My first attempt to update my iPhone to iOS5 : semi-disaster

My first attempt to update my iPhone to iOS5 : semi-disaster

1. The update process crashed repeatedly.

2. I had to restore the phone to factory conditions and reinstall everything

3. The whole process took over 5 (yes, FIVE) hours... and those 5 hours do NOT count all the time I will have to spend FIXING the stuff that got BROKEN and messed up by the " update". Read on...

4. Icon arrangement came out all messed up. I have to spend time now rearranging all

the App icons in the screens and folders I had them

5. I LOST ALL the eBooks (100+ !!!) I had in the Stanza eBook reader app. Gone. I probably have them on my Windows 7 PC (which has NOT crashed even once in almost 2 years, it looks like MS *finally* learned how to write an OS...).

6. The Stanza bookreader app doesn't work with iOS5. I'll have to switch to Kindle or Nook because iBooks sucks. That means that once I search and locate my eBooks in the PC, I will have to CONVERT ALL of them from .ePub to .mobi so I can access them on Kindle. Drat... MORE time wasted...

7. I lost ALL my Safari bookmarks. ALL. GONE. Re-doing all this is going to take A LOT of time that I don't have.

8. I lost ALL my photos and videos. This one is MAJOR. Thankfully I back them up manually to an external drive and didn't lose them completely. But if I hadn't ...

9. I lost ALL the alarms I had set. Minor but annoying.

10. I lost ALL the world clocks I had set up. Minor but annoying.

11. I lost ALL my "Favorites" in the phonebook. Minor but annoying.

12. My voicemail lost its configuration, now I have to remember the damn password or call AT&T.

13. All the entries in my Calendar are now duplicated. That's more time I will have to spend fixing that.

14. the Weather app lost all the pre-set cities. Minor annoyance, more time wasted.

15. some apps, such as Weather Channel, got deleted. GONE. Now I will have to reinstall them. More time wasted.

16. I lost ALL the text messages I have sent or received over MANY years. Apparently there is NO WAY to recover that. Gee, thanks, Apple...

17. eMail accounts configuration was lost. Minor annoyance, more time wasted.

18. My phone's memory shows 4.3 Gb in "other". It looks like I will have to wipe out the phone AGAIN and reinstall everything.

Pirámides y astronomía antigua

RE: pirámides y astronomía antigua

... La mayoría de la gente se cree que porque los antiguos humanos aún no habían desarrollado tecnología, eran brutos. No, señores, eran homo sapiens, tan inteligentes e ingeniosos como nosotros. Su vida dependía de la agricultura, así que aprendieron a discernir las estaciones y a medirlas con el sol y las estrellas. Total, de noche no había más ná que hacer !

No sólo los egipcios construyeron edificios y plazoletas alineadas con los astros. Por TODO EL MUNDO existen construcciones así. Era algo normal, y demuestra que la humanidad luego de haber observado los cielos durante siglos aprendió a discernir y medir muchas cosas. En Irlanda (Newgrainge) y Perú (Caral) existen complejos de edificios más antiguos que las pirámides, también alineados con los astros.

Los taínos, de hecho, también alineaban sus plazas y canchas de pelota con los astros; arqueólogos han encontrado plazas taínas alineadas con el punto donde el sol sale en el solsticio, con estrellas como Betelgeuse, etc. en Turks & Caicos. En Antigua hay rocas con glifos alineadas con los puntos donde sale el sol en fechas específicas, con estrellas particulares, etc. De hecho, Tibes en Ponce es el observatorio astronómico más antiguo de las Antillas:

http://ponce.inter.edu/tibes/ingles/historia.html

http://www.timespub.tc/2005/04/talking-taino-starry-starry-night/

http://uwispace.sta.uwi.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2139/11062/Article%206%20-%20astronomy_Cerami.pdf?sequence=1

Why Apple's Main Product was Steve Jobs image

• 
  Les comparto algo que acabo de postear en el foro Veritas... :-)
  
  
  

  El principal producto que Apple mercadeaba no eran ni los teléfonos ni los music players ni sus compus ni sus tablets. El principal producto que Apple mercadeaba era a Steve.

  
  
  
  
  Raul Soto I mean, el tipo era un genio vendiendo.
  
  
  El iPhone no hace nada que otros smartphones no hagan también. De hecho, mi iPhone se crashea mucho más a menudo que mi PC con Windows 7.
  
  
  El iPad no tiene access a Flash (o sea que no puedes ver cuchocientos programas y películas gratis en los websites de las cadenas de televisión, ni jugar montones de juegos gratis en el web), no tiene slots para USB ni tarjetas SD para uno mover files del cacharro a la compu fácilmente, no; todo tiene que irse por la leña de programa ese iTunes. Lo mismo los iPods. Las compus hacen lo mismo que las de Guindous por el doble del precio. Con un Kindle de $200 puedes leer los mismos libros que con un iPad de $500.
  
