Back when the National Security Agency still had a low profile, before it became the villainous adversary of action movies or the subject of congressional inquiries, there was a quip amongst the agency’s employees that the abbreviation NSA stood for “Never Say Anything.” But shift just one letter in that abbreviation and you’ll get “NDA,” the document that’s beginning to make Apple look more and more like the über-secretive government agency.

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Even the dark lords of ’80s metal listen to the blogosphere these days. After coming in for serious online criticism over the decision to lean on bloggers who had posted reviews of new Metallica tracks (tracks which they had been invited to listen to and which were not covered by an NDA), the band has posted a statement on its Web site.

“Once we re-surfaced on Tuesday after a few weeks on tour in Europe, we were informed that someone at Q Prime (our managers) had made the error of asking a few publications to take down reviews of the rough mixes from the new record that were posted on their sites,” they wrote. “Our response was ‘WHY?!!! Why take down mostly positive reviews of the new material and prevent people from getting psyched about the next record… that makes no sense to us!’”

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