What I Am Thankful For Today
I am thankful for wireless internet. I am thankful that so many people are giddy to the point of stupidity about Wi-Fi. I am thankful that because of this giddiness, the price of wireless routers has come down and they are flying off the shelves, becoming commonplace.
I am also thankful that people aren’t so bright. Because of this, and because the makers of wireless routers want them to continue to fly off the shelves, the average home Wi-Fi network is ridiculously easy to set up. You just plug it in with some ethernet cable, run the dinky wizard software that comes with the routers, and you’re up and running.
Because they are easy for morons to set-up, I know that when I fire up my laptop and run NetStumbler, if I see a network with the default name “linksys” and no encryption, chances are this is someone who just brought home their router, got it out of the box, and plugged it in, never thinking that other people might be able to filch off their internet. This is probably a person who never looks at their logs to see if anyone else is using their connection. And this anonymous neighbor is probably wondering right now why their internet is running so slow, as I fire up Bit Torrent and crank up the transfer rate.
So to whoever my new wireless provider is, whichever room it is that you live in, thank you. Tool.
