The things you say make me shudder. I think you may have a valid point (several, actually).

Can the electoral system be reformed to allow true public servants into office, without relying on big money?

There are two issues that remain unsolved before the drones are good enough for this to become a real game changer (for good and bad):

1. the stationary drones are too noisy since they're choppers.

2. the battery life is horrendous. usually around 10-15 min mark when what is needed is several hours.

This is already known. I read about it a few weeks ago. You didn't spill any beans I'm afraid.

You are correct that the peak speed isn't that important but, apparently, (please correct me if I'm wrong) 4G also reduces latency which is hugely important.

Here is a comparison between ATT 3G and 4G which shows that latency in 4G is about 30% lower (50ms vs 70ms).

This impacts browsing in a very big way for browsing, VOIP and Videoconferencing, online gaming and so forth.

You're putting GPUs on those things so here is what you do:

1-Start mining bitcoins
2-Watch their value soar
3-Sell them
4-Profit!

You're welcome!

Wake me up when it gets to 99%.

Unless I'm mistaken, 66% accuracy is ridiculously shitty.

Hi Mr. Mitnick,

Is there an amount of security that would stop a gifted social engineer like yourself, and if so, how much would it typically cost a Forbes 500 company?

Read your book, it was quite entertaining and informative!

There was a time when most WiFi hotspots were password-free and we could connect to the internet for free in most urban areas when we were travelling, with latencies and speeds that put 3G to shame.

Now, those times are gone forever. No more free internet for the casual user. No more sharing and love.

People like to talk about security but it's bullshit. We are not the winners in this ordeal. ISPs are. The security issues have an easy technical solution: The same one used by french ISPs to let its customers connect to other customer's WiFi.

They have a password-free Hotspot that sends you to web login and a separated, bandwidth-shaped VLAN for guests so they can't access network shares or do anything else.

R.I.P free WiFi. You will be missed.

Just make everybody switch to apple computers and the botnet is immediately worthless, along with 99.9999% of the malware out there.

You're welcome.

-Steve

That is the correct assessment but I'll disagree about the PC + PS3 choice.

While I'm not a big Halo fan (I finished the first and 2nd Halo campaigns I think), you have to admit that multiplayer Halo is like a religion to many people and is not to be dismissed lightly.

And yes, Uncharted and God of War brought me a lot of joy but the online experience on the PS3 sucks compared to Xbox Live.

Personally, I want to play street fighter online and the Xbox is the best platform to do so. PC + 360 ain't cutting it.

I'm saying this as someone who only owns a PC and a PS3 at the moment.

The PPC+SPE combo units ARE the far-out architecture of the PS3 he was talking about.

He was not talking about the PPC alone.

For desktops, always use an SSD as your OS/Applications drive.

For casual photographs: Buy the smartphone with a cutting edge camera. You'll have your phone with you more often than a camera.

For tvs: size first, then black levels, then refresh rates. You can safely ignore the rest.

Sony hasn't lost any customers with this whole thing. In fact, they gained many customers since the PS3 was hacked.

If people could force sony to exchange their PS3 with an xbox360, then I'm sure maybe 5 or 10% of PSN customers would switch.

Under current conditions, negligible amounts of people will switch.

It will definitely not sell for $250. You must account for inflation and the fallen dollar.

If they go with separate SKUs like MS and SONY, I'll bet the cheapest and crappiest one will cost $300, and the others will hover around the $450 mark.

Mark my words!

In conclusion, piracy is a noble service performed by historians dedicated to preserving the human intellectual heritage for the decades and centuries to come, when DRM servers are dead and legit copies are uselessly crippled.