It’s made stars out of America Ferrera, Vanessa Williams and braces.
But after a solid run on ABC, Ugly Betty is going off the air. Despite critical acclaim this season, and a recent move to viewer friendly Wednesday nights, the show’s ratings were simply too low.
Wrote producer Silvio Horta and ABC president Steve McPherson in a statement:
“We’ve mutually come to the difficult decision to make this Ugly Betty’s final season, and are announcing now as we want to allow the show ample time to write a satisfying conclusion. We are extremely proud of this groundbreaking series, and felt it was important to give the fans a proper farewell.”
Mark Indelicato, who plays Betty’s nephew Justin Suarezm, referred to the series as “a learning experience and said: “It’s been an amazing four years.”
We agree. What is your favorite memory from the show? Do you want Betty to end up with Daniel? How do you hope the show wraps up?
Britain’s freedom of information watchdog has just ruled that the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit broke the law by refusing to give skeptical researchers access to raw data used to produce claims of global warming.
The Information Commissioner’s Office says the university breached the Freedom of Information Act by withholding the data, but it could not be prosecuted because complaints were out of time. It wants the law changed to allow proscutions when a complaint is made more than six months after a breach.
The CRU’s illegal activities came to light when 14 years of its internal emails were leaked by a whistleblower last November in what has become known as the Climategate scandal.
CRU director Phil Jones — one of the key climate scientists behind the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — was stood down after the email leak while an independent inquiry was made into their contents and circumstances. That inquiry has yet to report.
Among the many Jones emails in the Climategate trove was one of him asking another scientist to delete emails relating to the IPCC’s 2007 report, and one where he boasted he had persuaded the university to ignore information requests from climate skeptics.
This latest setback for the AGWarming cause comes within days of the IPCC having to admit its claims of Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 were false; revelations that its claims of global warming making hurricanes worse and more frequent were also false; Britain’s chief science advisor criticising climate scientists for exaggerating claims about global warming; and revelations of companies and trusts associated with IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri making millions from climate science, including “research” on the false melting glacier claims.
She’s got the moves, she’s got big…guns, and she just got patched. As promised, Sega has now released the patch that will let Bayonetta players install the game into the PS3 HDD.
Just fire the game up on your PS3 and you should be prompted to download the patch. We don’t have a number on how big the patch is, but that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Thanks to this patch, you won’t have to stare at those load screens for prolonged periods, giving you more time to stare at the things that matter more.
Hey, so you know all about the iPhone, right? In the brief time we spent with Apple’s new iPad, from a gaming perspective, there’s not much more to add. It’s a big iPod Touch — both are missing the iPhone’s camera — but iPad’s got a flexible data plan option; no contract required. While Apple showed off some iPad-optimized games during today’s keynote, neither Gameloft’s new version of N.O.V.A. nor Electronic Arts’ new version of Need for Speed: Shift were available for demo. Instead, we took some plain ol’ apps for a spin, including Scrabble and Need for Speed: Shift (the current iPhone version; not the upcoming iPad one).
The “2X” button indeed fills the screen with a simple tap, turning your low-res iPhone apps into full-screen experiences; however, the increase comes with a graphical cost. The games are scaled up and look like it. That doesn’t mean they’re not entirely playable — Need for Speed actually controlled better with the larger screen; tilting the iPad had less of an effect on the screen than doing the same on the iPhone’s comparatively tiny display, meaning we were able to focus on the action while moving the screen around (something many iPhone games simply don’t do as well). Similarly, the larger surface means your big fat thumbs won’t obscure as much of the screen as they do on the iPhone — that means more room for on-screen pads, as shown in the iPad-optimized port of N.O.V.A.
The Apple representative guarding the preview device told us that the iPad-optimized games will be featured in their own part of the App Store. These aren’t “combo” apps that work one way on iPhone or iPod Touch and another way on iPad — they are separate apps. While the higher-resolution graphics and iPad-specific optimizations will surely result in better gaming experiences on the iPad, we’re not sure if existing owners of iPhone games will be interested in the perceived “iPad tax” for an optimized version — your regular iPhone games will work on both devices, after all.
Perhaps enhanced iPad games will have “downscaled” versions for iPhone, or perhaps some developers will discover a way to bundle both together? It’s not clear, but we’re reaching out to Apple to clarify some of the App Store functionality and will talk with developers to get their take on the new device. The new SDK is available today, so many iPhone developers will be busy exploring what’s new for iPad.
