just in case you missed it - bestbuy quickly fixed their open networks rather quickly. it turns out that they were using a wireless point-of-sale system from symbol :

" “There are security mechanisms in place, but whether or not (the stores) use them is a different story,” Ferrone said. “If the security is not turned on, then the traffic would be open.”"

don't mind me. i'm just tossing this quote that i found from matt jones about karl popper into the annotated bookmark bin:

"He criticised what came to be called solutioneering: the jumping to solutions - reorganisations, replanning - without spelling out what the problem was, or if there was one. At the back of this lay "holism", the belief that problems must be tackled "as a whole". He showed that the holistic method turns out to be impossible. The greater the changes attempted, the greater their unintended and unexpected repercussions, forcing upon the holistic engineer the expedient of piecemeal improvisation - the "notorious phenomenon of unplanned planning". "

i've been looking for the recipe for a crappy week and finally happened upon it. in case you're wondering, it calls for:

• 1 car crash with a dash of whiplash and back tweakage
• 12 ibuprofin and a side of stomach fu
• 1 case of hardcore carpal tunnel syndrome
• 12 more ibuprofin
• 1 visit to the dentist for crown work
• 8 more ibuprofin
• add stomach fu judiciously

if you are driving and your wife mentions the phrase "when we get in a car accident" in casual conversation, and then 5 minutes later you get into an actual car accident - does she get bonus cosmic coincidence points? if so, kris just scored big.

we're fine. luckily i learned my lessons about seatbelts a long time ago. a guy tried to pull out and turn left when he couldn't see around a utility truck. somehow, i managed to swerve just enough to avoid slamming straight into his driver's side door. i banged-up my knee a little, kris tweaked her back slightly and the trusty camry, while not totaled, is going to be spending some quality time at a body shop and mechanic. luckily, nobody was hurt.

so, it looks like bestbuy have left their wlans wide open:

"Well after sorting out my logs I noticed what looked to be like SQL queries and table headers in my logs ... things such as CUSTOMER_ROUTEID, BANKNAME, REGISTER_ID and things of that nature... luckily no where in that data did I find my own credit card. Non the less I decided to run to the store next to BestBuy while I left me PC on grabbing packets. Well yesterday I sorted through the data collected and this time I did indeed find a RAW clear text credit card number....not mine ... but definately a credit card number.

... I checked out a few of the other best buy stores for "beacon packets" and everyone I drove by was sending them out...so I assume all BestBuy's are wlan enabled."

that popping sound you hear is the sound of pringles cans being opened.

on the off chance that you find yourself in need of free forum software, phpbb has been updated. it's easy to install, easy to use, and purty too.

adding fuel to the belief that making money of access to public wireless lans is a losing proposition, sputnik decides to not charge for access to the sputnik network:

"Sputnik is relinquishing its plans to eventually charge subscribers for using the Sputnik Network. After a lot of careful analysis, we have not been able to overcome growing doubts about the long-term financial prospects for paid subscriber 802.11 networks. Eight months ago we thought a "bottoms-up" subscriber network was a killer idea, but the landscape has changed a lot since then." "We also appreciate the bug fixes and patches that community developers have contributed to our code base. We are committed to continuing to support you by providing, among other things, free authentication and roaming services."

so where's the money? sputnik aims to, "focus exclusively on being a product company, with an emphasis on the enterprise software market." while it's certainly smart to recognize that it's going to be tough to pay the bills with subscription revenues from mom-and-pop public hotspots, it's still hard to see this as a positive strategic move. i mean, this thing called "the enterprise" is a tough market full of people who like to buy from brands like cisco.

i don't think i can ever understand how difficult it must have been for bob cringely to write about his son's recent death:

"Chase Cringely sounds like the name of a NASCAR driver. Chase Cringely was my son. He died this week after 74 days of life, a victim of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). He literally stopped breathing lying in my lap while I did e-mail. There was no sound, no struggle. I just looked down and he was no longer alive. I have no idea whether he had been dead for one minute or 10, but we were unable to revive him. He was never sick, he just died, and now there is a void in our lives that we can never fill."

robert has decided to devote significant time and resources to inventing sensors to help fight SIDS ans is looking for help:

" I need your help. I need hardware engineers, software engineers, I need people experienced with biomedical sensors and sifting mountains of data. I need folks who make tiny processors and RAM chips. I need people who know more about this stuff than I do. Yet they must also be people who are willing to believe that there is an answer, since the medical establishment seems to have given up.

Nobody will make money from this, but everybody will benefit. Whatever we learn will be given to the world for free. "

a long time ago, i had a cousin who died very young, very unexpectedly and without a established cause ever found. it was, of course, completely devastating for the entire family. i remember simply not being able to wrap my head around the fact that she had died. for a long time. best wishes to bob as he picks up the pieces and learns to live with void. [ via doc ]

it's official. after years of crappy customer service, confusing calling plans and increasing cellular usage, kris and i decided to ditch the run-of-the-mill long distance scene for good. goodbye at&t , worldcom and sprint . you milked the last stupid "service" charge out of me. you will never, ever, ever again trick me into some wiggedy-wack call plan with tiny, tiny print [ especially you worldcom ]. nay, i say, it will never happen again. not while there are companies like onesuite around. 2.9 cents a minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no monthly charges and no minimum usage fees. nope 2.9 cents per minute. that's all, nothing else. yeah, baby. i wouldn't be investing in long distance carriers anytime soon :

"Phone and cable carrier AT&T Corp. reported its loss widened to nearly $1 billion in the first quarter, blaming the performance on falling long-distance sales and a slide in the value of its investments."

via adam kalsey i ran across a methodology from ibm for picking patterns for web applications:

"The Patterns leverage the experience of IBM architects to create solutions quickly, whether for a small local business or a large multinational enterprise. As shown in the following figure, customer requirements are quickly translated through the different levels of Patterns assets to identify a final solution design and product mapping appropriate for the application being developed."

as with most methodologies there's always the danger of getting into a "big mac vs the naked chef" situation with this kind of thing, but there's actually some useful tidbits throughout.

david hyatt clarifies his position on forking the netscape and mozilla UIs. it seems so straighforward, that i'm surprised it's rankled some feathers:

"The Netscape suite and Mozilla suite are constantly at war as features go into the Mozilla tree that Netscape doesn't want, and Netscape is forced to take byzantine routes to include its own desired user interface because it ends up being blocked by Mozilla. The issue of whether these UI changes are good or bad is completely irrelevant. There is a single fundamental principle that those who happen to disagree with Netscape's UI decisions overlook: that Netscape has the right to completely and utterly control the user interface of its application and mozilla.org has the right to control the user interface of its suite.

None of the other applications built using Gecko work this way. It's an insane no-win situation to be in, but we've tolerated it in order to make it to 1.0."