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MasterChef suffers IT skills shortage – Business – News – ZDNet Australia
MasterChef Australia is experiencing an IT skills shortage after Melbourne IT tech support worker Mat Beyer was forced to step down from the show.
Mat Beyer
(Credit: Network Ten)

Beyer was caught “smuggling a smartphone, with activated internet and phone capabilities” into the MasterChef house.
Beyer said that he had the phone for six weeks before being found out by production staff.
“I think it was the wrong thing to do, and I think it was a rash decision, but I made a stupid mistake and I guess I’m paying for it now,” Beyer said in a statement.
Smartphones and internet access are taboo for contestants, because they could use the devices to find information and get an advantage over other contestants.
All of the participants in the competition had been told the rules repeatedly, according to competition judge Matt Preston.
“We have to be fair to all the contestants, which is why it was decided that the only thing to do was to let Mat make a honourable withdrawal from the competition. Myself, George and Gary wish Mat all the best for the future, and hope that he will continue to pursue his dream of finding a future in food,” he said.
The television show brought back web designer Billy Law from elimination to replace the disgraced Beyer, so luckily there is one representative from the IT industry still on the show to plug the gap.
The other contestants’ jobs range from nurse to mum, journalist, professional lifeguard and film projectionist.
The IT industry has been the source for MasterChef winners in the past. In the first MasterChef show, Julie Goodwin, who helped her husband run business network support company Loyal I.T. Solutions, took out the crown in 2009.


BBC News – Hugh Grant: How I exposed hacking

Hugh Grant: How I exposed hacking

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6 July 2011 Last updated at 16:42 GMT Help
The actor Hugh Grant has been speaking about how he recorded a conversation between himself and Paul McMullen, in which the journalist revealed details of phone hacking by the media.
Details of the exchange were then revealed by Mr Grant in the New Statesman.
Mr McMullen, a former features editor at the News of the World, joined Mr Grant on the BBC’s News Channel to debate the issue.


Cover your ears, children – that’s a water boatman rubbing its penis again | Space, Military and
SCIENTISTS study the darndest things.
This time, they’ve got their eye on a tiny part of the tiny ‘water boatman’ insect. Namely, its penis.
That’s because by “rubbing” its penis against its tummy, males of the Micronecta scholtzi species serenade their sweethearts with an extraodinary three-part song that hits 99.2 decibels.
“(It’s) a significant output considering the small size of the insect,” says the study by scientists from France and Scotland, published by the PLoS ONE scientific organisation.
No kidding. That puts the water boatman’s sexy song somewhere between a lawn mower and a morning show celebrity gossip reporter.
If you’re still not impressed, consider this – M. scholtzi is just 2mm.
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However, the mystery remains as to how or why the creatures make such a loud mating call.
“This insect is a few millimetres in length yet can produce sound audible from the riverside,” the team said.
The water boatman outperformed marine and terrestrial mammal vocalisations.
“Such an extreme display may be interpreted as an exaggerated secondary sexual trait resulting from a runaway sexual selection without predation pressure,” they said.
They admitted, however: “The mechanism behind the intense sound production of M. scholtzi is not clearly identified.
“There are no obvious body or external resonating systems that could amplify the sound.
“To observe the micro-mechanics of such a small system remains a significant challenge.”
In terms of noise produced versus body size, the insect “is clearly an extreme outlier with a decibel to body size ratio of 31.5 while the mean is at 6.9 and the second highest value is estimated at 19.63 for the snapping shrimp S. parneomeris,” the study said.
So far, the researchers have not yet managed to find out whether females of the species like their suitors’ loud courtship calls.
“Eventually, playback experiments could test female preference for loud over soft calls,” they hoped, in the second hint at the possibility of more funding for this sort of research.
Dr James Windmill from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, told the BBC: “We were very surprised. We first thought that the sound was coming from larger aquatic species such as a Sigara species (of) lesser water boatmen .
“When we identified without any doubt the sound source, we spent a lot of time making absolutely sure that our recordings of the sounds were calibrated correctly.
“If you scale the sound level they produce against their body size, Micronecta scholtzi are the loudest animals on Earth.”


So you thought your penis size had nothing to do with your finger size? Think again… | Space,
KOREAN scientists say the ratio between the second and fourth fingers is linked to stretched penile length.
The research was published online last night in the Asian Journal of Andrology.
The scientists descended on 144 Korean men aged 20 or older who were in hospital for urological surgery and who signed away their right to dignity.

