I've seen the Junxion box before, and now Kyocera has a new Wi-Fi access point that connects Wi-Fi enabled computers to the Verizon or Sprint EVDO networks. At $200, it's a lot cheaper than any of the alternatives. If you're traveling in the Sprint or Verizon networks, this device could relieve you of the need to find a Wi-Fi enabled hotel room — just bring your own hotspot. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available for purchase yet.

Yes, another security hole in Internet Explorer. This one is unusually bad because this time there is exploit code running in the wild before Microsoft has a patch available. Most of the recent IE holes have been discovered by security researchers who first reported their results to Microsoft, giving the company time to create a patch before news of the security hole was made public. This time, it was hackers (a group calling itself "Computer Terrorism") who found the hole.

The NSA has a web site for kids.

It seems that Linksys switched to using VxWorks in the latest version of their WRT54G access point. This means that Linux-based custom firmware (like Sveasoft) does not work in the new access point. Looks like I need to find a new favorite cheapie AP.

Wi-Fi isn't short for "wireless fidelity," it's a marketing term. This has always been my understanding — that it's just an easy to remember mnemonic chosen by a naming firm.

Cool: Devicescape is selling to hardware vendors a toolkit for quickly adding WPA/WPA2 support to their products. This should help increase adoption of WPA Enterprise security, which requires some relatively complex software. Pricing starts at $50,000, which is actually pretty cheap compared to how much a company would have to pay their engineers to develop the code themselves — assuming their engineers even have the specific expertise necessary to do so.

Bruce Schneier has details on the new US RFID-quipped passports. It turns out that most of the data is encrypted, but the serial number — the item that allows for tracking people's movements — is in the clear. What's more, the chip can be read from at least 69 feet away, not the mere inches that the State Department claims.

I'm guessing that this setup will be specifically checked for and disallowed in the next version of the Developer Transition Kit software.