Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.
This week : A “twitterified” version!!
* An 18 month old girl falls off a third floor balcony, bounced off a cafe awning and into the arms of a passing doctor. Paris. Of course. [BBC.CO.UK]
* Researchers have figured out how to erase memories. Soon we can happily repeat our crap decisions over and over. [HOPKINS MEDICINE.COM]
* Rich people have their own exclusive pawnshops? OK, the economy really is bad. [NEWSWEEK]
* BIMBO to buy Sara Lee? Yay! Sugar on everything!! [FOOD BUSINESS NEWS]
* A 1099 will soon be required for EVERY BUSINESS PURCHASE over $600. Phooey! [HOTAIR]
* Waterboarding isn’t torture if the US governemnt does it, but it is “domestic assault, false imprisonment, and making terrorist threats” if an individual does it! Good to know! [SMOKING GUN] and [INDY POSTED]
* Dick Cheney apparently caused 70 CIA informants to get killed when he outed Valerie Plame. (Or become “living challenged” as the Dickster might refer to ’em.) [SUN TIMES / ROGER EBERT]
* Obama is still allowing torture. That is all. [YAHOO]
* Enjoy the Big Macs and McRibs while you can. McDonalds is gonna’ raise their prices. [UPI]
* Is it cheaper to keep employees off the new Obamacare insurance and pay the fine? YEP! Three guesses what’s gonna’ happen when it becomes law. [YAHOO]
* BP dispersants are making people living in the area very very very sick. But the fish are good to eat! Honest! [AL JAZEERA]
* Another scientific discovery says if you sit at your desk too much, you’re gonna’ die. No news on the effects of headstands, squatting, or hovering bosses. [MSNBC]
* Newspapers are done in 7 years? No way! Sending a glare over an iPad isn’t the same as sending a glare over a newspaper! [NEOWIN]
…and finally…
* A major Chineese minister says dollar printing is out of control. [REUTERS] With a (actually funny) related SNL video…
That’s all I got. Back Monday!
** Actually posted late Sunday because my lungs are still having a coughapalooza fiesta. Not fun.
I’ve always been more comfortable with manual device backups for my iPhone and iPad, mostly because I know I really have the data and I also know the specific location I’m backing it up to.
You can always have iTunes backup your iPad or iPhone by CONTROL-CLICKING (mac) or RIGHT-CLICKING (pc) the iPad or iPhone device icon when you’re in iTunes. When you do that, a pop-up window will appear with an option to BACKUP. Just choose that and iTunes will backup everything on your iPhone.
Hopefully.
If you want to try a manual backup, a website called MACROPLANT is giving away a free copy of their PHONE DISK software through December 1st. PHONE DISK is a pretty nice cross-platform application that allows you to access your iPhone or iPad on your computer like you would a USB disk.
Once you have installed PHONE DISK, it will reside in the system tray (pc) or your menu bar (mac) until you plug in a iPhone or a iPad. Once you do, the iPhone or iPad will appear along with the rest of your hard drives.
The default mount path for the iPhone and iPad is the device’s MEDIA folder. From this mount path, you can see the following folders on the device…
Books (all the books you’ve purchased from the iBooks app)
DCIM (all the photos you’ve taken)
Recordings (all the speech and audio recordings you’ve made)
Grab all of these folders and copy them over to a safe location on your hard drive as backup!
Now to backup purchases you have made from inside other apps (such as the great COMICS app or DC or MARVEL apps) or even to save in-game progress (like Angry Birds or Galaxy on Fire games) you will need to do one more thing.
Go to the PHONE DISK icon on the system tray or menubar and go to your iPhone / iPad’s name.
From there, choose CHANGE CONNECTION ROOT.
Once you do that, you will see all the apps you have on your device.
Scroll to the app you want to backup and click on it.
Once you do that, the iPad / iPhone will disappear from your computer, and a drive with just that application you selected will appear in its’ place.
Grab everything you see and back it up!
For example, I have a lot of free comics from the COMICS app (which BTW is a very easy way to entertain nephews and little kids!)
