SBTPS

Acoording to a report by Reuters, Apple’s generous customer service may be causing huge problems for victims of iPhone theft. The warranty plan is tied to the iPhone and not the person who owns the phone; this means anyone can take an iPhone to an Apple Store for service or replacement.

The ease of trading in stolen iPhones and selling their replacements makes them nearly as tempting as grabbing cash. In cities from coast-to-coast, reports of iPhone thefts are common. While some thieves sell the phones through the traditional channels of fencing stolen goods, examples abound of stolen iPhones being brought back to Apple, as if broken, for either replacement or a discount on a new unit. ”Apple seems to have not considered stolen devices and instead is relying on the honor system,” says Robert Siciliano, a consultant for Intel Corp’s technology security unit McAfee and an identity theft expert. “The honor system is devised with the mindset that we are all sheep and there are no wolves.” Siciliano says he has known of this problem for a while, but doesn’t see any immediate solution. “Until consumers scream loud enough about this issue, Apple probably won’t do anything about it.”

While this approach is fantastic for the honest iPhone owners, thieves are using Apple’s good nature to carry out a type of laundering for stolen iPhones. When a phone is reported as stolen, a carrier can blacklist it as stolen and disable it by using its device specific IMEI number. If the device has been swapped or replaced at an Apple Store, that security measure has now been bypassed. This enables a thief to sell on or use a brand new iPhone without fear of recrimination.

Apple has yet to comment on the findings within the report but let’s hope a simple solution can be found that will not cause pain for the honest amongst us. The last thing we need is for Apple to change its policies and make life more difficult when it comes to iPhone service and replacement.

Source: Reuters, Image Wikipedia

With the South Carolina primary set for Saturday and his prospects fading quickly, Rick Perry has decided to step out of the race for the GOP nomination for President in 2012. CNN is reporting that Perry will hold a press conference at 11AM on Thursday in South Carolina to formally announce his decision and to endorse former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

In South Carolina, Gingrich has managed to mount a challenge to Mitt Romney, although Romney still holds a significant lead in the polls. Perry’s donors had recently given indications that they saw the writing on the wall and that the Texas Governor was not going to be in a position to capture the GOP nod.

After strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, Romney brought plenty of momentum and a huge war chest into South Carolina. But recent questions about Romney’s business dealings as well as his personal wealth and savvy tax avoidance have drawn the suspicions of wary voters. At a time when many voters are increasingly concerned about the cozy relationship between big business and big government, Romney seems to represent the worst case scenario.

But even with the recent dents to Romney’s image, it seems like his is going to be the only campaign that is going to be able to sustain a strong run throughout the primary season. Romney is the candidate who appeals to those who are holding onto a traditional view of government as primarily benevolent and well-meaning. Newt Gingrich’s supporters fall into the same broad category, but with slightly different values. It will be interesting to see if any of the GOP candidates will generate the broad-based appeal required to topple President Obama in 2012.

The world can be roughly divided into two parts – TV lovers and TV bashers. Television, for most of us, is a good stress reliever. The following people, on the other hand, are the ones bringing a bad name to TV. As in the case of all good things, these party poopers make you want to smash your TV with your bare hands. I present you a list of people who bring out murderous tendencies in regular humans with their antics.

Highly Overrated Actors on TV

David Spade
Just Shoot Me! before I do, as David Spade keeps attempting to suck the joy out of television! Saturday Night Live showed us the amusingly sarcastic side of David Spade. After Rules of Engagement, the audiences decided that they have had enough versions of his sharp-tongued, dwarfy and skirt-chasing characters.

David Caruso
Take a bow, Lieutenant Horatio Caine, as David Caruso enters this list with honors. He chooses to portray every complex emotion by wearing and removing his sunglasses. To that, he adds some crass one-liners delivered in a deep monotone. Crime solving on CSI: Miami hits a hilarious low.

Sarah Jessica Parker
Sex and the City may have created a sartorial revolution, but the equine-faced Sarah deserves a lot of flak for portraying the thirty plus Carrie as a giddy sixteen year old. Thank heavens for the Vivienne Westwood outfits and the Manolo Blahnik footwear that shifted the spotlight from Ms. Parker’s juvenile attempts at acting.

