Hey, kids, it's Wednesday (sort of), and you all know what that means: it's time for this week's Jaded Rule of Life™! In previous weeks we've shared our world-weary wisdom (accumulated via decades of bitter, bitter mistakes) by illustrating the disheartening eternal truth of such pessimistic maxims as "she's only after your money, stupid" and "there's no such thing as a free eggroll, or at least not one that you'd actually want to eat." Today we're going to continue the tradition with yet another lesson you'd only learn the hard way on your own. Ready? Here it is: never trust anything the media tells you, or else you'll wind up broke, dead, or unable to run Repair Disk Permissions.

Oh, so you want an example, do you? Allow us to chuckle in a vaguely patronizing fashion, for your doubt reveals a charming idealism that, if not corrected immediately, will surely spell your downfall. Okay, here's your example: macHOME magazine. That's a trustworthy publication, right? It's all about Mac use in the home-- iMacs running Quicken in the den, eMacs with the hottest new edutainment titles in the 2.4 kids' rooms, Mom and Dad using iBooks out on the porch while sipping iced tea and enjoying the bracing scent of freshly-cut grass that hangs in the air. What could possibly be more idyllic? Well, how about an article in macHOME's March issue called "Spring Cleaning"? It's just got "white picket fence" plastered all over it.

Except that within that article lurks the seeds of your DOOM.

Here's the what: faithful viewer Scott Pennington tipped us off to a MacFixIt note which attests that the "Spring Cleaning" article contains advice which, if followed, would ultimately lead to your undoing. In its zeal to help readers sweep their disks clean of unwanted and unneeded accumulated gunk, macHOME reported that "there is at least one folder you can empty: Macintosh HD > Library > Receipts. This folder contains installer packages that are no longer of use."

Unfortunately, this advice turns out to be wrong, wrong, wrong (although it's a misconception we've seen in the past). As MacFixIt confirms, the Receipts folder doesn't contain installers at all, but rather-- are you ready for a shock?-- receipts. (Easy, now. Breathe. Put a paper bag over your head if you think it'll help.) These are packages "with detailed information about software that has been installed" and not the installers themselves.

macHOME should probably have been tipped off by file sizes; whereas the 10.3.2 update is over 36 MB in size, the file "MacOSXUpdate10.3.2.pkg" in our Receipts folder weighs in at a mere 1.2 MB on disk. But who knows? Maybe optimists think that data shrinks after it's downloaded. After all, if they can actually believe that the glass is half-full instead of half-empty, tepid, and tainted with someone else's spit floating in it, well, who knows what other goofy notions they might have rattling around in those zany brains of theirs?

Anyway, the upshot is that if you delete those receipts, your Mac loses all the information it needs about what files are supposed to have which permissions, and thusly attempting to run "Repair Disk Permissions" in Disk Utility produces only a confused grunt and an error message complaining about "no valid packages." Okay, so you wouldn't be dead or broke, but you wanted an example, and we gave you one. So there you go, we're right about this: never trust the media.

Trust us on this one. Would we lie to you?