Once I changed the CONNECTION ROOT to COMICS, I see a folder with…
Comics
Documents
iTunesArtwork
iTunesMetadata.plist
Library
tmp
…as the content.
The comics I’ve downloaded ad purchased are all in the LIBRARY / CACHES / COMICS / BOOKS folder. (I would hate to re-download all of those. Or worse, lose them all!)
Grabbing everything from the main directory (Comics, Documents, Library, etc), I now know that in case of a major catastrophe I really do have a backup of all my in-app purchases!
I usually CHANGE CONNECTION ROOT and go to all the APPS I have made significant app-specific purchases with (and in the case of some games, backup my saved progress!)
When you’re done, just CHANGE CONNECTION ROOT back to the MEDIA folder (at the end of the list of APPS you have) and you will go back to the default view you saw when we started.
Then just choose UNMOUNT DEVICE. Done!
Of course, if you have a jailbroken device, the PHONE DISK software will mount the device at its’ “true” root. (Hoo-Ah!)
A jailbroken device will have all of your the APPLICATIONS under the VAR / MOBILE / APPLICATIONS directory. (Under a cryptic naming system… I just grab them all.)
The BOOKS purchased from the iBooks app will be under the VAR / MOBILE / MEDIA / BOOKS directory on a jailbroken iPad / iPhone (I just grab the entire BOOKS directory too)
Hopefully I won’t have to deal with too many nuke-and-pave repairs on my iPad and iPhone this year, but with these manual backups, I at least know I’ve got a plan “C”.
Every Tuesday I re-post all zee tweets that didn’t originate from this blog just to keep everything in sync.
This last week on Twitter…
sears.com/zombies – fashions for the undead in your life. Not surprisingly, chainsaws getting a lot of “not liked” votes. (4:14 PM Oct 27th via Twitter for iPhone)
McDonalds says “it’s the end of the roll as you know it.” So why am I hearing Michael Stipe saying “I feel fine”? (5:11 PM Oct 28th via Twitter for iPhone)
The website Secure Mac has found a new Trojan Horse that is making the rounds. What’s interesting about this one is that it’s specifically cross-platform, meaning both Macs and PCs are targeted.
What’s worse is that this Trojan Horse is spreading through lots of social networking sites. (Which usually means a widespread outbreak is imminent.)
The Secure Mac website says the Trojan Horse is “currently appearing as a link in messages on social networking sites with the subject “Is this you in this video?” When a user clicks the infected link, the trojan initially runs as a Java applet, which downloads other files to the computer… When run, the installer modifies system files to bypass the need for passwords, allowing outside access to all files on the system… While running, the trojan horse hijacks user accounts to spread itself further via spam messages.”
Once you’ve downloaded the virus removal app, double click on the BTRT.DMG icon and then double click on the “Boonana Trojan Removal Tool” drive that appears on your desktop.
From there, you can double click on the Boonana Removal Tool icon…
…then click on the OPEN button when prompted…
…ACCEPT the license agreement…
…then press the SCAN button. That’s it.
When the scan is complete (and it will only take a few seconds), you will see the results (and a small sales pitch for their software.)
Just go to FILE and QUIT after the scan is complete!
I haven’t posted for awhile because I got a cough & cold a with 2nd degree black belt that judo-flipped me into bed for awhile. I’m somewhat better now… and just in time for Monday. Oh joy.
I had some stories ready to go for this weekend, but Jon Stewart had a “Rally To Restore Sanity” at the mall of America this last week and the mainstream media completely missed out on this.
More people attended Stewart’s rally than the one Glen BokBok held in the same location just a few weeks prior, but Stewart’s rally only garnered sparse coverage on CNN, MSNBC and FOX. More “real” people were at Stewart’s rally, and even though the event was a “comedy” rally, Stewart’s speech at the end was epic.
The only thing I’m posting this weekend is Stewart’s closing speech. It’s that good.
Here it is, presented in its’ entirety (the following transcript is courtesy of Rolling Stone).
