These words will always exist. People will just come up with new ones. It's been done on TV enough. (Someone should compile a list of TV swear-words.)

One part is old - imitating the web browser error page, specifically the IE error page. I've had many a chuckle when running Galleon or some other Linux browser and seeing it pop up a well-imitated IE error page. The new part on this one is that they're checking which browser it is and making sure the error page matches the browser.

Unfortunately, this will only lead to a false sense of security and become a haunt for paedophiles looking for victims. It's sad, really, but how could Togetherville verify that a "child" signing up for an account is not some paedophile whose "parent" is the same person trying to fool the moderators of Togetherville?
It's a nice idea, and I hope they can find a way to make it work correctly, but I sincerely doubt it will work without extreme measures to verify identities that I doubt they'd be able to perform.

Yes, these exist.
I'm sure they have been in the US for years, but as I live in a small town in the US the only place I've ever seen these is in China. They are 3D (usually "in your face" type of 3D) with additional effects such as air jets, water sprays, and one even had a little rubber hose activated by air to simulate a snake under your chair. The most creative one also had several devices in the seats themselves to simulate being hit or touched by various things. It was rather strange, and it really freaked out my colleagues. My kids (two of whom were with me in Guangzhou on the trip) really enjoyed it.
For those of you who are saying 3D is a gimmick, you should try these so-called 4D movies.

As Senator Graham is one of my senators, I have contacted his office regarding this matter.

For those of you who contact your senators or representatives, please try to be civil. If you have appropriate qualifications in the field (advanced degrees, etc.), please politely offer your assistance to your senator's staff to help them understand the technical complexities of the proposal. That is exactly what I have done, and I have had significant success with this approach with Senator Jim DeMint. I am on his "call list" and I occasionally receive calls from his office when proposals like this come up and I am asked for my input on the matter. (I have not received a call on this one, so I will contact Senator DeMint's office once I've had a chance to read the bill. Often they do not recognize that there is a "computer security" component to a bill such as this - they just think "ID card" and do not think of the databases behind the cards.)

If you are polite and you have appropriate qualifications that your senator or representative will recognize, you may have an opportunity to have a positive influence in the process. Remember, though, that your senators and representatives are people who have fears, egos, and agendas just like everyone else. Show them that you want to work WITH them.

If you honestly cannot bring yourself to assist your senator or representative for whatever reason you have, then please at least be polite in your letters. An angry letter filled with vitriol and profanity will only alienate the recipient from your viewpoint.

This appears to be one of those "secondary offense" laws that appear to be designed more to give the prosecution leverage. They can use it to add charges/fines/prison time or then can use it so they can drop other charges and still fine/imprison someone, sort of like "resisting arrest". Granted, resisting arrest can result in injury to law enforcement personnel, but think about it - most violent offenders are going to resist arrest. Most bank robbers are going to resist arrest (which is as simple as running away from the police).
Seriously - do you really expect a potential terrorist to register himself with the state? I didn't think so.
Full disclosure: I live in SC. I've seen people who still genuinely believe that the Civil war never officially ended, that the surrender was illegal, and that SC should not be part of the rest of the USA. Given what I've seen while living in SC, this doesn't surprise me at all.

This does NOT work on Sprint devices. I own one, and it came without any password by default, but with very clear instructions urging the user to set one and showing the user how to set one. (The MiFi device itself is great, by the way - please don't let Verizon's poor handling of the initial configuration turn you away from a wonderfully useful device.)

I agree with you, and with Nickodeemus and the other who all say that you should change the password ASAP, but the point I was trying to make (and apparently did not) was that to the average person, not the technically adept person, the long string of numbers appears to be a completely random string and seems perfectly strong. The only reason I cracked this thing several months ago was that I did some recon on "MiFi" online first and discovered the manufacturer and the range of ESNs assigned, then I noticed pictures that had the last part of the password blanked out and I saw that the first part matched the first part of the ESN range for the manufacturer. Numbers of that length would be decent passwords if they were not predictable. They never should have used the ESN. Even if they did something simple like HASHING the ESN it would have worked, because you normally can't see the ESN unless you've already attached to the device. That way, they still would have had a unique password for each device (the hash of the ESN instead of the ESN) but it would not be so easily predictable. Such is life, I guess.

This article is NOT pointless, especially when you consider that the password is the ESN. That greatly narrows down the possible values because the first part of the ESN is assigned by manufacturer. Also, it is NOT pointless because the average person will look at that long string of seemingly random numbers, and the strings are different for each unit because the string is the ESN of the chip, and will think that it is a secure, randomly generated number. The length of the password itself is good. It is the fact that several of the digits are predictable, thus significantly reducing the number of values you need to try, that makes this significant. The average person will not know this and will THINK that it is secure. My own testing: average time to break (on units that I had legal permission to scan, of course) was just over four minutes after forcing a reset. This article is a wake-up call to companies that are issuing these things that they need to fix those passwords.

The Password is the ESN of the CDMA chip.

Clinton's only going to bring BACK cigars. They can get Cuban cigars in China. I brought some American cigars for a friend one time and he asked me about Cuban cigars, and it took the next 20 minutes to explain the embargo and why you cannot buy Cuban cigars in the USA. (I do not smoke, but he does.) Marlboros are very popular over there, by the way, so if you have Chinese colleagues in China who smoke, bring a carton of Marlboros and you'll do well.

I hope you're only kidding.

Pointing out that this bug dates back to 1993 is a very important part of the story, because it shows that even with their careful reviews of the code that things can still slip by.

Supposedly, Microsoft performed a review of all of the code used in Vista and Windows 7. This is not a slam against Microsoft, but an illustration that something as complex as Windows will always have security flaws no matter how hard you try to fix things after the fact. You cannot add security as a feature. It needs to be included from the initial design.