I actually didn't mean private in a "security through obscurity" sense, I meant in the private sector. It just seemed that in modern times, the United States government wouldn't want to give anything to the community in terms of improving security for individuals. (These were just the thoughts at the time, I can see why now... just thought I'd throw it out there)

Ok, in that capacity it makes sense. I'm not sure why that didn't occur to me earlier. Thank you, Garridan.

Why would they release this? Don't get me wrong, I, personally, am all for donating to the community and further advancing technology as a species; however, why would the NSA deliver something to the public that would, in the long run, possibly make life harder on themselves by possibly furthering the advances of private encryption? I'm not trying to play Devil's Advocate, I just genuinely don't understand why they would (possibly) make life harder for themselves.

Actually, I'm in the United States military at the moment and we don't call ourselves a "defense force"; we call ourselves the "armed force", which seems, (as you seem to have pointed out) a territorial neutral term.

They say that it has been translated into 7 languages in TFA, however, they provide an HTML link for the Deutsch version. Why are they not available on the installer? What good does a license do if it's not available to be viewed at install time? And if it's not available on the installer, then the time that someone took to translate that license into another language was for nothing.

I second this motion! I also bought the book Code (I won't lie, the fancy cover made me look), and it ended up being one of the best books I've read on the subject. It covers many topics, but for those who may need a little help being introduced to the subject, this book will definitely help to peak their interest. Although, it covers many aspects, it will help to introduce someone who may be interested in programming, but maybe has trouble grasping the idea of binary or trouble thinking like a programmer when debugging a program.

It's always traceable, but the answer in short is to use proxies. If somebody steals from a bank in the US and routes it through Sweden, some anti-US countries, and then China to boot, do you think everyone will be so willing to help the US government? Probably not. And of course, you could do the same to your IP address through proxies.

Both secure websites AND browsers have been educating users on security since the early days of the Internet. Nobody can stop a stupid and/or ignorant user from being redirected and not realizing that SSL is not implemented or invalid. SSL is properly implemented, however, the attack in question was redirecting the DNS. For instance, you create your own website and your own certifications and then trick the DNS into thinking your site is from Verisign and was created by them as well (since the source address would be the same according to DNS). Everything looks legitimate, but it's not. This is not something that someone could look at say... banks for and blame them for incorrect security implementations, it's how DNS is (was) widely implemented at a fundamental level by ISP's and such.

This possibility has always been there. The matter of a MITM proxy-based atttack is not what is in question here, it is the possibility of a DNS poisoning attack which would redirect the user to a non valid website, which is appearing as valid, and the additional verification questions on sensitive websites (i.e. banks and such) would prevent this from happening (at least from a DNS redirect of the email standpoint).

Also From TFA, "Or, for the sheer geeky joy of it, he could reroute all of .com into his laptop, the digital equivalent of channeling the Mississippi into a bathtub." ... right.

The site linked in the article is indeed slashdotted, but the bug in question has been overhyped in the media and, although it must be fixed to prevent future problems, it currently does not present a big obstacle for the current Internet...

I'm partially color blind and on occasion I do have to tweak the background and/or text color to see them better (i.e. a dark background on Amarok is a must everytime). For those applications that do not do this, I will sometimes have to change something globally just for use temporarily (this actually happens quite frequently with the app in question... iTunes).

If you don't want an audio manager, then just use VLC. Or XMMS (If I remember correctly). Minimal interface, fully funcional player and no library management (thus low overhead).