For those who just don't want to have to stop their cars when war-driving, the latest version of iStumbler (available for free under the BSD license) will read coordinates from a connected GPS as you drive around the countryside looking for open WiFi access points.

Because scientists just can't get enough of "the sky is falling," we have a new report from Wired referencing an article in Science, that The problem is leaking hydrogen. Based on a 'hydrogen economy' and the estimate that 10-20% of hydrogen in systems will leak out and ascend into the …

An article from the Washington Post provides a number of complaints from Microsoft competitors indicating that they are violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the anti-trust agreement with the Feds. One issue is the licensing terms and prices for crucial interoperability technologies from Microsoft. These include a host …

An article from CNet talks about HBO Networks decision to move to a digital broadcasting system starting later this month. Perhaps more importantly is the use of Sun hardware as the platform for this. In the days of Microsoft touting their media solutions, it is important that we continue to …

Yesterday, the IEEE approved the 802.11g standard for higher-speed wireless in the same band as 802.11b. The official announcement is available online. And now, the fun begins. With the finalization of the standard, everybody will be upgrading their firmware and conducting compatibility tests and the magazines will finally …

According to their offerings list on their site, T-Mobile is now offering unlimited GPRS (packet data over GSM cellular) for only $19/month if you have a voice plan that runs at least $29/month. They've also realigned their National Business plans: Plan name minutes Cost/mo National Business Plan …

An article from Wired reports that the recent worm BugBear.B (distributed via email as an exclusive to Windows users) contains keystroke- logging code specifically designed to find passwords for financial institutions. All versions of Windows 95+ are affected. This is believed to be the first time that a worm …

Wal-Mart is revamping its by-mail DVD rental service, started last year. The service echos many of the features of Netflix, the premier internet-based DVD rental company (now with over 1 million members) including delivery by mail and rentals without a specific return date. Netflix says they aren't worried.

A good set of pointers this morning in an article from CNET about the IEEE-sponsored VLSI symposium taking place this week in Kyoto, Japan. They talk about Intel's Tri-Gate Transistor work, "finfet" transistors being worked on by IBM and AMD, and a variety of papers in the wireless area …

Most anti-spam technology is aimed at stopping spam coming in to your inbox. However, large service providers, such as Yahoo! also have to deal with preventing spam from being sent from their systems. An article from CNET today describes such a system being implemented by Yahoo! The system monitors the …

An article from CNET tells of a company from Tennessee that is installing WiFi systems in over 200 truck stops. IdleAire Technologies is a service company that provides a cab service unit that allows truck drivers to have HVAC, power, and internet services without leaving their engines running. Since they …

An article from Enterprise IT Planet claims that NCSA (former working home of yours truly) has established the largest known Storage Area Network. The huge filesystem, containing over 110TB of data (that's 110,000,000,000,000 bytes+, or the equivalent of ~500 of the largest disks you can buy …

Looks like it may be time to start looking at deploying FreeBSD 5.x. Slashdot has an article indicating that 5.1 is now available (including a couple of BitTorrent links), and generally once the .1 release is available, I start looking to deploy the major version.

An article from the New York Times describes a case pending against Enron by federal prosecutors. On the surface, I'm sure everybody enjoys the idea of trying to take down more Enron employees over alleged misstatements, but this one may create some problems for software and technology industries. At stake …

The State (of South Carolina) is reporting that Microsoft is trying once again to get back into the set top box business. Their latest offering, Microsoft TV Foundation Edition, announced in this press release, is aimed at the lower-priced cable converter market, as opposed to some of the previous offerings …

An article from CNET reports that Sun and Intel announced they are teaming up to make sure that Java runs well on Intel's XScale processor, used often in PDAs and some phones. The press release from Sun's site specifically refers to some modifications to Sun's Hotspot VM and some changes …

Argonne and Brookhaven National Labs have received a patent (No 6,528,948) for a valve to close off a vacuum used in photon experiments using plasma. SlashDot referred to this as a "force field", which is arguably correct as the particles that block the flow are constrained by electromagnetic …

Wired has an article today that describes the various efforts that Microsoft has underway in order to continue their push to make Windows Media 9 the next format for digital media. They cover a number of recent efforts by the company to push into the film industry, including a recent …

According to an article on CNet, the FCC is considering leveling the playing field with dial-up and DSL by charging cable modem service providers an additional tax of 9.1% on their cable modem revenues (said tax getting pushed into the USF). I find it interesting that a conservative administration …

The latest AIM beta for Windows from AOL contains "Encrypted IM". Following the "more info" link, we find out some more tidbits about how this is to work. It looks like the end-to-end pieces are part of AOL's move to offer enterprise AIM services on their existing infrastructure. Staying away …