If the key is as long as the message and only used once XOR is ok.

It depends on the app, there are a lot of good apps out there for various purposes.

Because it highlights that the USPTO is doing a sloppy job and don't review patents at all, just check the formalia and let courts decide if they are valid or not.

Probably because the patent engineers don't know squat about the stuff they get to review.

So that's why I can't make a file named PRN in Windows!

That's actually a good reason for an easter egg in the code. It's the small details that do it.

Well - if you have a bit of code where you never should reach a specific point you can add a message there with an unique text string. That could be a form of easter egg, but it will provide a pretty unique message that can be searched for in case something goes wrong - like someone changing one part of the code without realizing the impact on this part of the code.

Many of us have had fun of the "This error shall never occur" and similar messages, some showing up at The Daily WTF.

That's a nice one.

The original bug - you had one engine in the car and one in the garage that you could drop in as replacement.

The genie is already out of the box. It won't stop the real terrorists, but it will keep the knowledge off limits for the general public so it may actually take longer to discover a terrorist. If people forget that they should look out for people stashing a ton of fertilizer for their 1/2 acre land we know it's just going to get worse.

I wonder how much headache this will create among web developers. Will Spartan implement things in a new unheard of way or will it actually try to achieve maximum compatibility?

I encountered a bug once in Outlook where I did fill in the name, autocompleted it correctly but still Outlook sent it to the wrong person behind my back.

Luckily the person receiving the mail wasn't a security breach.

So I don't trust Outlook much since then.