I was hanging out with some friends today when I mentioned the war driving [1] I did on Friday. One friend, Russel, then asked, “Why? What's the purpose of war driving?” Curious, coming from someone in The Industry.
Then I began thinking—what was the purpose? It's not like we've been hired as a tiger team [2] or where bent upon wanton destruction of Internet resources. I think it came down to something that I (and the rest of the war driving team) found fun; because we could; a kind of “this is cool!”
Besides, we learned something on Friday's war drive: CVS Pharmacy stores [3] have open wireless networks [4], which we all found interesting. Other stores too, like Dollar Store [5]. Not that we can legally use the information, but it's still an interesting result we weren't expecting.
[2] http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/t/tigerteam.html
[4] http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=cvsretail