More Hacks Resigning

The New York Times reports that Sir Paul Stephenson, London's Police Commissioner, has resigned in the wake of revelations that, at best, police inaction helped the News of the World phone hacking scandal fester for years. At worst, we are looking at gross corruption, but let's reserve judgment on that. So, a casualty list so far:

• The News of the World - shut down after 168 years
  
• News Corporation bid to take control of British satellite provider BSkyB - withdrawn
  
• News International CEO and former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks - resigned, then arrested
  
• Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton - resigned
  
• Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson - resigned
  
• Metropolitan Police PR advisor and former News of the World executive Neil Wallis - arrested
  
• Former News of the World editor and Prime Minister's press officer Andy Coulson - arrested
  
• News of the World senior writer James Weatherup - arrested
  
• Former News of the World assistant editor Ian Edmondson - dismissed, then arrested
  
• News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck - arrested
  
• News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman - arrested
  
• Private investigator and phone hacker Glenn Mulcaire - arrested, convicted, and served prison time
  
• Two unnamed men - arrested

That leaves, of course, Prime Minister David Cameron, James Murdoch, and Rupert Murdoch, to name but a few, with considerable egg on their faces and awaiting news of the further spread of this ugly mess. A little phone hacking goes a very long way.

But I mustn't gloat. That would be mean.

Fun, though, isn't it?

This Changes Too Many Things

Apple's brand new Final Cut Pro is treading on more than a few professional toes. Just ask Conan O'Brien. And if you think people love to call David Pogue an Apple fanboy, just see what happens when he supports this new software.

My take: lack of backward compatibility is a serious drawback. Upgrade to 64 bit is a huge plus. The rest of those missing features will come, but it will take time. And in that time, Apple will lose a lot of professional users. But they'll make it back, and then some, in regular consumers.

Will they ever get the pros back? No idea. Does Apple care? Likely not.

This Changes Everything

Announcing Lytro, the camera that captures pretty much everything - essentially a 3D image that can be rendered as such, or as a variable focus, variable depth of field 2D image. The company calls them Living Pictures, and the raw data is the Light Field. Here's an example - click around the image to change focus:



It seems to me that, for demo purposes, they've created a depth map and pre-generated three or four images there. I imagine the computation time to refocus is nontrivial, so a simple focus or depth of field slider wouldn't be very effective.

Here's the take on it from the New York Times, and CNN Tech.

Et Cetera Et Cetera

What can I draw from this wonderful TEDTalk? I should stop citing the New York Times, for one thing.

Pay Up

Everyone else covered this yesterday, but I have to add my two cents on the New York Times and its move to an online payment model. It's pretty simple. I'll pay my $15 every four weeks for web and mobile phone, and not complain. The Times is consistently the best source for news in the United States, and I don't see that changing any time soon. Unless, of course, the company goes broke. So, I'll pay.

Emphasis

Today, I noticed competing headlines about a New York state senator, arrested on charges of accepting bribes. From the New York Times:

Graft Charges Depict Kruger’s Lavish Lifestyle

And from the New York Post:

BRIBE & GROOM: Pol, secret gay lover arrested

Outraged Insanity's Appeal Fading?

David Carr takes a long, hard look at Glenn Beck. And I am glad he does. Thank you, David Carr. You have saved me from ever having to hurt my own eyes looking at the fascist nut job.

An Artificial Sheen

Anna Holmes takes CNN's Piers Morgan and many others to task in the New York Times for less than critical coverage of Charlie Sheen and his so-called antics. Well worth a read.

Lighter and Thinner

Cropped from the New York Times' coverage of the iPad 2 launch. Ouch.

Keeping It Real

Or not. Mark Bittman takes on McDonald's and its oatmeal concoction in his latest column in the New York Times.

Gross.

New York Mess

Offered without comment: Daily News columnist Mike Lupica continues to wage war on Irving Picard, and as a sideline, the New York Times' coverage of the Mets.

Unexpected Comparison

The New York Times compares Skins and Al Jazeera.

No, really.

Outscooped

Yahoo! has outscooped the New York Times. A while back, the Times ran a piece about The Onion's excellent coverage of Joe Biden's shirtless, philandering ways. Trying for a quote, they were politely knocked back by an aide. But Yahoo! got the man himself on the record, saying the Onion's version of him is hilarious.

This makes me very happy.

Local Pride

The local papers seem to have been remarkably restrained about the latest round of cold weather. While a good blizzard will see words like Snowpocalypse and Snowmageddon dragged out with monotonous predictability, all I see today in the New York Times for the extreme cold is U.S. Frigid, and that's only in contrast to the Arctic.

In Australia, by contrast, the papers can't get enough of a good heat wave when it happens. Every year, after the first day to top 40 celsius, the Herald-Sun will feature WHAT A SCORCHER on its front page, along with a picture of some overly well fed gentlemen on St. Kilda Beach wearing Speedos they should have dispensed with decades earlier, and a time chart of the temperature under the heading How We Sweltered. Now that's weather reporting.

Report Cards

The New York Times has an excellent tradition of columns which examine the numbers we are given and get to the heart of the matter. As a working statistician, I was very pleased to read the latest effort, an examination of New York City's restaurant grading system.