From the Concise Oxford English Dictionary:

verb (past and past participle pleaded or US & dialect pled)

Interesting sources. 1. Writing in Human Events, a conservative magazine. an editor of the National Review (ditto), weaves several speculative ways voter fraud *could* occur and then lists two people who were in fact convicted. Two. Even though he links to Pajamas Media (ditto) which, with no citation, talks about "indictments, convictions, or investigation" in other states. 2. Missouri Watchdog & a local news program identified one *possible* "dead voter" but the article does allow for a clerical error. This was a 9 months ago and I can find no other follow up about this problem. This report came right before the November election and was handled with the typical "scary voice". This is the state that wants to raise the bar even further by requiring proof of citizenship (original birth certificate, naturalization papers or a passport), because, naturally, illegals must be voting illegally in droves, which will go further to disenfranchise voters. 3. My favorite was the Washington Post link which has nothing whatsoever to do with voter fraud. It has to do with legislation that allows for this time line: Voter mails in absentee ballot. Subsequently dies before the vote count. Should his vote be counted? The legislation said yes. This is typical of the documentation of "rampant voter fraud" (vs. registration fraud which is an entirely different animal). I don't know about voter fraud, but voter suppression is certainly a national tradition.

True, but you can't make an audio recording of conversations (i.e., not on the phone) without all parties agreeing in Oregon. Whether that applies to police is an evolving standard -- the most recent case, it was decided in favor of the recorder.

Apparently most are fondly remembering their youthful days of Lucas and/or MUD adventuring. I too love my days of MUDding and Lucas was revolutionary and influential -- my kids (and I) loved them back in the day! However, I don't believe a contemporary 10-year old would have much patience with a MUD or GOG-updated 10-15 year old games (with the exception of the Monkey Island remakes).

If you want a great contemporary adventure game (and, yes, I'm ignoring the fact that you apparently aren't asking about adventure games per se), I would highly recommend "Edna & Harvey: The Breakout" from 2011, easily one of the best games I've played in years. Very traditional but has both a fascinating story line, great voice acting and the wonders of a different (and usually quite witty) response to 98% of combination attempts. None of the repetitive "No, that doesn't work", but a unique on-point retort. The programmer claimed 30,000 lines of dialogue!

Another one from the same company is "The Whispered World". Artistic backgrounds, great story, great voice action. Highly recommended.

Both of these are from Germany -- the Germans are the ones making the best adventure games these days). Another is "The Book of Unwritten Tales" from 2009. This is more 3-D, a bit of action, delightful story. Problem: it's only in German but you can grab fan-written subtitles.

Black Mirror II & Black Mirror III are also recommended. Culpa Innata. The Runaway & Broken Sword series are good for a Lucas-like experience. And, yes, I'm still a connoisseur of adventure games at 57. :) Today I'm playing "The Next Big Thing" -- she would love it! Hilarious!

That's why you don't go for an all-in-one solution. For the most critical/confidential stuff (email, financial data), wrap it in a TrueCrypt container, use Mozy for its delta-block backups -- only backups blocks in the container that have changed. Yes, it means you have to download it in full to recover, but mine fits within a 2 GB file -- easy to download. I'm secure. For the non-confidential but important and ever-changing data (pdfs manuals of everything I've ever owned, save games), I use Mesh which provides 5 GB for free. This syncs similar to Dropbox but does not do delta-changes. I don't care if someone knows where I'm at in Fallout New Vegas but I'd be really bummed if I lost the save game. For the important static data (my collection of pics), I use Adrive -- 50 gb free. I then use Microsoft backup image of my system disk. I also use Acronis to create a backup image of my system disk (suspenders and a belt). I use RoboCopy to external drives of all of my music, movies, games. I'll lose them if my house burns down, but I can always recreate if necessary.

Mozy does delta-change backups. I have a 2 GB TrueCrypt container (which it backups for free) and it then backups only those blocks that have changed since the last. 53 MB today.