Monthly Archives: September 2012

Barack Obama and daughters Sasha (left) and Malia watching Michelle Obama deliver her speech at last night’s Democrat National Convention.

How did it go?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0w0WxINS2E

11 pm. Stunning, brilliant, moving, passionate and right. Flawless. That was a speech a presidential nominee would be proud to have given. The best speech of the conventions so far. There was an emotional arc and steel to this that was as suffused with patriotism as it was with love. Yes, I’m gushing. But gushing is what I feel. And this is live-blogging. So sue me. I’ve never heard a speech from a First Lady anywhere close to this. Andrew Sullivan, Daily Beast

Pic via White House flickr stream

Via Gawker

Earlier

ENTERTAINMENT Enterprises, the entertainment and restaurant group run by brothers Colum and Ciarán Butler, has taken on the operation of all 27 Starbucks outlets in the Republic.

Up to yesterday, the brothers operated 10 of the outlets under licence, with the US multinational directly operating the rest.

The chain had just 19 stores in the Republic a year ago. It is intended that another will open shortly in the Stillorgan Shopping Centre, Dublin, also to be run by Entertainment Enterprises.

Staff were told the news yesterday. Starbucks-operated stores employ 210 staff. The number employed at the other stores is not known. There will be no job losses arising from the development.

 

Irish group to operate Starbucks stores (Colm Keena, Irish Times)

(Sam Boal/Photocall Iteland)

Martin Naughton (above), a support officer with the Disability Federation of Ireland, briefing fellow disability campaigners on his meeting earlier (above) with Minister for Health James Reilly.

Whatever he said.

It worked.

Minister for Health Tells HSE Not To proceed With Personal Assistant Cuts (RTE)

(Mark Stedman/Photocall ireland)

Meanwhile…

Just like on NCIS…

Several hours ago, the latest hacker group to gain prominence, AntiSec, a subset of Anonymous, disclosed that it had obtained the confidential user data contained in some some 12 million Apple units after hacking an FBI Dell Vostro notebook computer

In other words, the FBI had the personal data of a substantial number of Apple device users, certainly all of which had been obtained without prior permission. Naturally the question here is why on earth does the FBI have this data, and as TNW suggests, “They published the UDID numbers to call attention to suspicions that the FBI used the information to track citizens. Much of the personal data has been trimmed, however, with the hackers claiming to have left enough for “a significant amount of users” to search for their devices.” AntiSec has subsequently released one million of these UUIDs and their associated data.

 

Find Out If Your Apple Device Was Among The 12 Million Units Hacked And Tracked By The FBI (Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge.com)

Thanks Nigel Hives-Toblerone