Jennifer Love Hewitt
This Ghost Whisperer had her job all sorted out. A maximum of two expressions fleeted across Jennifer Love Hewitt’s face throughout the time the show was aired. A collective sigh of relief was heard in some quarters when this show was abruptly pulled off the air.

Miley Cyrus
A chubby face that sings in a high school, Miley Cyrus fulfills the requirements for being a preteen idol. As far as her acting abilities are concerned, the less said, the better. Let us hope she manages to gain some of that when she loses her baby fat.

Charlie Sheen
Was Charlie Sheen actually acting on Two And A Half Men? If not for the laughter track, it seemed like a reality show, giving a glimpse into his personal world. The slow speech, the lost eyes looked so natural, it could be termed ‘method acting’, except for the fact that it was not.

Ashton Kutcher
The role of Michael Kelso on That 70′s Show embodied the spirit of Ashton Kutcher. He followed it with Punk’d, which reinstated the fact that Ashton Kutcher equalled bad television. He seemed to have done a huge favor to television audiences by moving over to the big screen. We can now touch our remote without the fear of getting punk’d. Rejoice!

David Hasselhoff
So what’s with this list and the name ‘David’, as they all seem to hatch a conspiracy to annihilate television? Before all the episodes of drunken rants happened, David Hasselhoff was a Baywatch star (not actor, but star) who didn’t even bring any star value to the show. Can’t really blame the guy, can you, when you had Pamela, Carmen and Yasmin grabbing all the eyeballs.

Other Overrated Actors on TV

The stellar names above deserved a special mention, for reasons of mass aversion. Here are a few more actors who have unknowingly unleashed an epidemic of misery on the viewers. Let us hope they spare us the agony of viewing them on television in 2012.

1. Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives)
2. Fran Drescher (The Nanny)
3. Minka Kelly (Charlie’s Angels)
4. Calista Flockhart (Ally McBeal, Brothers and Sisters)
5. Spencer Pratt (The Hills)
6. Alec Baldwin (30 Rock)
7. Gillian Anderson (The X-Files)
8. Ron Eldard (Arresting Behavior)
9. All the Disney Horrors – Selena Gomez, Ashley Tisdale, Raven-Symoné, Demi Lovato and the likes.
10. The Cast of The Bold and the Beautiful and The Young and the Restless

These actors have played a part in television being called the ‘idiot box’. However, dislike is a very subjective term, and you are obviously free to dispute this list. Acting prowess aside, they have managed to inadvertently give us some comic relief, putting a smirk (not a smile!) on our faces. After all, isn’t this a part of entertainment too?

By KAREN MATTHEWS

The Associated Press

NEW YORK — A former investment banker who says she was sexually assaulted after a hotel desk clerk in Finland gave a copy of her room key to a drunken fellow guest because he claimed to be her husband filed a lawsuit against the Starwood hotel chain on Monday.

Alison Fournier said she left her job after the Jan. 15 assault and moved from New York to Florida to be near her family.

“To this day, I still suffer from the memories of that night, and I am not able to put it behind me,” Fournier said at a Manhattan news conference at which she was joined by high-profile lawyer Gloria Allred.

Fournier said the man entered her room at the Hotel Kamp in Helsinki at 4 a.m. and began groping her in bed. She said she was terrified that she was going to be raped but grabbed a bathrobe and fled.

“I don’t want this to happen again to any woman traveling for her career,” Fournier said.

Allred, who in a nationally televised news conference in November stood with a Chicago woman accusing former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain of forcing himself on her, said the hotel clerk gave Fournier’s key to the drunken fellow guest without checking his identification. She said Fournier, 31, was traveling alone and no one else was registered to her room.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Allred said the man who assaulted her client hasn’t been criminally prosecuted.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., which is based in Stamford, Conn., and has 1,071 properties worldwide, said in a statement, “We are taking this allegation seriously and are working with the hotel in question to understand the facts and any breach of security that may have contributed to this very unfortunate event.”

Fournier said she had often stayed at Starwood hotels and expected “a certain level of security” there.

The Associated Press generally does not name people who report being sexually assaulted unless they choose to identify themselves publicly, as Fournier has done.

Cain denied the allegations made by the Chicago woman. He suspended his presidential campaign.

