It wouldn't be impossible to give private sandboxes to "legacy" apps that don't use the new secure APIs.
There are already applications that do nearly this. SandboxIE can sandbox any application and prevent it from overwriting anything on your system or in your registry. As far as the sandboxed application is concerned, it is making the file/registry changes (and those changes can persist from session to session). However, the real system is unaffected. If the program you ran turns out to have spyware or a virus, you just halt all executable programs in the sandbox and then dump the contents. No traces of virus/spyware will be left behind.
If Microsoft really set their mind to it, they could easily recreate SandboxIE (or they could buy it) and integrate it into Windows.
a whole lot of them will sit up and take notice if their antivirus pops up and warns them away.
My sister's computer was running slow once. I noticed that she didn't have a router, firewall, antivirus, or anti-spyware program running. So I installed a firewall, an antivirus program, and an anti-spyware program. (I also instructed her to get a router.) The scans showed multiple spyware infestations which I cleaned up with much effort. I configured her new security software and let her know what it did. My sister doesn't live near me, so I needed to take time off of Thanksgiving (or some other get together, I don't remember which one) to fix their computer.
The next year she was complaining of a slow PC again. I look at it and all of my software was disabled. I asked how that happened and they admitted to disabling it. I sighed, re-enabled it, re-cleaned their PC, and told them *NOT* to disable it again.
Flash forward a year or so and they're complaining about the PC being slow again. Over the phone, they admit to disabling the software. I recommended that they take it to a repair shop because I'm not touching it anymore. I don't mind fixing a friend or relative's computer once or even twice. But when you demonstrate a repeated inclination to ignore my advice and disable my safeguards because you are relying on me to get you out of any jam you get yourself in, then you lose my help.
I'm sure a dozen or more Slashdot posters could post similar stories. Unfortunately, users seem to be more likely to see an anti-virus warning and think "I should turn that off" than think "Hey, this might be dangerous to run."
I guess I'm lucky where I work. Punching in and out is taken care of by swiping your employee ID badge in an electronic clock. That compiles the "punches" and sends them to the central Kronos database (which I can query - it being a SQL database - for my internal web apps). Of course, I'm also an "exempt" employee so I don't get docked if I'm 15 minutes late. Then again, I also don't get paid more for working 30 minutes late.
When we got a new department head, he decided that we needed to fill out a description of our time usage. For a two week span, I had to account for all of the time I spent during the day. Not *too* bad, but then I got word that I needed to give an estimate for which departments I'd be doing work for next year and how much time for each one. The nature of my job is that I don't even know what projects I'll be working on in 3 month's time. How will I know what I'll be working on in November 2009? Luckily, the managers under the department head convinced him to drop that. The "account for all of your work" will definitely come back at some point, though. I'm tempted to put in "8:00 - 8:05 - worked on project A", "8:05 - 8:10 - documented work on project A", "8:10 - 8:15 - documented documentation", etc.;-)
What TripMaster Monkey and pla were trying to point out was that "How many terrorist attacks have there been on planes since this system was put in place?" is the wrong question to ask. There are a variety of factors involved in future terrorist attacks on planes occurring. Perhaps the war in Iraq really forced them to keep fighting "over there", perhaps other security measures on planes were effective, perhaps terrorists realize that the next plane hijacking won't be as easy since passengers are more likely to revolt, or perhaps Al Qaeda simply decided that the next attack should be a train derailment and is gearing up for that. There is no way to tell which of these, if any, was the cause of the lack of terrorist attacks and therefore it is useless to even pose the question as any sort of metric.
With that out of the way as even a question to ask, we're left with the question of how to determine how effective the program was. Of the 160,000 people they searched, only 1,266 were arrested (and many of those for non-terrorist related activities). The best way to determine whether this program was effective would be to search another 160,000 people at random. If you wind up with 1,266 arrests or more, then the program wasn't a success. If the program resulted in more arrests, then the TSA might be able to claim success.
