I was reading Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country and ran across an article which mentions why putting up a fence won't work to prevent illegal immigration.

It states the only solution is a temporary worker program. In fact, this is NOT a solution and I can easily explain why in a few different ways.

I'll start with the replacement problem. You see, what people are saying is "since we can't stop people from coming into the country illegally, we'll simply make it fully legal for them to come in." This would be like saying "since bank robbery is illegal, and yet it continues, the only way we can stop it is to just give them the money before hand." Taking it further, you could also say "since sex offenders are compulsive and cannot be rehabilitated, we'll make rape & sexual molestation legal."
What this boils down to is you're not really fixing the problem, you're simply declaring it to not be a problem...

The other problem is the problem of volume, and this problem has two possible illustrations...
a. The number of 'temporary workers' coming into the country will be equal to that of the millions that currently come in illegally, thereby not fixing the burdens illegal immigration causes.
b. The quota of 'temporary workers' coming in will not be sufficient to satisfy the hoards of those who do not make it via the legal means, therefore illegal immigration will continue in mass quantities (except for the lucky few that do make it in legally).

The next problem is that for every individual 'temporary worker' that would come in, there would be a family behind that worker that they would likely want with them. Far from being an insurance policy, it's like thoes family members will end up entering the country also, either via legal means or illegal menans...

This in turn leads to the problem that comes with a worker living in the country for an extended period. A lot is said about sending the worker back to their country when their time is up, but is it really that simple? After their term is up they already have a life in this country, quite probably along with property, friends, family, and much more. Would you feel comfortable telling someone they would have to leave their wife & kids and return to a country without them???
This possibility hits close to home for myself: My wife is currently working on getting her green card, and we're having difficulty because she was brought here under a student visa, mistakenly believing her sponsor at the time would allow her to fulfill that visa (this is the nice version of the story). Our worst case scenario right now is the possibility I may end up being without my wife for a couple years. This is currently taking into account that she both legally entered the country with the belief she would be fufiling her visa properly, and that she married me, a natural born US citizen. Now imagine yourself being in a similar position where you might be told that the governemnt is going to deport your spouce. Now, six years from now would you be comfortable geing teh one tell several hundred thousand (million?) 'temporary workers' that they will now have to separate from their families??? The only way to prevent this scenario is to prevent them from coming in as temporary workers in the first place.

For the record, I'm one who is of the opinion that we cannot ask all of the millions of illegals here currently to all go home, primarily because I feel (in the case of thoes who have not violated laws beyond entering the country illegally) breaking appart all thoes families is somewhat inhumane. This however does not apply to thoes who have commited criminal activities above & beyond basic immigration laws. I strongly believe the only solution at this point is to prevent people from sneaking in this country in the first place, and to deport thoes illegal aliens with criminal backgrounds.

The problem is, if we're going to go ahead & and tell all of today's illegals that they can now become citizens, we will again have another hoard of illegals coming over in an attempt to jump on the band wagon. Keep in mind that when Reagan signed the amnesty bill several years ago (which was ironically practically identical to the so called 'this is not amnesty' bill that was in front of the congress a few months back) it was considered to be an ending to the illegal problem. The idea was we would make the illegals legal, then stop more illegals from coming in. We all can see today what happened from there... The illegals of yester-year became citizens, millions of new illegals came, and now we're in the same position ironically talking about the same solution being a final solution.

The problem with what happened after Reagan's amnesty bill is the enforcement end was not beefed up enough to prevent the illegals from coming in. Until we can successfully do this, there will be no fix to the illegal immigration problem.

One final point I want to point out. To people who give the argument that enforcement (such as building a wall) will not fix the problem, my question becomes: how do you know? We have never had an effective border enforcement policy. Sure we have some enforcement, but the 'some' has never been enough in terms of border enforcement.

I think most of us would probably not want to sign up with a bank that keeps money and account records inside a wooden vault with an unarmed security guard who is on duty for 9 hours a day. Yet this is about where we are with border security. Would you be listening to the advocate who says "building a steel vault and getting 24 hour armed security isn't going to protect your money, the only solution that will work is for you to give money to those who would want to steal it in the first place." I think most of us wouldn't even begin to take this argument seriously, but how are the arguments against border enforcement any different? You know, don't just turn your head and try to believe my comparison here is invalid, as in the end it really solidifies the extent which anti-enforcement arguments use.

