The original framers of the constitution recognized this at the founding of the republic.

"The Congress shall have Power To...promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries...."

Nobody objects to people having the protection of a limited copyright so that they can profit from their ideas. Everyone - including, I'd argue, most copyright holders but excepting apparently their very successful lobbyists and tame congresspeople - agrees that "copyright" != "rights to exclusivity in perpetuity so that person and their heirs never have to work again".

As Regan looked at the world through the fog of dementia and dirty windows at the White House he couldn't distinguish between movie scripts and reality. (Remember the refit of the New Jersey?) It seems that Cameron has lost more than a few brain cells too.

Following the link referenced we get: "From the statistics below (collected from W3Schools' log-files over a period of ten years), you can read the long term trends of browser usage."

So this data set really shows only the behavior of access to the w3schools.com site. Don't make inferences across the general population.

Yes, but remember "Developers, Developers, Developers!". If the developers start abandoning IE, then your platform will no longer have the best experience and further encouage users to move to others, like Firefox/Chrome.

They aren't going to store a big database of valid credit card numbers so they can return someone else's card number, they'll just generate a random number that looks like it could be a real credit card number and passes the checksum test.

Yes, a criminal could take the credit card numbers from each decryption attempt and test them, but if he's willing to test millions of card numbers to look for a valid one, he could just generate the card numbers directly and not attempt the decryption in the first place.

People misunderstand what "security through obscurity" means. Most (all?) encryption relies on security through obscurity at some level.

Hiding your house key under a loose floorboard in your back deck is the kind of security through obscurity that can really work, assuming that there are no other clues that lead to the hiding place. However, hiding the prybar that you use to pry up the floorboard under the belief that hiding the method of access makes your key safer is not the kind of obscurity that works because if the attacker can find your hiding place, he can figure another way to get to the key.

Similarly, hiding or not writing down your password is security through obscurity that works. But trying to hide the implementation details of your cipher algorithm does not, because cryptoanalysis can break your encryption even without access to your encryption algorithm.

So, obscuring your real password among an endless number of fake passwords is the kind of obscurity that can work -- even if the attacker knows that your password is somewhere among the billions of fake ones, unless he has some clue to tell him what your real password looks like, just knowing that fakes are there doesn't help him.

If randomly generated "fake" data matches someone else's password (or whatever is being encrypted), that other person didn't use a strong enough password. This system is just acting like a hash function -- criminal tries password A and he decrypts the data to some string, then he tries password B and the data gets decrypted to another string. If those randomly generated strings happen to match someone elses password on the system, the criminal could have saved himself some time by generating the password guesses himself.

And the Kansas Department for Children and Families is completely right about this: Two persons cannot make any contract or agreement that takes away the rights of a third person. It is the right of the child to get support from his biological parents. The mother cannot decide that the child should not exercise this right. Even as a legal guardian of the child she can only make decisions for the child that are in the interest of the child. But not getting support from the child's farther is in the interest of the mother but not in the interest of the child.

Virgin Mary story would have lost them benefits from the state. This is a story of the Govt controlling who can have kids and who can't and one could even argue it's discrimination by the govt, because by saying "all your signed legal donor contracts are worthless" the govt is essentially saying "sorry lesbians if you want children you better pay $20,000+ for artificial insemination from a doctor" and requiring same sex couples to pay $20,000 or their child isn't really theirs is a great way to prevent same sex couples from having children at all. With the court ruling the father is still legally the father in this case means any same sex couple who had a child without artifical insemination could face a custody battle someday.

Had the contracts matched and been witnessed by doctor or even a $15 public notary then the outcome may have been different.

I don't think so. In cases I have seen, the father does not get to claim the child as a dependent even if he is supplying more than 50% of the cost of raising the child. Often, the father has to fight and sometimes loses, to be able to see the child he is paying for.

If you really think it is so sad, why don't you call up the Kansas DCF, and volunteer to support the kid yourself? It may be sad that the responsibility is being forced on an unwilling dad, but it would be sadder if it was forced on unwilling taxpayers.

Is that 12 or 13 stars before the 8? I keep trying to log in as Anonymous Coward with the password you provided and it's not working. Or does the 8 need to be capitalized?