By Cynthia Herbert :: 9:57 AM
Have you been seeing the Tweets and Facebook posts this morning about the sudden revelation that we’ve all been playing the game Monopoly wrong our entire lives? Turns out that they’re right – most of us aren’t playing the popular property buying and selling board game as the game’s maker, Parker Brothers, intended us to.
Seven years ago, this discovery was brought to light in an online magazine called Critical Miss. The article, “The Campaign For Real Monopoly” outlines instructions from the game that deal with how unowned property is dealt with when a player lands on it.
Directions from Hasbro (the current publisher of Monopoly), on the handling of unowned property are as follows:
“Whenever you land on an unowned property you may buy that property from the Bank at its printed price. You receive the Title Deed card showing ownership; place it face up in front of you.
If you do not wish to buy the property, the Banker sells it at auction to the highest bidder. The buyer pays the Bank the amount of the bid in cash and receives the Title Deed card for that property. Any player, including the one who declined the option to buy it at the printed price, may bid. Bidding may start at any price.”
How many of us have been playing by this rule? If you read the Tweets this morning, not too many.
By automatically placing unowned properties up for bid at auction, game play can be sped up tremendously. Players have a better chance of collecting their matched sets of streets and properties, thus enabling houses and hotels to be placed, and moving the game into the final, more lively phase.
[Photo credit: Etsy]
By Gilbert Falso :: 9:34 AM
When coders and online security researchers find errors in websites or software, the companies behind the programs will often pay out a bounty to the person who discovered the issue. Companies like Google and Facebook have very lucrative reward incentive programs, with payouts reaching from $100 to several thousand dollars, depending on the severity of the issue.
PayPal, the online money transfer website, also has a bug bounty program, and is withholding payment from a German teenager for discovery of a bug, because the teen is not yet 18 years old.
Robert Kugler is a German student who has found bugs for companies like Microsoft and Mozilla in the past. His work on uncovering problems in Mozilla’s Firefox browser has earned him about $4,500 over the past two years.
On PayPal’s website, the company lists the terms for rewarding people who find bugs, but mentions nothing about the age of the discoverer. One of the stipulations for PayPal’s program is that the finder have a PayPal account that money can be transferred in to.
Kugler has asked PayPal to transfer the funds to a PayPal account managed by his parents instead, but the company has not yet addressed his request. At a minimum, Kugler would like for PayPal to acknowledge his bug detective work in a form that he could use for a job application letter.
“I don’t want to allege PayPal a kind of bug bounty cost saving, but it’s not the best idea when you’re interested in motivated security researchers,” Kugler commented on the Seclists.org forum, a website for discussing security vulnerabilities in commercial software and websites.
PayPal has not commented publicly on this story.
By Paul Thomson :: 8:52 AM
When Microsoft announced its new console gaming system, the Xbox One, last week, it also ushered in a new era for how used games are dealt with on its hardware. The change coming for used games caused quite a stir for stock in GameStop, a retailer who has long made good money on the used game market.
Investors are concerned that GameStop won’t be able to withstand the new methods introduced with Xbox One for dealing with previously owned games, and how they can be resold. Under these new terms, Microsoft will be involved in the transfer of all game titles going forward, and will require a cut of the cost of the resold game in order for the transaction to register with Microsoft, and for the game title to be removed from the original system, and transferred to the buyer’s system.
Microsoft is planning to require all retailers who deal in used games for their system to participate in a cloud-based software transfer solution. The end retailer will likely be charged a fee to make this transfer, which could lead to higher game resale prices for consumers.
Stock in GameStop (NYSE – GME) dropped sharply last week, starting at more than $39 on Monday and descending to $32.11 by market close on Friday afternoon.
In addition to investor worries about the future of Xbox gaming, another issue putting pressure on GameStop stock is the general shift by consumers to mobile platforms for gaming. With game downloads happening through Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play marketplace, the retailer is completely left out of the equation when it comes to mobile gaming, giving it one less opportunity to pocket some profit.
By Leslie Spellman :: 8:04 PM
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced earlier today that it would be looking into complaints that Ford F-150 pickup trucks have been plagued with sharp reductions in engine power during acceleration. Owners of 2011 to 2013 models that are outfitted with Ford’s 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6 engine have complained about issues with the vehicles for over a year now.
Action by the NHTSA, a preliminary evaluation at this point, will cover approximately 400,000 vehicles. Ford Motor Company disputes the government’s data, and believes that the number of trucks affected is probably closer to 35,000. The EcoBoost engine that is being examined in the F-150 is also available in other Ford models, including the Explorer and Flex SUVs, as well as the Taurus sedan.
Ninety five Ford pickup owners filed reports with the NHTSA noting a drop in accelerating power during hard acceleration events, such as quickly passing another car on the highway. About 30% of those complaints noted that the problem occurred while driving in the rain or other damp conditions. There have not been any reports of accidents due to this issue.
While the NHTSA can issue vehicle recalls, this type of investigation doesn’t always lead to one. The next step after this investigation, if the NHTSA finds it is warranted, would be to call for a governmental engineering analysis. That step could take up to two more years to complete.
Ford has said it will cooperate with the NHTSA during the investigation.
By Paul Thomson :: 2:31 PM
After disappointing sales number and lackluster reviews in the U.S., HTC and Facebook are delaying the launch of HTC’s new Facebook Phone in Europe.
The HTC handset runs a special version of Facebook software called Home that makes the social network into a focused feature on the phone. Facebook created Home with the hopes that it would better engage Facebook users with the network, and change the relationship Facebook users have with their phones. Home is a replacement for the Android OS traditional home screen, and offers special Facebook feeds and options for chat.
When Home was initially launched, it was only available on HTC’s First smartphone, before being made available to other select Android-based handsets. It is a free download from the Google Play store.
HTC had grand plans for the Facebook deal, and had hoped that it would boost sales of the First handset. This is not the case, as retailers have heavily discounted the First after customer demand did not surface. AT&T, the largest mobile carrier in the US, has also since dropped the handset from its lineup.
In Europe, two carriers, EE and Orange, had been slated to carry the First handset.
Facebook released the following statement regarding European availability of the new HTC phone: “While we focus on making Home better, we are going to limit supporting new devices and think it makes a lot of sense for EE and Orange to hold off deploying the HTC First in Europe.”