As Bitcoin Soars in Value, Alternative Cryptocurrencies, Such as Litecoin and PPCoin, Also Climb

Bitcoin transactions are verified by the work of software run by other people using the currency, a process that takes on average 10 minutes and can be much longer, an hour in the case of many exchange sites. Lee says that hinders operators of online stores from using the currency. “With Bitcoin, sometimes merchants are forced to accept unconfirmed transactions because confirmations are way too slow,” he says. “Faster confirmations lead to a more useful currency.” Litecoin transactions are confirmed on average every 2.5 minutes, which Litecoin’s developers say is more practical for businesses.

via As Bitcoin Soars in Value, Alternative Cryptocurrencies, Such as Litecoin and PPCoin, Also Climb | MIT Technology Review.

As player numbers crater, EA will shut SimCity Social, other Facebook games

Similarly, The Sims Social rocketed to over 65 million monthly players just after its launch in 2011, only to drop to just over five million monthly players today, according to AppData. SimCity Social seems to have peaked at 10 million monthly players and has managed to hold on to just over one million of them less than a year after its launch.

via As player numbers crater, EA will shut SimCity Social, other Facebook games | Ars Technica.

Open vSwitch

Open vSwitch is a production quality, multilayer virtual switch licensed under the open source Apache 2.0 license. It is designed to enable massive network automation through programmatic extension, while still supporting standard management interfaces and protocols (e.g. NetFlow, sFlow, SPAN, RSPAN, CLI, LACP, 802.1ag). In addition, it is designed to support distribution across multiple physical servers similar to VMware’s vNetwork distributed vswitch or Cisco’s Nexus 1000V. See the full feature list here

via Open vSwitch.

Xen to Become Linux Foundation Collaborative Project

The Xen Project is an open source virtualization platform licensed under the GPLv2 with a similar governance structure to the Linux kernel. Designed from the start for cloud computing, the project has more than a decade of development and is being used by more than 10 million users. As the project experiences contributions from an increasingly diverse group of companies, it is looking to The Linux Foundation to be a neutral forum for providing guidance and facilitating a collaborative network.

via Xen to Become Linux Foundation Collaborative Project | The Linux Foundation.

Red Hat Announces RDO And OpenStack Partner Program

Installation is made easy with the Red Hat-developed installation tool, PackStack.

That last bit is interesting. OpenStack is a complex suite of tools, and the installation process is non-trivial. Any work to streamline that will reduce at least one barrier to success.

As for the name, RDO? It stands for “Red Hat Distribution of OpenStack.

via Red Hat Announces RDO And OpenStack Partner Program | TechCrunch.

Hopefully this works with CentOS as well.

Rackspace goes on offense against second patent troll in two weeks

Rackspace is being sued over its Rackspace Cloud Notes app for iOS, in a lawsuit that also includes claims again several other Texas companies, including Petroleum Geo-Services, PlainsCapital Bank, Texas Instruments, Schlumberger Technologies, and energy giant TXU. All of those companies have iOS apps which, apparently, rotate their screens.

via Rackspace goes on offense against second patent troll in two weeks | Ars Technica.