Bullshit. Any network connected host *needs* to be able to generate unguessable random numbers. Otherwise, that host might as well be a member of a botnet already.

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.

Religion has led to more deaths throughout history than anything else.

How about maybe... malnutrition? Or, to cheat horribly, old age?

I'm all for ripping on religion, but you've got to keep your sense of scale. Religion mostly doesn't kill people, just robs their lives of meaning.

Why would a pedophile want to do that when they can search the database where it is?

I'm pretty sure that this works the same as the corollary to Goodwin's law. When you bring up pedophiles or child molesters in an online discussion, you're an idiot, you've killed the thread, and your side loses the argument.

No. Those aren't serious idea-killing problems, those are minor engineering problems that have already been solved (each in a multitude of different ways). The problem is simply that a solid commercially viable product idea and source of funding have yet to be put together in the same room.

You're right. Humans can't grasp large numbers by simple intuition. Thing is, reality involves large numbers. That's why we've developed mathematical tools to deal with them over the thousands of years of human civilization. People who refuse to learn to use mathematics to understand the world deserve no more sympathy than people who refuse to learn to use hammers and complain that they have trouble pounding nails with their fists.

I won't. Gnome is even more limiting in practice than Windows.

Huh? I run Gnome. It does what it needs to do and keeps out of the way the rest of the time. What more could you ask for?

It sure seems like an easy problem, doesn't it.

As a programming problem, it seems like an easy problem because it is. Thing is - it's not a programming problem. It's a security problem. As a security problem, the programmer is the most significant potential attacker. Does it still seem easy?

If the margin of victory was greater then 2 percent, then it should be non-issue as far as who is in office. But it should be fixed for the next election.

Unless you're actually serious about the importance of voting, in which case the response here is very simple: Throw out the invalid votes (all of them) and re-run the election.