Of course, there would be a big asterisk next to their success claim as the purpose of the program was to catch terrorists, not Joe Fratboy flying with a joint. The best comparison would be to weed out all non-terrorist related arrests from the 1,266 and then compare that number with the number of terrorist related arrests from a search of 160,000 random people. If the program results in more terrorist related arrests than random searches, then the TSA can truly call it a success. Unfortunately, I don't think they have any plans to do this. Instead, they'll just tout the arrest numbers as a sign that the TSA is committed to doing something, anything, to make people think they are safer.
Great. First we had to worry about sharks with lasers attached to their heads. Now we need to worry about sharks with lasers spitting out antimatter beams. Add a Reverse Scuba Suit into the mix and mass panic will ensue!
I'm not an open source developer, but I find myself in a situation similar to the article's description. For the longest time (mostly due to lack of effort to come up with a good name), I used my real name online. I set up my e-mail address using it, my Slashdot account, etc. The world knew me as "Jason Levine" and I was fine with it. A couple of years ago, my wife set up a blog and decided to stay anonymous. She took great care not to link her blog-identity to my "public online-identity". A few months back, I decided to start a blog of my own and figured I might as well go anonymous also. My "alter-ego" links up to my wife's blog-identity but not to my "public online-identity." More and more, I've found myself wishing that I could go back and change my existing accounts to point to my more anonymous ID. (No, I won't reveal it here.)
If I had it to do over again, I'd probably have chosen a nickname and stuck with it. Of course, then you might find that you outgrow your nick and want to change it. Still, you'd be able to tell people "I'm taking NickNumber1 offline and will sign up again as NickNumber2" without compromising your anonymity.
Just because time erases many people from memory doesn't mean that technology hasn't changed communication. The point is that technology has enabled my friend to make an impact on myself and dozens of other people who wouldn't have even known he existed before.
To give an example with more lasting repercussions: I met my wife online 9 years ago (Yahoo chat rooms). We lived hundreds of miles apart at the time and so, without technology's contribution to communication, we would never have met, fallen in love, and gotten married. In addition, our two sons would never have been born. Any children they have in the future (as well as those childrens' children, etc) owe their very existence to the way the Internet changed communications. I know for a fact that my story isn't unique and the numbers of stories like it will only multiply. Pretty soon, virtually all segments of humanity will be able to trace their ancestry to a moment where the Internet contributed an influence. In 2000 years, I doubt that anyone would be alive who would be able to say that the Internet (or whatever eventually supplants it) didn't contribute to their ancestry in any way.
So Toyota is claiming copyright ownership on all photos taken that contain a Toyota? I own a '98 Toyota Corolla. It's completely paid up so there isn't even the ownership ambiguity of the bank having a claim to it. If I were to take a photo of my kids playing in front of the car and post that online, would Toyota be able to sue me? Would they be able to claim ownership of my photo simply because the car was in it?
Let's allow this for the moment and see what happens if we take this "copyright ownership" claim to the logical conclusion. Any band name manufacturer can claim ownership over your work (photo, indie film, etc) if their product happens to appear in it. Not only would you need to look out for cars appearing in the photo/film/etc, but you would need to make sure any soft drinks consumed are generic, any food eaten doesn't come from a known chain, and any clothes (especially shoes) worn can't be tied back to a particular manufacturer. Should you slip up and allow one cultural reference into your work, it ceases to be your work and is instead owned by the corporate conglomerate whose product you accidentally referenced.
In related news, Cambell's now owns all copies of Andy Warhol's 32 Campbell's Soup Cans paintings.
I've got to agree. To give an example, a member on a web forum I run has advanced cancer. Things don't look good and he's likely to pass away in a few weeks. If we needed to rely on TV/radio, I'd never have heard of him. His passing in Georgia wouldn't have merited even a quick mention on the TV/radio stations in NY (not to mention Israel, Australia, the UK, and other countries that our members are from). With the Internet, however, common interests (in this case computers) has enabled strangers from across the globe to become friends in a way that no other form of mass media would have allowed.
There's really nothing on the energy horizon big enough to replace oil.
