jfruhlinger - Slashdot User

Submission + - An Apple a Day Keeps the Apps Away (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Tuesday October 23, 2012 @03:33PM

itwbennett writes: "You've heard the horror stories about the App Store approval process driving developers away, but what really makes it so bad isn't the 6-8 day waiting period or even rejection. What make it so bad is the lack of access to a human problem-solver at who can loosen the stranglehold of Apple's protocol machine, says Matthew Mombrea, who recounts in excruciating detail his company's experience publishing iOS apps, and, worse, updates to iOS apps."

Submission + - DHS Sends Tourists Home Over Twitter Jokes (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Monday January 30, 2012 @02:37PM

itwbennett writes: "In a classic case of 'we say destroy, you say party hard,' the US Dept. of Homeland Security detained a pair of British twentysomethings for 12 hours and then sent them packing back to the land of the cheeky retort. At issue is a Tweet sent by Leigh Van Bryan about plans to 'destroy America,' starting with LA, which, really, isn't that bad an idea."

Submission + - LightSquared Says GPS Tests Were Rigged (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Wednesday January 18, 2012 @05:29PM

itwbennett writes: "Would-be cellular carrier LightSquared claims that the company's LTE network was set up to fail in GPS intereference tests. 'Makers of GPS (Global Positioning System) equipment put old and incomplete GPS receivers in the test so the results would show interference, under the cover of non-disclosure agreements that prevented the public and third parties from analyzing the process,' LightSquared executives said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning."

Submission + - Tizen Gets Boost From Bada Merger (itworld.com)

Submitted by LinuxScribe on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @10:16AM

LinuxScribe writes: As predicted last September, Samsung has announced plans to merge Tizen with its own Bada platform to create a new mobile OS that will fit well on low- and high-end smartphones. Last year, Bada had more global phone deployments than Windows Phone 7. The merger means each Linux-based platform will have access to more native- and HTML5-based apps.

Submission + - Is AT&T Building the Ultimate Walled Garden? (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Wednesday January 11, 2012 @03:23PM

itwbennett writes: "The announcement earlier this week that AT&T joined OpenStack, was greeted with much fanfare (of the 'woo hoo for open source' variety). But dig into why AT&T decided to sign up for OpenStack and things get a lot more interesting. 'AT&T is about to take on Amazon's EC2 and S2 cloud services, and OpenStack's technology is going to be the engine that drives it,' writes blogger Brian Proffitt. 'Leaving aside the potential problems for user privacy here--and oh, there are many to be addressed to be sure--a plan such as this would represent a stunning coup for AT&T, since they would be able to provide the one thing Apple and Google have not been able to have in their respective plans to own the entire stack: the network on which all communications must flow.'"

Submission + - Reddit turning SOPA 'blackout' into a 'learn-in' (itworld.com)

Submitted by bdking on Wednesday January 11, 2012 @02:11PM

bdking writes: Reddit's planned 12-hour "blackout" on January 18 sounds like an ineffectual, if not self-defeating, strategy for opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act. But the social news site actually will use that time not to "go dark," but to educate visitors about the ramifications of the House legislation that many fear will lead to widespread shutdowns of Internet sites.

Submission + - Qualcomm Wants A Piece Of The PC Market (itworld.com)

Submitted by

jfruhlinger

on Tuesday January 10, 2012 @06:18PM

jfruhlinger writes: "Much of Intel's story of the past few years has involved its so far fruitless attempts to break into the smartphone and tablet market. But as it keeps trying, it may find competition on its home turf: Qualcomm, which makes many of the ARM-based chips in those smartphones and tablets, wants to make PCs, too. The advent of Windows 8 for ARM and Android will make this possible."

Submission + - Oracle, Cloudera Team Up on Hadoop Appliance (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by LinuxScribe on Tuesday January 10, 2012 @10:00AM

LinuxScribe writes: Oracle has announced a new Big Data Appliance, which will feature Cloudera's Hadoop, shiny hardware, and a price tag that could be more affordable than commodity servers. But Oracle's new Cloudera partner should heed the lessons of Red Hat and what it means to partner with Oracle.

