Even the netbook processors (Intel Atom and VIA Nano) have full 64-bit support.

How many processes have you seen complain that they are out of address space with only 4GB?

This first came up for me a couple years ago running Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, a mainstream Windows video game. The default Windows user address space limit on a 32 bit system is 2 gigs and Stalker wanted to use about 1700 megs of RAM. Problem is, video memory is also mapped into the user address space and I had a 512 meg video card.

In that case i was able to fix the problem by using a tool to hack the binary to make Windows give 3 gigs to the user process instead of the default of 2 gigs (the OS needs to keep a big chunk of address space for the kernel).

In any case, the moral of the story is that 32 bit address spaces have been cramped - for common applications, in practice - for a while now. Any application using more than a gig of RAM would be better off on a 64-bit machine. It's possible to work around this with silly hacks, and there's a lot of that going on, but it won't be too long before 32-bit users are a small enough minority to ignore for RAM-intensive apps.

Fortunately for them, the USPTO has, pursuant to its statutory authority (which is well-grounded in the constitution, unlike about 90% of what the federal government does), granted them a limited monopoly.

In what sense do software patents "encourage the progress of science and the useful arts"?

GNU Privacy Guard is part of the default install of Ubuntu / Debian because it's used to validate the digital signatures of .deb packages before they are installed. It can easily be used for pass-phrase file encryption with the "-c" option. If you run "gpg -c some_file" it will prompt you for a passphrase and spit out an encrypted some_file.gpg. If you then run "gpg some_file.gpg" it'll prompt you for the passphrase and recreate the origional some_file.

There are various reasons why this doesn't perfectly accomplish the goal described, but the fact that many Linux systems have user-accessible strong crypto functionality installed as an integral element of the system is definitely relevant to the topic at hand.

WTF?

If you're going to look at it that way, then people suing over corruption that directly hurts their interests is also "how things work".

The organization then writes an RFP, goes to public bid, then comes up with a reason to get XYZ over all competitors.

And if the RFP doesn't go to public bid and the contract is instead delivered to a convicted monopolist with no bidding at all, then there's a problem.

Ok. I'll back off from the "any" claim for a moment and focus entirely on SSH/SSL. Any host running one of those protocols is regenerating keys on a regular basis in such a way that farming it out to a dedicated machine doesn't make much sense.

Wouldn't it be sufficient to use the host random pool as a seed for some sort of strong PRNG?

If we don't play god, who will?

A particularly good film on the subject (which raises some interesting things to think about) is GATTACA. For those of you who haven't seen it, I would highly recommend it. (Kudos to OP for mentioning, too.)

GATTACA successfully raises some questions, but only manages to express the generic anti-progress knee-jerk rather than actually covering the real issues in any depth. Almost all the problems in the movie would have been solved by simple genetic privacy law; it's easy to make ponies, rainbows, and butterflies seem sinister if you set them in an Orwellian future.

The air waves are a public good and to avoid the "tragedy of the commons" it needs to be regulated, because we learned the hard way as the commons were already figuratively overgrazed.

That makes sense, as long as you're completely ignorant of physics and modern radio technology. Minimal regulation - even just a total transmission power cap - would be more than sufficient to avoid interference as long as the technology was given a little while to shake itself out.

What should happen: The Supreme Court rules against business method patents and manages to eliminate software patents entirely at the same time.

What will happen: The Supreme Court rules in support of business method patents and redefines "prior art" to mean "other US patents that haven't yet expired" at the same time. Lawyers rush to patent levers, gears, buttons (electrical, mechanical, and on clothing), etc.

If it gets granted, how much lawyer time will it take to get overturned later?

This is a setup for a denial of service attack on the budgets / legal resources of smaller companies in future legal engagements.