[geeks] Air filter material?

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: "Geoffrey S. Mendelson" <gsm at mendelson.com>
>Date: 2007/01/10 Wed PM 01:47:30 CST
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Air filter material?

>On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 01:26:24PM -0600, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>> >Turn off all encryption and try again. 
>> 
>> Never turned it on...
>
>Why? Unless you live in a place that is unacessable by normal people, 
>eventually someone will drive by, see an unencrypted network and use it.

If it ain't broke don't fix it? :^)

Seriously, my WiFi signal doesn't make it off my property, and while a motivated individual could park outside my house, it would be very obvious and provoke a call by a neighbor in short order, as we all know each other and keep an eye out. Also, there is a bit of security by obscurity - my house is far off the beaten track, you have to drive a half mile through a corn field (preserved farm land), then choose my house from the other houses - and there are wireless networks at most of my neighbors houses, by my estimation...

But, in th eend, these arguments all ring hollow when spoken out loud (or written down), so the proper answer is most likely sloth. When I first installed an access point at home (7 years ago?), I got burned by inter-vendor compatibility, and finally stripped all the bells and whistles off my connection to get everything to "just work" (my SSID was 101 for a long time, since it didn't have any pesky upper/lower case issues)...

>Most of those people are not the kind that you want on your network.

I don't want anyone on my network, esp. someone that knows how to do anything more than pick an available SSID from a drop-down list.

>Some are ok. One friend of mine found a network that was unencrypted,
>but called "ken's network". He used it for his email while his high speed
>line was down. I don't think Ken ever knew.
>
>Another friend of mine has a condo near the beach. When he goes there,
>he gets free internet access from a network named "linksys". 
>
>Neither of these guys are ones that are going to hack into your computers,
>monitor your traffic, SPAM the world, or download kidde porn.

I've done the same thing - even helped a guy out by changing his channel since two neighbors were both using CH 6 (Linksys default) they were clobbering each other, changed one to CH11 and performance was greatly improved... I figured if they saw the change, they'd realize someone got on to their network and consider security measures - if not, it would make everyone work just a bit better...

>But there are lot of people out there who will.

Yep, agreed.

As it turns out, the hardware is suspect - the Apple Guru (a decent fellow, the Kharmic opposite of Mr. Bill's recent "Guru event"), and he was able to confirm the same WiFi behavior on their network, and when he tried to isolate hardware vs. software by booting off a firewire drive, it wouldn't boot. He declared it bad hardware, ofered to enter it into repair (with a 2 week estimated turn-around!), or I could work with Apple store directly, since it was a refurb, he couldn't swap the machine for a new one (darn it)...

I'll be calling Apple later today to negotiate a return/advance swap if at all possible...

Lionel