No one technology, maybe, but perhaps the future is multiple technologies working together. You could have Solar plants in the south-western US, wind turbines in the plains states, some geo-thermal plants, nuclear, clean-coal, etc. You might even toss some oil powered facilities in the mix also. All of those plants would convert their respective fuel sources to electricity which would be shared across a giant electrical grid. Need to power your electric car? Just plug it in. You don't need to think about the fact that you are getting 23% of your power from solar cells in Arizona, 31% from a Nuclear plant in New York, 18% from a clean coal plant in Tennessee, and 28% from a wind turbine facility in Illinois.*
* NOTE: State names picked at random, so please no replies telling me why Facility A would never, ever be built in State B.
I can't stand when Classmates sends me mails telling me how many people viewed my profile
I kept getting messages from Classmates.com telling me that former classmates of mine sent me messages. Of course, you can only view those messages if you pay Classmates.com. I knew this was a scam, but decided on a test. I altered my profile (first time I did that since setting it up years back) to include my e-mail address and a short message: "I don't read messages posted here. If you want to contact me, e-mail me at USERNAME at DOMAIN dot COM." (That e-mail address gets enough spam that I didn't mind exposing it like that.)
I keep getting "people" leaving me messages on Classmates.com and no real classmates have sent messages to my e-mail address. My theory is that these "messages" are:
1. Nonexistent with the e-mails serving only to goad people to pay for their "premium" service.
2. From Classmates.com itself or some third party company trying to get me to buy stuff from them.
3. From an actual classmate who is such a huge idiot that he/she doesn't know how to read in which case why would I want to pay money to contact them back?
I've heard that, once you get into a scam like this and you begin to get evidence that it is a scam, you basically have two mental options:
1. Admit that it is a scam, you are an idiot, and you are out tons of money.
2. Ignore the "It's a Scam!" evidence and send more money their way because this last payment is the one that'll make you rich.
Now you and I can easily say that it's better to do #1 and walk away, but they've mentally and financially invested themselves in this scam. It is easier in the short term to simply believe that you will be rich if you just cut one last check than to face the cold, hard reality of the situation. She obviously got herself in deep and then mentally ignored all evidence that it wasn't a scam to avoid facing the pain of being scammed. All that did, however, was postpone (and increase) the pain.
That trip was the most picture messaging that I've done in some time. Most months, we don't send any text/picture messages at all. With Verizon, we would have to pay $5 extra per month per phone for unlimited text/picture messaging. That is $120 per year that could be better spent elsewhere.
And... to make matters worse, if I text my wife, I pay $0.20 to send the message and then $0.20 for her to receive it. While on a trip recently, I sent her some photos of the grounds I was staying at (The Inn at Middleton Place, beautiful place right outside of Charleston, SC) and of me in my Tux and costume (it was a wedding with a costume reception following). I paid $0.25 to send each of the photos to her and $0.25 for her to receive each one. The four I sent will show up on our monthly bill as $2. For that price, I could have gotten 10 photos printed from WinkFlash.com, shipped to me, and still had money to spare.
Obama, on the other hand, didn't give the press much chance to cover McCain. His attacks were far fewer, and according to most fact checkers nearly every one of them had merit.
Just to support your claim: Throughout the campaign, I used FactCheck.org and Politifact.com to check the veracity of the candidates' statements. Politifact was especially helpful because they give a count of how truthful the candidates were.
McCain thus had less truthful statements (True, Mostly True) and more non-truthful statements (Barely True, False, Pants On Fire). To make it easier to rate the politicians overall, I would assign numbers to their statements: True was +2, Mostly True was +1, Half True was +0.5, Barely True was -0.5, False was -1, and Pants on Fire was -2. Adding up the totals (and taking the average to prevent any bias from more statements being made) gives us a Truth rating of 0.69 for Obama (between Half True and Mostly True) and 0.26 for McCain (between Barely True and Half True). Obama obviously was more truthful.
Assigning my scores for them gives Biden a score of 0.42 and Palin a score of 0.45. Both are just under Half True rating. Palin's truth score is above Biden's but just barely.
