I laughed at "Year of Linux Desktop" every year. Never expected MS itself would make it happen.
(moderate me -5,since Its a parallel universe where its 5th year of Linux Desktop)

There is no reason to not assemble them outside US. The process is "security by obscurity".

Who wouldn't download a car?

Its for debugging.The code works on release versions(if (1)),but for debugging people need the ability to turn on/off certain parts of code(if (!1)).

Could you read the post carefully? Especially the words 7-10.

They are not secure.What are hashes relying on is reversible,with clever algorithmic tricks and without quantum computing.Today we know about rainbow tables,but tomorrow there would be far faster ways to break hashes.The complexity of some hash algorithm is just "security by obscurity"(the secret is not in expensive computation/bruteforce required ).The point about the approach is that sooner or later the algorithm would be "refactored" by people who understand the idea behind the algorithm far better then its designers.
Then all this security gets out the window.

Action Script is harder to learn for people customized to javascript.
If it was more optimized(e.g. even removing/replacing eval) and had some graphic capability it would replace everything else quickly.Its such a design which can be cross-platformed and adapted easily(every modern browser runs the code).
Plus alot(probably more then all other languages) of people have at least some knowledge of programming in JavaScript.
Its inherent advantage over everything else and even Adobe understands it(Air is targeted to such programmers).
There is an possibility JavaScript would be replaced by something like Python or Lua,but they must be clearly superior to switch(in all cases people will not see advantages until they are painfully obvious to everyone).
JavaScript will stay for several decades otherwise.

Its exactly the opposite.The closed groups of people playing on a private server are better community then the masses playing the legit version.

Necessity is the mother of invention.