The Amen Break

She sure likes the throw that word around a lot. But is it really that great being a maverick?

Maverick was a dick, always tailgating the Iceman.

But seriously, is a maverick what America needs right now? America really needs change, not some lone non-conformist rebel.

And is it really great praise coming from someone who pronouces “nuclear” as “nucular”? In fact, in all the videos I’ve seen of Sarah Palin speaking, she barely seems able to string a sentence together.

Surely the most powerful nation on the planet doesn’t want someone in the White House who appears to the rest of the world as being as dumb as a stick.

Uh, I mean, again..

As stated above, this press release is entirely fictional, however there is an exciting (and real) project in progress to bring a similar idea to fruition, called Webconverger.

Unfortunately, it’s really designed as a kiosk browser, and it’s still a little rough around the edges for consumer use. Configuring non-dhcp networking is not straightforward, and setting your own default homepage (which is a fairly basic requirement) will cost you £100 GBP for a customised version. In addition, I had trouble getting it to install on my Eee PC 701 4GB.

I would really love to see Mozilla put their full weight behind a project like this.

FirefoxOS has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Note: This post originally featured the press release presented as if it were real, followed by the admission that it was just fantasy. However, as Mike pointed out, these sort of things can sometimes go very pear shaped. The risk was minimal, given my readership levels, but it wasn’t worth taking the chance.

Friends,

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies — who must soon vacate the White House — are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday’s New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:

“Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.

“Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

“At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

“Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury’s proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions.”

Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to “consult” in the bailout.

The problem is, nobody truly knows what this “collapse” is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn’t know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can’t figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.

And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Falling for whom? NOTHING in this “bailout” package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.

Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What’s this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?

It has everything to do with it. This so-called “collapse” was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people’s home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it’s because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn’t afford. Here’s the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage “crisis” may never have happened.

This bailout’s mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It’s to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It’s to make sure their yachts and mansions and “way of life” go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!

I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something — NOW! Here’s what you can do immediately:

1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they’ve made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what’s the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street.

2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly-called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC).

3. Call your Representative in Congress and your Senators. (click here to find their phone numbers). Tell them what you told Senator Obama.

When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Having read further the details of this bailout bill, you need to know you are being lied to. They talk about how they will prevent golden parachutes. It says NOTHING about what these executives and fat cats will make in SALARY. According to Rep. Brad Sherman of California, these top managers will continue to receive million-dollar-a-month paychecks under this new bill. There is no direct ownership given to the American people for the money being handed over. Foreign banks and investors will be allowed to receive billion-dollar handouts. A large chunk of this $700 billion is going to be given directly to Chinese and Middle Eastern banks. There is NO guarantee of ever seeing that money again.

P.P.S. From talking to people I know in DC, they say the reason so many Dems are behind this is because Wall Street this weekend put a gun to their heads and said either turn over the $700 billion or the first thing we’ll start blowing up are the pension funds and 401(k)s of your middle class constituents. The Dems are scared they may make good on their threat. But this is not the time to back down or act like the typical Democrat we have witnessed for the last eight years. The Dems handed a stolen election over to Bush. The Dems gave Bush the votes he needed to invade a sovereign country. Once they took over Congress in 2007, they refused to pull the plug on the war. And now they have been cowered into being accomplices in the crime of the century. You have to call them now and say “NO!” If we let them do this, just imagine how hard it will be to get anything good done when President Obama is in the White House. THESE DEMOCRATS ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS THE BACKBONE WE GIVE THEM. CALL CONGRESS NOW.

For 13 years I have subscribed to the above philosophy (from the brilliant XKCD). But when I got the iPhone, the choice of ringtones was, frankly, abysmal. I looked around for a decent ringing tone, but ended up settling for the original Super Mario theme from the NES.

While super-geeky, I was never entirely happy with this situation.

Thankfully, I finally found some decent ones at RCP Tones, and all is right with the world again (mostly).

