Patterico's Pontifications

4/26/2011

Bleg: Syncing an iPad (or iPod or iPhone) to a new Mac

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:58 pm



So I finally took the leap and bought a Mac laptop. Everyone I have talked to who has one likes it. They don’t get viruses and continue to work well 2, 3, 4 years later.

Just one problem. I moved over my iTunes library from the PC and iTunes seems to work fine on the Mac. But if I try to sync up the iPad to the Macbook, it tells me that it can only sync with one library, and that it will wipe my iPad. I de-authorized the PC, so what gives?

This is not a request for people to criticize my decision to get a Mac. I’m just wondering if anyone else has encountered this issue before. You would think it would be the simplest thing in the world, but every solution I see online is ridiculously complicated — download this third-party software, or get a MobileMe subscription, or use a migration utility that doesn’t work with a PC or an external hard drive, etc.

Absolutely nothing simple in the way of a solution — for what ought to be the easiest thing in the world.

Ideas?

Scary Larry O’Donnell: Jesus Favored a Progressive Income Tax

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:36 pm



Liberal atheists are so cute when they pretend to be pious.

“While Jesus may not have specified specific tax brackets, he was the first recorded advocate of a progressive income tax.”

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

I love the way Scary Larry phrases that. Jesus may not have specified specific tax brackets — but then, you know, maybe he did. You just don’t know for sure.

I could get all serious and spend time seriously refuting O’Donnell and his pious nonsense — Jesus told his followers to give all their money to the government, Larry? Really?! — but that would totally miss the point. He’s putting on a show. People mock Limbaugh for being a mere “entertainer” — but he believes what he is saying 100 times more than Scary Larry.

I have but one thing to say to the right Rev. O’Donnell.

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.

The Rape of Libya

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 5:09 pm



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

The title is not as metaphorical as you would wish it was.  From the UK’s Daily Mail:

Fuelled ‘by Viagra’, Gaddafi’s troops use rape as a weapon of war with children as young as EIGHT among the victims

Children as young as eight are being raped in front of their families by Gaddafi’s forces in Libya, according to a leading charity.

Aid workers described horrific stories of widespread sexual abuse, including one incident in which a group of girls was abducted and held hostage for four days.

When they were finally released, they were too traumatised to speak.

Other children have described being forced to watch as their fathers were murdered and their mothers raped.

Read the whole thing if you have the stomach for it.  To anyone wondering if a person could do something so horrific, you should read up on what the Japanese did in World War II. The Rape of Nanjing, from which I took this post’s title, was indeed worse although in horrific ways, similar.

H/t: Hot Air.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

PSA: Playstation Network Intrusion May Have Compromised Personal Information

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 2:12 pm



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update: And politicians are getting involved.  Sigh.

Update (II): IGN has some tips on protecting yourself.

You might have heard a few jokes about it here and there in the comments, but the Playstation Network, that is the computer network that allows gamers to play online, download games, etc., has been down.  Now, via IGN we get word that it was not only the result of hackers, more or less, but that personal information might have been compromised, specifically:

– Name

– Address (city, state, zip)

– Country

– Email Address

– Birthdate

– PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID

And they aren’t ruling out any credit card information being compromised, too.  You should bluntly take steps to protect yourself.

You can read all about it, here.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

Proposition 8 Proponents Strike at the King and Go In For the Kill

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 9:24 am



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

That’s a riff off the old saying, attributed to Emerson, that “if you strike at the King, you have to kill him” which is in turn riffing off of something Patrick said the first time he blogged about Judge Walker’s potential bias in the Proposition 8 case.  Applied here (and note for the slow and dishonest, the violence is purely metaphorical), that means that you don’t assert that a judge is biased unless you are almost certain that the judge will step down.  And that goes double in this case, under these circumstances.

Anyway, late yesterday, Proponents of Proposition 8 have tried to strike a killing blow against Judge Walker’s ruling, seeking for it to be vacated following the recent revelation that he has been in a ten year relationship with another man.  I have been hammering at this issue since February, 2010, (language warning at the link), and it is nice to finally see that we are finally going to have real action on the issue.  There is no guarantee what the new judge (Walker is retired), will say on the issue, but it always annoyed me how so many people pretended it wasn’t a question at all.  For all we knew, Judge Walker could have said to his paramour that the moment that gay marriage was legal in California, they would tie the knot.  At the very least the parties deserved to know about the relationship.

