Howboring

Alex Gross - Vintage Super Heroes

Blakeson vs The Sandpit (Taken with instagram)

How Much Do Music and Movie Piracy Really Hurt the U.S. Economy?

parislemon:

Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman of Freakonomics discuss the claims that piracy leads to $250 billion a year in loses and 750,000 American jobs lost:

The good news is that the numbers are wrong — as this post by the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez explains. In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which is polite government-speak for “these figures were made up out of thin air.” 

And:

So what’s the real number? At this point, we simply don’t know. And this leads us to a second problem: one which is not so much about data, as about actual economic effects.  There are certainly a lot of people who download music and movies without paying. It’s clear that, at least in some cases, piracy substitutes for a legitimate transaction — for example, a person who would have bought the DVD of the new Kate Beckinsale vampire film (who is that, actually?) but instead downloads it for free on Bit Torrent. In other cases, the person pirating the movie or song would never have bought it. This is especially true if the consumer lives in a relatively poor country, like China, and is simply unable to afford to pay for the films and music he downloads.  

Do we count this latter category of downloads as “lost sales”?  Not if we’re honest. 

Apple - $97.6 billion in cash and equivalents

So hey Apple, how about kicking some of those billion back to the developers that support the iOS platform and cut that 30% tax on App Sales?

It means little to Apple but a lot to small indie developers.

http://developers.enormego.com/view/what_if_images_on_the_iphone_were_as_easy_as_html

Apple 2.0's Q1 2012 "Whisper" Numbers

parislemon:

Based on six analysts with the best track records, Philip Elmer-DeWitt compiles his best guess for the Q1 (Apple’s holiday quarter) numbers Apple will announce tomorrow. These are analysts who typically update their numbers over time and, notably, aren’t necessarily Wall Street analysts (who generally blow at guessing about all things Apple-related).

If he’s close, my prediction from October 18 (the day Apple announced Q4 numbers) that this quarter would not only be Apple’s first $30 billion quarter, but first $40 billion quarter, looks very good. Elmer-DeWitt’s numbers have revenues coming in at a cool $42.76 billion.

Such a number would constitute a massive blow-out. Apple’s previous revenue record is $28.57 billion, hit in Q3 2011. Again, if the numbers hold, Apple could see a quarter almost exactly 50% better than their previous record quarter. That would be insane.

It would also further prove that last quarter’s miss was simply because analysts were lazy and failed to recognize the impact moving the iPhone launch a quarter later would have.  

It’s worth noting that Elmer-DeWitt’s whisper numbers were off last quarter as well. But again, all analysts were off, so it’s no surprise that an average of the best would be off as well. 

DeWitt’s craziest number has to be iPhone sales of 33 million. The previous record was 20.24 million iPhones sold (again, in Q3 2011). It would also be eerily close to the projection of 34 million iPhones sold if you extrapolated out Verizon’s stated numbers. And it would directly speak to the recent NPD and Nielsen numbers that iPhone has closed the gap with Android sales in the U.S. 

http://www.hollance.com/2011/03/mhlazytableimages-efficiently-load-images-for-large-tables/

Forest Walk

Andrew Scott as Moriarty has been literally awesome this season. The rest of the cast are good, but the mentalist Moriarty has been very entertaining. 

So the ending:

Moriarty faked his shooting - knowing Sherlock may not do if he was still alive. 

Sherlock faked the jump by getting the Forensics girl to position a laundry trolley and provide fake blood and maybe some other looking-dead stuff. 

The cyclist knocks Watson back so as to stall him and give Sherlock time to climb out of the laundry trolley and onto the pavement. 

Sherlock also asked for a moment when on the roof top. Which was probably to get Moriarty to step back so the jump could be set up.

Or not. Who knows. 

Hope they make more.