apple juice

I don’t think I can add much to what has already been said about Steve Jobs. Like others I’ve read on the web, I consider my life, professionally and personally to be linked in a way to Apple, and Steve Jobs. From my first interactions with the Apple II in kindergarten, to my Campus Representative job in college, the Mac SE/30 I bought my Grandparents so they could email, my current job, the announcement we sent out about our engagement (edited with iMovie), the thousands of photos I have stored on our laptops, FaceTime and iChat conversations with my family and friends. It all seems possible because of Apple and Jobs. We probably would have gotten here without Steve Jobs, just a little less elegantly and maybe not for another few years.

Here’s just a couple things you should read / watch about Jobs:

Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot

The Steve Jobs I Knew

Steve Jobs’ Commencement Address at Stanford, 2005

The iconic, “Here’s to the crazy ones” Think different ad, narrated by Jobs

 

 

good point from Dave Winer – Relying on Facebook, Google and Twitter – it’s like vegans who wear leather.

another take from the atlantic. 5 Reasons Why ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Won’t Work

I’m not sure you can say it won’t work when you don’t really know what their goals are yet. (I guess that is his first point, but still). I’m interested to see how this develops. There is a group in Minneapolis, appropriately named OccupyMN, ready to hunker down October 7th.

I have to say that I’m a bit disturbed about the recent news about Anwar al-Awlaki being killed in Yemen by our super secret special forces. Certainly bothers me that a U.S. citizen was essentially executed without due process of the law. Actually, executions bother me in general, I don’t really much care who the person is.

But I suppose there is some point at which you implicitly give up your rights as a U.S. citizen, perhaps organizing terrorist operations against the U.S. counts as one of those points.

I also find it interesting that this is one of those situations in the bizarro-world of american politics where briefly and in an insane manner, the left and right sides of the political spectrum turn themselves inside out and get all wound up. Peace-loving democrats cheering on the President for acting decisively? War-mongering Republicans suddenly concerned about flexing our military to take out potential threats? Isn’t this what happened when Clinton sent a few cruise missiles into Yemen during the “wag the dog” incident? Who was he targeting again? Oh yeah, Osama Bin Laden.

Anyway, here’s another perspective from a progressive who is supporting this action. Mostly I agree with these guys, but not so sure on this one….

Telling You What I Think: “

I won’t mention the show. Because these things are often cancelled at the last moment. But I’m going to go on TV this afternoon to debate the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki. And I’m on the ‘for’ position. (These things always get radically simplified. But when asked, do I think it was illegal? No. I don’t.) I suspect this will cause a great deal of consternation for some readers of the site. So I thought I’d explain my thinking in advance.

Just to have the key facts on the table, as most of you know, Anwar al-Awlaki, unlike virtually all the other members of al Qaeda targeted by the US, was an American citizen. He was born in New Mexico of Yemeni parents, returned to Yemen when he was seven and then returned to the United States for college. More recently he returned to Yemen and became involved with the al Qaeda affiliate al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

So how is it exactly that a US President can order the extra-judicial killing of an American citizen? I agree. It’s a troubling thought. But I would approach it differently. Is it really possible that a US citizen can be operating abroad as a key leader of an international terrorist group, organizing and inspiring terrorist attacks within the US, and the US has no recourse other than to secure an arrest warrant and arrest him somewhere in the wilds of Yemen? That strikes me as preposterous.

The key in my mind is that al-Awlaki is or was essentially waging war against the United States from abroad.

Now, there’s a great deal we don’t know and probably won’t know. And that leaves open a great opportunity for abuse. There is for instance some controversy over whether al-Awlaki was simply inspiring terrorist attacks or whether he was operationally involved in them. I don’t think a US president should ever be allowed to do this within the United States or anywhere else where arrest is a credible option. I also think that in the case of targeting a US citizen, the President of the United States should need to personally authorize the decision. Someone has to take responsibility and be accountable.

The idea that his US citizenship mandates that he be handled through the US criminal justice system in every case, even the most extreme ones such as this, simply doesn’t make sense to me. So I just can’t credit that argument that targeting him is ‘illegal’.

Just to emphasize the point again, this is a case where there’s a ton we don’t know. So I’m answering the question based on my understanding of what happened. Liable to abuse? Sure. Illegal. I can’t see the argument, either legally or logically.

(Via Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall.)

I wish I could see the look on my face when I learned this…

 

Kindle Fire

I kind of want one. $199? Prime members get free streaming?

I’ve just had the stressful experience of losing a hard drive. In fact, the main internal drive in my MacBook Pro. This is never fun, even if you are 100% sure that your backup solution is going to work when you need it. Luckily, mine did work, and I just wanted to document the process for any friends or family who might not have a backup solution in place. This is critical! All your pictures, your music, your movies, documents, etc are on your laptop, and you need to have it backed up on a second drive somewhere. (Remember also that having important data only on an external drive is not sufficient!)

If you have a Mac, you should know about Time Machine. It is easy to set up, and as long as you remember to connect the drive, easy to keep up to date. If you buy a new machine, having an up-to-date Time Machine backup makes that process almost anti-climatic.

I’ve gone one step further with my backup system and purchased CrashPlan+ from Code42 (a local Minneapolis company!). I decided to go this route for a few reasons:

1. By purchasing the family plan, you can back up all your families’ machines to their cloud backup service.
2. The cloud backup service works from any location, so your computer is always backing up the latest files to their system.
3. If your local backup drive dies, you have the piece of mind of the backup on someone else’s servers.

So my hard drive went down, and the Apple Store quickly replaced it under warranty. My backup drive was working and up to date, so when I returned home, I started the restore process:

1. Install Crashplan on the new blank system
2. Log in to my Crashplan account
3. Attach my backup drive directly to the machine for a faster restore (I typically have it connected to a “server” in the house)
4. Started the restore of my entire home folder choosing to overwrite any existing files.
5. After about 12 hours of copying data (I have a pretty full 500GB internal drive), I restarted and found all of my data back in place, preferences, desktops, dock, everything.
6. I told the CrashPlan app that I wanted to adopt a previous computer (as it thought that this was a completely new system)
7. Completely back up and running!

CrashPlan has picked up exactly where it left off, backing up the new pictures I just downloaded.

Now admittedly, I did NOT have an up to date Time Machine backup. If I had, I would have used that to do the restore since it is baked right in to the operating system. But I do feel safer knowing that all of my backup data is in two places. I’ve had more than one drive die in the past year, and it is a bad, bad feeling.

The moral of the story… pick a backup solution and use it. Whether it be CrashPlan, Time Machine, or something like Carbon Copy Cloner, always have an up-to-date backup of your data.