3 Newswire tried to methodically drill down to unearth more of them only to find: 1) A download like Heart's 34-year-old song Barracuda went up to $1.29, not down. 2) Obscure '90s Brit pop and '50s rockabilly artists — those most likely to benefit from a price drop — remained at $0.99. 3) Collected tracks from a cross-section of 1920s, '30s, and '40s artists all remained at $0.99. Finally, MP3 Newswire called up tracks in the public domain from an artist named Ada Jones who first recorded in 1893 on Edison cylinder technology. The price on all of the century-old, public-domain tracks remained at $0.99. (The same tracks are available for free on archive.org.) The scarcity of lower-priced tracks may reflect the fact that the labels themselves decide which price tier they want to pursue for a given artist; and they are mostly ignoring the lower tier. Meanwhile, Amazon's UK site has decided to counter-promote their service by dropping prices on select tracks to 29 pence ($0.42)."

Twitter On Scala 324

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @04:35PM from the going-off-the-rails dept.

machaut writes "Twitter, one of the highest profile Ruby on Rails-backed websites on the Internet, has in the past year started replacing some of their Ruby infrastructure with an emerging language called Scala, developed by Martin Odersky at Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Although they still prefer Ruby on Rails for user-facing web applications, Twitter's developers have started replacing Ruby daemon servers with Scala alternatives, and plan eventually to serve API requests, which comprise the majority of their traffic, with Scala instead of Ruby. This week several articles have appeared that discuss this shift at Twitter. A technical interview with three Twitter developers was published on Artima. One of those developers, Alex Payne, Twitter's API lead, gave a talk on this subject at the Web 2.0 Expo this week, which was covered by Technology Review and The Register."

Comment Re:Dynamic quests system for a MMORPG (Score 1) 88

by Johnathon Walls on Monday November 27, 2006 @11:04PM (#17011252) Attached to: Piercing the Veil On Bioware's MMOG

You're absolutely right, it definitely would be more interesting. The scaling should be pretty simple, but the key lies in getting a good, cohesive, interesting dynamic-story generator. As the other replier notes, Anarchy Online has these "random"/"dynamic" missions. They're truly awful. Some work on this must already exist ... there must be some ground work laid in MUDs, IF, or in other games ...

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