Somebody's watching my Nike+

Wired article on how the new Nike+ running system can be used by others to track your movement. Basically an article on the dangers of unsecured long range RFID chips. Now I'm sure readers are expecting a rant about how this is a massive invasion of privacy, and that the Feds will soon use similar stuff to keep track of all of us, and maybe that I would expect this from the big evil Microsoft, but never from cuddly little Mac, but I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint.

What stopped me in my tracks was this,

With a quick hardware hack that Kohno said "any high school student could do in the garage,"

Wait, what? I have an iPod and I can barely work the thumb-wheel thing. High school kids can "hack" into them and make them do other things? Look I watched Alias, so I always figured those kinds of things can happen, but I assumed they were done by really experienced master spies with cool technology. But Wired is saying high schoolers can rework the same iPod that I just discovered had an alarm clock into a tracking device. Wow. And why a garage? Do they need ratchet sets and vices to do this? I'm completely perplexed. Well, that is until Wired dropped this,

the researchers hooked a Nike+ iPod receiver up to a Linux-based "gumstix" -- a tiny, $79 computer that could easily be hidden in door frames, in trees next to jogging trails or in a pocket.

What the hell's a "gumstix?" Are they just making up words so that non-wired readers get confused. Is it a test of some sort? Can I sound cool if I say, "'gumstix' are so last year, and that everyone's moved on to the more modular 'chicklex' system?" As a side note, "gumstix," if they really exist, missed out on a great marketing opportunity. Everyone knows that things sound more extreme with three "x's" on the end. Maybe they would be popular enough for a caveman like me to know about them if they were called "gumstixxx."

Anyway, no big anti-government rant, just wanted to point out an article that demonstrates how woefully technoilliterate I am.