___

January 10, 2012 08:51 AM EST

Copyright 2012, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of the Mac App Store, Apple’s attempt to remake software distribution by offering an easy-to-use digital download store for Mac apps linked to the company’s existing iTunes Store infrastructure.

The Mac App Store gained prominence throughout the year as Apple added more and more of its own software to the marketplace, even opting to use the Mac App Store as the primary method of distribution for OS X Lion. Less than a year after the store’s launch, Apple announced that the Mac App Store had seen over 100 million downloads, not including purchases of OS X Lion, app updates, or multiple downloads from a single transaction.

In an effort to assess the impact of the Mac App Store on established Mac software companies, we chatted with Aspyr, which offers over a dozen games through the store including the current top-grossing game and Mac App Store Game of the Year Civilization V: Campaign Edition [Mac App Store]. Other major titles from Aspyr include Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Call of Duty 4, and DOOM 3.

Aspyr is in a relatively unique position among Mac App Store developers in that it already offered a significant digital distribution platform of its own through its GameAgent marketplace. But the Mac App Store has still been able to attract a significant amount of business from Aspyr customers, with Aspyr telling us that the Mac App Store accounted for sales of roughly 500,000 units across all of Aspyr’s titles in 2011, representing 50-60% of the company’s digital distribution business.

In particular, Aspyr credits the Mac App Store with breathing new life into older titles, bringing them to the attention of more casual gamers who would not have otherwise sought out the games. Unsurprisingly, games that receive featured treatment from Apple in the form of banners and other promotional mentions are the strongest performers for Aspyr.

Even beyond the Mac App Store, Aspyr cites general growth of the Mac platform as another driver of increased software sales. The Mac has seen steady momentum in outpacing overall PC market growth every quarter for nearly six years, most recently setting a new high with 12.9% of the market in the third quarter of 2011.

Overall, the Mac App Store remains heavily skewed toward Apple’s own software, with the top six most popular apps and the eight highest-grossing apps in the store being Apple software. But given the volume of downloads on the store, a number of other developers are clearly seeing success with the store as it is proving popular with Mac users looking for ease of purchase and installation. According to our sister site AppShopper, there are currently over 8,900 apps available in the Mac App Store, making for a substantial library of content easily found and downloaded through the marketplace.

It’s amazing when, on a rare occasion, the image of a superstar – or even Jesus himself – appears in a cloud formation, or even on a piece of toast. Whether you want to pay tribute to a famous singer, or even your favorite Star Wars personality, you can do it with toast. Your creation might not be a miracle but it will be interesting and unusual. Visitors to your home will certainly notice and ask about the unique wall hanging and they’ll look again when you tell them it’s made from toast! Bread art looks like uncommon tiles with images you choose to put on them.

When you use bread and toast you can create any number of art pieces. In addition to the bread you’ll need a piece of foam board for hanging your finished art. Also, purchase Mod Podge or a similar, pasty product, to coat the art and prevent mold.

Decide on the image you want for the wall hanging. You can use a stencil, and create some images on toast, or you can just mix white bread with other colors of bread to spell out a sentiment. The best bread you can use for the art is the type that features four square sides, rather than a type with a rounded top.

Draw a grid on paper so you’ll know which pieces to put where. Decide which pieces will be regular bread and which ones will need to be toasted. If you’re using a stencil, lay it on the toasted bread (set to toast as dark or light as you want), and scrape away the top of the toast inside the stencil. Or, make a reverse stencil from paper, and scrape away everything except the stencil image.

It’s best to test a couple of pieces of toast so you can set the toaster to lightly toast or blacken the bread. Also, take the bread out of the wrappers and lay it out, overnight, to allow it to harden.

For bread that won’t be toasted, coat one side and around the edges with the adhesive, which dries clear. Allow to sit overnight, flip the bread, and apply the glue to the other side. Allow it to dry overnight as well. The glue creates a lustrous finish for the artwork.

After toasting the pieces required for your design, apply the glue to both sides, as stated above. Assemble the wall hanging by cutting the foam board to the size you need. Glue the pieces onto it and it’s ready to hang. You and your guests will be quite impressed!

Source: http://www.instructables.com/id/8-Bit-Toaster-Art/