Right! Someone has been capturing traffic to his ISP, and instead of grabbing his credit card info and his passwords, they are just content to snatch his e-mail address. If he was hacked, the hackers would have done lot worse than stealing his email addy you dumbass!
Credit card info and passwords will be encrypted, if a user is taking any precautions at all.
However, most connections between MTAs (Message Transfer Agents like Sendmail, Postfix, etc.) are not encrypted. My Postfix server offers TLS to anyone that connects, but very few MTAs actually use it.
It would be difficult to capture credit card numbers, but trivial to capture email addresses from RFC-822 headers.
Like the article-poster I'm one of those guys who uses individualized addresses for each online entity they deal with [....]
I do the same thing. So, I'll get to the point quickly...
The email address that I use for my Hertz rental membership has been distributed to spammers, twice. The first time, I sent a complaint and after a while I got a patronizing response about how it couldn't be them, and was instead someone else to whom I had given the address. It must have been a form response, as I had already explained that it was an address I had given only to them. I sent a second and rather strident message, repeating that they were the only company that had the email address in question, and that if they didn't want to be black-listed by my company's travel agent, they would do something beside blow me off.
I got a relatively quick response the second time, apologizing for their mistake and a further explanation about how they were pursuing the spammers in court to determine the source of the leak. I apparently wasn't the only one that followed up with a similar message, because I subsequently got spam addressed to hertz@mydomain, hertz@anotherdomain, hertz@yetanotherdomain and so on -- for about a dozen similar addresses. I changed the address on my car rental profile to another address, and again started getting spam a few years later. Since my profile is accessible to any agent with a terminal at a Hertz rental office, spammers can probably always find someone that is willing to make a few bucks.
But, I've always wondered: how secure are ISPs? For a while, every article about "Carnivore" made the front-page of Slashdot. Forget the feds for a moment: how difficult would it be for a network technician to configure a router/switch and modify an open-source network sniffer to snatch email addresses from the stream of email going to/from their customers -- and keep it hidden from anyone else that isn't in on it?
Logically your argument amounts to this: if on balance a number of right wing people believed Gore was cheating, then this is evidence that Bush did not. For one thing, the numbers of people who believe anything is an uncertain kind of evidence for anything. For another, this is literally a totally unrelated issue. They both could have tried to "steal" the election, only Gore didn't cheat as well.
My point was that the left-wing fear that Bush would somehow avoid leaving office in 2008 is not a new one. The right-wing had the same fear about Clinton, about halfway through his second term.
I was trying to get people to think: if you fear that Bush won't leave office, ask yourself honestly: what would you have thought if someone told you Clinton wouldn't leave office in 1998? It wasn't a rational fear then, and it isn't rational now. Any claim to the contrary is nothing more than political rhetoric -- just like it was 8 years ago.
The outcome of the 2000 election in Florida is viewed through the same lens, by both sides. Who and what one chooses to believe is basically determined by political ideology, rather than any objective measure.
Of course those elections were held. You know why?
Yes, I do. It's because no one seriously proposed doing so -- the question was whether elections could/should be postponed if they were seriously disrupted by a terrorist attack. We can debate all day about if it is a valid reason, but it didn't happen and the elections went on as planned.
If you had read the article that was cited earlier, you would have noticed that a primary election was being held in New York on September 11, 2001. It was postponed, and legal challenges were dismissed. However, this was a state election. The Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee (Rep. Christopher Cox of California) said: "there isn't any body that has that authority to do that for federal elections."
Citation please? The mainstream media seem to think it was some combination of Rove and Scooter Libby, neither of whome was a disgruntled employee.
Actually, the mainstream media reported this -- although not as widely as their previous allegations about Rove/Libby. However, it didn't make even the politics section of Slashdot: I would be curious how many people submitted a story about it and were rejected.
It was Richard Armitrage, a deputy Secretary of State. Google for the name, and you'll find lots of articles and editorials about it. Or you can read the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage.
I had never heard of Condorcet I see that it's similar to Instant Run-off.
