If you build it, someone will inevitably hack it. In the computer business, most manufacturers object when hordes of spotty teenagers tinker with their products. [Wired]

Digital Convergence responds to the flak that they've taken after demanding that several developers take drivers offline that work with their "CueCat" barcode reader. [Slashdot]

This unimpressive little gadget has recently become the heart of a controversy involving independent software developers. The outcome could potentially set a new precedent in how consumers control and use the products they bring home. [SF Gate]

People engaged in reverse engineering are a check on the ability of companies to invade our privacy without our knowledge. [ZDNet]

Finally, I want to add my voice to the cacophony (cat-ophony?) of complaints, grouses, and amazement at the proliferation of the :CueCat from Digital Convergence. [Byte]

. Michael Rothwell (the author of Foocat) wrote in to tell us that our friends at Digital Convergence are not giving up on their quest to defend their 3rd grader calibre "encryption" of their "intellectual property". [Slashdot]

Just noted that CueCat is going for this year's Useless Legal Action Beanie by going after www.upcdatabase.com, a site that is storing UPC codes and allows people to look them up. [Slashdot]

The :CueCat is a classic example of a broken business model. One can no longer (if, indeed, one ever could) put out a piece of hardware with the expectation that people will not seek to improve its operation with new software. [Linux Weekly News]

Concerns about its data-collection practices threaten Digital:Convergence's plans to roll out 50 million of the bar-code scanners by 2002. [ZDNet]

About the serial number and how to remove it. [Slashdot]

[Dallas Observer]

Apparently Digital Convergence has changed their EULA. This EULA has been modified to include the CueCat reader in an attempt to shutdown those tinkering with their cats. [Slashdot]

Thanks to a (previously) little-known company called "Digital Convergence," we now have our latest attack on the right to program. [Linux Weekly News]

Can Wired's CueCat giveaway turn us into a nation of bar-code-reading clerks? [Salon.com]

Forbes magazine last week shipped its 810,000 subscribers a new computer gadget it hopes will turn its pages into a new form of hyperlink to the Internet, as part of an experiment aimed at bridging the divide between old and new media. [Washington Post]

The pam_cuecat module reads decoded bar codes from /dev/scanners/cuecat, looks up the username:barcode_type:barcode line in /etc/cuecatpasswd, and returns whether or not this user has been authenticated.

A little of this convergence stuff goes a long way. Face it, when media outlets as dissimilar as Parade (that magazine supplement in your Sunday newspaper) and Slashdot.org ("News for nerds. Stuff that matters.") start covering the same stories, maybe it's time to head out for Idaho. [Dr. Dobb's Journal]

By Brent Michalski.

Bar codes for Internet scanners called CueCats made their latest debut in print Sunday in The Dallas Morning News, even as the creators of this new technology grapple with concerns about privacy and ease of use. [Washington Post]

A humorous protest of Digital Convergence's CueCat product featuring satirical parodies of ads and their license agreement plus alternate uses/gratuitous destruction of the controversial barcode scanner.