Over the years, I have been involved in organizing numerous research-oriented conferences on software-related topics. Since 9/11, I've only worked on conferences to be held outside the US. There's just too much risk that speakers and other participants won't be able to get their visas or will have other problems getting to the US. There's also a growing number of people (see above) who simply don't want to come to the US. We're seeing the same phenomenon among potential graduate school applicants: the US may have the top schools, but Canada, Australia, and the UK are increasingly successful at recruiting those students.

In the past, McDonald's was the employer of last resort. Now it's the TSA.

I have an unlocked N95 that I have recently used with T-Mobile in the US and with Orange in Spain. Call quality and signal pickup seem reasonably good. The N95 has an amazing collection of features (WiFi, GPS, built in maps, 5 mp camera, video call support, music player, slot for up to 2 Gb microSD card, etc.). That makes for a significant learning curve, even before you download additional apps, such as the SymTorrent client for BitTorrent. As for battery life, it's poor if you keep the WiFi and GPS on, but considerably better if you remember to turn those features off when you are not using them.