But, I agree with you whole-heartedly. Unfortunately, the two major parties have a vested interest in keeping the current system, and won't willingly change it. There are also many barriers to getting on the ballot if you aren't a candidate from one of the two major parties.
You cite Rice's reassurance that her gang won't postpone elections as reason to "cool the rhetoric"?
I reminded someone else that apparently didn't read the cited article in the grandparent posting, but it's worth repeating:
Rice made her comment about not postponing the elections in 2004, in response to concerns about discussion of what to do if terrorists tried to disrupt elections. This was shortly after the train bombings in Madrid, a few days before national elections in Spain.
You can choose not to believe her. But you cannot dispute the fact that the 2004 elections were held.
As the original poster cautioned: cool the rhetoric. The facts are making you look like a fool.
One is spoken of in terms of a certainty, the other in terms of a probability.
The probability that the 2008 elections will be held on schedule, as they have for the past two centuries, is a certainty -- at least as certain as one can be about any event 2 years from now. That's the point I was trying to make, which was apparently lost on you. On November 4, 2008, you can quote me on that.
I think it's good that you can cast off concerns about the world for a time, hole up in yourself, and so on. But I wouldn't go around encouraging others to do so.
I was hoping that those worried about Bush cancelling the 2008 elections would realize that they are being as rational as their counterparts on the right that expressed the same fear 8 years ago. Apparently, this point was lost on you as well.
Perhaps, but why have exit polls been so amazingly accurate in the past - and now, when anomalies turn up, the exit polls don't match for those places where weird shit was going on, like voters being turned away from the polls, or machines malfunctioning?
Actually, the article says: "...the greatest disparities between exit polls and the official vote count came in Republican strongholds. In precincts where Bush received at least eighty percent of the vote, the exit polls were off by an average of ten percent. By contrast, in precincts where Kerry dominated by eighty percent or more, the exit polls were accurate to within three tenths of one percent -- a pattern that suggests Republican election officials stuffed the ballot box in Bush country".
Now, there is a subsequent statement that says the "discrepancies are higher in battleground states, higher where there were Republican governors, higher in states with greater proportions of African-American communities and higher in states where there were the most Election Day complaints. But, I think it's interesting that the article is admitting that precincts where Kerry dominated matched the exit polls, while the biggest discrepancy occurred in precincts where Bush dominated.
The article quotes several people that say they studied the potential errors caused by self-selection bias in exit polls, and concluded that it wasn't the problem. Even they guy who originally floated the theory said: "It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters."
I think that's just a lame attempt to avoid the obvious. Anyone that has been following the national elections for the past few years could tell you that Republicans are furious with the mainstream media for their repeated attempts to influence the outcome of elections. In September, 2004, it exploded in what has come to be known as Rathergate.
I've had the opportunity to vote for Bush in various elections since 1992. I haven't done so once, as I've always thought he was a lightweight riding on his daddy's coat-tails. But even I was flabbergasted at the brazen attempt by CBS to discredit Bush so close to an election.
After I voted in the subsequent election, I was approached by an exit poller. When he asked who I voted for, I told him I voted for Kerry. I didn't vote for either Kerry or Bush, but I intentionally lied. I was so tired of their lies, that I lied to them. I wanted them to forecast the outcome of the election based on erroneous data, and then be discredited (again) when it turned out to be wrong. But, my effort was foiled: when the mainstream media realized that the exit polls weren't coming out as they expected -- even before the election was closed -- they realized that something was very wrong and declined to report them.
I live in an area that votes about 90% Republican, so my actual vote was nothing more than a protest. But if enough Republicans shared my disgust and acted similarly, I'm not the least bit surprised that the discrepancies between exit polls and actual votes were the largest in Republican strongholds.
I must have missed this. Can you site a qoute from any Republican official that they thought Clinton stole an election?
I was referring to the contention that Bush would somehow suspend the 2008 elections or otherwise remain in office beyond the end of his term. As far as I know, no reputable Republican official ever made this claim about Clinton. And I'm not aware of any reputable Democrat official saying it about Bush.
But as Dave noted, these claims are being made by the party faithful -- just look at the threads in response to this article. They are no different than 8 years ago: only the names have changed.
