Back in November the Disney CEO said that the company had sold 500,000 films and 12 million television show episodes since such content reached iTunes. Disney hit 1.3 million films sold in February.
“We continue to view the broadband-enabled internet as an important entertainment medium, and our creative and technological investments in Disney, ESPN, ABC.com are designed with that premise in mind.”

Iger was also pleased with the iTunes pricing plans, he said that he could make as much profit on a actual shop sale as one on iTunes.

“There are cost of goods that are factored out of the iTunes sale, which allows them to sell at a lower price. That’s their decision and it allows us to take revenue out that is equal to, in terms of a per-click sale, store sales. So, yes, we’re quite comfortable with iTunes,” Iger explained.

“User data stolen but not unsecured

Hi, we have some sad news, but don’t be alarmed…

Some people (and yes, we know who) found a security hole on our web site (in fact, actually in this blog).
They have got a copy of the user database. That is, your username and passwords. But, the passwords are stored encrypted, so it’s not a big deal, but it’s still very sad that it’s out there. All e-mails are for instance encrypted as well, they will most likely not be able to decrypt them either (they are _very_ encrypted).

We encourage all our users to change passwords as soon as possible – and if you have the same password on the bay as other places, you should update them as well.

Sorry for the mess, but we are all human and we miss something sometimes.
Posted Y-day 13:48 by bkp”

Not Good.

As the site operates under DMCA law , and has to play the rights holders inside the US, however there is no system for that over here in the good old European Union, so the site must close. The site must sign deals with the rights holders directly if they wish to continue, and this simply ” would take too much time and effort” and is an impossible task.

The site did not allow non-US users before, but signup was still possible by using a fake Zip Code. However the use of IP filtering will not completely eradicate the access to the site.

This is a shame. I enjoyed using the Pandora site and thought it a really good idea. However this was going to happen, with people hacking the site to download the music as it played with Java add-ons and rights problems the Pandora service was on rocky ground from the start. This isn’t the end for the US, but still everyone else will miss out. The filter is by-passable , but it will take a lot of detailed proxy’s which isn’t really worth it.

A copy of the email is shown in the continued story:

The flood of posts containing the key could not be quelled and unless Digg went into full scale lock down and kicked half it’s users, there was no point fighting. The Digg CEO, Jay Anderson, responded to the event saying, on the Digg blog, that he did not understand why the user’s were doing this., however this only made matters worse. The co-founder, Kevin Rose, posted later on the digg blog saying that he could now see what the Digg users wanted, and that they would rather “go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company” and vowed “not to delete stories and comments containing the code”. He also said that they would “deal with whatever the consequences might be”

Lets hope that the Digg users have not just shot Digg in the face. But this just shows the power of people.

Daily Mail reports that Sony apparently decided to turn things into a true Roman spectacle in the UK for the launch of God of War II by decapitating a live goat and having revelers reach inside to feast upon the goat’s innards. “Guests at the event were even invited to reach inside the goat’s still-warm carcass to eat offal from its stomach”

The official PS3 magazine, already sent to it’s subscribers contained images of the slaughtered goat and images of topless women who were also entertaining at the event. However the main launch of the magazine this month, pushed by the Daily Mail, has been cancelled. The two page article in this magazine is to be re-designed and then reprinted, all 80,000 copies of it.

It seems silly to me that Sony would make such a mistake. I realize that this is just another Political Correctness fiasco, and this county maybe thinks too much about it, but was this a step too far?

This is damn good news for any owners of the console, and for me personally, reinstates the motivation to buy a Nintendo Console. The lack of games on the old system, the Gamecube, was it’s main downfall. The introduction of games aimed at the older gamer, such as Call of Duty, have put Nintendo back on the map, after a shaky period. With rumors that the Take That, Producers of GTA , are going to be closely working with Nintendo , the new horizon looks promising.

On the Nintendo European Website:

“Perhaps you are not familiar with mod chips, but nevertheless we would like to draw your attention to some important information.

Modification microchips (mod chips) circumvent the security embedded into Nintendo’s products. To install a mod chip into a Nintendo hardware system, it is necessary to dismantle the product and, in some instances, remove components.

The use of mod chips voids the manufacturer’s warranty. In addition, the installation of a mod chip can damage the functionality of a Nintendo console, sometimes rendering it incapable of repair. Mod chips have been adjudicated to be illegal in various countries around the world, including the Unites States, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. Most European countries have also already adopted laws prohibiting the circumvention of technological measures for copyright protection. People caught installing or selling mod chips may be subject to criminal charges”

This clearly shows that Nintendo are not hiding away and cowering from their piracy fears. They wish to embrace their user-base and try and befriend them with the hope that they will think twice about pirating their products. Well, they can live in hope.

This forces beta users to upgrade and help fund the empire, and Darth Gates, but thats no suprise.

Using the dock settings dialog makes the dock slightly less intrusive. This can be accessed by the apple button in the top left hand and inside the Dock–> Dock Settings menu.The icon size can also be changed by dragging the divider towards the right hand side of the dock either left or right. The ability to make it smaller or less magnified makes the whole dock shrink in size, however this also makes them harder to click and clicking on a resource hungry application such as Photoshop can waste a lot of time.

The more links to applications etc. that the user adds to the dock for easy access, the smaller it becomes, making the idea of OSX eye candy less appealing as your icons as shrunk to the size of Umpa-Lumpas. However there is a solution.

Overflow by Stunt Software – stuntsoftware.com – $14.95 (£7.50)

This easy to use application is one of the best ways to enhance the OSX dock. This application adds another icon to the dock which can then be fully customized to contain all the links you need. As the name suggests it is like a overflow for all the things just that little bit to unused to put in the dock.

The overflow can be sorted into groups and a application, file, web address, or folder can be dragged into the slots provided in each group.

For example I have a number of groups that I use and have a main group, “Most Used” , which is a primary overflow for my dock. Setting edit mode in the pop-up allows the launcher window to be added to without it vanishing. The files you wish to place can then be dragged directly from finder. The launch windows is fully customizable from it’s color to the spacing of it’s icons.

The application’s launcher window can also be launched, as with Quicksilver, from anywhere with the touch of a simple hot key which can be defined in the preferences.