Now if only Apple woud allow us to change the “New Text Message” tone..

Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Joe Biden, has already met with many world leaders over his nearly 36 year career as a United States Senator. This is just a partial list:

As of September 23, 2008

Iraq
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi (May 2004 - April 2005)
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari (April 2005 - May 2006)
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (April 2006 - Present)
President Jalal Talabani (June 2005 - Present)
Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani (June 2005 - Present)
Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani (March 2006 - Present)

Israel
Prime Minister Golda Meir (March 1969 - June 1974)
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (July 1992 - November 1995)
Prime Minister Shimon Peres (November 1995 - June 1996)
Prime Minister Menachem Begin (June 1977 - October 1983)
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir (October 1986 - July 1992)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (June 1996 - July 1999)
Prime Minister Ehud Barak (June 1996 - July 1999)
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (March 2001 - April 2006)
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (April 2006 - Present)
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (January 2006 - present)

Palestinian Territories
Chairman Yasser Arafat (September 1993 - November 2004)
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (November 2004 - Present)
Prime Minister Dr. Salam Fayyad (June 2007 - Present)
Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei (October 2003 - March 2006)

Jordan
King Hussein (August 1952 - February 1999)
King Abdullah (August 2005-Present)

Egypt
President Hosni Mubarak (October 1981 - Present)
President Anwar Sadat (October1970 - October 1981)

Libya
Prime Minister Col. Muammar Qaddafi (March 1977 - March 1979)

Lebanon
Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri (October 1992 - December 1998)
Prime Minister Najib Mikati (April 2005 - July 2005)

Bahrain
Crown Prince Shaikh Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa (March 1999 - Present)

Syria
President Bashar al-Assad (July 2000 - Present)

Turkey
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (March 2003 - Present)
President Ahmet Sezer (May 2000 - August 2007)
Prime Minister/President* Abdullah Gul (November 2002 - March 2003, Current President)
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit (January 1999 - May 1999)
Prime Minister Demirel (November 1991 - June 1993)

Greece
President Kostis Stephanopoulos (March 1995 - March 2005)
Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis (March 2004 - Present)
Prime Minister Kostantinos Mitsotakis (April 1990 - October 1993)
Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou (October 1981 - July 1989)
(October 1993 - January 1996)

Cyprus
President George Vassiliou (February 1988 - February 1993)
President Glafcos Clerides (February 1993 - February 2003)

Afghanistan
President Hamid Karzai (December 2001 - Present)

Pakistan
President Asif Ali Zardari (September 2008 - Present)*
Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani (March 2008 - Present)
President Pervez Musharraf (June 2001 - August 2008)
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (December 1988 - August 1990, October 1993 - November 1996)
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (November 1990 - July 1993, February 1997 - October 1999)

India
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (May 2004 - Present)
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (May 1996 - June 1996)
(March 1998 - May 2004)

Sri Lanka
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe (May 1993 - August 1994)
(December 2001 - April 2004)

Russia
President Vladimir Putin (May 2000 - May 2008; current Prime Minister)
President Boris Yeltsin (July 1991 - December 1999)
Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev (March 1990 - December 1991)
Soviet Union President Andrei Gromyko (July 1985 - October 1988)
Premier of the Soviet Union Alexey Kosygin (October 1964 - October 1980)
Premier of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev (May 1960 - July 1964)

France
President Jacques Chirac (May 1995 - May 2007)
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin (May 2005 - May 2007)
President Francois Mitterrand (May 1981 - May 1995)

U.K.
Queen Elizabeth (February 1952 - Present)
Prime Minister Tony Blair (May 1997 - June 2007)
Prime Minister John Major (November 1990 - May 1997)
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (May 1979 - November 1990)

Ireland
Prime Minister Bertie Ahern (June 1997 - Present)
Prime Minister John Bruton (December 1994 - June 1997)
Prime Minister Albert Reynolds (February 1992 - December 1994)
Prime Minister Charles Haughey (December 1979 - June 1981)
(March 1982 - December 1982)
(March 1987 - February 1992)