Always remember, there is a difference between thinking and doing.
The article that was referenced was about a discussion that occurred in 2004, about concern that terrorists would try to disrupt the upcoming elections. This was shortly after the train bombings in Madrid shortly before their elections.
Last time I looked, the 2004 elections were not postponed.
Whatever they were thinking, what they did was hold the 2004 elections, on schedule.
Look up what happened in 1960 in Texas and Illinois if you think 2000 or 2006 were the most crooked.
Texas had a long tradition of crooked elections after Reconstruction. There were very few Republicans in state government until after the 1960's, so most races were decided in the Democratic primary.
Lyndon B. Johnson's first victory (by 87 votes) in the 1948 Democratic primary for US Senate was enabled by the last-minute appearance of about 200 "uncounted votes" that were overwhelmingly in his favor. Years later in the late 1970's, the head election official at the precinct admitted that the additional votes were fictional.
A decent description of the campaign, the vote, and the aftermath in the courts: http://www.eiu.edu/~historia/1999/texas99.htm. Note that Johnson's place on the November ballot (where election was assured) was secured by a US Supreme Court decision.
Worse still, we're talking about it two (or six, depending) years later. Not only do we have people who believe firmly that both elections were stolen, but we have people who literally believe something will cause a suspension of the 2008 elections, allowing Bush to remain in power.
The right-wing believed Clinton would do the same thing in the late 1990's. Of course, it didn't happen. And it's about as likely to happen this time.
But, they viewed the 2000 fiasco in Florida through the same lens: for every person that believes that Bush stole that election, there is someone on the opposite side that believes that Gore was narrowly prevented from stealing the election. There is plenty of "evidence" for both, if you carefully choose what to believe.
To me, the growing ranks of people who believe that with all their heart - growing mostly because of the internet, and sources of information that reinforce what they want to believe - are actually more of a threat to our system of government than anything else.
I agree that the polarization is getting worse, but I don't think the Internet is to blame. I believe the traditional coalitions of "left" and "right" that once wanted similar things (and differed only on the details) are drifting further apart as the extremists take control of the respective major parties. In the past (past 30-40 years), it typically happened to only one party and the other captured the "center".
But now, the center is fed up and stays home, leaving the party faithful to battle it out. And the parties need something to motivate their followers, and aren't above stretching the truth a little to do it.
I would imagine that jets are equipped with some sort of fire surpression system in the hold.
US airlines moved quickly to install fire suppression systems in their cargo hold after the ValuJet plane crash in 1996. Some airlines didn't even wait for the FAA to require it.
There are no oxygen tanks in the overhead bins, except for a handful of emergency air tanks used by flight attendants and perhaps oxygen in an emergency medical kit.
The oxygen masks intended for emergency use by passengers are supplied by oxygen generators, which use a chemical reaction to generate oxygen. They get quite hot and will ignite anything combustible that comes in contact with the generator. Combine that with the additional oxygen, and you have a potential problem. For that reason, they are considered hazardous and are prohibited from being shipped in the cargo holds of airplanes.
Oxygen generators contributed to an in-flight fire in the hold of a ValuJet plane a number of years ago. All passengers and crew perished in the subsequent crash.
Dish's first PVRs (the DishPlayer 7100 and 7200) ran Windows software (CE, I think). Microsoft got a monthly royalty for every one of them, so Dish refused to waive the PVR fee, even though they were doing so for later PVRs.
The Microsoft PVR software was a piece of crap. It would regularly do the equivalent of a "BSOD", turning the screen to a shade of pink. Dish developed their own PVR and dumped the DishPlayer as fast as they could. They offered me a substantial discount to upgrade, but never offered an outright swap for a newer one.
At one point, they filed a suit against Microsoft, but I don't know if it ever went anywhere. It was so bad that there was a SEPARATE option in the phone system for DishPlayer tech support -- they had to maintain an army of CSRs that were specially trained for that abomination.
Having said that- your repsonse to a lying media is to lie to them more and assure that the media is further from the truth, instead of trying to rectify the lie and create a more accurate system?
