We describe weaknesses in most master-keyed lock systems, such as those used by offices, schools, and businesses as well as by some residential facilities (particularly apartment complexes, dormitories, and condominiums). These weaknesses allow anyone with access to the key to a single lock to create easily the "master" key that opens every lock in the entire system. Creating such a key requires no special skill, leaves behind no evidence, and does not require engaging in recognizably suspicious behavior. The only materials required are a metal file and a small number of blank keys, which are often easy to obtain.

The Knowledge Web (K-Web) is an interactive tool for understanding and inspiring the creation of ideas ...

By flying through its unique 3D nested globes, which combine space and time into a single intuitive construct, users can explore how seemingly unrelated people, places and disciplines interrelate in unexpected and unpredictable ways ...

... people are creating things having no idea what [others are] up to ... we clearly need to think systemically ...

... sometimes an idea will lie fallow for a while until a piece comes along to enable it ...

... doodling away, diagramming people and things [and] their connections ... "spaghetti diagrams" ...

... instead of my building the thing, hoping some community would adopt it, why not let a community build it?

... The K-Web is being built by a community, but is also a community building tool which can reintegrate people and schools.

... the ability to create material, not just passively consume it, is key.

The user can get the kind of information she wants in the way she wants it; moreover, the user can see how ideas of a given text evolved (or even mutated) through time, how they were situated in varying contexts, and their effects on our lives today.

Silicon Valley lost about 9 percent of its employment from the first quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2002. Losses were particularly acute in the areas of software, semiconductors and computer and communications hardware, which lost 22 percent of their jobs. Average pay declined 6 percent.

... we urge the FCC to:

* Resist at all costs the telephone industry's calls for bailouts. The policy should be one of "fast failure."

* Acknowledge that non-Internet communications equipment ... is economically obsolete ...

* Discourage attempts by incumbent telephone companies to thwart [asset-based telecom].

The explosion of information continues to accelerate. Even in limited domains, the amount of available knowledge is usually too great for any one person or group of persons to grasp and utilize effectively.

Mapping of knowledge domains is a new scientific discipline aimed at using the developing speed and power of computation to chart, mine, analyze, sort, and display interesting and important aspects of (electronically available) knowledge.

Can a book with references to Starbucks, iBooks and Hummers become a classic?

Can anything transcend its time now? Or is any novel about our tumultuous era bound to be a blip on the radar screen -- the equivalent of 20 seconds of stray footage on the Net?

"Pattern Recognition" considers these issues with appealing care and, given that this best-selling author is his own kind of franchise, surprising modesty.

If the Spanish Armada had had distributed information for shared awareness, we'd all be speaking Spanish now.

Lying dormant in virtually every digital cable box in America is technology that can prevent viewers from recording certain programs to watch them later. Soon, several Hollywood studios are planning to tell cable operators to flip the switch.

"We need to put in speed bumps to keep people honest," said Jack Valenti, the president of the MPAA, which is lobbying federal regulators to require many devices to incorporate technology that prevents consumers from sending digital media files over the Internet. "If we don't, our future is bleak."

Cayce Pollard is a coolhunter, "a 'sensitive' of some kind, a dowser in the world of global marketing," able to recognize trends (i.e., patterns) before anyone else ...

Gibson's usual themes are still intact -- globalism, constant surveillance, paranoia, and pattern recognition -- only with the added presence of real-world elements (pilates, Google, Bibendum, Echelon, Buzz Rickson's). With incredibly evocative prose, Gibson masterfully captures the essence of a specific time and place ...