The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle (2005)

From Archie through Altavista (the first Internet search engine, where DEC executives were not wishing to see the light and grab the opportunity), AOL, Yahoo to GoTo.com (Overture) and Google the books offers an overview of development in the search on the Internet, arguing that this is likely just a beginning of a transformation on how we find and access information. Google is the 1000 pound gorilla in this game today, and is being described in somewhat less than ideal light. From the humble beginnings in a dorm room, living off the "free" bandwidth and computer parts of Stanford, through their various corporate actions, which do not seem to correspond to the often repeat "do no evil" slogan. Their stand on issues, like hiring practices, trademarks, advertising practices, privacy issues, dealings with the Chinese government, issues during their IPO and others many times bring them to the questionable side, although usually putting more money in the company's pocket on the way. But I guess repeating the mantra frequently, some could get brainwashed indeed ... Search and internet activity information stored about individuals by these private companies (in addition to the credit and medical information stored by other private companies) and the use of this information by other private companies and the government likely is to be cause for concern.

The American by Andrew Britton (2006)

The basic premise of the book is simple. A psychopath ex-Special Forces operative joins the radical islamists, and becomes their best weapon. It seems a bit too "current" in places. Although the plot sometimes is predictable, it does not become cliche. Reading it will keep you on the edge of whatever furniture you are currently occupying.

Open source password managers

Open source password managers (tested on Windows)

KeePass provides the best functionality of the packages noted. It has a nice looking UI, with ability to export data into txt, html, cvs. It also imports existing password data from other applications. The autofill setup is configurable, although the global auto-type hot-key didn't seem to work in all cases. Users may in particular like the mouse movement entropy based password generation.
Mirek's PINs provides a system wide hotkey to paste userid/password into browsers
based on URLs currently accessed. Special emphasis is given to the ability of setting expiry dates. Data can be saved in cleartext.
PasswordSafe has a long history. It offers various password generation options, the easily readable password generation is a nice touch, although would only be used if your digital backups disappear altogether. It is unclear how it connects to a browser, although there is "autotype" functionality? Data can be saved in cleartext.
Secure Data Manager (SDM) is developed in Java and available with Java WebStart. Provides basic functionality with less integration into Windows.
PasswordMaker offered as an extension for Firefox, IE, and others, also as a standalone version. It generates passwords based on a master password and site URL (and date and username too if needed). The generated passwords are not stored, always generated on the fly. So there is not way to print a list of userids/passwords, which could be considered a security feature. Is is also not clear what is the process of changing existing settings for a particular account, as those are also not stored? The current version also does not a way to keep existing passwords for certain sites.
KED Password Manager written in Python/GTK2, mainly targeting *nix based systems.

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald (2005)

Welcome to the world of smoke and mirrors! Based on the timeline presented in the book, Enron was cooking the books for longer then a decade, booking future revenues in current year, allowing executives to run money losing projects and receive enormous bonuses at the same time. And all this with very little or no words from their internal and external accountants and auditors. With many executives being visionary, which worked in earlier years moving Enron from a "simple" pipeline company into the political and international scene, the actual function of a corporation, as in making real profit for its shareholders, got lost in the shuffle. The offshore corporations created to hide money losing ledger entries of failing projects was simply a natural outgrowth of these previous practices, and probably most nobody even batted an eye, even if noticing them. Add to this the endless stream of individualistic corporate executives and their power struggles, and you got a page turner on your hand. Too bad that looking back at historical timelines does not help the workers and investors of Enron with their financial and emotional losses.

A Simple Plan by Scott B. Smith (1994)

Lets imagine that you and your friends found lots of stolen money. You know that the robbers and the police will be looking for it. So how far would you go to keep this a secret and protect your interests? not telling anybody is one thing, but would you go as far as to commit murder? Could one action lead to another going down a slippery slope? Good suspense.