(And if that seems intrusive, bluntly… tough on him. That’s the life of a judge. Sometimes you have to disclose things that you would prefer not to. And if he really didn’t want to answer these kinds of questions [I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to answer the question of whether I intended to marry my wife, prior to finally asking her to marry me], he had an easy way to avoid them–recuse himself from the case.)

So you can read the entire motion below the fold using one of those annoying Scribd documents, but here’s the introduction of the argument, which reads like a Cliff’s Notes version of the whole brief (cutting and pasting from Ed Whelan’s triumphant post):

Fundamental to the integrity of the judicial function, and therefore to public confidence in the courts, is the judiciary’s strict fidelity to the ancient maxim that “no man can be a judge in his own case and no man is permitted to try cases where he has an interest in the outcome.”  This principle is expressed in the Code of Judicial Ethics and is codified in federal law by statutes requiring that a judge recuse himself whenever he has an “interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding,” … or more generally, in any other circumstance in which “his impartiality might reasonably be questioned[.]”…

(more…)

Inevitable: The Apple Class Action Suit Has Begun

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 6:53 am



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

“This’ll be interesting,” Glenn Reynolds wrote this morning, linking to this story.  Here’s the rundown.  Last week I told you about how Apple was secretly tracking users movements, an appalling invasion of privacy.  So this morning, Reynolds linked to this story about the lawsuit that had been filed:

Two Apple customers have filed a lawsuit accusing the Cupertino, California, company of committing violations of computer-fraud laws by recording location data of iPhone and iPad customers.

Vikram Ajjampur, an iPhone customer in Florida, and William Devito, a New York iPad customer, filed the suit in federal court April 22 in Tampa, Florida.

“The accessibility of the unencrypted information collected by Apple places users at serious risk of privacy invasions, including stalking” (.pdf), the lawsuit states….

Ajjampur and Devito are seeking class action status to represent U.S. iPhone and iPad customers. The complaint seeks an injunction requiring Apple to disable the data collection in a software update, and it also seeks damages for violations committed.

(Emphasis added.)  Well, I will have to disagree with Mr. Reynolds.  The most likely outcome here is that these class representatives will secure benefits primary to themselves, their lawyers will make millions, and we the people will be lucky if we get that update they are talking about.  It will not be interesting, but the latest tediously predictable example of abuse in the class action system.

Consider, for example these recent class actions.  For instance, there was a controversy a few years back when someone discovered some discarded game code opening up a (terrible looking) sex game in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which you could only find if you actually hacked the game.  This apparently horrified parents who were apparently okay with the usual action in the Grand Theft Auto series, which includes giving players the option of having sex with a prostitute in a car (complete with rocking car and moans), and then running over said prostitute and collecting the money you just gave her for the sex.  That resulted in a settlement giving up $35 in damages per customer if they seek it (at last reporting, none had).  Meanwhile, the class representatives were paid almost $25,000 for their trouble and the lawyers were paid $1 million.

Or take this one.  Did you know that loud noises hurt your ears?  Well, according to this suit, the ordinary reasonably prudent person doesn’t know that and thus turns up their Bluetooth to 11, because they are not properly warned.  The class got nothing, a few charities got some money, and representatives sought $12K and their lawyers sought $850K.

Seriously, follow Overlawyered for a month, and you will see many cases like this.

The point is that class actions are the dirtiest area in law.  If you want to talk about lawsuit abuse, there is the poster child.  I am not sure if they should be abolished altogether, but at the very least this is an area in serious need of reform because 1) it encourages lawsuits on the most ridiculous theories and 2) even if there is merit, the vast majority of the aggrieved get little in compensation.  Indeed, we are unlikely even to get some fun discovery on the subject, here–they will most likely settle before it comes to that.

So not interesting, but a tedious example of how broken the class action system is.  At least that is my prediction.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

Ron Paul Ryan for President?