(NOTE: These scores include statements made from the beginning of the Primaries up until the election.)
1. On Change.gov, scroll down to the link for the "GSA Transition Directory" (next to the purple rectangle that says "GSA"). 2. This will prompt you that you are exiting Change.gov. Click the link that takes you to http://directory.presidentialtransition.gov/ 3. Click on Organizational Chart (second item down on the sidebar under "Home").
A PDF will download with the organizational chart. Open that PDF to see that "The Constitution" is the highest-most item. To be fair, though, this PDF (and PresidentialTransition.gov as a whole) doesn't seem to be an Obama-team-creation, but a generic website that was already there.
Interestingly enough, I was flying back from a wedding this past weekend and the jet had an in-flight entertainment system. They had to reboot it to clear up some problems and up popped a familiar logo. No, not Windows, but a cute little penguin. Unfortunately, I don't know what distro they were using. (I do know that the resulting touch-screen interface -- probably a custom job for Delta -- was familiar enough that some ordinary-looking users had no trouble using it.)
Seriously, as a parent, I've seen packaging on kids toys get progressively worse. Not just ultrasonic-sealed plastic clamshells, but toys attached to cardboard boxes with dozens (sometimes over a hundred) wire twist-ties and highly strecthy rubber-band-like straps.
I completely agree. And don't forget that you need to keep an eye on those one hundred twist-ties, rubber-band-straps, and other assorted plastic bits to make sure that they all get thrown out. If you leave one behind, your child *will* find it and then they may wonder what happens if they chew on it. Some of those plastic bits are a huge choking hazard and having them in the box for a small child's toy is just irresponsible.
Even if they don't plant evidence, who wants to go through the hassle of losing their PC for one or two months while the cops scan it for hidden porn (or even stashed drugs).
Not to mention the "guilty when accused" attitude of the public. Suppose the police arrest you, seize your laptop, "leak" your name to the media, and they say "Oops, our bad" and let you go. You might not have a single blemish on your record, but the public will think of you as a child pornographer who somehow evaded the police. Every place you go you'll get wary looks. If you have kids, Child Protective Services might make your life a living hell. (I know someone who had CPS called on them by a vindictive neighbor. Even if there's no evidence of any mistreatment, they can still make your life hell.) You might find yourself "downsized" from your job. All because the police were able to arrest you/search you on a whim without any real evidence.
The warrant system isn't perfect. Innocent people still wind up going through the above troubles. But warrants help keep those incidents to a minimum.
But how do you know the guy had pictures on his hard drive? How did they get there? (Some else mentioned that planting Child Porn on someone's computer would be a great way to ruin their life.) Can the photos be admissible as evidence in a court of law?
Plus, there's the risk to the person's reputation if you are mistaken. Suppose the police didn't need a warrant to seize and search personal belongings. A police officer might arrest me and seize my belongings based on some flimsy connection (say, one of my co-workers who I often talked to had some child porn on his computer). My name might get plastered across the media as a sex offender (accused, not that it would matter in the public's eye). I could be fired from my job, lose my kids, basically have my entire life ruined. When the police eventually got around to searching my hard drive and found no child porn, they might be honest and clear my record, but I'd still be guilty in the eyes of the public. I still might have to fight to get my kids back. My marriage might be ruined thanks to the strain. I might find it tough to get work.
Trust me, as the parent of two young children, I want to protect them from the grossly perverted segments of society. But I also don't want to unravel our country's civil rights in a misguided attempt to protect them. I'd rather make sure everything was done properly so that, when we seize someone's belongings, we have real evidence that they are involved in a criminal activity. Giving the police unchecked powers is dangerous which is why the Founding Fathers built our government with a series of checks and balances.
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There are already applications that do nearly this. SandboxIE can sandbox any application and prevent it from overwriting anything on your system or in your registry. As far as the sandboxed application is concerned, it is making the file/registry changes (and those changes can persist from session to session). However, the real system is unaffected. If the program you ran turns out to have spyware or a virus, you just halt all executable programs in the sandbox and then dump the contents. No traces of virus/spyware will be left behind.