Germany
Chancellor Angela Merkel (November 2005 - Present)
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (October 1998 - November 2005)
Chancellor Helmut Kohl (October 1982 - October 1998)
Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (May 1974 - October 1982)

Italy
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (June 2001 - May 2006)
(May 2008 - Present)
Prime Minister Romano Prodi (May 2006 - May 2008)
Prime Minister Cossiga (July 1989 - April 1992)

Serbia
President of Serbia Boris Tadic (July 2004 - Present)
Prime Minister of Serbia Vojislav Kostunica (March 2004 - Present)
Prime Minister of Serbia Zoran Djindjic (January 2001 - March 2003)
President of Serbia Slobodan Milosevic (May 1989 - July 1997)

Yugoslavia
Premier of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito (January 1953 - May 1980)

Croatia
President of Croatia Franjo Tudjman (May 1990 - December 1999)

Slovenia
Prime Minister of Slovenia Janez Drnovsek (December 2002 - Present)
President of Kosovo Ibrahim Rugova (March 2002 - January 2006)
President of Slovenia Milan Kucan (October 1991 - December 2002)

Bosnia and Herzegovina
President of Bosnia Haris Silajdzic (November 2006 - Present)
President of Bosnia Sulejman Tihić (October 2002 - November 2006)
President of Bosnia Alija Izetbegovic (March 1992 - October 2000)

Kosovo (as an independent nation)
President Fatmir Sejdiu (January 2008 - Present)
Prime Minister Hashim Thaci (January 2008 - Present)

Poland
President Lech Walesa (December 1990 - December 1995)
Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz (October 1993 - March 1995)

Czech Republic
President Vaclav Havel (February 1993 - February 2003)

Hungary
Prime Minister Gyula Horn (July 1994 - July 1998)
President Arpad Goncz (August 1990 - August 2000)
Prime Minister Viktor Orban (July 1998 - May 2002)

Finland
Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen (April 1995 - April 2003)

Romania
President Ion Iliescu (December 1989 - November 1996)

Georgia
President Mikheil Saakashvili (January 2004 - Present)
President Eduard Shevardnadze (October 1995 - November 2003)

Kazakhstan
President Nursultan Nazarbayev (December 1991 - Present)

Ukraine
President Viktor Yushchenko (January 2005 - Present)

Canada
Prime Minister Paul Martin (December 2003 - February 2006)
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (September 1984 - June 1993)

NATO
Secretary General Lord George Robertson (October 1999 - January 2004)
Secretary General Javier Solana (December 1995 - October 1999)
Secretary General Manfred Woerner (July 1988 - August 1994)
Secretary General Lord Peter Carrington (June 1984 - July 1988)

China
President Jiang Zemin (March 1993 - March 2003)
Premier Zhu Rongji (March 1998 - March 2003)

Hong Kong
Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa (July 1997 - March 2005)

Taiwan
President Chen Shui-Bian (May 2000 - Present)

Korea
President Kim Dae Jung (February 1998 - February 2003)

Singapore
Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (June 1959 - November 1990)
Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong (November 1990 - August 2004)
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (August 2004 - Present)

Indonesia
President Megawati Sukarnoputri (July 2001 - October 2004)
President Bambang Yudhoyono (October 2004 - Present)

Australia
Prime Minister John Howard (March 1996 - December 2007)
Prime Minister Paul Keating (December 1991 - March 1996)

Philippines
President Gloria Arroyo (January 2001 - Present)
President Fidel Ramos (June 1992 - June 1998)

Vietnam
Prime Minister Phan Van Kai (September 1997 - June 2006)

East Timor
President Ramos Horta (May 2007 - Present)

Tibet
The Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso (1950 - Present)

