Wish I'd said that -- and been attacked for it.

Good point. McDonalds will have burger flippers on duty, but the Navy won't have anybody manning the sonar screens.

Let's just broadcast hundreds of gigs of known cleartext through our encryption stream - and announce in advance that we're going to do it.

Windows 8 has a real chance at beating iOS/Android in the enterprise, which eventually makes it a challenger at home also, and this is in large part due to the ability to run Office - and *the full Office suite* at that. Why would Microsoft want to give away this advantage in exchange for short term Office sales?

<Homer Simpson voice>Mmmmmmm.... Kool-Aid....</Homer Simpson voice>

I almost said Foster Brooks.

Dude, please. If Microsoft software became self-aware, it would be Terri Schiavo.

That's the "our encryption is unbreakable" argument. Let me know how that works out for you.

TFA is about battlefield electronics. Embassies have been using things like thermite-encased hard drives for a very long time already. But the GP raises an interesting question about what happens when an enemy has the ability to press a button and turn all your most critical battlefield C&C gear into slag.

If you dropped it, you weren't holding it right.

What's the difference between a bowl of Bon Vivant Vichyssoise and the electric chair?
You don't need a spoon with the electric chair.

I remember, in the 80's, Xenix was "export restricted", especially libc.a if it had "crypt.o" in it - like the algorithm hadn't been published many years prior to that. Anybody remember the big Toshiba machine-tool controller foorah that supposedly allowed the Soviets make quieter submarine propellers?

Does anybody think that our enemies-du-jour (and our friends, too) aren't reading all our science journals and buying samples of all manner of products for reverse engineering? Or for that matter, does anybody really think that we aren't doing the exact same thing, all over the world?

Lists like these are like "the seven words you can't say on television" - just a dare for somebody to do it.

I agree. 140 characters is just ridiculous. Where would we be if say, Pierre de Fermat, had been similarly limited to express himself?

I first read your post as "AT&T bought that part of the government...". Then I realized that was the case.

What part of "failed" wasn't clear?

The problem is, you can't run with Scissors.