The press release is pretty hard to decipher, but the phrase "Bad guys ... using encryption to avoid the HTTPS protocol to bypass filters" makes it appear that the real goal is to block the use of SSL on non-standard ports, so I think the DPI is actually being used to detect SSL, not to open it up and read the encrypted data.

That's no moon.

Right there at 1:30. No getting around it.

All his neighbors? You mean everyone on the Internet? World's way smaller when your definition of harm (e.g. spam) can be accomplished without leaving home.

I don't have a modem, but I do have a USB-attached multi-function printer/scanner that includes fax capability, which I'm pretty sure a piece of malware could trick into calling any number it wanted (might be difficult to keep it from turning on the annoying speaker as it dials). Which reminds me... I should cancel my plans to get a network-attached version that would be vulnerable to such an attack without having to infect any of the PCs on the network; just breaching the firewall or wireless encryption would be enough.

In thirty years it will all fit in your pocket and cost $19.99.

In 30 years, Alex Trebek will be 100 years old and perhaps replaced by a computer himself. The hard part will be replacing the army or producers and researchers that generate the answer/question pairs, as well as the judges that determine whether a contestant's answer is correct/complete enough. Perhaps 30 years will be long enough for a roomful of computers to do those jobs and we can look forward to a computer generated game pitting computers against each other to compete for Quatloos, running thousands or millions of games an hour. Who'd tune in for that?

DBAs always seem to want root for some reason or other... with apologies to A Few Good Men:
  SysAdmin: You want the authority?
  DBA: I think I'm entitled.
  SysAdmin: You want the authority?!
  DBA: I want the root!
  SysAdmin: You can't handle the root!

The garage door opener is labeled as "brilliant" by the article, but frankly I was hoping for something more inspired than networking to a PC-controlled garage door. A real hack would be to modify the firmware so that the cellphone antenna would send the right rolling code directly to the existing radio receiver in the garage door opener. Then there's no need for special "don't accidentally open the garage door if I'm in Japan" type safeties in the software.

As ever, my primary concern is user privacy. There are a variety of controls in place that govern the maintenance and use of call logs that the phone company keeps. None of those laws would apply to logs of phone number lookups. I would expect privacy to eventually settle to about the level (and consistency) you see for library checkout history, but without starting a conversation, it'll just end up as one more bit of data the phone company call sell about you (assuming you have the same company for phone and internet).

Have you got anything without fraud?

Well, there's fraud, egg, sausage, and fraud; that's not got much fraud in it.

I don't want ANY fraud!

In many non-democratic states established in the last half century they call that "counter revolutionary activity." Not something I'm eager to see in the USA.

There's a stream the bad guys would dearly love to tap into.

And giving the information to which governments will guarantee the "bad guys" don't get it? Does no one recognize that all these entities play for keeps and telling them about a vulnerability before anyone else is like throwing a bloodied sheep into a tank full of sharks? The sharks may get scratched up a bit, but they're used to it; the sheep will just get slaughtered.

On the internet, where there's a will there's a way.

If you accept that postulate, I've got a corollary: On the internet, whoever has the strongest will gets his way. The "evade content censorship" goal has no inherent superiority over the "censor content" goal. Whichever goal has the most (or most potent) resources applied can still win out.

Heard once (no reference available) that the subjective experience of a normal modern lifetime is half over by the time you reach 20. So the last 60(?) years seem as long as the first 20. Wonder if it's a linear decay or something more exotic... with only one (admittedly unsubstantiated) data point, it's impossible to know.

Next up: no more anonymous voting. As Attorney-General Michael Atkinson might say:

There is no impinging on the freedom to vote, people are free to vote for whomever they wish as themselves, not as somebody else.

Just goes to show that the US generally values the ability to convince people that something is true over the ability to discover that something is true. Time and again we see that marketing, fear mongering, and legal tactics overwhelm reasoned arguments and hard work. Not that I would have the laws simply torn down to get at this devil (see A Man For All Seasons). We must take care in our approach to reform that we don't find ourselves adrift in a worse sea of argument and arbitrary assignment of winners and losers.