Are we too afraid of touch?

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I’ve raised this issue a few times before:
Park attendants being told to question people in parks (especially men) if they have no children
or men in the US refusing to get near children in need due their being afraid of being branded a child molestor whilst in the UK everyone is banned from coming into contact with children without a government permit.

Now the Times asks whether maybe this hasn’t gone a bit far, with especially men refusing to volunteer to do anything having to do with children due to the suspicion and bureaucracy involved.
Are we too afraid of touch? – Times Online

UK DNA database deemed unlawful

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The European Human Rights court in Strassbourg has decided that the UK DNA Database, which keeps the DNA data of people in it regardless of whether or not they have committed a crime and won’t let you out once you’re in, is in contravention of the basic right to privacy. Too right! You can’t just tape people’s lives without their consent – it’s one of the things that’s supposed to differentiate us from the totalitarians!

Schools: more sexist and more stupid

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This experiment took the top science students of this year and gave them 1965 exams. They all failed miserably, showing the dumbing down of education quite graphically. An interesting side effect was that the girls did worse than the boys did, even though other research puts girls ahead in current exams. This clearly shows something that is quite taboo in today’s society to put into words, but has been shown again and again: current education is built up to favour girls and make boys do badly.

NHS loses patient data

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Yes, these fantastic guys in the UK keep on building huge centralised databases: The NHS has had data of around 10,000 patients compromised in around 135 seperate incidents – last year alone!

In the Netherlands, they’ll be starting a system like this in 2009. Fortunately you can opt out here

If you live in NL, then you might want to remove yourself from the Vecozo database, which lists centralizes all insurance data on people in NL. There is no direct way to remove yourself from this, but you can try the contact page

Linux on the iPhone

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It’s only a matter of time 🙂

What we have:

– Framebuffer driver
– Serial driver
– Serial over USB driver
– Interrupts, MMU, clock, etc.

What we have in openiboot (but hasn’t been ported yet):

– Read-only support for the NAND

What we don’t have (yet!):

– Write support for the NAND
– Wireless networking
– Touchscreen
– Sound
– Accelerometer
– Baseband support

The size of the Bailout package

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The size of the bailout plan is truly staggering. Not just a little bit huge but immensely massive. Did you know it was larger than the following combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

As a matter of fact, the only single thing that comes even vaguely close (but still isn’t as huge) is the entire US cost of WWII!

the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion

Enable emoji

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It’s Apple cripples your 2.2 software update but hack it time! This time it’s the emoji, which only Japanese iphones got. So if you want it on your iphone or ipod, try the following:

You need to edit the file /User/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preferences.plist on the device -> whether you use a jailbreak to achieve this or merely some iTunes backup editor is up to you.

Add the following boolean key as ‘true’: KeyboardEmojiEverywhere

[Update: Cydia has added this change as a package: See here for more]

e-gold spanked by US judicial system

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In a surprise move, e-gold was dumped on by the US justice system because prosecution stated they must have known crooks were using the system to transfer money. Doesn’t this now mean that all banks in the US have to be slapped in the face, because, well, let’s face it – there are a load of crooks and they all need to put their money somewhere. Which means that all banks know their services are being used by crooks.

[HowTo] Enable Street View on Touch 2.2

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Because Apple are dicks and have disabled streetview on the 2.2 ipods in a pathetic attempt to make the iphone somehow more exclusive than the ipod, someone has had to come out and discover how to fix this 🙂

i’ve found the trigger so this is probably the easiest way for the time being…

1. get this file via ssh: /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/N45AP.plist
2. convert to xml at http://iappcat.com/plist/bin2xml
3. add

key>telephony /key>
dict>
key>maximumGeneration /key>
real>2.5 /real>
/dict>

underneath

key>standAloneContacts /key>
true/>

4. save then using that website again reconvert to binary
5. rename original file N45AP.old
6. copy new N45AP.plist in (make sure permissions are 644)
7. reboot ipod
all new Maps features work however you get a searching for service (replaces the word ipod in the top left) and waiting for activation message that pops up occassionally also music slot in prefs disappears (hjrry)

Hopefully someone can patch the frameworks or springboard which wouldnt require this to be done! Anyway if you’re desperate to try it out, thats all that needs to be done theres nothing wrong with stability or anything so you’re not going break anything permanately trying this out.
enjoy

[HowTo] Enable Street View on Touch 2.2 – iPod touch Fans forum