Kyt Dotson
Latest from Kyt Dotson
Activision Foundering with Social Media: Call of Duty Elite Suffers Setbacks
Call of Duty Elite emerged alongside Activision’s much anticipated launch of Modern Warfare 3; the service would merge social and stat tracking for players to keep abreast of the exploits of friends and teammates. However, the service is suffering a multitude of glitches, crashes, and setbacks that have shown that it might not be quite ...
Occupy World of Warcraft: The Allure of Virtual Gold
With the Occupy Wall Street protests reaching the hearts and minds of millions and raising the specter of the difference between the haves and the have-nots, the economy of many nation-states come into question. Much of the wealth of the world is held by few—video games generate microcosom economies and sometimes even reflect real-world problems ...
World of Warcraft Subscriptions Plummet Ten Percent; Activision-Blizzard Triples Profits
During an investor call for Activision-Blizzard revealed some interesting news about the overall health of the massively popular massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. Blizzard’s MMO lost more subscribers than previous years and has hit its all-time-low from 11.4 million in May to 10.3 million in June; whereas the Activision side has openly beaten ...
Facebook Gore-Porn Account Hijacking Epidemic Reaches a Fever Pitch
It’s as if the circus of pornographic horrors has marched into the hallowed, staid halls of Facebook, painting over the frescoes and setting up shops of debauchery on every corner. A new exploit, slowly gathering steam over the past few days, has been hijacking users’ newsfeeds and turning them into a churning cesspit of unwanted ...
Bitcoin Wallet Encryption Bug Discovered in Official Client
News is circulating the Internet right now that a serious bug has been discovered in the newly minted “encrypt wallet” functionality of the official client for Bitcoin versions 0.4 and 0.5. The private keys may be left unencrypted in the wallet.dat file and therefore become fodder for thieves or malware that might then use those ...
Syria Spy Tech May Be Powered By NetApp, U.S. Senators Seek Investigation
Amid technology companies being implicated in oppression and censorship, U.S. lawmakers are seeking an investigation against NetApp for their potential role in Internet-surveillance infrastructure being raised in Syria after the recent political upheaval. A recent article in Bloomberg reveals that Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) and Robert Casey (D-Pennsylvania) have sought action from the departments of State ...
Microsoft Xbox 360 “Madrid” Beta Dashboard Update Rolls Out
Thursday, Microsoft announced that it will begin to push out a beta preview of it’s new Xbox 360 code-name “Madrid” dashboard. The beta preview will give a select-few beta testers access to the new dashboard so that they can see what’s happening and be part of the bleeding edge. This extends out of Microsoft’s call ...
Steam’s User Database Compromised, Possible Credit-Card Information Theft
Earlier this week it came to our attention that Valve’s video game digital download service, Steam, had suffered an intrusion on its user forums—it has now come to our attention, via a message sent from Valve Corporation head Gabe Newell that states that credit card numbers and other personal information had been taken along with ...
Xbox.com Dashboard Goes Social with Upcoming Renovation
Microsoft is seeking to bring the social element of Xbox LIVE front-and-center to start marching the users of their gaming network to the beat of the same drum—and that drum is all about keeping in touch and bringing out the gamer community. While the dashboard is changing, it will focus on a Social tab which ...
Amy O’Connor in theCube: Nokia Looks to Hadoop for Transforming Data Solutions and Consumer Apps
The troubles facing smartphone manufacturer Nokia have been front and center a lot lately so seeing them at Hadoop World 2011 shines a light on their future intent. Nokia Senior Director of Analytics, Amy O’Connor, came into theCube for an interview with John Furrier and Dave Vellante about how Nokia is using Hadoop and unstructured ...