Foiled: Hacker's Audacious Plan to Rule the Stolen-Data Black Market

A) The writer of this article made a mistake.

B) It's a special device Max used to get some extra cash out of his non-technical partner.

It is another name for snake-oil cryptography: http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9902.html#snakeoil

An out-of-date term since before the Internet went "pop." Early on, when the U.S. military was reluctant to allow civilians full access to cryptographic technology, there were still laws on the books limiting consumer e-mail clients and the like to 40-bit encryption. When Moore's Law eventually made this kind of barrier breakable in milliseconds, the laws were changed to allow 128-bit encryption to be "exported." Nowadays, there's no real limit due to most crypto research being driven overseas, although I don't remember if the arbitrary key size limit was finally removed in the U.S. proper.

This one, the one about the ship full of Mazdas tipping over, etc. I'm a little suspicious of the magazine as a whole - if there a higher percentage of stories were excellent, wired would be on HN more.

It's less than a $1 an issue. I've been a subscriber from the beginning and my interest/satisfaction has ebbed and flowed but I've never thought about dropping my subscription.

1. It is very cheap.

2. I always find something worth reading in each issue.

3. I harbor the fantasy that a full set in very good condition will be worth something one day. ;-)