and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

More for myself than anything, here is a link to a good overview article on the existing 802.11 WEP cracking tools out there.

Perhaps more interesting to a wider audience, here is an article about self-heating coffee! No kidding. Whadlltheythunkupnext?

The RIAA and MPAA (pdf) are at it again, suing college students, websites, and probably your grandmother's cat, for essentially beating them at their own game. Apparently Bittorrent is giving them quite the trouble these days, accounting for (as one statistic put it) 35% of all internet traffic. I believe every statistic only so far, but that's alotta traffic. Even still, it's been clarified on Slashdot today that the $10 billion video game industry has not in fact surpassed the movie industry - If DVD and VHS sales and rentals are taken into account, the movie industry revenues approach $30 billion. Wowser, and I'm supposed to feel bad for them?

Given my mention of the shutdown of the LA Times national edition, here is a timely link about what could happen to media and news delivery by 2014. Sensational, exaggerated, and somewhat annoying at times, it is interesting nonetheless. It begs the question:

Do we love Google too much?

It is entirely possible that given the growth of the free market, given the creation and evolution of giant corporations from the ashes of tiny mom-and-pops, and then given the backlash towards big business, given the Microsoft haters, EFF fanatics, Open Source pundits, and trendy hipsters, given Enron and Worldcom and all that is evil, Google is convincing the world that it's just right in some sick emulation of a goldilocks fairytale.

If ever there was a media darling right now - bigger even than Amazon at it's newsworthy height - Goggle is it. Google, with it's searching, it's google groups, blogger, and now it's gmail is pandering to the crowd, feeding the frenzy, and maybe.. just maybe.. biding it's time. Remember my discussion about the most powerful resource of all? People.. Well, it worked for Microsoft. Everyone all thought Billy was quite the media darling too, at one point. Mr. Gates and his nifty little DOS program were quite the hit 15 years ago and Microsoft didn't seem to be at all threatening - especially with the real powerhouses like Intel and IBM calling the shots. Only now, when the giant is too big to be killed and 95% of personal computers run Windows, do we start to question our logic as a group, as consumers, as a powerful resource in this global economy.

Now I'm not saying Google is evil. I'm not saying Microsoft is really all that evil either.. they're just trying to make a buck. But if that's the motive, fine, we just have to keep remembering that that is the motive and take things with a grain of salt. When Google gives us a Gig of gmail space we should question why Google wants to archive all our mail. When google buys Blogger, we should question what it's really buying: a webhosting portal, or .. people?

And after all this discussion, is it any surprise to find a new zdnet article posted that tells us:

A Web worm that identifies potential victims by searching Google is spreading among online bulletin boards...

What happens when Google starts taking people's content by eminent domain? Yahoo seems alright with it!