If Microsoft really set their mind to it, they could easily recreate SandboxIE (or they could buy it) and integrate it into Windows.
My sister's computer was running slow once. I noticed that she didn't have a router, firewall, antivirus, or anti-spyware program running. So I installed a firewall, an antivirus program, and an anti-spyware program. (I also instructed her to get a router.) The scans showed multiple spyware infestations which I cleaned up with much effort. I configured her new security software and let her know what it did. My sister doesn't live near me, so I needed to take time off of Thanksgiving (or some other get together, I don't remember which one) to fix their computer.
The next year she was complaining of a slow PC again. I look at it and all of my software was disabled. I asked how that happened and they admitted to disabling it. I sighed, re-enabled it, re-cleaned their PC, and told them *NOT* to disable it again.
Flash forward a year or so and they're complaining about the PC being slow again. Over the phone, they admit to disabling the software. I recommended that they take it to a repair shop because I'm not touching it anymore. I don't mind fixing a friend or relative's computer once or even twice. But when you demonstrate a repeated inclination to ignore my advice and disable my safeguards because you are relying on me to get you out of any jam you get yourself in, then you lose my help.
I'm sure a dozen or more Slashdot posters could post similar stories. Unfortunately, users seem to be more likely to see an anti-virus warning and think "I should turn that off" than think "Hey, this might be dangerous to run."
I guess I'm lucky where I work. Punching in and out is taken care of by swiping your employee ID badge in an electronic clock. That compiles the "punches" and sends them to the central Kronos database (which I can query - it being a SQL database - for my internal web apps). Of course, I'm also an "exempt" employee so I don't get docked if I'm 15 minutes late. Then again, I also don't get paid more for working 30 minutes late.
When we got a new department head, he decided that we needed to fill out a description of our time usage. For a two week span, I had to account for all of the time I spent during the day. Not *too* bad, but then I got word that I needed to give an estimate for which departments I'd be doing work for next year and how much time for each one. The nature of my job is that I don't even know what projects I'll be working on in 3 month's time. How will I know what I'll be working on in November 2009? Luckily, the managers under the department head convinced him to drop that. The "account for all of your work" will definitely come back at some point, though. I'm tempted to put in "8:00 - 8:05 - worked on project A", "8:05 - 8:10 - documented work on project A", "8:10 - 8:15 - documented documentation", etc. ;-)
What TripMaster Monkey and pla were trying to point out was that "How many terrorist attacks have there been on planes since this system was put in place?" is the wrong question to ask. There are a variety of factors involved in future terrorist attacks on planes occurring. Perhaps the war in Iraq really forced them to keep fighting "over there", perhaps other security measures on planes were effective, perhaps terrorists realize that the next plane hijacking won't be as easy since passengers are more likely to revolt, or perhaps Al Qaeda simply decided that the next attack should be a train derailment and is gearing up for that. There is no way to tell which of these, if any, was the cause of the lack of terrorist attacks and therefore it is useless to even pose the question as any sort of metric.
With that out of the way as even a question to ask, we're left with the question of how to determine how effective the program was. Of the 160,000 people they searched, only 1,266 were arrested (and many of those for non-terrorist related activities). The best way to determine whether this program was effective would be to search another 160,000 people at random. If you wind up with 1,266 arrests or more, then the program wasn't a success. If the program resulted in more arrests, then the TSA might be able to claim success.
Of course, there would be a big asterisk next to their success claim as the purpose of the program was to catch terrorists, not Joe Fratboy flying with a joint. The best comparison would be to weed out all non-terrorist related arrests from the 1,266 and then compare that number with the number of terrorist related arrests from a search of 160,000 random people. If the program results in more terrorist related arrests than random searches, then the TSA can truly call it a success. Unfortunately, I don't think they have any plans to do this. Instead, they'll just tout the arrest numbers as a sign that the TSA is committed to doing something, anything, to make people think they are safer.
