I agree that this would be a great solution, but even just this will meet great resistance from the companies that profit from activating stolen phones. Cricket is one example. After having my phone stolen, I was happy that Sprint blacklisted the phone... then I did a little research and discovered that thieves need only "flash it to Cricket" and then they can use it on Sprint's network. I have a feeling that a large portion of Cricket's business comes from activating stolen phones. Expect push back on this type of law from Cricket and other similar companies.

The US government spends billions of dollars on research each year and much of it requires software development to some degree. Much of this money goes to the big guys like Boeing or Lockheed Martin, but a non-trivial portion of it is reserved for small companies as well. In any case, there are lots of programming jobs out there doing research, either directly or indirectly, for the government.

I happen to work for a small company that does contract research and software development for the gov't. We pride ourselves on writing solid, maintainable scientific software. To accomplish this goal, we need programmers and scientists, but most of all we need programmer-scientists. We are hiring (message me if you want more info), but I'm sure there are other companies out there as well.

They charged you to be a member? Neither credit union I've joined had membership fees. Generally, maintaining membership involved keeping a low balance of around $25 in my savings account with them. The two credit unions I joined were:

Kirtland Federal Credit Union (military only)
San Diego County Credit Union

If I understand the article correctly, banks are not worried about these transactions because it's traceable and can easily be reversed. If your girlfriend said the transfer was fraudulent, then the bank would simply take the money back from your account (yes, they can still do that even though it's with a different bank). If you had already withdrawn the money from your account, then you'd be looking at a negative balance and probably lots of fees and charges on top of that.

Now, if you could initiate a western union transfer from your girlfriend's account, then it would become a serious risk.

I think this is the key, right here. Once you pay $3.99 and get the source code, you can do whatever you want with it. You could make it freely available to everyone, or you could even compile it and sell the identical app for $3.98. If you really feel strongly about making this code freely available, you should be glad that you can make that happen for less than $4.

Good point. And I'd also like to know how many flowers we are talking about. Solving the traveling salesman problem for 5 flowers isn't really the same as solving it for 100 cities.

Does anybody know if Windows 7 will be restricted to running applications bought through their official marketplace (like iPhones are)? I hadn't heard much about this issue until I read a blog, a couple of weeks ago, that implied that they might go the way of the iPhone on this issue. That broke my heart because I love my windows mobile phone but would be unwilling to tolerate this.

(In case anyone cares, PdaNet is why I'm so passionate about this issue. It's a very useful app that would never survive in a restricted marketplace setup).