How are you so sure that the media is accurately reporting the results of their exit polls? There's no accountability and no way to audit the results. It's no more reliable than me taking a poll, making up numbers, and proclaiming they are accurate.
Exit polls are still abused in the US to influence the outcome of an election that is still in progress. Winners have been declared in states before all the polls have closed IN THAT STATE. And due to the wide difference in time zones from east to west coasts (never mind Alaska and Hawaii), projecting winners of elections in eastern states affects national elections in western states.
Every election, the US mainstream media claims they will be more 'responsible' the next time. And the next time, the desire for ratings compels them to project the winner as early as possible, before their competitor does so and pulls viewers away to another channel.
Exit polls are irresponsible, but the only way that they will end is when no one believes them. And that's why I (and many others) either lie or refuse to participate. It's our way of making the press behave responsibly.
Interesting- yet another American who thinks the truth and freedom of the press is something to play around with.
I believe in freedom of the press, even if it is to tell their own lies. But, I'm not naive enough to believe that their version of the "truth" is anything but entertainment. It's all about ratings, and that motivation influences everything from what is reported to how it is reported.
Personally, I think honesty about my opinions should always trump stupid little kid games- which does have a tendency to make me unpopular, but at the very least I can go to sleep at night knowing I'm not a liar.
I don't have any problem lying to an organization that regularly does the same.
I intentionally lie to exit pollers. I do so because I want to make the mainstream media look like idiots when they make the wrong projections based on incorrect data. And I know that I'm one of many, among a relatively small sample size.
Like all telephone polls and Internet polls, exit polls are self-selecting. The only people that participate are those that WANT to do so. That effectively invalidates the results of the poll: if it is anywhere close to the actual vote, it's by accident.
Exit polls have one purpose: to keep you interested and glued to the television set on election night before the results are official, so the mainstream media can earn revenue for the advertisements they show you while you are waiting.
I vaguely remember someone in the UK that was convicted of the computer equivalent of trespass for doing something like this: manually removing the trailing elements in a URL.
I was thinking about this the other day when I opened my Razr to make a call. And it suddenly occured to me how much my phone reminded me of the old ST communicators especially when I flip it open to make a call. Too bad I don't have the sound effect to go along.
On a recent episode of Boston Legal, Denny Crane (portrayed by Shatner) received a text message on a newly-received cell phone, to the amusement of Shore (James Spader). Apparently, Crane had never had a cell phone until his new girlfriend gave him one so she could send him lewd text messages.
Of course, it was a flip-phone. And when Crane/Shatner opened the phone to read the message, the foley artist inserted the easily recognizable sound of a communicator being opened on the original Star Trek series.
Earlier this year, The Discovery Channel broadcast a mockumentary entitled: How William Shatner Changed the World. It was a semi-amusing look at the technology (cell phones, computers, etc) that was either predicted by Star Trek or even inspired by it. The "hook" was Shatner projecting his infamous ego throughout the show, taking credit for all of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Credit card info and passwords will be encrypted, if a user is taking any precautions at all.
However, most connections between MTAs (Message Transfer Agents like Sendmail, Postfix, etc.) are not encrypted. My Postfix server offers TLS to anyone that connects, but very few MTAs actually use it.
It would be difficult to capture credit card numbers, but trivial to capture email addresses from RFC-822 headers.
I really wonder who the dumbass is.
I do the same thing. So, I'll get to the point quickly...
The email address that I use for my Hertz rental membership has been distributed to spammers, twice. The first time, I sent a complaint and after a while I got a patronizing response about how it couldn't be them, and was instead someone else to whom I had given the address. It must have been a form response, as I had already explained that it was an address I had given only to them. I sent a second and rather strident message, repeating that they were the only company that had the email address in question, and that if they didn't want to be black-listed by my company's travel agent, they would do something beside blow me off.