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The hand in question was the right one and the fingers were the second and fourth – otherwise known as index and ring.
The subjects were anaesthetised, which is important, because their tockleys needed to be torpid so the scientists could stretch them.
To make sure there was no preconceived notions, one measurer was designated the fingers and another got the goolies.
Men who were admitted with conditions that affect their penis size – such as hypospadia or urethral stricture – were excluded.
Now, before you start checking out your own fingers, or anyone’s around you, you need a “digital Vernier calliper” accurate to 0.01mm just to be sure.
You measure the ventral surface of the fingers, from the crease at the palm to the tip.
Result?
The scientists discovered that while each man’s height, ring finger length and digit ratio were all associated with the size of his penis, the digit ratio was the sole “significant predictive factor” for stretched penile length.
Reporting their findings in the Asian Journal of Andrology, the scientists said the results “did show that stretched penile length correlated with digit ratio, as men with a lower digit ratio tended to have a longer penile length”.
So the closer in length your two fingers are, the more “jumbo heat” you’re packing, as Jon Stewart would say.
Why knowing this is important is anyone’s guess, however, the team says the findings link the phenomenon to another study that links height with prenatal androgen exposure.
Higher exposure to prenatal androgens such as testosterone generally result in taller people.
Now we know it is also “responsible for both the lower digit ratio and the longer penile length”.
That “prenatal” caveat also means it can’t be applied retrospectively, so for now, you’ll have to stick to Swedish pumps and suspended weights.
(Trust us, there’s no chemical fix. Ignore those emails.)
The best you can hope for is a good outcome for your son in gestation.
The study found that foetal androgen levels in male embryos are elevated between 8 and 24 weeks of gestation, peaking between 14 and 16 weeks.
There is a serious side to all this, as well.
According to the team, digit ratio “has been correlated with a number of aspects of reproductive biology and sexual behaviour over the past decade, including a link with the risk of developing prostate cancer”.
And there are also critics of the study.
Some say it’s not fair because the analgesic properties of anaesthesia means the penises could be stretched beyond reasonable lengths.
Others say it’s not valid because the test subjects were solely Korean.


Airlines told to beware exploding breasts | Space, Military and Medicine | News.com.au
AIRLINES are being warned by the government that terrorists are considering surgically hiding bombs inside humans to evade airport security.
And as a result, travellers may find themselves subjected to more scrutiny when flying in the heart of summer vacation season, especially to the US from abroad.
Bombs-in-the body is not a brand new idea, but recent intelligence indicates a fresh interest in using this method, as people-scanning machines in airports aren’t able to detect explosives hidden inside humans.
Surgery to implant explosives could be done a couple of days before a planned attack, said James Crippin, an explosives expert in Colorado.
In order for it to work, there would need to be a detonation device, and it’s conceivable that if the explosive was implanted in a woman’s breast, the detonator could be underneath the breast so that all the operative would have to do is press downward, Crippin said.
Still, there is no current information that points to a specific plot involving surgically implanted explosives, a US security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss such sensitive matters.
As airport security has increased since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, so has the terrorists’ creativity in developing methods to get around it.
Aviation continues to be a special target and evidence from Osama bin Laden’s compound showed that the al-Qaeda leader retained his fascination with attacking airplanes until his death in May.
Last year, it was reported that British officials uncovered intelligence that al-Qaeda was seeking to surgically implant bombs inside people, a move some believed was prompted by the use of full-body imaging machines at major airports around the world.
“This is something we’ve been concerned about for quite some time,” said J. Bennet Waters, a security consultant and former US Transportation Security Administration official.
The US Government has been working with foreign air carriers and governments to identify ways to discover hidden explosives, including bombs potentially hidden inside of humans.
Officials did not want to discuss specific security measures under consideration so as not to tip off terrorists who could seek ways to get around them.
Once a terrorist finds a willing suicide bomber, secures the explosive material and makes the bomb, carrying off this tactic is not that difficult, said Chris Ronay, a former chief of the FBI explosives unit.
“It’s rather easy and the damage could be rather severe,” Mr Ronay said.
But Jimmie C. Oxley, a chemistry professor at the University of Rhode Island and explosives expert, said it would be tough to carry out such an effort successfully.
She said there are only so many places to hide a bomb in the body, and a suicide bomber would have to recover enough from the surgery to travel and set off the device.
The al-Qaeda offshoot in Yemen has emerged as the most inventive terror organisation these days and has been behind two plots that nearly brought down planes over the US.
The group, known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, was behind the Christmas Day attack in 2009 when a Nigerian hid a bomb in his underpants and nearly brought down an airliner over Detroit.
AQAP operatives also concealed bombs in printer cartridges last October, shipping them to Chicago addresses.
That attack was thwarted because of specific intelligence about the plot. And in late December, the US received intelligence that the Yemen group was considering hiding explosives in the insulated lining of beverage containers and carrying them aboard airplanes.


