Charging the Palm Pre

I don't own one [1], but the guy next to me just got a brand new Palm Pre. The battery was low and it wasn't obvious to both of us how to charge the device with the Micro USB cord. After searching the web for a good 10 minutes I finally found instructions.

User manual for the Palm Pre is here --> Palm Pre User Manual (PDF)

Image of relevant item:

Why wasn't charging the device obvious?

1. I was looking for a Micro USB port on the bottom of the device
2. The quality of the engineering is so tight that the cover of the port on the side doesn't appear as if you can open it
3. With any new device you are less likely to really try and force the opening of anything (especially if it isn't yours)

Why were search engines unhelpful in finding information on how to charge the device [2]?

1. The search engines are still in the device pre-release hype phase. Search engine indexes are focused on documents that speculate rather than provide fact (see below for evidence)
   
2. Searches for "charging palm pre" turned up numerous hype pages dedicated to the fancy cordless charging device
3. Searches for "palm pre user manual" turned up countless pages of possible pre-release leaked user manuals all of which had received C&D letters from Sprint (or Palm) in that they we're no longer available to download
   

[1] Still a happy iPhone user
[2] unhelpful in that it took longer than 10 minutes to find the answer (we're on internets time ppl)

Security considerations while restoring iPhone

Security considerations while restoring iPhone

Well it happened. I was at the airport ready to fly off to Las Vegas when my iPhone quit working[1]. Upon arriving in Vegas I went strait to the Apple store in the shops at Caesars Palace, and within 10 minutes was issued a brand new phone. The new phone allowed my phone number to work, but didn't have any of the applications and contacts that I had on my old phone. I felt out of touch with all of my social networking applications missing.

When I got home I decided that I was going to document the authentication information that was restored form the backup I had of my phone the day before it broke. I wondered which applications stored authentication information during a backup.

List of security related items that PLEASED me after the restore:

• Apple Mail - both gmail and my companies (both imaps) services didn't have stored credentials. No emails where backup (good in my opinion).
• Facebook Application - same thing, the program normally has the name and password cached in some capacity, but I was required to re-authenticate after the restore.
• App Store (iTunes authentication) - Re-authentication was required.
  
• iTunes Store (I purchased a song to test this out, and will not disclose which one :-). Re-authentication required for iTunes account which is good. Apparently not shared somewhere under the OS covers with App Store (good).
• All programs needed to request location information again.
• Twinkle needed to be re-authenticated. It did have cached tweets from the backup.

List of security related items that BOTHERED me after the restore:

• Anything web based! All of my google mail sessions where still there. Any sort of session data that was on the system at the time of backup was restored into Safari. I question the value of this.
• All of your Safari web history is restored.
  
• Notes Application - all notes where still there. Since notes didn't require authentication before it didn't now. Be careful putting sensitive data in your notes.
• I had to re-enable erase after 10 failed authentication attempts feature. <-- on a broken screen phone that is still responding (via "vibrates" when auth failed attempt) can be used to start destruction of data.
• Passcode lock was NOT restored. (4 digit number used to unlock the screen).

[1] Quit as in the screen was pure white. Hard restart didn't fix. Phone still responded evident in that it would vibrate on a failed authentication attempt.

Steve Fossett wreckage has been found

The StarTribune has this:

Crews conducting an aerial search late Wednesday spotted what turned out to be the wreckage in the Inyo National Forest near the town of Mammoth Lakes, Sheriff John Anderson said. They confirmed around 11 p.m. that the tail number matched Fossett's single-engine Bellanca plane, he said.

Hopefully the family can find some closure from this.

Search for Fossett crash site back on?

Back in September of 2007 I took part in the search for Steve Fossett. You can learn about it here.

All this work went unsuccessful and Mr. Fossett was declared dead in February of 2008.

It seems however that some of Mr. Fossett's stuff (papers) turned up on a trail in the Mammoth Lakes area (map above). From this this article:

The call came last night. A story from a friend about a ski shop owner hiking in the mountains off trail above Mammoth Lakes California near the area of Minaret Lake and Minaret Mine. Apparently the man came across what appeared to be some papers lying in a remote path, but what he may have found wasn’t some wayward trash left by a careless camper.

Tattered and crumpled on the ground, the Mammoth Lakes local found what appears to be two FAA cards that listed the name Steve Fossett, both were apparently either issued or had some sort of connection to the State of Illinois. The two cards were found with a small amount of money and not far away, a sweat jacket, also a bit worn and beaten up from the weather.

I think I've identified Minaret Lake in Google Earth:

Lat: 37.659534
Long: -119.156814

Here it is on maps.google.com (confirmed with the lake name):


View Larger Map

It should be noted that this area was NOT part of the high resolution imagery provided to Google Earth patrons involved with the Fossett search. We maybe were looking in the wrong area?

Is it possible the search could be back on? How could one go about getting high resolution imagery of this area shortly after the time of Mr. Fossett's disappearance?

[UPDATE 10/1/08] Google Earth Blog mentions the coordinates to the lake here and has provided a KML file for consumption here.

[UPDATE 10/2/08] The wreckage has been confirmed as his.

A real life "Training Day"

A fun read can be found here, from the FOXNews website.

It seems that Mr. Hick's was operating a corrupt police organization not unlike the one portrayed in the Academy award winning movie Training Day. From the article:

Authorities say Hicks wasn't interested in busting bad guys in those raids — he was after the drugs instead, and allegedly kept the money and sold the seized cocaine and marijuana to rival dealers. None of those rotten raids netted any arrests, and officials say kept it up for almost a decade until he and his accomplices were picked up in an undercover sweep in 2001.

This is how it came apart for Hicks:

For nearly 10 years, feds say, this crew robbed and extorted hundreds of pounds of marijuana and kilograms of cocaine, telling their targets they were DEA task force officers even as they robbed them blind. But on April 20, 1999, one bust went wrong, and it started the investigation that would bring them down two years later.

According to press reports, a drug dealer was on the phone with his girlfriend in Alsip, Ill., when his house was raided by Hicks' crew. The woman thought her boyfriend was being attacked, and she called local police. They arrived on the scene to find Hicks & co., who offered a cover story the cops found suspicious.

Mr. Hicks is on the lamb, and I bet he has a little bit of cash he never told the IRS about.

Some history of Fannie and Freddie

The New York Times ran this article in September of 2003.

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

This organization was to:

... determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

It is also noted that:

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken.

A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

OK. So we have people noticing a problem and calling for some change. Remember change is the only thing we're looking for these days in politics.

This part of the article speaks to some of the problems:

''The current regulator does not have the tools, or the mandate, to adequately regulate these enterprises,'' Mr. Oxley said at the hearing. ''We have seen in recent months that mismanagement and questionable accounting practices went largely unnoticed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight,'' the independent agency that now regulates the companies.

... and the piece de resistance ...

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

WOW!

An election doomsday

From the Washington post we get this.

On Nov. 5, the presidential election winds up in a electoral-college tie, 269-269, the Democrat-controlled House picks Sen. Barack Obama as president, but the Senate, with former Democrat Joe Lieberman voting with Republicans, deadlocks at 50-50, so Vice President Dick Cheney steps in to break the tie to make Republican Sarah Palin his successor.

"Wow," said longtime presidential historian Stephen Hess. "Wow, that would be amazing, wouldn't it?"

"If this scenario ever happened, it would be like a scene from the movie 'Scream' for Democrats," said Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh.