"That way other workers could report their employer for hiring cheap illegals."

No luck there. First of all, the actual people involved have protection from liability as a business so the business gets fined and nobody goes to jail. Second, in the US the accused has the right to face the accuser. WHO reported the company will be in the paperwork and will also be a matter of public record.

By the way it is already a crime to hire illegals, and to pay them less than american workers, and it is already a criminal affair. The system doesn't work particularly well.

You can anonymously report a crime, but you can not anonymously accuse someone of a crime. No employee is going to lose their job by reporting their employer for anything.

Somehow I doubt many Mexicans in the illegal border crossing business are afraid of U.S. law enforcement framing them for kiddie porn.

So would gasoline.

Well, there are plenty of distros to choose from. Heck, another 3 hours on the forums and he might have it narrowed down to half a dozen or so. Then if he can just figure out what RAR is and which distro works with his processor and his NIC he'll be in business! ;-)

There's already a moat of sorts - the Rio Grande river. I think that only stops illegals who can't swim and have no access to a raft or other boat.

I think we have bigger problems than illegal immigration and trying to patrol the border, which is an arguably worthwhile endeavor, is really not the most effective technique at our disposal. It would help, for starters, if the country they were fleeing wasn't such a cesspool of corruption, crime and poverty. Notice that we don't have nearly as much trouble with Canadians fleeing their country. I can hardly blame those Mexican immigrants for wanting to get the heck out of there.

Second it would probably be more effective if we made it easier for them to come here LEGALLY. Then they could work and live here, with less fear of deportation, and contributing more openly to the society they want so badly to join.

It's a complicated problem, which is why nobody has really managed to solve it. Just ask a Cherokee. If you can find one.

So, the 9/11 hijackers were all dull & depressed?

It's just that he spent a hour recompiling his video drivers, another 3 searching the forums to figure out which build he was supposed to have for the core he was running, had to redownload a bunch of files because he found out he's running an Athlon processor instead of an Intel, then couldn't remember which .conf files to VI and finally just gave up on the whole deal because he needed to get some deliverin' done.

He'll find some 14-year-old Elf with lots of time on his tiny hands to help him figure it out later. ;-)

TheBrain is a really interesting UI also. Cool idea, great for mind mapping and seeing connection. You can spend a LOT of time putting information into it and maintaining it though. I suppose that's true of any project software but TheBrain is an app you could easily lose a day playing with without even realizing it.

I agree - our firm uses OneNote extensively for project and research tracking. OneNote 2010 even has a view that will dock to the side of the screen - very handy for leaving your notes convenient while working on other things.

Microsoft does provide a 60-day free trial - fully functional.

Goggles is an interesting concept but it's still a long way from prime time. There are a lot of things (like close at hand items) that it doesn't work with. Tells you right up front that it probably won't work with "Animals" or "Furniture" and I've tried it on one or two pretty significant landmarks without much success.

Like a lot of what Google does it probably deserves the "Beta" tag. But give them time, they may be a long way from a useful tool but I think they're on the right track at least.

It's not Motorola's fault that the calendar sync is broken and the camera issues are not hardware but rather software. Motorola makes the hardware... Here ya go: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What's+the+difference+between+hardware+and+software%3F You're welcome.

You probably won't have to install A/V software for their iPhones unless they jailbreak them. One of Apple's weaknesses (heavy-handed control over their hardware and their App store) is also a strength when it comes to security.

What happens when parts of your open source mesh network is off that day because the people with the nearest access point unplugged it to plug in the vacuum cleaner?

One of the big advantages to the big carriers is that, for the most part, their signal is relatively reliable in urban areas. Yes, there are places were you can't get signal, but those areas are fairly well-known and don't tend to change that often. I know when I'm in my fave Chinese restaurant that my Verizon Droid gets 4 bars of signal. It's not a vague "Gosh, I hope somebody has an access point around here" situation.

The other question I'd have with a Mesh network is security. If I'm connecting to some random mesh access point how do I know who owns that and what they might be sniffing (traffic wise)? At least with Verizon I know, unless I'm roaming, whose tower I'm connecting to.

I don't get why I would use Google's DNS instead of OpenDNS - which is what all of my sites use now.

You would think so but they've made mistakes with security before. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/26/more-security-loopholes-found-in-google-docs/