Vodafone Australia class action gathers momentum | The Australian
A BID to bring a consumer class action suit against Vodafone Hutchison Australia over the performance of its mobile network has proceeded apace with more litigants joining the proposed action.
Law firm Piper Alderman, which is preparing a proposal for the suit, confirmed that the number of claimants had grown by a thousand to 23,000 since April and that efforts to raise money to fund the litigation had progressed.
The law firm said it was continuing its investigation of complaints by litigants which includes a mix of individual consumers, small businesses and companies. Piper Alderman litigation partner Sasha Ivanstoff said that once the investigation was complete and funding arrangements were secured, the company would prepare a statement of claim to be lodged in the Federal Court under trade practice and consumer protection laws. Mr Ivanstoff said he was not at liberty to discuss the details of the funding proposal.
The suit would contain allegations that VHA subsidiary Vodafone Australia Pty Ltd has made false claims about the capacity and coverage of its 3G network over a period stretching as far back as 2007.
Its parent company, VHA, may also be directly named as a respondent in the claim if Piper Alderman investigators assembled sufficient evidence it also misled customers, Mr Ivanstoff said.
The claim may eventually extend to associated telecommunications services such as voicemail, data and email.
Vodafone was yesterday hesitant to comment on the lawsuit in detail.
“We are aware of a law firm that is seeking litigation funding however we have not received any official word or approach from this firm. Our priority has always been to work to resolve any issues with our customers directly,” a Vodafone spokeswoman said.
Mr Ivanstoff told The Australian that the law firm was yet to fully quantify the extent of the damages claim. Larger claims could come from small businesses claming direct business losses due to problems with Vodafone’s mobile service.
“A lot of the businesses that are coming to us are saying that they missed work because of calls that weren’t received or voicemails that weren’t received. So there is that additional category of losses flowing from the service not functioning properly,” he said.
Around a third of the claimants were small businesses but Piper Alderman was unable to provide details on their size.
Reported problems with VHA’s network include constant call drop-outs and reception problems.
Damage to the company’s brand due to the service problem was believed to have contributed to a disastrous subscriber growth performance result for the mobile provider for the second-half of 2010. VHA’s subscriber growth for the half to December 31 was 142,000 compared with new customer additions of 539,000 in the previous corresponding half.
As the extent of Vodafone’s network problems were becoming apparent last October, VHA announced a major network upgrade program to boost its 900MHz and 2100MHz network and add a new 3G 850MHz network layer to ease pressure on it network resources.
It said it would add 1400 new sites to its 900Mhz and 2100MHz networks in metro and regional areas, and build its new 850MHz network across 1500 sites.
Around 900 of the new metro 2100MHz sites would come from a pool of around 1350 sites it expected to retrieve from the gradual termination of its 2004 joint-venture with Telstra.
Last December VHA chief executive Nigel Dews issued an apology to the carrier’s customers and pledged to fix the problems.
Last week the company announced its network roll-out was proceeding on schedule.
It said it had turned on 775 new 850MHz sites and that a further 810 sites had been upgraded, including 330 in high-congestion areas.
By the end of the year it aimed to upgrade a further 520 sites and establish a further 500 850MHz sites, the company said.
Last October VHA said that it had spent $550 million on its business consolidation program to consolidate Hutchison 3 and Vodafone into a single business since they merged in 2009.
It may all be too little too late, however, to hold off the class action suit and further brand damage.
Mr Ivanstoff said that the number of litigants was expected to grow if the company could secure firm funding arrangements for the class action.
“If we get funding in place and we can communicate that with people, if and when that happens, we’d hope to get more,” Mr Ivanstoff said.


