Annabel Crabb on the decline of political language:

“But the worst politician of all, and their ranks are swelling strongly - is The Extruder.

The Extruder is the politician who keeps an extensive supply of greyish words in stock, and who - when called upon to speak in public or answer questions - simply squirts out a collection of them in order to fill the silence.”

Last night I had the unedifying experience of watching a friend’s WoW account be hacked and being powerless to stop it. There were a few of us online, when our most experienced guy logged on. I sent a greeting his way, he replied with a quick “hi”, and we went about our business.

He logged out shortly after, and jumped on another toon. Then another. Then back to the first one. Then yet another. I thought he must be clearing mailboxes, checking auctions, etc. Then he logged on to a toon that hadn’t been online in a long time, so I sent another more questioning message, to be met by stony silence.

The other guild members on at the time caught on that something might be up, and we went and checked the Guild Bank. Sure enough, each toon had withdrew their maximum allowance from the GB. Luckily enough we had pretty severe limitations on the bank, and nothing much of value in there.

I paged an online GM immediately, and another guildee raised a forum post. About 5-10 minutes later the account was locked by Blizzard. Unfortunately probably too late for his characters to not have been stripped of all their gear, personal banks emptied, and gold transferred. 

It was incredibly frustrating seeing the hacker log on again and again, ignoring us and doing whatever nefarious stuff s/he wanted without being able to stop it. We removed Guild access, but all the personal stuff was out of our hands. The account block happened pretty fast once we got onto it, but not fast enough.

Buying gold is a cash money industry and according to Symantec trojans seem to be the default way into an account. Authenticators all round I guess.

Very interesting analysis of why the launch issue is 500Mb:

I mounted my jail broken iPad via AppleTalk and quickly tore into the app itself to see how it was constructed.  Similar to the PopSci+ magazine application, each Wired issue is actually a bunch of XML files that lay out a bunch of images.  And by “a bunch of images” I mean 4,109 images weighing in at 397MB.

Each full page is a giant image - there are actually two images for each page: one for landscape and one for portrait mode. 

No text, but instead two images for each page? Yikes.

Sneaky way to make comics collectible again.

After watching the snoozefest that was the State of Origin on Wednesday night, and putting up with the endless glorification and deification¹ of the SofO concept, I awaited the newspaper articles the next morning bemoaning how dull the game was.

Instead what we got was more of the same guff. From “NSW need to start believing in themselves” to “an epic arm wrestle”, there was no analysis that said it was a predictable game of four hit ups and a kick.  We don’t seem to have a mature enough sporting media, one that could critique rather than just jump on the hype bandwagon and continue shovelling the clichés.

Where’s our Bill Simmons? Richard Hinds in the SMH probably comes closest, but doesn’t provide the same kind of long rambling passionate fan coverage. Maybe you have to exist outside the sporting media nexus to be able to really comment, and poke fun at it rather than be so drably earnest (though the Sports Guy proves otherwise in the US).

Roy and HG used to fill this gap on triple j’s This Sporting Life, a fantastically satirical radio sports show that managed to be hilariously entertaining and precise in how it skewered mainstream media sports coverage. Since they disappeared into the commercial radio wasteland, it’s been hard to find a replacement. 

Thankfully FBi have stepped into the breach with their 9-10 Friday morning show Fire Up. It’s 110% all Rugby League all the time, and has taken the baton from TSL and kept running with it. They’re totally irreverent, very clever, and love the game as only fans can. On today’s show I finally heard someone telling it like it is - this edition of the Origin contest was rubbish.

Yay!

EBTG singer returns to her singer-songwriter acoustic roots after a long detour into electronica (that started with her stunning guest spot with Massive Attack). Lovely to hear her singing again, where her voice is the centre more than the beats, and this time pondering the ravages of middle age. Reflections on divorce, singles bars, and even menopause - not subjects commonly heard, but a welcome change from the JT brigade (even if he does indeed bring sexy back).

US companies by market cap:

1. Exxon-Mobil
2. Apple
3. Microsoft
4. Walmart

Australia:

1. BHP-Billiton (aka mining)
2. Commonwealth Bank
3. Westpac Bank
4. ANZ Bank
5. NAB Bank
6. Rio Tinto (aka mining)
7. Telstra (aka telecommunications)

The first ‘tech' company in Australia is Telstra at 7th, and they are ex-government ex-monopoly.

Correct.

Finally a justification for playing WoW before bed:

“If you’re spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it’s practice,” said Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. “Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams.”