—–
And now I thought we might have a moment, however brief, for some sincerity, if that’s ok; I know there are boundaries for a comedian, pundit, talker guy, and I’m sure I’ll find out tomorrow how I have violated them.
I’m really happy you guys are here, even if none of us are really quite sure why we are here. Some of you may have seen today as a clarion call for action, or some of the hipper, more ironic cats as a clarion call for ‘action.’ Clearly, some of you just wanted to see the Air and Space Museum and got royally screwed. And I’m sure a lot of you are here to have a nice time, and I hope you did. I know that many of you made a great effort to be here today, and I want you to know that everyone involved with this project worked incredibly hard to make sure that we honor the effort that you put in and gave you the best show we could possibly do. We know your time is valuable, and we didn’t want to waste it. And we are all extremely honored to have had a chance to perform for you on this beautiful space, on The Mall in Washington, D.C.
I can’t control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith. Or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.
Unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country’s 24-hour politico pundit panic conflict-onator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems and illuminate problems heretofore unseen, or it can use its magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous-flaming-ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.
There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and tea partiers, or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rich Sanchez is an insult — not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put forth the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish between terrorists and Muslims makes us less safe, not more.
The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything we eventually get sicker. And perhaps eczema. Yet, with that being said, I feel good. Strangely, calmly good, because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a funhouse mirror, and not the good kind that makes you slim and taller — but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass like a pumpkin and one eyeball.
So, why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own? We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is — on the brink of catastrophe — torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day. The only place we don’t is here or on cable TV. Americans don’t live here or on cable TV. Where we live our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.
Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats or Republicans or conservatives or liberals. Most Americans live their lives that our just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often it’s something they do not want to do, but they do it. Impossible things get done every day that are only made possible by the little, reasonable compromises.
[With footage of lanes of slow-moving traffic playing on screens behind him, Stewart went on to build a metaphor based on the traffic merger at the Lincoln Tunnel between New York and New Jersey.]
These cars — that’s a school teacher who thinks taxes are too high…there’s a mom with two kids who can’t think about anything else…another car, the lady’s in the NRA. She loves Oprah…An investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah…a Latino carpenter…a fundamentalist vacuum salesman…a Mormon Jay Z fan…But this is us. Everyone of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear — often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers.
And yet these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile-long, 30-foot wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river…And they do it. Concession by concession. You go. Then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go — oh my god, is that an NRA sticker on your car, an Obama sticker on your car? Well, that’s OK. You go and then I’ll go…”Sure, at some point there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute. But that individual is rare and he is scorned, and he is not hired as an analyst.
Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together and the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.
If you want to know why I’m here and what I want from you I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. Your presence was what I wanted. Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder. To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine. Thank you.
The FDA and the U.S. Marshals played “beat the stupid company with a sharp pointy federal stick” today by shutting down a big United Food Service warehouse (AKA Sun Hong Kai Holding Inc).
Apparently the FDA found out that United Food Service was having a regular rat fiesta at one of their warehouses. “An FDA inspection of United Food Service’s facility… revealed “an active and widespread rodent infestation, including live and dead rodents within the warehouse where food products are stored.” FDA investigators found 28 live rodents, one dead rodent, apparent rodent droppings, 26 apparent rodent gnaw holes in multiple packages of food products, rodent urine stains on food packaging and four rodent nesting sites.”
What? You mean rats aren’t the cute “cook a four course meal and help you get the babe” blue furry happy critters like I saw in Ratatouille? Damn you, Disney! You lied to me again!!
Anyhow, the FDA yanked “$700,000 worth of rice and other packaged food products”, and nuked United Food Service from orbit, just to be sure closed down that warehouse.
A new article on CNET says that “U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood issued an injunction today against the company that operates the long popular file-sharing software, LimeWire, and requires managers there to disable “the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality” of the LimeWire software”
If you visit the Limewire page right now, you’ll see the official “death notice”…
“This is an official notice that LimeWire is under a court-ordered injunction to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software. Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal.”
If you’re still on Limewire, I would recommend you remove the app from your system right now. It’s about to be as useful as Napster was when the hammer came down on them.