St George banks on mobile apps | The Australian
ST GEORGE Bank expects 50 per cent of online customer transactions to be conducted via smartphones over the next 12 to 18 months as it spends “tens of millions of dollars” ramping up offerings to cater to a booming Generation Y clientele.
Monthly smartphone transaction volumes are already equivalent to those at 85 physical branches, double the figure from eight months ago.
In time, St George wants its mobile banking apps to act as a customer acquisition platform so people can apply for credit cards, personal loans and other products on their mobile devices.
The bank has 1.3 million logins and attracts about 500,000 financial transactions each month on its mobile apps, which recently underwent a revamp for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry devices.
About 20 per cent of its internet banking customer base are currently mobile users. In total, it has 396 retail branches, including those of BankSA and St George Victoria (soon to be Bank of Melbourne).
St George chief executive Rob Chapman said he was a firm believer in mobile technology as it was a key differentiator to the business, and one that would attract the future generation.
“I just think it’s so powerful . . . I’m investing much more of my personal time and my team’s time and resources, people and cash to develop something special,” Mr Chapman said.
St George’s mobile users fall into two distinct categories: 80 per cent is under 35 and 42 per cent is under 25.
“This demographic is really, really important to us. I’m a big believer in mobile technology and where that takes us,” Mr Chapman said.
Local banks do not scrimp on security, according to one IT expert. “From a general perspective, Australian banks’ approach to mobile banking apps are relatively secure when compared to the international banks that we have undertaken penetration tests for,” said Ty Miller, Pure Hacking chief technology officer. “Australian banks are prepared to invest significantly in security procedures and can certainly be classified as security-conscious.”
Mr Chapman said St George would lift its mobile technology spend. “I can see us over the next three years spending a lot more money, as in tens of millions of dollars on it (mobile) as opposed to probably only a couple so far,” he said. “I’m going to open up 100 new branches in the next three years at $1 million a pop, so to spend $10m on mobile banking is not inconceivable.”
Mr Chapman believes that over the next 12 to 18 months, 50 per cent of St George’s internet banking customers would also be mobile users.
His mantra for the new mobile banking apps is that they must be “really quick and really simple”, as 70 per cent of its mobile base mainly check account balances.
App features include the ability to add BPay billers and payees, schedule payments up to 24 months in advance, and view a summary of the last 24 months’ interest charges across all accounts.
According to Travis Tyler, St George head of e-channels, mobile banking has opened new avenues for the bank beyond traditional services.
Mr Tyler said a small number of customers were willing to spend 20 minutes to apply for credit cards via their smartphones, although the forms were not optimised for mobile.
About 80 per cent of St George mobile banking customers were iPhone users, although 30 per cent of new downloads were on Android, Mr Tyler said.
Windows mobile made up about 1.5 per cent of users, while BlackBerry made up less than 1 per cent.
The bank’s iPad app, currently being tweaked, received 2400 downloads a month. Across all St George apps, there were 25,000 downloads, he said.
The significance of mobile was also apparent at St George’s parent bank Westpac, where 13 per cent of all eligible customers actively used mobile banking.
At National Australia Bank, 16 per cent of its 3 million internet banking logins come from a mobile device.
From a security perspective, most local banks don’t scrimp on their mobile investments.
“Australian banks approach to mobile banking apps are relatively secure when compared to the international banks that we have undertaken penetration tests for,” said Ty Miller, Pure Hacking chief technology officer.
“They are prepared to invest significantly in security procedures and can certainly be classified as security conscious,” Mr Miller said.


Sony global chief Howard Stringer takes pay cut | The Australian
SONY chief executive Howard Stringer took a 16 per cent pay cut in the just-ended financial year, reflecting the electronics and media giant’s third straight year of losses as it looks for new ways to spark growth.
Sony also gave Kazuo Hirai, the head of its PlayStation videogame and consumer electronics business, a central role at its shareholder meeting on Tuesday, underscoring his status as the frontrunner to eventually succeed Mr Stringer.
Mr Hirai laid out his plan to turn around the company’s troubled television business, saying reversing seven straight years of losses at the division was the “most important task” facing Sony’s electronics arm. Sony is forecasting another year of losses at the TV business this fiscal year to March 2012.
According to the company, Mr Stringer’s total compensation for the fiscal year ended March 30 dropped to 345 million yen ($4m) from 410 million yen in the previous year. He also received stock options for 500,000 shares, worth 518 million yen based on the theoretical value of 1,036 yen a share calculated by Sony. Sony’s shares ended at 2,038 yen on Tuesday.
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Related Coverage

• Sony slow to reveal massive hack NEWS.com.au, 15 Jun 2011
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• Sony in another hacker attack Adelaide Now, 25 May 2011
• Sony predicts $3 billion in losses The Australian, 24 May 2011
• Attack to cost Sony $162m NEWS.com.au, 23 May 2011

