If you get lung cancer, emphysema, heart failure, you will likely cost society hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital bills.

You will also likely change your tune as you age and decide that you were young and stupid, that you still want to live, despite your increasing frailty, because death is so definitive while life is full of possibility.

Therefore, I can't take what you say seriously. You are simply deluding yourself and trying to justify your pack a day habit as something with a positive side.

Been there, done that and it was bullshit when I thought it, it's still bullshit when you write it on slashdot.

hacktivists, by definition, will publicize their break-ins so you can be sure they will be counted.

Common thieves and governmental spies (chinese, russians, etc.) on the other hand, might never be discovered if their level of competence is superior to that of the security administrators of a company.

Therefore, the statistics offered are very dubious and I would not be surprised if they are completely and spectacularly wrong.

If ping to my ISP is more than 20 ms, I am not happy. I play online fighting games and they require good latency. In fact, even the speed of light is too low to play against people on the other side of the planet.

If my ping to most places within a reasonable range (2000 miles) is under 100 ms, it is acceptable.

50 ms is good. 30 ms is perfection.

You make a lot of good points. One only has to look at societies where social justice is stronger than in the US to see that you speak the truth.

Look at Japan, look at Sweden, Norway, Denmark. It is true that they are exceptions and even there, social justice is not perfect. That's because human nature is the same everywhere. I suspect something in the culture simply acts as a counterweight there. And even that counterweight can become evil because it is often grounded in national pride and chauvinism which gives us racism and so forth.

The fact of the matter is that the flawed idealists in this world who get mad when they discover the truth take drastic action always end up the villains.

Here is a scary thought for you. Guerillas in south america, the original russian socialists, today's terrorists are all romantics instead of pragmatists.

I know I'm not going to convince anyone. I just wanted to share some random thoughts.

How was this modded interesting? How is backing out over someone's toe acceptable?

Your line of reasoning is weird and hypocritical. What is worse is that it ignores the contrary scenario: people who just let things go that you would consider unacceptable.

And that invalidates your premise completely.

Neal Stephenson used that very idea as a backdrop for two of his best novels: Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. Both incredibly entertaining reads, especially if you like sci-fi.

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