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 6:07 am



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

So Ron Paul is set to announce something today, and The National Journal makes the following prediction about it:

Sources close to Paul, who is in his 12th term in the House, said he will unveil an exploratory presidential committee, a key step in gearing up for a White House race. He will also unveil the campaign’s leadership team in Iowa, where the first votes of the presidential election will be cast in caucuses next year.

Well, certainly with government overreach in the last few years, libertarianism is likely to be a more appealing position this year than in years before.  Still, it is Quixotic of him to keep trying, if only because of his tendency to blame America for September 11, which doesn’t fly in the Republican party.

Bluntly he is fine, even useful, as a Congressman, where he can be a reliable vote against big government and his more kooky beliefs are checked by their overwhelming lack of popularity.  I find him tolerable in that role.  But lord, he might be the only Republican who would be so bad that I would pull the lever for Obama.  And you guys know that is saying something.

And that is on the issues.  You will remember what I said about representatives running for President so I will only give you the Cliff’s Notes version: I like my candidates to have prior executive experience.  Well, that applies to Ron Paul, too.

Of course the last time I talked about this sort of thing (in relation to Michele Bachmann) I wrote:

And you know, if we have to pick a Representative with little executive experience, couldn’t it be Paul Ryan?

And wouldn’t you know it, they just might give me that option.  From a rumory post over at Ace of Spades HQ:

But I asked another journalist type (I won’t say who since I didn’t tell him I’d be quoting, it was a personal type question) and he said, “Well, he rules it out in his public statements but in his private statements…?” Not so much.

I asked, to be sure, if he was saying “Who knows what he says in private?” or if he was saying “I’ve heard what he says in private, and he’s not as firm on it as he is in public declarations.” He confirmed it was the latter.

I think the situation he’d be willing to consider it is if there’s no unifying, consensus figure in the primaries.

Which isn’t a very solid rumor, but it gave me an excuse to write that silly title.  I still think that his resumé needs more executive experience, but I feel better with the idea of him being president than Paul and/or Bachmann.  Which isn’t exactly high praise, but there you go.  Personally, if we were going to pick a budget fixing guy, Governor Chris Christie would be my choice.  I would love to see him raking Obama over the coals with the budget B.S. that has come out of Washington in the last few years and he is a lot closer to the minimal executive experience I prefer.

And of course you all know that Haley Barbour bowed out yesterday.  His official statement is here.  Which is too bad, because his credentials were better than most in the field (saying that with little knowledge of Barbour’s actual positions).

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing, who didn’t die yesterday (I was sick).]

Andrew Breitbart’s RIGHTeous IndigNATION: A Review . . . Of Sorts

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:53 am



I just finished Andrew Breitbart’s book Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!. (The words “Right” and “Nation” are placed in red print in the title, so that the title carries a nice double meaning. Hence the odd capitalization of the title of this post.)

This isn’t going to be your standard book review. It’s going to be a little more personal. I hope that’s OK.

Many of you know that I know Andrew personally. I met him at a monthly Los Angeles gathering that was for years hosted on the first Friday of every month by Scott Kaufer, a reader of the site and one of the greatest human beings I have ever met. Scott provided me with the key to a world of fascinating people too lengthy to list, but which has included Cathy Seipp, Mickey Kaus, Ann Coulter, Tammy Bruce, Jill Stewart, Amy Alkon, Dale Launer, Michael Walsh, Steve Oney, Matt Welch, Tim Cavanaugh, Mike Sullivan, Bruce Feirstein, Bob Sipchen, Ben Sheffner . . . the list goes on and on. And that list includes Andrew Breitbart, through whom I “met” (in some cases virtually) Larry O’Connor, Larry Solov, Adam Baldwin, John Nolte, James O’Keefe, Alex Marlow, Kurt Schlichter, Liberty Chick, Dana Loesch, and so on. Scott has called off the monthly gathering, and I am desperate to find some way to revive it. It enriched my life immeasurably, and I miss the meetings terribly.

