You travel often. You like stylish hard luggage. You use Bluetooth. You need a Samsonite Suitcase with Bluetooth [from: JB Ecademy]

World War Drive II Results "The results of the second World War Drive are in, and they don't look good for wireless security. Of the almost 25,000 wireless access points surveyed, only 35 percent used Service Set Identifier (SSID), a default security feature in the 802.11b protocol. Only 28 percent had Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)... [thanks, Lockergnome's Bits and Bytes] [from: JB Wifi]

Interesting little story from a system administrator. He's setting up a company wide WLAN and suitable security measures both on the firewalls and on the Cisco access points that he puts in. But he's plagued by unauthorised WLAN access points. "I detected them by equipping my Compaq iPaq with an AirMagnet Handheld PC Card and detection software from Mountain View, Calif.-based AirMagnet Inc. I can pick up the signals, but I can't tell where the APs are. A management e-mail demanding the removal of these devices seems to have had the opposite effect." Stalking Elusive Access Points  [thanks, Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News] [from: JB Wifi]

The latest Wired has just dropped thorugh my letter box. So to continue today's comments about open source software for Microsoft platforms.

Out of 48,000 plus projects on sourceforge, 20% are cross platform and 18% are for Microsoft Windows platforms.

7% of open source coders live in the UK.

Of coders who code at work, 28% use open source and the Boss knows. 9% use it but it's not core to their job, 17% use Open source but the boss doesn't know.

60% of open source coders said that if there was another hour in the day, they'd spend it coding.

62% of open source coders said their open source project is as creative as any other pursuit in their lives. Intellectual stimulation is the most-cited motivation.

I love that last one. In my experience most open source projects get started because the lead programmer has an itch that they can't stop scratching. Thouughts of money or payback come a distant second.

The first stat, that 18% of the sourceforge projects are aimed at MS Win platforms is the one I'm most interested in. Why is it low? Is it low? Should Microsoft do anything to try and increase it? [from: JB Ecademy]

Why is there so little open source software for the MS platform?
Bear with me because this isn't fully worked out yet. I have a perception that the MS programming community doesn't produce much free or open source software. Now there are plenty of FS/OSS projects that involve ports to MS operating systems (Apache and PHP to name but two) but I never seem to see much that uses .NET or is based on Visual Studio and is specifically aimed at MS Win.

As I was thinking about this, it occured to me that MS could do worse than actively promote this sort of effort, except that it could be a double edged sword if any of the projects ended up competing directly with one of their areas.

And then I thought I had better actually check that this market doesn't actually exist or if it was all in my mind. So I took a look at Sourceforge and found some 10,000 projects aimed at MS Win. Then I looked on Hotscripts and found 1781 scripts and components So clearly there's something happening out there in this area.

So how did I miss it? Why don't I see this? Why doesn't MS promote this? And more importantly where are the websites that discuss all this? [from: JB Ecademy]

WirelessSoftware.info - Next generation of Wi-Fi (wireless LAN) has arrived ALREADY and first 802.11a/b dual PCMCIA cards are available NOW!!!

So if combined 802.11a/b cards and APs are on the verge of being available, this has all sorts of implications.

How do the manufacturers maintain sales of 802.11b only devices?

What about Antennas? An 802.11a antenna design is not going to work with 802.11b and vice versa.

What about sniffers? Where's Kismet/Netstumbler for 802.11a?

What about WISPs? Will OpenZone, T-Mobile and Megabeam (not to mention all the free ones) have to upgrade the hardware they've already put in?

My feeling is that as soon as dual mode card prices get within 25% of single mode prices, single mode device demand will just disappear. [from: JB Wifi]

A new blog searching tool has appeared. Waypath. Check out. Waypath Related Weblog Entries for Ecademy [from: JB Ecademy]

Good article with lots of links. InformationWeek > Fred Langa > Langa Letter: Wireless Poachers, Wireless Guests > October 30, 2002 : Sharing your wireless connection should be a conscious choice, Fred Langa says. Too often, it's accidental. [via geeknews.net] [from: JB Wifi]

Web services are alive and well at Amazon Amazon's Web services interface is spawning a host of unique storefronts and applications. [thanks, Meerkat: An Open Wire Service] [from: JB Ecademy]

Dell makes a wireless connection - Tech News - CNET.com : The PC maker plans to add dual-band Wi-Fi networking technology to its line of Latitude business notebooks by the end of 2003. The company also expects to reduce the price of its network access points to about $50.

