At 2:03 PM -0400 4/27/04, Dave Bittner wrote: >My house is near a lake that many people use for recreation. Every now >and then I find someone using my hose to get a drink for themselves or >for their dog. Stealing? Technically, yes. I paid for the water. And >yes, it's always nicer when someone asks, first. But really, it's not >that big a deal. If you're thirsty, help yourself to some water. It >strikes me that in the Wi-fi world, leaving your AP open and >unprotected is often considered by the "community" as unspoken >permission to share. > >So come on by and have a drink. But if you use my hose to fill your >swimming pool, well, then we'll have words. Right on the money Dave. This is one of the few ways that ordinary citizens have to fight back against the heavily regulated government franchises in telecommunications. Just for the record, the WiFi network that I connected to was listed as "Unit G4." A few weeks earlier I was in New York City for a conference; while I was there I stopped at the Apple store in Soho. A young women was giving a presentation about iTunes. She described a phenomenon in the building where she lives. Turns out that the building has high speed Internet access. Apparently all of the residents are behind a firewall though which they get high speed internet access. In essence, all residents are on an Intranet where they can access each other. The phenomenon that was being described is the way that iTunes auto discovers other iTunes libraries connected to the network. Apparently there are many people in her building using iTunes. When you get home you can play songs from your library or any other library connected to the network. Don't worry John, this is not illegal...its a feature. iTunes is designed to prevent illegal copying from other libraries it can access. And you can turn off the ability for others to access your library. Regards Craig ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.