For some reason Andrew eventually took to me, and started giving me inside information on what was going to break next on his Big sites — whether it was the NEA scandal, the next step in the ACORN scandal, a new victim of Roman Polanski — the stories seemed endless. And whatever the latest story was, it was always fascinating. Andrew would always swear me to secrecy, sort of . . . but he would permit me to drop vague hints. Long-time readers will remember me issuing knowing pronouncements about what might be the next shoe to drop. (Always trust content from Patterico!) Well, as I think many of you already suspected, 98% of the time I wasn’t guessing. I knew what was coming next.

I will never forget pacing in my back yard, shouting excitedly into my cell phone as Andrew was laying out the plan for releasing ACORN videos out of Los Angeles — and asking my advice about the best way to do it. We had been exchanging e-mails, and at some point I suspected that the woman he was describing on the main L.A. ACORN video — happily offering advice and counsel on how to further a house of child prostitution, according to Andrew — was the same woman who had told the ever-gullible L.A. Times columnist James Rainey that she had angrily turned O’Keefe and Giles out of her office.

If Breitbart had a video of that very same person actually helping O’Keefe and Giles, we had damning evidence of a columnist for a major daily newspaper — a media critic, no less! — accepting the bogus story of an ACORN shill without even having checked with Breitbart. Breitbart said the name “Lavelle Stewart” sounded familiar, but he had to go check. I kept prodding him. In one reminder, I sent this e-mail:

If you get a chance to call me, call the cell: [redacted].

I’m dying to know if “Lavelle Stewart” is our woman in L.A.

Andrew’s response was succinct: “YES!”

In no time flat, we were again on the phone. (Andrew is not big into e-mail. When you e-mail him asking for an important status update on a big story, usually the reply is a terse one-line e-mail asking you to call him. Which is way more fun anyway.) We knew we had a great story that would, once again, discredit the partisan media scoundrels who are responsible for shaping the narrative in this country. We were absolutely giddy. The story led to a series of posts on this site in which I danced with unabashed glee on the grave of James Rainey’s credibility. If you haven’t read those, do yourself a favor. I have almost never had this much fun as a blogger.

Breitbart’s book abounds with this kind of joyous storytelling, of taking on the Big Media goons — a lowly David facing down the Goliath Media Complex, armed with nothing but the truth.

Which, as it turns out — especially when leavened with a little humor — is all it takes to win the day against the biggest liars out there.

But it helps to have a camera in hand. Just today I read some of the best passages in the book. They have to do with Andrew’s efforts to debunk the lie that the Tea Party is racist. Much of the story is recounted in a legal filing (.pdf), highlighted here by Lee Stranahan, against the would-be speech-stomper Shirley Sherrod. I still hope to summarize that legal filing soon, as it recounts the context of the Sherrod lawsuit: namely, the B.S. accusations of racism against the Tea Party. The filing reminds us how Andrew and Larry O’Connor did yeoman’s work to prove that Congressmen were not spit on and called the “N” word. And then, as Andrew’s book so well documents, it all culminated in an incredible story in which Nevada union thugs pelted Breitbart’s group with eggs — and then damn near got him arrested by claiming that he was the guy throwing the eggs!!! I had read bits of this story online before, but it was very clarifying to soak in the entire narrative in the book. The fringe left did what they specialize in: attack you in the nastiest possible way, and then accuse you of doing precisely what they just did to you. Thank God Andrew had a cameraman recording everything, or he probably would have gone to jail — and Eric Boehlert would still be talking about the time Breitbart egged those poor union guys in Nevada.

(To be fair, I have run into people on the right who employ this precise tactic: attack you in the nastiest possible way, and then accuse you of doing precisely what they just did to you. Long-time readers know just what I mean. This tactic is, unfortunately, not limited purely to the left.)

Let me close by saying: I bought the book because Andrew is my friend. As I began reading it, I enjoyed it because I could hear his voice as I read it. But now that I have finished it, I am convinced that every single reader of this site would love it.

There are parts you will disagree with. I did. That’s fine. Andrew would tell you the same.

But if you share the belief that Andrew and I hold, that the real problem in this country is Big Media and its distortion of the basic facts of life — and that the proper way to combat this scourge is with a joyous, unblinking march straight towards the conflagration — you will love this book.

Buy it now. I promise you won’t regret it.


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