Wild About Wi-Fi

Source: MSNBC

Pete Shipley’s dimly lit Berkeley home has all the earmarks of a geek lair: scattered viscera of discarded computer systems, exotic pieces of electronic-surveillance equipment and videos of the BBC sci-fi “Red Dwarf” show. But among the hacker community, Shipley, a 36-year-old freelance security consultant, is best known for his excursions outside the home—as a pioneer of “war driving.”

Breathe Easy: this isn’t a “Sum of All Fears” kind of thing. War driving involves roaming around a neighborhood looking for the increasingly numerous “hot spots” where high-speed Internet access is beamed to a small area by a low-power radio signal, thanks to a scheme called Wireless Fidelity. Imagine your computer as a walkie-talkie, but instead of talking, you’re getting high-speed Internet access. Wi-Fi, as it’s generally called (propellerheads call it 802.11b), has unexpectedly emerged as the wireless world’s Maltese Falcon, something truly lustworthy and, once possessed, impossible to let go of.