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Mr Stringer’s compensation consisted of 295 million yen in basic compensation and 50 million yen in bonuses. A year earlier, he received 310 million yen in basic compensation and 100 million yen in bonuses. Mr Stringer was awarded the same number of share options a year earlier although those carried a lower theoretical value of 813 yen per share.
The overall company posted a net loss of 259.59 billion yen for the just-ended fiscal year, as the March natural disaster prompted a massive write-down in deferred tax assets in the January-March quarter. But it expects to swing into a net profit of 80 billion yen in the current fiscal year through March.
Sony is also rebuilding customer trust and repairing its brand image after hacker attacks on its popular online videogame platform and other online entertainment services compromised personal data for more than 100 million user accounts worldwide.
At the meeting Tuesday, a few shareholders complained about the decline in the company’s share price, down 29 per cent since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. One shareholder blamed the loss of trust from the PlayStation Network cyber-attack for the decline in the stock’s value. The person suggested Sony replace the company’s president, Mr Stringer, as part of efforts to show the world it is moving in a new direction. Sony didn’t ask shareholders to identify themselves before they spoke at the meeting.
Mr Stringer didn’t directly address the call for change, but said his “foremost responsibility is to advance the transformation process” and nurture the next-generation of executives at Sony.
During the meeting, Mr Hirai said his turnaround plan for the TV business would require aggressive cost reductions with parts procurement and more efficient operations as well as overhauling the company’s geographic and product strategies. Mr Hirai said this strategy had been effective in stopping losses at Sony’s PlayStation business.
One shareholder — who in response to Mr Hirai’s presentation said “it finally feels like we’ve got the ace on the mound” — asked why Mr Hirai didn’t have a seat of the company’s board of directors if he is overseeing such important businesses. Yotaro Kobayashi, an external Sony board director and chairman of the board appointment committee, said there was discussion among the directors about giving Mr Hirai a board seat, but they decided in the end he didn’t need the additional burden of serving on the board.
In March, Sony promoted Mr Hirai to executive deputy president and gave him oversight of the consumer electronics business in addition to the PlayStation business he was already managing. Since then, Mr Hirai has taken a higher profile at the company, spearheading Sony’s response to the security problems at its PlayStation Network. Mr Hirai’s total compensation for the just-ended fiscal year was 101 million yen, down from 110 million yen a year earlier. He also received stock options for 50,000 shares.
Sony disclosed the annual compensation of six senior executives receiving 100 million yen or more after the meeting, in accordance with Financial Services Agency disclosure rules in place since last year.


Our young children are the digital generation, social trends study confirms | The Australian
SEVEN in 10 Australian households have access to the internet at home, one in five of us want to work less and the most popular physical activity is walking, the latest data on social trends shows.
Four out of every five children aged 5-14 use the internet, making them the digital generation, and 86 per cent of households with children aged under 15 have access to the internet at home, the latest Australian social trends study from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows.
Eighty five per cent of children used the internet for educational activities, 69 per cent played online games, 47 per cent used the internet to download music and 22 per cent used it for social networking.
Only two out of three households without children had access to the internet at home, the study found.
While 65 per cent of Australians are happy with their working hours, one in five would prefer to work fewer hours and have more time for social and recreational pursuits, the social trends report shows.
Meanwhile 1.4 million workers – 14 per cent of the workforce – wanted more hours of work in 2007.
Workers who put in an average 67 hours a week were most likely to want to reduce their working hours and men and workers with children were most likely to feel they were overemployed.
Overemployed workers were most likely to be aged 35-64, have a partner and be managers or professionals.
Medical practitioners, school teachers and legal professionals were among the most likely to have been overemployed in 2007.
Walking for exercise was the most popular physical activity enjoyed by 23 per cent of the population, while 14 per cent of Australians used a gym or did aerobics, seven per cent swam for exercise, 6.5 per cent jogged and the same number cycled.
An insight into cultural activites shows that nine out of 10 Australians aged over 15 attended at least one cultural event in 2009-10 and attending the cinema was the most popular activity.
Australians spend $14.7 million a year on cultural activites, or $36.40 per household per week, the study shows.


Nine out of 10 concerned about identity theft | The Australian
NEARLY one in six Australians have been a victim, or known somebody who has been a victim, of identity theft or misuse in the past six months.
An independent online survey of 1200 people also revealed nine out of 10 people were concerned or very concerned about identity theft and misuse.
“It’s clear from these results that there is real concern in the Australian community about identity theft and misuse,” federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland said yesterday, adding that as people undertook more transactions online, the risk of identity theft increased.
The survey also revealed the majority of identity theft or misuse occurred over the internet (58 per cent), or through the loss of a credit or debit card (30 per cent).
Information from the survey would be used to help develop a new national identity security strategy, Mr McClelland said.