Great. First we had to worry about sharks with lasers attached to their heads. Now we need to worry about sharks with lasers spitting out antimatter beams. Add a Reverse Scuba Suit into the mix and mass panic will ensue!
In the deleted scenes, will we get to see Spock shave off the top of a random crew member's skull by pointing his fingers at him?
I'm not an open source developer, but I find myself in a situation similar to the article's description. For the longest time (mostly due to lack of effort to come up with a good name), I used my real name online. I set up my e-mail address using it, my Slashdot account, etc. The world knew me as "Jason Levine" and I was fine with it. A couple of years ago, my wife set up a blog and decided to stay anonymous. She took great care not to link her blog-identity to my "public online-identity". A few months back, I decided to start a blog of my own and figured I might as well go anonymous also. My "alter-ego" links up to my wife's blog-identity but not to my "public online-identity." More and more, I've found myself wishing that I could go back and change my existing accounts to point to my more anonymous ID. (No, I won't reveal it here.)
If I had it to do over again, I'd probably have chosen a nickname and stuck with it. Of course, then you might find that you outgrow your nick and want to change it. Still, you'd be able to tell people "I'm taking NickNumber1 offline and will sign up again as NickNumber2" without compromising your anonymity.
Just because time erases many people from memory doesn't mean that technology hasn't changed communication. The point is that technology has enabled my friend to make an impact on myself and dozens of other people who wouldn't have even known he existed before.
To give an example with more lasting repercussions: I met my wife online 9 years ago (Yahoo chat rooms). We lived hundreds of miles apart at the time and so, without technology's contribution to communication, we would never have met, fallen in love, and gotten married. In addition, our two sons would never have been born. Any children they have in the future (as well as those childrens' children, etc) owe their very existence to the way the Internet changed communications. I know for a fact that my story isn't unique and the numbers of stories like it will only multiply. Pretty soon, virtually all segments of humanity will be able to trace their ancestry to a moment where the Internet contributed an influence. In 2000 years, I doubt that anyone would be alive who would be able to say that the Internet (or whatever eventually supplants it) didn't contribute to their ancestry in any way.
SlashDeity.com Post comment:
Name: ImaGod0001
URL: http://www.thedivine.god/
Subject: RE: How do you make a Universe?
Comment: First post! Let there be light!
So Toyota is claiming copyright ownership on all photos taken that contain a Toyota? I own a '98 Toyota Corolla. It's completely paid up so there isn't even the ownership ambiguity of the bank having a claim to it. If I were to take a photo of my kids playing in front of the car and post that online, would Toyota be able to sue me? Would they be able to claim ownership of my photo simply because the car was in it?
Let's allow this for the moment and see what happens if we take this "copyright ownership" claim to the logical conclusion. Any band name manufacturer can claim ownership over your work (photo, indie film, etc) if their product happens to appear in it. Not only would you need to look out for cars appearing in the photo/film/etc, but you would need to make sure any soft drinks consumed are generic, any food eaten doesn't come from a known chain, and any clothes (especially shoes) worn can't be tied back to a particular manufacturer. Should you slip up and allow one cultural reference into your work, it ceases to be your work and is instead owned by the corporate conglomerate whose product you accidentally referenced.
In related news, Cambell's now owns all copies of Andy Warhol's 32 Campbell's Soup Cans paintings.
I've got to agree. To give an example, a member on a web forum I run has advanced cancer. Things don't look good and he's likely to pass away in a few weeks. If we needed to rely on TV/radio, I'd never have heard of him. His passing in Georgia wouldn't have merited even a quick mention on the TV/radio stations in NY (not to mention Israel, Australia, the UK, and other countries that our members are from). With the Internet, however, common interests (in this case computers) has enabled strangers from across the globe to become friends in a way that no other form of mass media would have allowed.
