I think Psycho Pass' premise presents a really interesting moral scenario. If you had a system that could always detect violent criminals (non-violent criminals are simply locked up), is it a reasonable thing to use deadly force against them? What does that do to society? It's very death note-esque. If you like sci-fi anime then I would recommend giving it another look and try focusing on the potential utilitarian morality of the premise rather than its immediate distaste.

While on the topic of badges, is there anywhere that explains what one needs to do to get a badge. At the moment I have two dots out of eight but I have no idea how I got those or how I get more.

Ah, that makes sense, thank you!

The amount of information that the Chinese has been able to gather on American war assets is both astounding and disturbing. I'm sorry, but defense contractors need to get their act together and start removing computers from internet connected networks. Seriously, every computer that holds defense secrets should NEVER have been connected to outside networks! Who thought that was a good idea? Unfortunately, by this point I really wonder what more information the Chinese could hope to gather. They certainly have enough technical specifications to not only close the technological gap by years and certainly billions of dollars. Potentially more damaging is the ability to look for holes and weak points in our defensive and offensive systems. Knowing the flight profiles of missiles, their ranges and capabilities could theoretically allow the Chinese to make weapons that bypass these capabilities. I really hope we don't get into any sort of shooting war with the Chinese...

Just is troubling is that if the Chinese can hack into supposedly secure defense networks, our civilian networks must be easy pickings. China could insert malicious code to take down American businesses or even utility networks. What would we consider such actions? A declaration of war? What if China simply passed along military or civilian backdoors to other countries, what a mess that would be...

I wonder if the NSA spent less time spying on American citizens it might be able to find decent ways of purging hacked systems and getting better security to contractors, businesses, etc.

Hmmm many things! Besides the obvious answer of invest/save the money. Go to a used book store and buy loads of books. There are some places which offer old paperbacks for a dollar or two. Find some new authors or new genres or a book that teaches you something new. I recommend anything by Asimov if you want excellent science fiction (that's personally where I would spend my money).

If you play PC games then wait for the steam summer sale and buy 2 or 3 triple A titles for really cheap. You can easily get hundreds of hours out of them which works out to some great bang for your buck.

If you want something interesting and unique, visit kickstarter or etsy and find something that catches your fancy. I like investing on kickstarter, a good project will keep you engaged in its progress and is a good lesson in delayed gratification.

If you're feeling curious, buy some old electronics/junk/etc and take it apart. Give yourself two tasks, one, understand as much as you can about what you took apart and two, then build something new with the disassembled bits and bobs. Make some art or a flickering light or little gizmo that spins.

If you have plenty of 'things' already then give it to charity or the homeless. They will appreciate any amount and you'll feel better having given to those genuinely in need.

This sounds awesome! Just wanted to show interest in the idea and say that I'll be reading the books and hopefully contributing to the discussions!

I like that idea, I've always felt rather limited in my knowledge of great books so I'd love to experience some new books, especially outside my comfort zone (scifi).

I am glad that hardware experimentation is on the rise with arduinos/pis and rapid prototyping. As a current CS major I love my arduino (still need to pick up some servos for it) for being able to do embedded systems really easily. I hope these open source projects become foundations for all sorts of things.

Also, I'm perfectly ok with 99% of users only ever using computers for a few things. I just don't want to see that limiting my ability to use computers however I want :P

While I agree that most serious people will continue to "roll their own", the fall of traditional desktops does have an impact on those who will always make their own computer as well as on traditional consumers. From a practical standpoint I imagine it will mean more expensive components as fewer people buy them. It could also mean less competition as manufacturers leave the desktop market for mobile computing, and with less competition less innovation. Already most important new technologies in displays like OLED are almost entirely found in mobile platforms. It will be interesting to see when graphene or photonic or any other next generation chips begin to become available where they appear first, in desktops or in mobile.

However, honestly, I'm not too worried about the practical hardware considerations, desktops will always have at the very least a market among gamers (like you pointed out). I'm more concerned about the general trends towards convenience and simplicity over freedom and deep content creation of which mobile computing is both a symptom and promoter. Cellphones especially, but mobile computing in general, wants to present information as quickly and as succinctly as possible. Consumers have bought into this as instant gratification and convenience are very nice. But we have bought it at a price, at least thus far, by getting devices we intend to replace every year or two, by getting locked into disparate ecosystems, by getting sound bites instead of a reality of complexity. There are certainly many apps and new OS's that try to combat this, but I can't shake the feeling that a society on mobile technology maybe sees more, but grasps less. This is all very cynical of me of course, and being a PC gamer makes me (probably very) biased.

Woah... That sounds incredible! It's also pretty nice that they're being handed out at tradeshows, as I imagine that means they aren't too far from being in actual products. Don't worry too much about brands being the only ones to be able to afford stuff like this. Based on the progress and advances in 3D printing and arduino/raspberry pi I think electronic gadgets will become far more accessible. The average consumer may never be able to do same uber-tech ideas as large companies, but we soon may be able to come close enough to satisfy me.

This article on eHow lists some PS2 emulator requirements and they seem pretty low. Building your own computer will give you a lot more control and much better performance for the price. For between 50 and 80 dollars you can get a pretty decent CPU + GPU combo like this one. Then you want to find a motherboard that goes with the chip like this one (check the sockets to ensure they are compatible) and a cheap case that comes with a power supply and maybe looks snazzy like this. Buy a few gigs of ram ($25) (you shouldn't need more than 4) and a harddrive of your choice ($25-50)and assemble. In total this will cost maybe $200-300. Be fore-warned, I'm spec'ing this thing for one purpose, be as cheap as possible while still being functional.

Now the real kicker is the OS, there are plenty of user friendly linux distros like ubuntu which won't cost you anything, but a legit copy of windows will run you $170 by itself (unless you're a student, then its cheaper). Also for comparison against building one yourself: this is about what I spec'ed for you and that is with it on sale for $200 off!