Metaphorically - 7:24 pm on Nov 7, 2007 (gmt 0)

One possible reason they would do that is to protect your AdSense ID.

I just tried making an ad unit in the new interface. The only js variables that are still there are width, height and publisher id. So no, they're not hiding your publisher id.

Who knows, maybe they will throw us a bone and say we can set the old variables to set the channels on an ad.