Colombia
President Alvaro Uribe (August 2002 - Present)
President Andres Pastrana (August 1998 - August 2002)
President Cesar Gaviria (August 1990 - August 1994)

Mexico
President Vincente Fox (December 2000 - December 2006)
President Ernesto Zedillo (December 1994 - November 2000)

Bolivia
President Jaime Paz Zamora (August 1989 - August 1993)

South Africa
President Thabo Mbeki (June 1999 - September 2008)
President Nelson Mandela (April 1994 - June 1999)

Liberia
President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (January 2006 - Present)

Lesotho
Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan (July 1965 - January 1986)

United Nations
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (January 2007 - Present)
Secretary General Kofi Annan (January 1997 - January 2007)
Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali (January 1992 - January 1997)

Vatican City
Pope John Paul II (October 1978 - April 2005)

Slovakia
President Rudolf Schuster (June 1999 - June 2004)

Turkmenistan
President Saparmurat Niyazov (October 1990 - December 2006)

*Senator Biden met with leader before he or she became head of state.

List stolen blatantly from WashPo.

I wanted to make myself a few wallpapers for my iPhone, most of which feature the Apple logo, so I put together a layered Photoshop PSD file, allowing me to drop in the image of my choice at the bottom and overlay it with various versions of said logo.

I also added a layer containing the black ’slide to unlock’ and clock overlay, which you’ll obviously want to switch off before you export the final image.

I can’t take credit for the chrome apple logo. I have no idea who did it, but I found it on the web and decided to add it in as well.

Download iPhone Wallpaper Template (376k) Photoshop PSD

Update: Ben, over at Kinky Solutions, has a similar template available as a Fireworks file.

So anyway. The iPhone is a pretty amazing piece of kit, but it has some annoyances which bug the hell out of me.

1. Why is it so complicated to add a new ringtone. Why can’t I simply choose a song from my library?

2. Why am I unable to add new text message sounds at all? The default ones are awful.

3. Why can’t I forward a text message?

4. Why can’t I hide icons I don’t use from the launcher? (stocks/weather/itunes)

5. Copy and paste? How hard can it be?

6. In most situations, the camera is pretty dreadful.

7. Speaking of which.. why is there no movie mode?

(*It’s not really, but I just love that line from Bill Hicks)

Why?

Well, it’s not the content of the message I object to; everyone loves lolcats. God knows I do. The problem is in your use of the CC: field.

When you CC: a whole bunch of people, ask yourself this simple question:

Once you send that message, do you trust every person who will read it?

Before you answer, I’m not talking about the recipients on your CC list. I’m talking about all the people they will forward it onto.. and the people they in turn will forward it to..

Let’s assume that every person who receives that email, in turn forwards it to 5 more within 1 day of receiving it.

1 week later, that’s 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 (or 5^7) which is 78,125 people.

2 weeks later: 5^14 = 6,103,515,625 people.

Most won’t wait a day, some will take less than 5 minutes to foward it on.

At this point you might be saying “Wow, that’s a lot of people. But, so what?”

Well, you are aware that most people don’t remove the list of previous recipients before forwarding messages, right? In fact, you probably didn’t when you sent them to me.

What you may not realise, is that there are spammers and scammers around the world that are dedicated to one simple task: harvesting email addresses. They love them. Each one is like a little gold nugget. They have powerful tools to collect them from web pages, forums and best of all, forwarded emails.

Forwarded emails are the richest source, because most of the time they contain up-to-date valid addresses.

So next time you reach for the send button, think for a moment; Didn’t you really mean to use BCC? All email clients have that option, though sometimes you have to switch it on in the settings.

BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) will ensure that your recipients can’t see each other, and you’ve helped me from having to change my email address for the hundredth time.

Thanks!

P.S. Please refrain from forwarding any kind of warning without researching it on the internet first. Just type the subject line into Google, and see what comes up.. or try Snopes.

Oh and those virus warnings? I’m on a Mac. We don’t get viruses.

Have a nice day.