> wouldn't go so far as to say "Easy to crack". Netscape sponsored a contest some months ago to see if anyone could crack a single 40 bit encrypted message. The only guy that was able to do it used 20 high powered desktop machines linked together and had them cranking for over 3 weeks. he cracked that one message, but to crack another, it would take another 3 weeks. I wouldn't call that "easy".
>
>128 bit is for all practical purposes, impossible to crack.

Then you see a news story where a highschool student using a Commodore 64 was able develop new cracking algorithm. Onward to 256bit ... :-)