As I've posted in previous articles, I myself am open to immigration. I go to a Chinese church, and the vast majority of those around me are in fact immigrants (my wife being one of them). I have zero problem with people coming here, and I would back a plan to increase legal immigration in a heartbeat. But in the end we have to deal with the fact that the vast majority of those who we allow in the country as workers or otherwise will end up staying here. To think a 'temporary worker' program will remain temporary is shortsighted wishful thinking. The 'temporary worker' program solution is basically a band-aid on a bullet wound. It's a 'right now' solution that will end up in a much deeper and more serious problem once the 'temporary' time span comes to an end...

After getting my TiVo I signed up for a TiVo rewards program and shortly after a TiVo Rewards Master Card. My statement date passed a couple weeks ago and according to both TiVo an the CC company, I should have gotten my points 3 days after my statement date...

I called them and their system sure enough said I had earned zero points. I got a representative on the phone and she said they should have already been posted but I have to wait 31 days before I can do anything to inquire about the points...

Basically, something is wrong, they know it's wrong, but they won't do anything to fix it until Christmas day, or after Christmas day in this case, being they're likely closed on Christmas...

I feel real confident when they tell me there is a problem but I have to wait a month before they'll bother even looking to fix it...

It's apparent that Verizon employees do not know basic math. This clip has a Verizon supervisor stating .002 dollars/kb is the exact same as .002 cents/kb...

I swear I wanted to rip the employees head off hearing this. They are changing from cents to dollars without applying any additional math...

It would be like this:

Say they were charging 1 cent per kilobite, and you were to use 100 kilobites:

1 x 100 = 100 cents, or 1 dollar, NOT 100 DOLLARS!!!

Now if you do the same for .002 cents you get the following:

.002 x 100 = .2 CENTS, or 2/10 of 1 penny, NOT 20 CENTS!!!

Come on guys, how can EVERYBODY AT VERIZON not know how to do a simple conversion (or more clearly, not know that the end results is still in cents, and does not change to dollars automatically without any conversion)...

There was a story a while back about a university student who made an online tool to generate valid looking (and possibly working) boarding passes online. His sole purpose was to bring to light the fact that they are overly easy for ANYONE to generate. After the FBI dropped it's investigation against him, the TSA is now going after him... To possibly fine him up to $11,000...

The sad part here is that the morons at the TSA (pure, idiotic, shortsighted morons with an IQ comparable to that of a pencil measured in miles) is that if this guy could make a tool to create possibly working boarding passes, a damn terrorist could do it too! Only the terrorist would do it without telling anybody first!!! Does anybody see just how stupid these morons are??? I mean come on, can anybody really be this stupid???

If a problem exists, instead of fixing they go after the one guy who points it out... Because, you know some random guy who makes a tool solely to point out a horrific problem is doing much more damage than a secretive terrorist with a bomb using one he made without telling anyone first could do...

This whole airport security thing is truly pitiful... And these idiots at the FBI & TSA are busy working very hard ensuring it stays that way...

[update]

As much as I can tell this method would work much better than the 'generator' talked about above, and all you nee to pull it off is a stolen credit card & a real ID (even assuming the name on the ID is on the no fly list)...

This post is an article regarding a copyright law passed in Australia. In it's original wording the use of an iPod or the singing of Happy Birthday in public would be considered a crime. Apparently they've refined the law to allow such things now, but the following rule still applies:

...it would be illegal to 'sell, loan, or give away a copy you make to a friend, but a friend can listen to your music with you'.

Being the Zune allows you to send a song to a friend which he can listen to 3 times, this would pretty much make that feature illegal, as you need not be present with the friend for him to use the song those 3 times...

So the law effectively makes the sharing feature on the Zune illegal in Australia...

I guess Universal's rant about the Zune being the only music player that was 'legal' in fact incorrect. As at least the iPod doesn't inherently contain a feature that violates Australia's copyright law...

I just got off the phone with Ambient support, and they indicated that my device is the odd one out apparently...

They are having me send back the board from my device & will be sending me a replacement. Hopefully it won't take the replacement that long to make it back here, so with any luck my device should be running by next week (assuming the shipping doesn't take that long)...

I'll keep my fingers crossed in the mean time...

After sending another email requesting support last night, I received a response this morning that the problem has been fixed.

I very excitedly began to create a new account & register my device. I selected the option to open a premium (paid) account & upon completion ended back up on their main page. So logically I logged in to configure my device...

Immediately I was stopped, however, with an error 500! The very same error at the very same place where this entire process started. Only difference this time is this time I signed up for a $19.95/quarter payment first. The entire process has gone from frustrating to ridiculous in one quick instance...