"Free Public Wifi", and me being snoopy

[Les Mikesell]

Frank Cox wrote:
> A new wireless signal showed up on Network Manager on my Fedora 10 laptop
> yesterday named "Free Public Wifi".
> 
> As there has never, to my knowledge, been any announcement of anyone providing
> free public wifi in Melville, I became quite curious about this and attempted
> to connect to it.
> 
> However, while Network Manager connects with this signal it never actually
> completes the process and lets me in.
> 
> "Free Public Wifi" appears to be something other than just a standard
> "home-style" wireless router because the signal strength is a lot more even and
> higher than anything else I get in my theatre other than my own wireless
> router, so whatever it is has fair amount of power behind it.
> 
> Network Manager shows me an icon beside "Free Public Wifi" that I've never seen
> before and I'm thinking that it might be a clue to what this is and how one can
> connect to it.  I put the icon on my website here:
> 
> http://www.melvilletheatre.com/wifi.png
> 
> Can anyone tell me what that means, and what I might need to do to connect to
> it?  So far the only steps I've ever needed to connect to any wireless routers
> that I've set up myself  were to click on the signal listing and enter the
> password, and I've never actually tried to connect to anything else before.

You see those all over the place and can tell from the 'ad hoc' mode 
that it is another computer instead of a real access point.  I always 
thought it was a scam trying to steal passwords or something, but I 
guess it's just another case of Microsoft stupidity:

http://billkosloskymd.typepad.com/wirelessdoc/2008/01/free-public-wi.html

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com