I got a relatively quick response the second time, apologizing for their mistake and a further explanation about how they were pursuing the spammers in court to determine the source of the leak. I apparently wasn't the only one that followed up with a similar message, because I subsequently got spam addressed to hertz@mydomain, hertz@anotherdomain, hertz@yetanotherdomain and so on -- for about a dozen similar addresses. I changed the address on my car rental profile to another address, and again started getting spam a few years later. Since my profile is accessible to any agent with a terminal at a Hertz rental office, spammers can probably always find someone that is willing to make a few bucks.
But, I've always wondered: how secure are ISPs? For a while, every article about "Carnivore" made the front-page of Slashdot. Forget the feds for a moment: how difficult would it be for a network technician to configure a router/switch and modify an open-source network sniffer to snatch email addresses from the stream of email going to/from their customers -- and keep it hidden from anyone else that isn't in on it?
I am serious....
And don't call me Shirley.
My point was that the left-wing fear that Bush would somehow avoid leaving office in 2008 is not a new one. The right-wing had the same fear about Clinton, about halfway through his second term.
I was trying to get people to think: if you fear that Bush won't leave office, ask yourself honestly: what would you have thought if someone told you Clinton wouldn't leave office in 1998? It wasn't a rational fear then, and it isn't rational now. Any claim to the contrary is nothing more than political rhetoric -- just like it was 8 years ago.
The outcome of the 2000 election in Florida is viewed through the same lens, by both sides. Who and what one chooses to believe is basically determined by political ideology, rather than any objective measure.
Yes, I do. It's because no one seriously proposed doing so -- the question was whether elections could/should be postponed if they were seriously disrupted by a terrorist attack. We can debate all day about if it is a valid reason, but it didn't happen and the elections went on as planned.
If you had read the article that was cited earlier, you would have noticed that a primary election was being held in New York on September 11, 2001. It was postponed, and legal challenges were dismissed. However, this was a state election. The Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee (Rep. Christopher Cox of California) said: "there isn't any body that has that authority to do that for federal elections."
Sorry, but that just isn't true. It may be true in your state, but not nationwide. A couple of references:
http://www.ballot-access.org/winger/fbfp.htmld 03/
http://www.reforminstitute.org/resources/scorecar
Actually, the mainstream media reported this -- although not as widely as their previous allegations about Rove/Libby. However, it didn't make even the politics section of Slashdot: I would be curious how many people submitted a story about it and were rejected.
It was Richard Armitrage, a deputy Secretary of State. Google for the name, and you'll find lots of articles and editorials about it. Or you can read the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage.
But, I agree with you whole-heartedly. Unfortunately, the two major parties have a vested interest in keeping the current system, and won't willingly change it. There are also many barriers to getting on the ballot if you aren't a candidate from one of the two major parties.
I reminded someone else that apparently didn't read the cited article in the grandparent posting, but it's worth repeating:
Rice made her comment about not postponing the elections in 2004, in response to concerns about discussion of what to do if terrorists tried to disrupt elections. This was shortly after the train bombings in Madrid, a few days before national elections in Spain.
You can choose not to believe her. But you cannot dispute the fact that the 2004 elections were held.
As the original poster cautioned: cool the rhetoric. The facts are making you look like a fool.
Actually, the Dixiecrats were briefly a separate political party: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat
But, the actual vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 tells the tale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1 964
A majority of both parties voted for the Act. However, the margin was significantly greater for Republicans.
The probability that the 2008 elections will be held on schedule, as they have for the past two centuries, is a certainty -- at least as certain as one can be about any event 2 years from now. That's the point I was trying to make, which was apparently lost on you. On November 4, 2008, you can quote me on that.
I think it's good that you can cast off concerns about the world for a time, hole up in yourself, and so on. But I wouldn't go around encouraging others to do so.
I was hoping that those worried about Bush cancelling the 2008 elections would realize that they are being as rational as their counterparts on the right that expressed the same fear 8 years ago. Apparently, this point was lost on you as well.
