Demanding a ransom is not trying to return it.

Shortly after walls became a defensive technique, tunneling was developed as a counter, then counter-tunneling was developed, able to detect and locate enemy tunnels, without using electronics, which we now have.

I have heard of nacro-subs. They "work" because we aren't looking for them. WW2 radar could pick up reflections from a sub's periscope. A semisubmersible does not magically render all our technology useless by having a catchy name.

Where did I assume they don't already use low flying small aircraft? A low flying Cessna would be a skeet shoot for AAA (and make for some good youtube, I'd pay to see Cessna vs. Phalanx (yes, not actual AAA but one can dream)). Low and slow may avoid radar but with an actual military presence you'd be very vulnerable to plain old vision.

Nice threads you've got by the way. *snicker*

China?

Moving goods/people to AK and through Canada back to the US wouldn't be cheap for the ne'er-do-wells either.

Don't need to lock down the entirety of the borders, just the ones profitable enough to violate. Alaska would work much like the bulk of Russia, let the land itself be the defenses.

We seem to be up for supporting multiple foreign fronts in under developed areas. Pull the bulk of the troops out of foreign theaters and what standing army we have can be standing in Roman style border posts.

"costs to feed and transport this border protection force would be on the scale of a major war."

Given just the cost of transporting fuel in Afghanistan moving the troops there to the Mexican border would probably be on the scale of a minor police action and not a major war.

Move some bases down there and do boot camp on the border.

Tunnels can be detected (to a point where they'd have to dig too deep to be practical) if anyone bothers to put the devices and manpower in and flights over the border would make for cheap gunnery practice.

As for people starving, NPR interviewed a tomato farmer all upset that his illegals were fleeing some new laws, illegals that had skills the local work force lacks, hmm, sounds like the job for a work visa, of course, they wouldn't be cheap illegals then.

Moving the goal posts, nice.

"If you don't install iOS updates, you can't sync with iTunes at least."

It can't have the latest iOS updates yet it still syncs.

No, you just can't get it from the app store anymore.

I have a number of apps that were pulled for using private APIs which still work (haven't tried them on iOS 5 yet) and can be restored to any of my devices from my iTunes backups.

Why buy a good fillet knife when there are 100 blade swiss army knives that do everything?

You should have seen all the hacks I needed to do to get my second generation Touch to synch, there were literally none!

Someone needs to lay off of the haterade.

We at /. just turn "There Exists" into "For All" when talking about corruption of authority figures.

Call your local (landline) telecom company, if they don't handle the MSAG for your street there's a good chance they'll know who does.

More than four computers in the country was a hype-based phenomenon, then room sized computers were a hype based phenomenon, then furniture size, desktop, luggable, portable, laptop, notebook and even your precious netbook (which have laster longer than I thought they would, though they're now more sub-sub-notebooks then netbook) are hype-based phenomenon. Deal with it.

Once the darling of the English language...

Thank you political wonks, your contributions to the language will be with us (unfortunately) for generations.

"Middle Ages income distribution per law :

33% lord, 33% church, 33% peasant.

Modern income/wealth distribution :

5% gets 72% of everything. 85% gets 15% of everything. "

You're mixing percentages.

What percent of the population were lords or the bigwigs of the church (and serf's didn't own the land they were tied to, the land basically owned them)?