then the international standards change

"*Whether any service today warrants the label “4G” depends on whether marketing labels carry more weight than international standards. ®"

Of course, what about when the international standards change?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/22/4g_itu/

So, I'd say neither carry much weight.

Encrypt it all

I'm just as worried about the US government snooping as I am about China. The US courts say that the government is free to snoop, and the people cannot force the government to follow the law. Encrypt all your internet traffic.

With the cost of SSL certs cheap, no website should unencrypted. I moved my home site to only allow encrypted traffic. I've also stopped visiting sites that don't have a signed certificate.

It's easy to turn on encryption for torrents (done). Many IRC servers also support TLS too.

Basic email encryption can be done if more people install a certificate. Simply install a certificate on your SMTP server and most sending hosts will automatically use TLS. Sure it isn't as good as PGP as it's still unencrypted on the sending/receiving hosts, but at least on the internet it is.

Dec 7th? Try Jan 11th

If you believe B&N's website, it won't be available till Jan 11th. I check yesterday and it said Jan 4th, but apparently things are moving even more slowly. How they can stock the shelves when you can't order it online till after Christmas is beyond me. If you want an e-reader to put under the tree, better buy a Kindle.