End 2003? Why not, end 2002? [from: JB Wifi]

Schlotzsky's Warchalks a Stealth Ad Campaign Schlotzsky's Deli Cool Cloud Network has launched with free Wi-Fi in locations around Austin and Houston, Texas. But don't look for signs to tell you that. Look for chalk. [thanks, 802.11 Planet]

What is it about Austin Texas? All sorts of cool stuff seems to happen there. [from: JB Wifi]

Ben Hammersley.com: Edenfaster is go : News just in: Edenfaster, the community wireless group I wrote about in The Guardian last month were given their funding today. £150,000 in seed money to bring Wifi broadband to 10,000 people in the Yorkshire/Cumbria border.

No comment needed really. [from: JB Wifi]

A google employee, "Google Guy" says : Good find, Brett--I was recommending cluetrain six months ago. Come to think of it, Google is the only company I know of that has Cluetrain, Bruce Sterling, and The Shockwave Rider sandwiched between Knuth and our python books. One little-known perk of working at Google: you can order just about any book you need for the company library.

Which explains a lot. And particularly nice to see a reference to John Brunner's "Shockwave Rider". A seminal book written long before William Gibson's Neuromancer. [from: JB Ecademy]

Who is Hennry Raddick? And is his collection of Amazon reviews a piece of high conceptual art or merely the doodlings of an idle office worker between trips to the water cooler?

Task Force Calls for Modernized Spectrum Policy : The task force found that new technological developments could now allow the FCC to increasingly consider the use of time, in addition to frequency, power and space as an added dimension permitting more dynamic allocation and assignment of spectrum rights. Technology was also cited by the task force as a force to overcome another longstanding assumption underpinning traditional spectrum management: interference.

Very interesting to see the FCC publicly acknowledging that specturm is not really scarce any more. Unfortunately there's a lot of business and money tied up in the idea of spectrum scarcity. Expect the incumbents to fight hard to retain their dominant position. [from: JB Wifi]

ConvergeDigest: South Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication announced a new plan to deliver Internet connections of at least 1 Mbps and preferably 20 Mbps to every household by 2005. (South Korea already leads the world in broadband penetration.) [thanks, Werblog]

I'm repeating myself but; How long before we get 10Mbps up and down to the home for a tenner a month. 1, 2, 5, 10 years? [from: JB Ecademy]

Palm is licensing RIM's keyboard patents for their Tungsten W wireless device. [thanks, Bryce's Weblog Experiments] As far as I can tell RIM have a patent on a keyboard for handheld devices that is a full qwerty layout but is arranged so that it can be operated with both thumbs. Doesn't anyone else find this ridiculous? Or am I oversimplifying?

More here at the Register [from: JB Ecademy]

Referring to the aftermath of the US mid term elections. Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Choose : Ten ways today is worse than yesterday:

Global warming

Energy conservation and clean air

John Ashcroft

The Supreme Court

Preemptive wars

Staggering debt

Health care

School testing replaces education

Internet freedom

Arrogant, smirking ex-CEOs are now the world's sole super power

Of course none of that applies in the UK, right? [from: JB Ecademy]

A juicy collection of links at The Unofficial 802.11 Security Web Page Warning, this is heavy duty stuff and probably way too much for the causal observer. [from: JB Wifi]

I don't like statements about the Internet that appear to state facts because they are always generalizations and frequently just plain wrong. But this is quite a good one The Internet exists to improve communication. Communities can grow anywhere communication occurs. From an excellent article O'Reilly Network: Building Online Communities [Oct. 21, 2002] [from: JB Ecademy]