Actually, the article says: "...the greatest disparities between exit polls and the official vote count came in Republican strongholds. In precincts where Bush received at least eighty percent of the vote, the exit polls were off by an average of ten percent. By contrast, in precincts where Kerry dominated by eighty percent or more, the exit polls were accurate to within three tenths of one percent -- a pattern that suggests Republican election officials stuffed the ballot box in Bush country". Now, there is a subsequent statement that says the "discrepancies are higher in battleground states, higher where there were Republican governors, higher in states with greater proportions of African-American communities and higher in states where there were the most Election Day complaints. But, I think it's interesting that the article is admitting that precincts where Kerry dominated matched the exit polls, while the biggest discrepancy occurred in precincts where Bush dominated.
The article quotes several people that say they studied the potential errors caused by self-selection bias in exit polls, and concluded that it wasn't the problem. Even they guy who originally floated the theory said: "It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters."
I think that's just a lame attempt to avoid the obvious. Anyone that has been following the national elections for the past few years could tell you that Republicans are furious with the mainstream media for their repeated attempts to influence the outcome of elections. In September, 2004, it exploded in what has come to be known as Rathergate.
I've had the opportunity to vote for Bush in various elections since 1992. I haven't done so once, as I've always thought he was a lightweight riding on his daddy's coat-tails. But even I was flabbergasted at the brazen attempt by CBS to discredit Bush so close to an election.
After I voted in the subsequent election, I was approached by an exit poller. When he asked who I voted for, I told him I voted for Kerry. I didn't vote for either Kerry or Bush, but I intentionally lied. I was so tired of their lies, that I lied to them. I wanted them to forecast the outcome of the election based on erroneous data, and then be discredited (again) when it turned out to be wrong. But, my effort was foiled: when the mainstream media realized that the exit polls weren't coming out as they expected -- even before the election was closed -- they realized that something was very wrong and declined to report them.
I live in an area that votes about 90% Republican, so my actual vote was nothing more than a protest. But if enough Republicans shared my disgust and acted similarly, I'm not the least bit surprised that the discrepancies between exit polls and actual votes were the largest in Republican strongholds.
I was referring to the contention that Bush would somehow suspend the 2008 elections or otherwise remain in office beyond the end of his term. As far as I know, no reputable Republican official ever made this claim about Clinton. And I'm not aware of any reputable Democrat official saying it about Bush.
But as Dave noted, these claims are being made by the party faithful -- just look at the threads in response to this article. They are no different than 8 years ago: only the names have changed.
The article that was referenced was about a discussion that occurred in 2004, about concern that terrorists would try to disrupt the upcoming elections. This was shortly after the train bombings in Madrid shortly before their elections.
Last time I looked, the 2004 elections were not postponed.
Whatever they were thinking, what they did was hold the 2004 elections, on schedule.
Texas had a long tradition of crooked elections after Reconstruction. There were very few Republicans in state government until after the 1960's, so most races were decided in the Democratic primary.
Lyndon B. Johnson's first victory (by 87 votes) in the 1948 Democratic primary for US Senate was enabled by the last-minute appearance of about 200 "uncounted votes" that were overwhelmingly in his favor. Years later in the late 1970's, the head election official at the precinct admitted that the additional votes were fictional.
A decent description of the campaign, the vote, and the aftermath in the courts: http://www.eiu.edu/~historia/1999/texas99.htm. Note that Johnson's place on the November ballot (where election was assured) was secured by a US Supreme Court decision.
The right-wing believed Clinton would do the same thing in the late 1990's. Of course, it didn't happen. And it's about as likely to happen this time.
But, they viewed the 2000 fiasco in Florida through the same lens: for every person that believes that Bush stole that election, there is someone on the opposite side that believes that Gore was narrowly prevented from stealing the election. There is plenty of "evidence" for both, if you carefully choose what to believe.
To me, the growing ranks of people who believe that with all their heart - growing mostly because of the internet, and sources of information that reinforce what they want to believe - are actually more of a threat to our system of government than anything else.
I agree that the polarization is getting worse, but I don't think the Internet is to blame. I believe the traditional coalitions of "left" and "right" that once wanted similar things (and differed only on the details) are drifting further apart as the extremists take control of the respective major parties. In the past (past 30-40 years), it typically happened to only one party and the other captured the "center".
