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Comment Re:Not a new trick (Score 1) 447

by lendude (#32858400) Attached to: Hollywood Accounting — How Harry Potter Loses Money

More Fun.

Prowse was also in 'A Clockwork Orange', the seminal 1971 film, as 'Julian', the bodyguard to subversive writer F. Alexander (played by Patrick Magee). He was chosen for the role due to his physical prowess (he was a past weight lifting champion) - the role required him to lift Magee in a wheelchair and carry him down stairs, as well as look physically intimidating I guess.

Comment Hopefully it's just you... (Score 4, Insightful) 419

by lendude (#32675370) Attached to: Australia Gets Its First Female Prime Minister

Given that Australia follows the Westminster system, and our government is a representative one (i.e. we all vote to choose our own electorate's representatives), then no Prime Minister is 'voted in' directly by us (well, unless you live in his electorate). The party with superior numbers in the Legislative Assembly has a leader it elects, and that party is invited by the Governor-General to form government. If the party elects a new leader, then they by definition are the elected Prime Minister.

And if you're suggesting that K. Rudd was any less beholden to the 'big, bad Unions' than J.Gillard, and secured his leadership solely with the aid of non-union aligned factions and a bit of magic pixie dust...

It's like complaining a vote for Liberal is a really vote for Corporate Swill-meisters: the power bases of the major political parties have been pretty much as is for all eternity.

I didn't vote for K. Rudd either, but all the best to Ms Gillard. Just please Julia, dump that dead arse Conroy and whatever wheelbarrow he pushes, tell Fielding to stick his poison apple support, and get on with the job.
Science

Submission + - GM diet stunts growth and fertility in hamsters (thinq.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: Just days after two leading scientists quit the UK's advisory body on food safety amid allegations of pro-GM bias, a study has suggested the consumption of genetically modified crops may pose major health risks.

Researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences, led by Alexey Surov, have said that hamsters eating a diet of GM food stand a greater chance of developing problems with growth and reproduction.

Comment Re:give it a rest (Score 4, Informative) 117

by lendude (#32476746) Attached to: Australian Police To Investigate Google Over Wi-Fi Scanning
Exactly right. This is Conroy chucking a hissy fit, attempting a vindictive and conceited payback for Google's accurate commentary re: his pet 'Filter OZ' project, and trying to leverage what remains of his crippled credibility to boost the same. The guy is so adolescent it's laughable. Please Conroy - just fuck off and die: that's seriously the best advice I can offer you.
United States

State Senator Caught Looking At Porn On Senate Floor 574

Posted by samzenpus from the let's-vote-on-this-instead dept.
Everyone knows how boring a debate on a controversial abortion bill can get on the Senate floor. So it's no wonder that Florida State Sen. Mike Bennett took the time to look at a little porn and a video of a dog running out of the water and shaking itself off. From the article: "Ironically, as Bennett is viewing the material, you can hear a Senator Dan Gelber's voice in the background debating a controversial abortion bill. 'I'm against this bill,' said Gelber, 'because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida.' Bennett defended his actions, telling Sunshine State News it was an email sent to him by a woman 'who happens to be a former court administrator.'"
Networking

Ubisoft DRM Causing More Problems 279

Posted by Soulskill from the there's-a-lesson-here-that-nobody-will-learn dept.
Joe Helfrich writes "Ubisoft's Settlers 7 servers have been causing problems for over a week for users worldwide, and Australian gamers are hardly able to connect at all. 'The problem reportedly strikes after the game has already confirmed an active Internet connection, and prevents the user from playing even the single-player campaign, returning the error "server not available." But they are available, because other people are logged into them and merrily playing away.' Wonder how they're going to describe this one as an attack."
Transportation

The Year of the E-Bicycle 494

Posted by kdawson from the daisy-daisy dept.
theodp writes "Electric bicycles have been around for more than a century, but they have never quite captured the imagination of auto-obsessed Americans. That may be about to change. At CES this month, Sanyo showed off its sleek, lightweight Eneloop Hybrid Bicycle. Priced at $2,300, the e-bike sports a black lithium-ion battery strapped to the frame beneath the seat. Press a button on the left handlebar, and a 250-watt motor kicks in, providing about twice as much power as your own pedaling. Some basic e-bike models, like the Ezip Trailz can be had for as low as $500. Both Trek and Schwinn began selling e-bikes last year, and Best Buy is offering e-bikes in three test markets: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland, OR."
Piracy

App Store Piracy Losses Estimated At $459 Million 202

Posted by Soulskill from the arrr-me-hearties dept.
An anonymous reader passes along this quote from a report at 24/7 Wall St.: "There have been over 3 billion downloads since the inception of the App Store. Assuming the proportion of those that are paid apps falls in the middle of the Bernstein estimate, 17% or 510 million of these were paid applications. Based on our review of current information, paid applications have a piracy rate of around 75%. That supports the figure that for every paid download, there have been 3 pirated downloads. That puts the number of pirate downloads at 1.53 billion. If the average price of a paid application is $3, that is $4.59 billion dollars in losses split between Apple and the application developers. That is, of course, assuming that all of those pirates would have made purchases had the application not been available to them for free. This is almost certainly not the case. A fair estimate of the proportion of people who would have used the App Store if they did not use pirated applications is about 10%. This estimate yields about $459 million in lost revenue for Apple and application developers." A response posted at Mashable takes issue with some of the figures, particularly the 75% piracy rate. While such rates have been seen with game apps, it's unclear whether non-game apps suffer the same fate.
Businesses

Former Exec Says Electronic Arts "Is In the Wrong Business" 180

Posted by Soulskill from the inspiring-internet-outrage-is-a-bad-business-model dept.
Mitch Lasky was the executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts until leaving the publisher to work at an investment firm. He now has some harsh things to say about how EA has been run over the past several years, in particular criticizing the decisions of CEO John Riccitiello. Quoting: "EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again. ... by far the greatest failure of Riccitiello's strategy has been the EA Games division. JR bet his tenure on EA's ability to 'grow their way through the transition' to digital/online with hit packaged goods titles. They honestly believed that they had a decade to make this transition (I think it's more like 2-3 years). Since the recurring-revenue sports titles were already 'booked' (i.e., fully accounted for in the Wall Street estimates) it fell to EA Games to make hits that could move the needle. It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another. Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's $850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy."
Security

Blizzard Authenticators May Become Mandatory 248

Posted by Soulskill 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."

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