  
  Sin embargo mucha gente ve los productos de Apple como mejores que los de la competencia. No son malos, pero tienen serias limitaciones. Pero la gente los compra por montones, pagando el precio premium que Apple cobra - gracias al famoso Steve Jobs' Distortion Field.
  
  
  El que la IMAGEN de Jobs era el principal producto de Apple se veía cada vez que lanzaban un producto "nuevo" que aunque no era otra cosa que un catch up con OTROS productos de la competencia, como quiera la gente lo compraba, aún los que tenían la versión que Apple había tirado 8 meses antes.
  
  
  La gente JURA y PERJURA que Steve Jobs era un Da Vinci moderno, dando como ejemplos Apple y Pixar. ¿Pero es que uds se creen que Steve fue quien se inventó a Woody y a Buzz Lightyear y al iPad? Jobs era un CEO, él daba dirección high-level, y aprobaba o desaprobaba conceptos para productos. Pero Jobs no se inventó nada de eso. Zuckerberg se inventó Facebook, pero hace años que él no es el programador que lo actualiza. Larry Page y Sergei Brin se inventaron Google, pero hace años que ellos no son quienes inventan y programan ahí, Bill Gates escribió el MS-DOS original y junto a Jobs se pirateó el GUI de Xerox (Gates para hacer Windows, Jobs para hacer la Mac), pero nadie sostiene que Bill Gates se inventó Powerpoint ni el XBox.
  
  
  Nadie en su sano juicio se cree que Kevin Sharer se mete en los laboratorios de nosotros en Amgen a inventarse las medicinas.
  
  
  ¿Por qué creen entonces que JOBS fue el inventor de todo eso? Porque Apple cultivó esa IMAGEN de genio rebelde, irreverente y contra cultura. Porque ESA imagen, no los cacharritos electrónicos, es el producto principal de Apple. Los gadgets son el símbolo.

About China's Naval Threat ...

About China's Naval Threat ...

I just read this article, and posted the following rant at Veritas, one of my favorite Fbk discussion groups. ;-)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/10/us-usa-china-military-idUSTRE7990S620111010

That's how services compete among themselves in the Pentagon - by trying to grab as much of the budget pie as possible. At one point several years ago, when the USA started getting heavily involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan, plus in counterterrorism activities around the globe, the Navy found itself relegated to a secondary role as the Army's cargo drivers. With the once mighty Soviet fleet rusting in Kiev and Arkhangel, NO ONE in the world had a Navy that even got close to ours.

We were no longer fighting the vast armor columns of the Warsaw Pact, or the splendid supersonic naval bombers of the Soviet Atlantic fleet. Now we were fighting Ahmed the Towelhead with a Chinese-made AK-47 and 10kg of C4 strapped around his balls, and his 10 thousand cousins. The Army, once thought to be an obsolete left over from mid 20th century in an era of missiles, fighters and carriers, was once again king of the services and getting the lion's share of the budget. The Air Force, after doing away with its Iraqi counterpart in like the first 7 minutes of the 2003 invasion, morphed and settled into its close ground air support role and never looked back. Even the Marine Corps found itself at home in the sands and cliffs along with the Army, thousands of miles away from the nearest beach.

That whole state of affairs, of course, didn't sit well with the admirals. Yeah, they fired Tomahawks from ships and subs, yeah the SEALs are doing awesome things everywhere, yeah they get to launch drones every time Obama wants to execute an American-born terrorist without them pesky niceties such as due process. Sure, they got to blow up Qadaffi's butt and provide command & control while our esteemed Euro NATO allies were still sorting out which of them whose turn it was to bring the Grey Poupon.

But that's not what the Admirals got into the Navy for. It's SHIPS, big and scary and shiny, bristling with mighty missile launchers and mysterious antennae and full of white-clad sailors saluting them and polishing brass to a mirror and kissing their ass. Yeah, SHIPS. That's the ticket.

So... how do they keep the Navy from feeling irrelevant in the Brave New World of enemies with no navies to speak of? Hmmm...

Of course! The People's Republic of China! The big bad dragon replaces the big bad Soviet bear! They bought a floating pile of shit from Ukraine and spent 10 years scraping the rust off - they have a CARRIER !!! Forget that we have like 14 of them, and that ours are bigger and mightier, and that even countries like Brasil and Thailand have carriers... No! They.Are.THE.NEXT.BIG.Threat!

THAT's how the Navy gets its budget appropriations passed!

And now, after this not-so-frequent stroke of Generalísimo wisdom, I have to go design @#$%^ primers for PCR because this week I've got to clone genes.