Submission + - Data Hogs: The Monsters Carriers Created (itworld.com)

Submitted by

jfruhlinger

on Monday January 09, 2012 @05:03PM

jfruhlinger writes: "A recent study claimed that the top 1 percent of mobile data users eat up 25 percent of the available bandwidth. But assuming it's true, who's at fault? Stats show that data usage has increased radically with each new model of the iPhone, and similar phenomenon are in place for Android phones — all of which are gleefully sold to the public by the same people who complain about 'data hogs.' Isn't this the equivalent of a car dealer that heavily promotes Cadillacs, then complains about poor fuel efficiency, then charges a ton for extra gasoline?"

Submission + - Samsung Could Soon Start to Twist Google's Arm

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Monday January 09, 2012 @04:34PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "For the past three years, Android has experienced a kind of free space expansion but as we enter 2012, it seems the game may be changing. Instead of the old “there’s more than enough room for every Android handset maker to be a winner”, we have a three-horse’s-length leader, Samsung shipping close to 55% of all Android phones, while Motorola and HTC lag behind. "[Samsung] could be in a position to twist Google’s arm," writes Jean-Louis Gassée."If last quarter’s trend continues — if Motorola and HTC lose even more ground — Samsung’s bargaining position will become even stronger." But what is Samsung’s ‘‘bargaining position’’? What could they want? Perhaps more search referral money, earlier access to Android releases, or a share of advertising revenue. Will Google let Samsung gain the upper hand? It's not likely because Motorola is about to become a fully-owned but “independent” Google subsidiary that with 16% of the android market could counterbalance Samsung’s influence to some extent. So what could Samsung do? "Consider the Kindle Fire example: Just like Amazon picked the Android lock, Samsung could grab the Android Open Source code and create its own unlicensed but fully legal smartphone OS and still benefit from a portion of Android apps, or it could build its own app store the way Amazon did," writes Gassée. "Samsung is a tough, determined fighter and won’t let Google dictate its future. The same can be said of Google. This is going to be interesting.""

Submission + - Pirate Party Leader: Copyright Laws Ridiculous (itworld.com)

Submitted by smitty777 on Monday January 09, 2012 @12:13PM

smitty777 writes: Rick Falkvinge, better known as the leader for Sweden's Pirate Party, recommends doing away with copyright laws, since no one is following them anyway. FTA: "he uses examples from the buttonmakers guild in 1600s France to justify eliminating the five major parts of copyright law today. The first two are cover duplication and public performance, and piracy today has ruined those. The next two cover rights of the creator to get credit and prevent other performances, satires, remixes etc they don't like. Falkvinge says giving credit is important, but not worthy of a law. Finally, "neighboring rights" are used by the music industry to block duplication, which Falkvinge rejects."

Submission + - Mandriva SA to close up shop? (itworld.com)

Submitted by LinuxScribe on Friday January 06, 2012 @08:51AM

LinuxScribe writes: A shareholder fight (French) has put one of the oldest commercial Linux vendors at risk of shuttering on January 16. If Mandriva can't raise 4 million euro in capital by then, it will have no choice but to cease operations.

Submission + - FDA Approves Self-Sanitizing Keyboard (itworld.com)

Submitted by

jfruhlinger

on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @05:07PM

jfruhlinger writes: "Deep down, most people ,now that the germiest thing they touch all day is the thing they're touching all day: their keyboard. But what, if anything, can be done about it? A couple of former MIcrosoft hardware guys have launched a keyboard that sterilizes itself via ultraviolet light. While the FDA has signed off on it, tests show that the UV only kills about two-thirds of the germs living in it, and that it still needs to be cleaned by hand."

Submission + - Why Freemium Doesn't Work (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @12:44PM

itwbennett writes: "Tyler Nichols learned an obvious but important lesson with his freemium Letter from Santa site: 'most people who want something for free will never, ever think of paying you, no matter how valuable they find your service.' He also discovered that non-paying customers are more demanding than paying customers, which only stands to reason: If someone likes your service enough to pay for it, they probably have an affinity for your brand and will be kinder."

Comment Re:False supposition (Score 1) 464

by jfruhlinger on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @08:45PM (#38580150) Attached to: Why Do All Movie Tickets Cost the Same?

"Also, profits of Mission Impossible go to cover the losses of the gamble on Young Adult."

$10M is a pretty anemic box office, but it's totally possible for a huge special-effects-laden blockbuster with lots of high-priced stars to rake in a huge box office and still not be profitable for the studio, while a small film like Young Adult to take in a fraction of the ticket sales but still make a tidy profit.

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