Also SmoothWall but of the three I'm happiest with pfSense.

http://www.pfsense.org/ (BSD)

http://www.smoothwall.org/ (Linux)

http://m0n0.ch/wall/ (BSD)

The USA is reported to have a long history of cable tapping, Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage

http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/dp/006097771X/ref=sr_1_1

"For decades American submarines have roamed the depths in a dangerous battle for information and advantage in missions known only to a select few. Now, after six years of research, those missions are told in Blind Man's Bluff, a magnificent achievement in investigative reporting. It reads like a spy thriller -- except everything in it is true. This is an epic of adventure, ingenuity, courage, and disaster beneath the sea, a story filled with unforgettable characters who engineered daring missions to tap the enemy's underwater communications cables and to shadow Soviet submarines."

Contact your ISP, you'll have to get beyond the phone-script crew, and explain the issue to the technical types there. It isn't likely that they will be happy to have someone playing this type of games with their connections and will step in. In most places the ISP can also bring legal charges under a theft of service law.

Not a Motorola Barrage, the Bluetooth system doesn't work very well. After a call made or answered from your bluetooth device the phone may not reconnect to it properly properly and you'll be scrambling for your phone when it rings and your car/headphone remains silent.

Check the bug tracker here: https://bugzilla.novell.com/buglist.cgi?&query_format=advanced&order=Importance&field0-0-0=op_sys&type0-0-0=substring&value0-0-0=openSUSE&resolution=---&product=openSUSE%2012.2&classification=openSUSE - Lots of critical and major bugs left that can leave you with an unusable system until you figure out the poblem and find the work-around for it.

Timothy Zahn the six volume Dragonback series. I just picked it up used from Amazon (look for Zahn "dragon and") for the grandkid and ended up reading the whole set myself.

They and Bill Gates play well together? Google: Monsanto "Bill Gates" - but only if you want to get really aggravated.

A bit further south will put you out of the worst danger from the problems drug addicted Americans are causing for Mexico and be a bit closer to the equator as a bonus. Given a choice of 10 years in court and millions in legal fees for a Texas base or a facility located in Mexico that can be started in a few months the choice seems clear. Down the road not having every move opposed and being hauled back into court over and over for years is going to be a big cost and time saver.

http://www.spi.dod.mil/lipose.htm Quote: Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) creates a secure end node from trusted media on almost any Intel-based computer (PC or Mac). LPS boots a thin Linux operating system from a CD or USB flash stick without mounting a local hard drive. Administrator privileges are not required; nothing is installed. The LPS family was created to address particular use cases: LPS-Public is a safer, general-purpose solution for using web-based applications. The accredited LPS-Remote Access is only for accessing your organization's private network."