AT&T stolen device block implementation (Macintouch)

Link. AT&T will launch a new service for reporting and blocking stolen devices on Tuesday, according to a trusted source. The service will allow customers to deny voice, data and SMS access to any individual phone or tablet while keeping their account intact, avoiding the inconvenience of a full SIM block.
The company sent a message (pictured below) to customer service representatives on Wednesday advising them of the change. According to the guidance, AT&T will compile a “blocklist” of stolen devices and service will be automatically suspended “if any attempt is made to use a device that is stored in the blocklist.” The only way to add a device to the list will be by contacting a customer service representative directly, and users with remote data wipe apps will be required to activate them before suspending their device, to “prevent access to their personal information.”

Apple finally supports merging iPhoto Libraries — with Aperture. Sort of.

Link. “you can now open your iPhoto libraries in Aperture and merge them into a consolidated master library… Smart albums from each application are visible and fully functional in the other. However, the album settings must be edited with the application in which you created the album…”

I suspect if you merge with Aperture you lose all your Album Descriptions.

Earth’s 1977 interstellar probe: Beyond mere awesome.

Link. “The level of solar cosmic rays that Voyager detects coming from the Sun need to dramatically decrease, and the orientation of the magnetic field outside the spacecraft needs to change its direction from the east-west, the direction of the Sun’s rotation, to north-south, the speculated magnetic field of the nearby intergalactic region”

Ed Stone, age 76, is still Chief Scientist. The probe may function through 2025, and so may Ed. I am pretty sure they’ll make him Chief Scientist emeritus.

SOHO Organizer for iCloud use on Snow Leopard ($100)

Link. Macintouch: “.. SOHO Organizer runs on the iMacs, and the standard Apple Address Book and iCal apps run on Lion and IOS 5 equipment with both sets of apps talking to each other. In other words, you only need to run the SOHO Organizer on the non-iCloud capable machines.

Also SOHO Organizer does not appear to support push notifications. That is, SOHO Organizer syncs on a time schedule rather than immediately after a change has occurred. However, the Lion laptop and the IOS 5 iPhone do communicate with push notifications. I have SOHO Organizer set to sync every 5 minutes, so when it syncs, then iCloud pushes out the change to the Lion laptop and my iPhone very quickly. I am still learning about SOHO Organizer but it seems to do the job.

Others have noted other methods of moving Snow Leopard machines to iCloud. I have not tried it, but for a small group of machines, fruux (https://fruux.com/) might work without having to buy an application. I would be interested if anyone has tried it.”

Not cheap! $100 individual, $180 family. Cheaper than replacing a machine though. Works on 10.5.8

Crenezumab to prevent Alzheimer’s: The Columbia study.

Link. Done with great care. “… 100 family members who carry the mutation will receive the drug every two weeks… Another 100 mutation carriers will receive a placebo. And because many people do not want to know if they have the mutation, researchers will also include 100 non-carriers in the study; they will receive a placebo.”

It is unlikely to work. We hope it will cause no harm. Even if it fails it will guide treatments for at least the youngest of this afflicted clan.

Note that it will probably be 5+ years before we get results. That’s a clue as to how far we are from having good Alzheimer’s prevention. We should have treated Alzheimer’s as an emergency 30 years ago, but of course 30 years from now people will say the same about our attitude to climate change.

Getting happy: 8 practical tips

Link. The most practical and persuasive list I’ve yet seen:

1. Buy experiences instead of things
2. Help others instead of yourself
3. Buy many small pleasures instead of few big ones
4. Buy less insurance
5. Pay now and consume later
6. Think about what you’re not thinking about
7. Beware of comparison shopping
8. Follow the herd instead of your head

I’ve pasted the text into my SimpleNote app so I have it at hand.

MEDCottage

Link. “… a prefabricated 12-by-24-foot bedroom-bathroom-kitchenette unit that can be set up as a free-standing structure in their backyard … decked out with high-tech monitoring and safety features that rival those of many nursing homes.” My daughter will put mine on the side of a very steep cliff.