Not as geeky as posting an xkcd comic, but here's some related Sheldon comics on the subject:
http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/080523.html
http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/080524.html
No one technology, maybe, but perhaps the future is multiple technologies working together. You could have Solar plants in the south-western US, wind turbines in the plains states, some geo-thermal plants, nuclear, clean-coal, etc. You might even toss some oil powered facilities in the mix also. All of those plants would convert their respective fuel sources to electricity which would be shared across a giant electrical grid. Need to power your electric car? Just plug it in. You don't need to think about the fact that you are getting 23% of your power from solar cells in Arizona, 31% from a Nuclear plant in New York, 18% from a clean coal plant in Tennessee, and 28% from a wind turbine facility in Illinois.*
* NOTE: State names picked at random, so please no replies telling me why Facility A would never, ever be built in State B.
I kept getting messages from Classmates.com telling me that former classmates of mine sent me messages. Of course, you can only view those messages if you pay Classmates.com. I knew this was a scam, but decided on a test. I altered my profile (first time I did that since setting it up years back) to include my e-mail address and a short message: "I don't read messages posted here. If you want to contact me, e-mail me at USERNAME at DOMAIN dot COM." (That e-mail address gets enough spam that I didn't mind exposing it like that.)
I keep getting "people" leaving me messages on Classmates.com and no real classmates have sent messages to my e-mail address. My theory is that these "messages" are:
1. Nonexistent with the e-mails serving only to goad people to pay for their "premium" service.
2. From Classmates.com itself or some third party company trying to get me to buy stuff from them.
3. From an actual classmate who is such a huge idiot that he/she doesn't know how to read in which case why would I want to pay money to contact them back?
Classmates.com is nothing but one huge scam.
I've heard that, once you get into a scam like this and you begin to get evidence that it is a scam, you basically have two mental options:
1. Admit that it is a scam, you are an idiot, and you are out tons of money.
2. Ignore the "It's a Scam!" evidence and send more money their way because this last payment is the one that'll make you rich.
Now you and I can easily say that it's better to do #1 and walk away, but they've mentally and financially invested themselves in this scam. It is easier in the short term to simply believe that you will be rich if you just cut one last check than to face the cold, hard reality of the situation. She obviously got herself in deep and then mentally ignored all evidence that it wasn't a scam to avoid facing the pain of being scammed. All that did, however, was postpone (and increase) the pain.
That trip was the most picture messaging that I've done in some time. Most months, we don't send any text/picture messages at all. With Verizon, we would have to pay $5 extra per month per phone for unlimited text/picture messaging. That is $120 per year that could be better spent elsewhere.
And... to make matters worse, if I text my wife, I pay $0.20 to send the message and then $0.20 for her to receive it. While on a trip recently, I sent her some photos of the grounds I was staying at (The Inn at Middleton Place, beautiful place right outside of Charleston, SC) and of me in my Tux and costume (it was a wedding with a costume reception following). I paid $0.25 to send each of the photos to her and $0.25 for her to receive each one. The four I sent will show up on our monthly bill as $2. For that price, I could have gotten 10 photos printed from WinkFlash.com, shipped to me, and still had money to spare.
Just to support your claim: Throughout the campaign, I used FactCheck.org and Politifact.com to check the veracity of the candidates' statements. Politifact was especially helpful because they give a count of how truthful the candidates were.
Obama ( http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/personalities/barack-obama/ ) had 49 True statements, 31 Mostly True, 33 Half True, 19 Barely True, 25 False, and 2 "Pants On Fire."
McCain ( http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/personalities/john-mccain/ ) had 30 True statements, 28 Mostly True, 28 Half True, 27 Barely True, 34 False, and 7 "Pants On Fire."
McCain thus had less truthful statements (True, Mostly True) and more non-truthful statements (Barely True, False, Pants On Fire). To make it easier to rate the politicians overall, I would assign numbers to their statements: True was +2, Mostly True was +1, Half True was +0.5, Barely True was -0.5, False was -1, and Pants on Fire was -2. Adding up the totals (and taking the average to prevent any bias from more statements being made) gives us a Truth rating of 0.69 for Obama (between Half True and Mostly True) and 0.26 for McCain (between Barely True and Half True). Obama obviously was more truthful.
