I arrived in New York City somewhen around 1400 EST5EDT, after getting turned around in Penn Station (what kind of adventure would it be without my getting lost, after all?) and being sent in the direction of the hotel by a wary yet friendly security guard at the office building I'd blundered into. I finally got to the Hotel Penn, which they really did a nice job fixing up since the last time I'd been there (though the air conditioning was still pants, which became a common complaint that weekend). I wandered around for a while because I had no …

Following battlefield tales that Hezbollah had compromised the IDF communications network during operations in Lebanon last year, defense contractors have developed Meshnet, a hardware and software firewall appliance to protect the data networks of battlefield equipment, on the chance that someone would figure out how to infect them with malicious agents of some sort in the near future. Meshnet is supposedly based upon the Sidewinder Security Appliance from Secure Computing, but includes specialized hardware that deals with the network protocols and connection gear used in the control systems of tanks, armored personnel carriers, or what have you along with anti-spyware …