and here's where we might disagree on the distinction. you say he should never have been granted an H1-B visa, I agree, but only on the H1-B part. I don't see why there isn't a fast track for citizenship in cases like this. sounds like he was a productive member of society. i don't see any reason not to increase the ratio of those around here.

I don't care what country someone came from. only what country they belong to now. there isn't a problem with someone leaving their country, becoming a US citizen, and either joining our workforce, or continuing their education before joining the workforce. i don't see a problem with tax dollars assisting with that along with any other citizen. now, spending our tax dollars so a citizen of another country (doesn't matter which) can get a nice mostly free education, and return home to assist with improving their economy at the cost of ours.. that i kinda have a problem with.

wait..google voice isn't VOIP.. geesh, and all this time i thought it was an app that handled voice over IP... marketingspeak- it's bad

primary mac user here, though i have a vista box, a fedora box in a server role, and a dual boot xp/fedora desktop. i deal in tech support with a variety of OS's, find it comes in handy to have some around at home. i agree that you're more likely to run into a situation where a combination of your computer and a given software title "just won't work" on a mac when dealing with an age gap, but much of that is due to the changes that apple's implemented to try and move in a new direction. If they'd had a bigger share of the market 5-10 years ago, i don't think there would have been quite such a steep cliff. that being said, that issue does arise on windows as well. 10 years prior to the release of vista, win95 was the current OS, try running a win95 app on vista, or an app designed for vista on win95. 10 years prior to now, win98 (the first release) has been out for a year or so. trying to update a pc you bought with win95 to vista would be a long slow, likely fruitless process. with some significant hardware upgrades you 'might' be able to have a usable xp installation on an early win98 pc, but even that's unlikely. the move to 64 bit OS's and apps will make things even more interesting for compatibility. basically. if you want things to work, use recent hardware, recent software, and try not to do anything too outside spec with it, or expect to be supporting yourself (which isn't impossible, but not something john q public's gonna do)

in a different direction. the pictures were discovered by the school administration confiscating one of the male's cellphones. what then gave them the right to go poking around at the data on the phone? if the student was using a phone during class time, i can understand taking it away. but i don't see how that allows an invasion of privacy? what if we were talking about a laptop instead of a cellphone. does the school have the right to go through all that data as well? access to bank information (that some 16-17 year old's could have) going through old emails, etc. with today's cell phone capabilities, in many ways there isn't a difference between what you store on your laptop and your phone.

yes, it is horrible that you'll have to spend money on your friend due to his procrastination. the important part is understanding that it's that procrastination that's at fault, not the government. I'm not a huge fan of the performance of most government aid programs, but seriously, i have next to no sympathy for anyone that's getting 'left out' here. we're looking at 1 month left until the changeover is coming out, and they're 'starting' to run out of money. this program has been going on all last year at least, and the commercials on this television that your friend is so dependant of have been common since that time, progressively more so as we got closer. When you wait until dinner's wrapping up to get yourself a plate, don't come complaining when all that's left is scraps, or that they're cold.

to your first point. why would there be a 'device'.. they can wiretap through the service provider. hence why the bill providing immunity to the telco's for complying with illegal tap requests was passed.