Why not? Is satire not a good enough reason? As an atheist, you wouldn't be afraid of upsetting any supernatural creatures, being cursed, etc.

My point was that there are already ARM-powered tablets on the market running linux, and they aren't locked down like the GP was thinking. This is simply an outdated pocket-sized tablet I'm using as an easy example, since I'm already familiar with it. It's not a perfect 1:1 comparison to the iPad. After all, this device was released more than 2 years ago, and had reached it's end-of-life before the iPad was announced. Yet, at least for myself, the functionality it offers still far exceeds that of the iPad.

Wow, and all of this time I thought the idea behind cheap school lunches was simply to ensure that all of the students were fed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDe1gd-pBRo -- There have been ARM-powered tablets on the market for quite awhile now, and they don't have the limitations you mention... Unlike the iPad, this one not only supports tethering to cell phones, it even steps you through BT pairing and configuring the DUN connection during the out-of-box setup wizard. You can also dual-boot different operating systems (Android, Ubuntu, Mer, etc.) stored internally or on removable SD cards. Not bad for something that costs less than half the price of the iPad. There are surely better ones available if one were to look around.

There are linux tablets with sliding hardware keyboards. Much easier to carry around in your pocket than a netbook.

How about being able to port over existing existing software more easily?

Or if you want a device that can actually do stuff and aren't worried about whether or not it's fashionable, look at some older handheld devices with wifi. Currently, I'm using an n810 that I bought a year ago for ~$200. Sliding hardware keyboard, 800x480 display, wifi, gps, bluetooth, runs a linux distro based on debian, etc. The out-of-box setup wizard will even step you through tethering to your phone via bluetooth. Then when there's no wifi around for your 'smartphone-like things', you can tether to any handset with bluetooth DUN to get online. If you don't care about speed and want to go really cheap, you can activate an old Verizon handset with Page Plus Cellular (pre-paid, available at many gas stations or online) for $10 every 180 days, then dial-up via QNC(14.4k, but does not use up your minutes).

Then you don't really need a smartphone to communicate with them. Without even moving your hands away from the keyboard, you could probably speak to both of them simultaneously.

It sounds like he was simply pointing out the likelihood that some idiot mail admins will end up misusing this in a way that punishes everyone for the actions of a few. Unless you were intending on doing that, it was not referring to you.

Using your neighbor's wifi without permission would be unauthorized access, which is a completely different crime than stealing. Copying movies is also a far cry from stealing. The crime you're thinking of there is called copyright infringement, and it has far more severe consequences than simple theft. People who are caught copying a movie illegally only wish they were punished as lightly as someone caught stealing a DVD from a shop.

It sounds like you might have some misguided assumptions about open wifi networks. IIRC, in the early days of wifi that was one of the proposed long-term benefits of this new wireless technology. The idea that eventually open wifi access points would be so commonplace that people would have free convenient access to the internet while away from home.

If an AP is broadcasting itself as being open, and the DHCP server is granting IP addresses to anyone who requests one, then what would indicate that the owner does not want them using it? The average non-technical user might not even realize that they connected to it, since some operating systems will automatically connect to open access points by default. I've met many non-technical people who admit to leaving the default settings on their AP with the intention of allowing others to use it for free. So, while a default SSID may be a sign that the owner hasn't bothered to completely configure the AP, it does not mean that the owner had no intention to share it with the public. If someone has an open AP and is granting IPs to anyone who requests them, but they really don't want anyone else to use it, then it's clearly a misconfiguration issue on their end that needs to be corrected. Similar to someone who uploads files to an indexed directory on their publicly accessible website, but doesn't want anyone else to download them. The appropriate way to handle situations like those is to politely inform the owner of the mistake, rather than outlaw a completely legitimate use of the technology.

There's nothing wrong with making use of an open access point. That's what they are intended for, to provide convenient internet access to the public. Of course, taking advantage of the owner's generosity by using it for P2P file sharing, or anything else that would cause a disproportional load on the network, is definitely a dick move and some people may need to be made aware of that.

I have a router serving as an open access point for public use. No registration required. In fact, a registration page like you suggest probably wouldn't work so well for embedded devices with wifi, like handheld game consoles. (One of the motivating factors for setting it up was to allow a family member to use their Nintendo DS online, which only supports WEP encryption.) I just use iptables to drop traffic from the public network destined for anything on the private network, or the AP/router itself (with exceptions for DHCP and DNS), and also mark the traffic so that it goes to a lower-priority queue for traffic shaping. Why should I not be doing this?

I wonder what game he's talking about.

s/routers..."/routers".../

I've seen support requests emailed in from network admins needing assistance with their "Sysco routers..."

Everyone knows there are no girls on the internet. Only 35-year-old men, living in their mother's basement, who pretend to be girls...