Show me one financial institution in the US that allows this.

I have cashed cashier's checks of up to about $30,000 at a local financial institution. It took a few minutes of them talking amongst themselves, a few more minutes to count it out in $100 bills (three times), and it made my bi-fold wallet very difficult to stuff into the leg-pocket of my cargo pants (which is an absurd thing to be doing, but I did it anyway). None of this attention to detail seemed inappropriate, so I count the result as definitely being "on demand."

The institution is Fifth Third Bank. Not that I recommend them for anything in particular because they've shown themselves to be incompetent in other ways that are important to me, but they had assets on-hand to deliver the amount within short order and without any sort of appointment.

*shrug* If the issue is whether or not any financial institution has large quantities of cash on-hand (for various definitions of "large"), I can say: Yes. No problem. (For me. So far.)

The PS3 already accepts Bluetooth and USB audio from various sources, and I have no doubt that the PS4 will continue this trend. It is unclear to me how the Kinect's microphone on the Xbone is in any way advantageous toward "I am the alpha and the omega" broadcasts.

Why not just run a drill through it?

If opening the device is acceptable, then wiring a switch in series might be better than clipping the wires: It allows choices. (And choices are always good.)

Nothing is totally random.

And your data was clearly vague, and therefore unreliable.

Not really if you think about it. Let's say that you did move to a more modern system sooner. The logical choice would have been to go to the MicroVax which is also dead. The reason why that would have been the logical choice is that it also used the QBus system. The downside is that the software would have to be ported from the PDP 11.
You could have gone with X86 but you would have been stuck deciding if the hardware should be ISA, EISA, or MicroChannel!. Then you would have to decide what RTOS to use or would you just go bare metal? Then you would have to validate every motherboard, chip set, and CPU that you would use not to mention re-writing the software for the X86.
This is part of the problem with going with COTS hardware in industrial settings. Today there are critical systems running on 486 systems and ISA based hardware running under DOS. If you think about it they are in fact no less outdated than PDP-11 based systems from the same time period. The last PDP-11s were introduced in 1990. There does seem to be a cottage industry building new PDP-11 based computers. They are much smaller, faster, and use modern hard drives and ram but still PDP-11s. Some probably use FPGAs for the CPUs, some use X-86 and are emulated in software, and some may even use ASCs. Just as you can still find people that can rebuild an R-2800 radial engine and by parts for old DC-3s it is possible to keep PDPs plugging along.

We've heard that before when Sony...

• Shut down LikSang
• Went through the rootkit debacle..
• and the related tactless "damage control" ("why should users care")
• Handled the PSN breach in about the worst possible way for about 3 weeks
• Killed OtherOS

I could go on. And now of course people are talking about how great Sony is.

The point is, yes, their rep can be salvaged, because people really dont care that much for very long.

The world where triple A titles will be on a system that RMS approves is the same world where communism works.

That is, not this one.

Im not supportive of anything particular here, just recognizing how ludicrous the claims of conspiracies surrounding assange are.

"Not a fan of big government" doesnt mean "believes every tin-foil hat conspiracy anyone makes up". Im capable of nuance and subtlety like that.

Completely different scenarios. Rainbow tables only work when you have access to hashed passwords. They also run into trouble with salts. They also run into trouble when you change hash algos (have to re-generate the tables).

Ah yes, the old "extradite from the UK to Sweden so we can extradite you from Sweden to the US, even though we have an extradition treaty with the UK" maneuver-- creating red tape for no other reason than that we can.

A little tried, but much feared legal gambit.

There people sell new PDP-11 Systems. http://www.logical-co.com/dec-replacement-systems/

Im willing to come with you and discuss the robbery charges, officer, if you sign this document stating that you promise to never extradite me to another country.

Any guesses as to why A) no officer would ever sign that and B) it would be worthless if he did?

Really which micro? You have the advantage of 20/20 hindsight.
Maybe go with an IBM PC based system? What RTOS would you use? What hardware interface would you use ISA? EISA? MicroChannel?
Then you have the problem of revalidating the software when a new CPU comes out. Remember the Pentium Bug?
Or you could have gone with VAX.... Dead.... Alpha? Dead, 68k? Still kicking around but mostly dead, 88000, PowerPC, MIPS, Spark?
And yes you can get new PDP-11 hardware. http://www.logical-co.com/dec-replacement-systems/

Better than half the computers sold no longer even include a discrete GPU

Has it ever been the case in the past decade that more than half of the computers sold included a discrete GPU?

Once integrated graphics became a useable thing, the vast majority of systems that I see* do not have a dedicated graphics card: Integrated graphics of the day have always been adequate for any non-gaming usage of that same day, and people are (as a rule) cheap.

*: This is an anecdote based on a couple of decades of fixing computers. I welcome actual data.