The guy who thinks his router sucks should talk to 'lexus'. What ever happened to the good old days when people didnt know what the hell they were doing and you'd open up the wireless network panel and see: linksys linksys linksys linksys All of which would be unprotected so that i could leach internet/log in and change the network settings.
I haven't paid for internet access for over five years. Occasionally there was a dry period or I had to pick it up outside on the steps.
When I lived in SF's Mission District I found unsecured networks that included "Stop Iraq War Now," "Extacy Free For All" and "Immaculate Conception Academy." My roommate stole bandwidth from the nuns.
In west hollywood, there are waay too many good ones! VOLS alicat gayboyz07 TwoBrains razzledazzle these are all my neighbors!
When I was at UC Davis the whole town was hooked up with free wireless access. I hate places that advertise free wireless and then cut you off during "peak" hours.
An unexpected thing happened when I lived in an area with numerous unsecured wireless accounts nearby ... by setting iTunes to "look for other networks" (or whatever that setting is called) I could play music from strangers' libraries. A combination of ethics guilt and the fact that their taste in music sucked kept me from doing so, but it was sort of cool to stumble across the capability.
I see this all the time at the Boston Public Library and on the large network at work. If someone shares out their music library, I have no ethics problem with it. It doesn't share by default, you have to consciously turn this on. Ethics problems start to surface when you learn that there is software (such as Blue Coconut) that allow you to copy songs from shared libraries.
There was a coffee shop that advertised free wireless access and then cut me off as I was supposedly using too much bandwidth by downloading files.
