And when it comes to security, not even technical folks can handle their systems competently.
Just ask the sys admin who didn't password protect his PHPMyAdmin install at Gemnet.
http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/12/08/1341224/another-dutch-ca-hacked

Didn't read TFA, per Slashdot tradition, but the system is likely protected by the use of public key crypto.

This system is secure because you can't feasibly obtain IBM's private key. Sure, you can provide an IBM certificate, but you can't complete a key exchange or any other communications if I send it to you encrypted with IBM's public key. Likewise, in theory you can't obtain a new certificate that says that you are IBM with a public/private key that you know from a certificate authority. In practice, obtaining a valid certificate is much less difficult than it ought to be.

In most cases, we can't tell where traffic comes from. Between botnets, Tor, and other proxies, the best we can do is say "it looks like the attacks are coming from IP addresses from Karblockistan." Attack attribution is difficult, if not impossible. Hypothetically, I can attack your network and make it look like it came from anywhere in the world. If I want to be extra convincing, I'll use Chinese language tools so that you suspect the Chinese. An attack from Chinese IP's doesn't mean the PRC had anything to do with it.

As for the rest of your comment, have you not seen the flood of news articles on how DoD et al. are trying to hire security experts in droves? Besides, information security is a lot harder than putting bars on the windows. In many cases, you cannot know where you are vulnerable in the software (and hardware!) until after a breach, and in some of the more prominent attacks, the method was spear-phishing -- social engineering. You can't patch (or harden) stupid. Security is, always has been, and always will be a non-trivial problem.

The answer is public-key cryptography, where I can send you a message encrypted with your public key, and only you (who knows the matching private key) can decrypt the message. A high-level analogy is sending everyone a box that they can close and lock, but only you have the key to unlock. It's impractical to obtain a private key given a public key. The tags or "secret messages" -- the colored notes in the analogy -- are messages encrypted with the public key of the Telex system in use. The initial analysis by the researchers indicates that it is infeasible to determine if the a tag is actually a tag or just a random number. Only a Telex server can tell if the field that holds the tag is a tag or not. Compromising the tag system in the way you describe would require compromising the private key from the Telex system. This would require quantum computing or espionage (stealing the key from the Telex system). It's a neat solution, actually.

In the US? Health Insurance.

It's news because it's a gasoline engine, not just because of efficiency. Gasoline is marginally more available and often cheaper than diesel.

At GHz speeds, wire delay is pretty significant. Another part of it is electrical noise -- longer wires tend to act as transmission lines. I didn't RTFA, butI think the advantage of optical interconnects is that the throughput that you get beats the loss of waiting for data. You can afford to wait 10 nsec if afterwards you can fill your 1kbyte whole cache. (Not read it 64 bits/4nsec or whatever). Additionally, optical lines are immune to electrical noise (RF).

This is an epic obscure Simpsons reference. When Sideshow Bob goes before the parole board, they question him about his "Die, Bart, Die" tattoo. He explains it as German, where 'die' is a definite article, and they buy it hook, line, and sinker. Sideshow Bob gets out, and mayhem insues.