Everyday we make choices about how we live. Sometimes they are healthy and sometimes we choose to ignore conventional wisdom and do what we like. But as health care costs skyrocket, employers are becoming more concerned with what the employees do with themselves. According to industry consultants, companies are looking for ways to reward employees for making positive health choices and seeking to penalize those that do not. Companies would like to make your physical condition their business because it's costing them serious money in insurance premiums.

With Google's stock north of $400, folks are looking for any kind of weakness in the company's game plan. The recent launch of Google Video Store is being lauded as a spectacular flop before it even gets off the ground. Is all the negative press around Google just sour grapes, or is there a dark underbelly to the Internet's latest darling?

The week between Christmas and New Years is often a time retrospection on the happenings of the past year. So far I've read several articles citing the technical winners and losers of the past 12 months, as well as a few that mark predictions for the coming year. So I will not attempt to add to the collection of prognostication and near term nostalgia. Instead, I'd like to focus on the overarching topics that neither began yesterday, nor will be resolved in the next year.

As we press into the second half of this decade, several stories have lingered with us. In a way the time has passed quickly, in others it's almost shameful that some things have yet to be resolved. First and foremost is the RIAA's battle against music piracy. Never mind that I played my first mp3 in 1996, or that the format dates back to 1991. The RIAA became very concerned with the technology in 1999 when a service called Napster launched. In defense of their intellectual property the group launched a lawsuit and eventually shut down the site in March 2001. I'm sure that the group celebrated what they believed to be a victory. However, as we approach five years after the fact they must now realize that the lawsuit did not stop file trading nor did it secure their future in the digital world.

Is piggybacking on an open wireless network stealing? I have to admit, the definition of "stealing" has changed a bit since I was a kid. In her article Wireless Freeloaders Are Breaking The Law, "cyberspace lawyer" Parry Aftab attempts to argue with some precocious preteens about the moral dilemma of hopping the nearest open wireless connection.

Though she did her best to explain her actions to the kids, I think she missed a few important points that further confound the definition merely as stealing. First off, stealing means your taking something FROM someone without permission. In this case your not denying the party their Internet connection, but merely using it on a temporary basis. When you disconnect the original service is rendered back to normal, barring some sort of malicious action.