And just for the sake of completeness, the VPs:
Biden ( http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/personalities/joe-biden/ ) had 8 True statements, 5 Mostly True, 7 Half True, 6 Barely True, 4 False, and 2 "Pants On Fire."
Palin ( http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/personalities/sarah-palin/ ) had 6 True statements, 2 Mostly True, 5 Half True, 3 Barely True, 2 False, and 2 "Pants On Fire."
Assigning my scores for them gives Biden a score of 0.42 and Palin a score of 0.45. Both are just under Half True rating. Palin's truth score is above Biden's but just barely.
(NOTE: These scores include statements made from the beginning of the Primaries up until the election.)
I went to the site and found it within seconds.
1. On Change.gov, scroll down to the link for the "GSA Transition Directory" (next to the purple rectangle that says "GSA").
2. This will prompt you that you are exiting Change.gov. Click the link that takes you to http://directory.presidentialtransition.gov/
3. Click on Organizational Chart (second item down on the sidebar under "Home").
A PDF will download with the organizational chart. Open that PDF to see that "The Constitution" is the highest-most item. To be fair, though, this PDF (and PresidentialTransition.gov as a whole) doesn't seem to be an Obama-team-creation, but a generic website that was already there.
Barbara Streisand! *shoots lightning from malfunctioning V-chip implant*
Interestingly enough, I was flying back from a wedding this past weekend and the jet had an in-flight entertainment system. They had to reboot it to clear up some problems and up popped a familiar logo. No, not Windows, but a cute little penguin. Unfortunately, I don't know what distro they were using. (I do know that the resulting touch-screen interface -- probably a custom job for Delta -- was familiar enough that some ordinary-looking users had no trouble using it.)
I completely agree. And don't forget that you need to keep an eye on those one hundred twist-ties, rubber-band-straps, and other assorted plastic bits to make sure that they all get thrown out. If you leave one behind, your child *will* find it and then they may wonder what happens if they chew on it. Some of those plastic bits are a huge choking hazard and having them in the box for a small child's toy is just irresponsible.
Not to mention the "guilty when accused" attitude of the public. Suppose the police arrest you, seize your laptop, "leak" your name to the media, and they say "Oops, our bad" and let you go. You might not have a single blemish on your record, but the public will think of you as a child pornographer who somehow evaded the police. Every place you go you'll get wary looks. If you have kids, Child Protective Services might make your life a living hell. (I know someone who had CPS called on them by a vindictive neighbor. Even if there's no evidence of any mistreatment, they can still make your life hell.) You might find yourself "downsized" from your job. All because the police were able to arrest you/search you on a whim without any real evidence.
The warrant system isn't perfect. Innocent people still wind up going through the above troubles. But warrants help keep those incidents to a minimum.
But how do you know the guy had pictures on his hard drive? How did they get there? (Some else mentioned that planting Child Porn on someone's computer would be a great way to ruin their life.) Can the photos be admissible as evidence in a court of law?
Plus, there's the risk to the person's reputation if you are mistaken. Suppose the police didn't need a warrant to seize and search personal belongings. A police officer might arrest me and seize my belongings based on some flimsy connection (say, one of my co-workers who I often talked to had some child porn on his computer). My name might get plastered across the media as a sex offender (accused, not that it would matter in the public's eye). I could be fired from my job, lose my kids, basically have my entire life ruined. When the police eventually got around to searching my hard drive and found no child porn, they might be honest and clear my record, but I'd still be guilty in the eyes of the public. I still might have to fight to get my kids back. My marriage might be ruined thanks to the strain. I might find it tough to get work.
Trust me, as the parent of two young children, I want to protect them from the grossly perverted segments of society. But I also don't want to unravel our country's civil rights in a misguided attempt to protect them. I'd rather make sure everything was done properly so that, when we seize someone's belongings, we have real evidence that they are involved in a criminal activity. Giving the police unchecked powers is dangerous which is why the Founding Fathers built our government with a series of checks and balances.