Some friends of mine from the maclab and I are planning to go into a startup of great hilarity. We just got the domain names, so hopefully we will have something we can be more public about soon.

Since my roommates and I first moved into our apartment, we have left our wifi access point open. No security al all. None of the other people in our apartment building strike me as the type to break any sort of security. Besides, some of my roommates were having some trouble getting it setup with security on their computers, and I really didn’t want to have to configure their computers or deal with problems that came up. Really, I liked the idea of leaving an access point open.  I knew the security was weak to begin with, and it can be a lifesaver for others at times. Bruce Schneier wrote a piece on why he keeps his wireless network open that follows this same line of reasoning. Unfortunately, there is a very real problem with open wifi in apartments. Some people moved into the apartment a floor above ours, and it appears they never bothered to get an ISP; they just leached off ours. I would think that few people would mind someone using their connection while waiting to get their own. The connection started to really slow down. I suppose one way to solve the problem would have been to talk to them, but I decided to implement MAC address filtering instead. I suppose such things were to be expected, but I always hate when I end up being disappointed by human nature.