Turns out the encoder was really easy to make using 1980s era stuff, but the tech required to pull off the decoder product greatly exceeded the technological/economic limitations of the time, so that's why the project failed. Oh well.
The point was a raid to eliminate fancy Java and GUIs and modern computers won't stop forbidden SAME encoders from being written, they'd actually have to raid and confiscate museum pieces.
It would be like trying to forbid DES-56 by getting rid of everything DES-56 capable. That's a lot more than year 2012 quad core pentiums, that includes my 25 year old HP-48 calculator...
Another interesting note is that I'm sure the security theater guys would like to calm people by claiming it takes millions of dollars and dozens of people and years of effort and top of the line modern high tech stuff to make a SAME encoder, but I did it alone as a poor yet smart kid using junkpile stuff decades ago in a ridiculously short amount of time. The only reason this doesn't get hacked on a regular basis, is despite the paranoid delusion that they're all out to get us, they actually are not, because they would have gotten us a zillion times over already, if "they" actually wanted to, which they obviously do not desire to do. Some lower forms of humanity profit off convincing people to be hostile toward each other, nothing new there.