But now, the center is fed up and stays home, leaving the party faithful to battle it out. And the parties need something to motivate their followers, and aren't above stretching the truth a little to do it.
In this case, art imitated life:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chante_Mallard
US airlines moved quickly to install fire suppression systems in their cargo hold after the ValuJet plane crash in 1996. Some airlines didn't even wait for the FAA to require it.
The oxygen masks intended for emergency use by passengers are supplied by oxygen generators, which use a chemical reaction to generate oxygen. They get quite hot and will ignite anything combustible that comes in contact with the generator. Combine that with the additional oxygen, and you have a potential problem. For that reason, they are considered hazardous and are prohibited from being shipped in the cargo holds of airplanes.
Oxygen generators contributed to an in-flight fire in the hold of a ValuJet plane a number of years ago. All passengers and crew perished in the subsequent crash.
Dish's first PVRs (the DishPlayer 7100 and 7200) ran Windows software (CE, I think). Microsoft got a monthly royalty for every one of them, so Dish refused to waive the PVR fee, even though they were doing so for later PVRs.
The Microsoft PVR software was a piece of crap. It would regularly do the equivalent of a "BSOD", turning the screen to a shade of pink. Dish developed their own PVR and dumped the DishPlayer as fast as they could. They offered me a substantial discount to upgrade, but never offered an outright swap for a newer one.
At one point, they filed a suit against Microsoft, but I don't know if it ever went anywhere. It was so bad that there was a SEPARATE option in the phone system for DishPlayer tech support -- they had to maintain an army of CSRs that were specially trained for that abomination.
How are you so sure that the media is accurately reporting the results of their exit polls? There's no accountability and no way to audit the results. It's no more reliable than me taking a poll, making up numbers, and proclaiming they are accurate.
Exit polls are still abused in the US to influence the outcome of an election that is still in progress. Winners have been declared in states before all the polls have closed IN THAT STATE. And due to the wide difference in time zones from east to west coasts (never mind Alaska and Hawaii), projecting winners of elections in eastern states affects national elections in western states.
Every election, the US mainstream media claims they will be more 'responsible' the next time. And the next time, the desire for ratings compels them to project the winner as early as possible, before their competitor does so and pulls viewers away to another channel.
Exit polls are irresponsible, but the only way that they will end is when no one believes them. And that's why I (and many others) either lie or refuse to participate. It's our way of making the press behave responsibly.
I believe in freedom of the press, even if it is to tell their own lies. But, I'm not naive enough to believe that their version of the "truth" is anything but entertainment. It's all about ratings, and that motivation influences everything from what is reported to how it is reported.
Personally, I think honesty about my opinions should always trump stupid little kid games- which does have a tendency to make me unpopular, but at the very least I can go to sleep at night knowing I'm not a liar.
I don't have any problem lying to an organization that regularly does the same.
I intentionally lie to exit pollers. I do so because I want to make the mainstream media look like idiots when they make the wrong projections based on incorrect data. And I know that I'm one of many, among a relatively small sample size.
Like all telephone polls and Internet polls, exit polls are self-selecting. The only people that participate are those that WANT to do so. That effectively invalidates the results of the poll: if it is anywhere close to the actual vote, it's by accident.
Exit polls have one purpose: to keep you interested and glued to the television set on election night before the results are official, so the mainstream media can earn revenue for the advertisements they show you while you are waiting.
Don't confuse entertainment with facts.
On a recent episode of Boston Legal, Denny Crane (portrayed by Shatner) received a text message on a newly-received cell phone, to the amusement of Shore (James Spader). Apparently, Crane had never had a cell phone until his new girlfriend gave him one so she could send him lewd text messages.
Of course, it was a flip-phone. And when Crane/Shatner opened the phone to read the message, the foley artist inserted the easily recognizable sound of a communicator being opened on the original Star Trek series.
Earlier this year, The Discovery Channel broadcast a mockumentary entitled: How William Shatner Changed the World. It was a semi-amusing look at the technology (cell phones, computers, etc) that was either predicted by Star Trek or even inspired by it. The "hook" was Shatner projecting his infamous ego throughout the show, taking credit for all of it.