Honestly, what's the fantasy here? In most cases (queue anecdotal counterarguements) if the police are looking for something on your machine they are going to have a reason to do it. This little "honeypot" isn't going to make them surrender to your brilliance, it isn't going to expose a dramatic flaw in the legal system and no, you will not eventually be vindicated by the supreme court. It will land you in the same position as this woman - the government believes that you have evidence on your machine and they don't believe that you conveniently forgot the password.

Or do what other primates do and fling your stool!

FTFY. Commercial research, as you pointed out further down, includes product development. (Of course, it also includes developing things that help you develop the products as well.) Xerox PARC was/is funded by the sale of copy machines. It isn't unreasonable to require researchers to focus on developing products that help fund more research.

You shouldn't expect Xerox to fund projects that are solely designed to learn something new. Sometimes they will and that is great, but at the end of the day, the responsibility for funding high-risk research (the research that commercial labs often build upon) rests solely on the government.

I think the question implied "on an original Windows install." In that case the proper answer is to fall off your chair laughing.

You understand it incorrectly. Passing the state bar exam is one barrier to entry (a VERY DIFFICULT barrier), but you also have to pass the MPRE (an ethics exam), possibly take an additional ethics course (if you're in New York, like I am) and finally, submit an application to the court for admission. The application is very thorough - I just sent mine in and had to include reference letters from every attorney I ever worked with and had to list every job and residence I've had for the last ten-odd years. Here's a link to the packet, if you want to look it over. After you have submitted the packet, you get grilled by the character and fitness committee and then, if you make it through that step, you become a lawyer.

I believe that the original poster isn't a great journalist. (Did you see how I qualified that?) He or she didn't bring up the fact that after creating websites like obsidianfinancesucks.com, she offered her services to Obsidian to clear up their "PR Problem" at $2,500 a month. That seems like an important fact that someone might need to shape his or her opinion on the ruling. As I understand the judge's ruling, it doesn't bar all bloggers from being considered journalists, just this one and even then, only as it applies to this case.

I'll go on record with a preemptory "what he/she said" to include all of the previous comments. This is one of those things that nearly every slash dotter has to do at one point or another and in my experience, you'll have to deal with at least one of three bottlenecks: time, money, or bandwidth.

If you are doing this to several hundred machines, sneaker net is likely a faster solution than your network. Take advantage of the higher bandwidth and save the backup images to a portable USB drive. With a large enough drive you can also keep the new image local as well. Using this method you can boot into Your Favorite Backup Solution, take the backup, securely erase the disk, and write the new image in one fell swoop. After the imaging is complete collect your various USB drives and march them back to the server.

With large enough USB disks, you could repeat this process several times before off-loading the images to your server.

There is a back tick key. If you hold your finger on the single quote button, you get a selection of four quote-like characters: ', ’,‘, and `. I'm not saying your network filter didn't work, it just kept people off who don't know how to use their idevices. (Sent from my iPhone, of course.)

If memory serves, there was a CarAnalogyGuy somewhere in that lineage as well.

Getting nine lawyers to agree on anything, much less an interpretation of the Constitution, is a self-defeating premise.

I can't speak for the author, but I think he meant "touch screen" and not just "touch." Steve Jobs (among others) have criticized touch screen desktops because of the "gorilla arm" problem. FWIW, I use a magic trackpad at work and it's good for gesturing - especially if you are already used to it, coming off a laptop or tablet.