No RJ-11 For You

And it's no surprise that you can find so many Wifi nodes in your neighborhood. Here in Japan, where apartment buildings (very close to eachother) are the rule, you can usually get 2-4 connections. A couple years ago, very few had password protection. But now, nearly all of them do. The problem I have with my home AirPort connection is interference from other WiFi networks. So I periodically have to use a different channel.

Moving someone from OS 9 on a G3 to OS X on an Intel iMac because a modem broke... just how much software will she now need to buy, since there's no Classic anymore?

My cynical radar is beeping like mad.

And no, she didn't need to buy any replacement software to go with the upgrade. Apple provides everything the average user needs bundled with the OS.

Now there are 5 wireless networks here, and both of mine are protected.

As for sharing your connection, you need to be careful here as well. If they are illegally transferring music/movies over your connection, you may be the one held liable in a civil suit.

-- Shawn.

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?mode=View%20Statutes&SubMenu=1&App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=CH0815/Sec06.HTM

But you're absolutely right about being liable for what others do on your network.

Either they didn't think anyone needs them or they think it's remarkably silly to drop a tiny little item from a portable computer.

The Silicon Valleyites need to travel outside the land of ubiquitous WiFi and realize there's a lot of wide open spaces out there. I just got rid of the damn dongle for networking, and now I need a modem dongle?

Getting rid of the floppy drive was different. They took up a LOT of space inside a laptop and were not particularly useful. Modems are not large and you can always find a phone line, even when there's no WiFi or wired networking around.

It's remarkably stupid.

I think it's cool if people want to make their network open and give explicit permission to use it, but using someone else's connection without permission is pretty dodgy. I don't think most people would mind occasional low-bandwidth borrowing like e-mail checks, especially if it's an 'emergency' use like when your own connection goes down; but tying up half their pipe downloading the newest Lost episode is rude at best, and leeching off someone else's router without permission to avoid paying for your own connection is sleazy and despicable.

The cordless phone analogy is also flawed, since cordless phone channels are closed unless forcibly opened. An unprotected WiFi broadcast is the opposite. If someone leaves an open network, the law should interpret that as intention to share, just as if I drive by you with my car radio playing, that should be interpreted as me giving you permission to listen to my radio.