Spam Cartoon

My little brother is applying to BYU this year, and BYU has been communicating with their new applicants through email. Unlike years past, for whatever reason, acceptances have been significantly delayed. However, yesterday he received an email from BYU Admissions saying the acceptances will now be sent out Monday, February 9th. He was so excited! Then he noticed that there was an attachment at the bottom of the email, which contained EVERY email address of EVERY applicant to BYU this year. There were thousands of emails on this list. Are you kidding me?? Who was smart enough to attach the list of every applicant to an email that went out to thousands of 18 year olds? I have concluded that maybe this is the reason that acceptance letters have been so slow this year…technologically inferior employees.

Question: What would you do if your email address was on this list, sent out to thousands of people who could sell your email address to any and every spammer they could find. Over 183 billion emails are sent each day, and probably 180 billion of them are spam. Is your email box ready to accept this many messages  every day? Even the most insecure person doesn’t want that many friends.

After determining the Big-12 championship game participants the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.

“Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work–including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule–our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking.”

Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States the BCS commissioner stated “The US only had two major victories–Japan and Germany. The computer models, unlike humans, aren’t influenced by head-to-head contests–they consider each contest to be only a single, equally-weighted event.”

German Chancellor Adolph Hiter said “Yes, we lost to the US; but we defeated #2 ranked France in only 6 weeks.” Herr Hitler has been criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn ‘style points’ to enhance Germany’s rankings. Hitler protested “Our contest with Poland was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional forces.”

The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented ” France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1 ranking they only fell to #2.”

Japan was ranked #3 with victories including Manchuria, Borneo and the Philippines.

I know that we cannot do a playoff, due to school schedules and other various things, but this BCS stuff is ridiculous.  Why is Utah #6 playing #4 Alabama when #3 Texas is playing #10 Ohio State?  I would think that #3 would play #4, but apparently not.  Go Deutschland!

I don’t quite know how I feel about it yet, it seems like a good feature, especially now that Andrea and I are looking for housing. It would be nice to “drive” down the street and look at the neighborhoods that we are interested in.

Take a look at this article that I found online today:

The Pentagon said that Google Street Views is a threat to national security and made Google pull images taken on streets near U.S. military bases. Google complied with the governmental order, even though the images were taken from public streets. Freedom of information and security butt heads once again.

The government was concerned that the images, which included views of the entrances to military bases, were a threat. Gen. Gene Renuart, head of the military command responsible for homeland defense, said, “It actually shows where all the guards are. It shows how the barriers go up and down. It shows how to get in and out of buildings. I think that poses a real security risk for our military installations.”

But the images were taken from public streets, where anyone could walk and take the same pictures and/or video and post them to the Internet. The question remains whether the government had the right to request that the images be removed. While that question is assuredly being debated, Google complied. Google spokesman Larry Yu said, “We have been contacted by the military. In those instances where they (the U.S military) have expressed concerns about the imagery, we have accommodated their requests.”

Street Views has caused controversy from the start. Many privacy advocates claimed that even though images were taken in public places — where no reasonable assumption of privacy really exists — people were being exposed doing things they might not wish to have plastered on the Internet for all to see.

According to this Reuters report, “a man was pictured exiting a San Francisco strip club. In another case, a woman was shown sunbathing. Complaints have even included a woman asking that a picture of her cat be taken down, a request Google denied.”

This is definitely a thorny issue. The government has been eating away at various public freedoms and due processes for the sake of security. While I believe ensuring our protection is one of the federal government’s main functions, Benjamin Franklin’s words continue to ring in my head: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Article Taken from Information Week -

I am interested to see what others think about this issue and whether Google should be allowed to post these images to the internet or not. Leave a comment and let us know.

It is that time of year again when everyone is trying to send out a Christmas card as a year in review.  It is a difficult job to find a good photo of the whole family.  This year, Andrea took on the job of making my families Christmas card.  She touched up all the photos, and made us all look better.  Take a look and let us know what you think about Andrea’s first Photoshop Christmas Card.

When she got here we turned on the computer and it prompted her with the normal Windows XP login. When all of the personal settings were loaded (which took forever), the desktop was blank and the My Documents lead to a blank folder with the sample Music and Photos. It basically looked like a virgin install of XP.

Well I accidentally clicked on the Picasa icon and the program started up. Right away, the program started finding all of the files on the hard drive. As it turned out, all of the files on her computer weren’t gone, Windows had just gotten all messed up. Somehow, and I don’t know how yet, the registry or something was changed, because a new used file had been created named ‘TEMP’ and all of the shortcuts were remapped to those folders.

Even though I don’t know exactly why things got all messed up, at least the files were not deleted. That would have been the worst. We backed them up to an external hard drive and then tried to run a virus scan and spy ware remover. They both ran and of course found nothing. Likely I will just reinstall the OS and all of the documents so her computer will be healthy again. So even though It isn’t fixed, Picasa helped us find the missing files in a jiffy. Thanks Picasa, therefore, thank you Google!