Here's a great account by Neil McAllister of one of the most exciting sessions of last week's O'Reilly P2P and Web Services Conference: Michael R. Macedonia, Ph.D.'s Network-Centric Warfare.

Peering Into The Future -- The military contemplates network-centric warfare

The term "cyber warfare" gets thrown around every now and again. Most often, it comes attached to the fanciful notion of some virtual battleground of the near future, one where hackers are the foot soldiers, worms and viruses are the tools and dominance over the network is the ultimate military objective. It's an idea that owes more to Hollywood than to reality, however. In truth, bullets, bombs and control of all-too-real estate are likely to remain central to warfare for a long time to come.

That's not to say the US armed forces are letting the fruits of the Internet Age simply drop from the vine -- far from it. The military is among the first institutions to recognize the many contributions of the computing industry to solving real-world problems. So perhaps it shouldn't have come as a surprise when representatives of the armed forces came looking for ideas among a decidedly nonmilitary bunch: the geeks, hackers and codeheads attending last week's O'Reilly P2P and Web Services Conference in Washington, DC.