Easier to authenticate anonymously and cause mischief? More people using the network because it's now free, therefore more targets for break-in?

Really, I'm racking my brain here trying to figure out the increased security risk.

I'm not sure how pay vs. free changes this. They've always had an unsecured Wi-Fi network. You can sniff packets whether you're authenticated or not.

Please enlighten us.

Yep, we're one of the last hold-outs. McDonald's in the UK, Australia, Singapore all have free Wi-Fi.

I've never tried a BitTorrent or any other p2p app on McD Wi-Fi but they don't filter much on the outgoing side. I've used many services on non-standard ports, including SSH2 and cisco VPN and never had a problem.

You'll never get to listen on incoming port, though, so you'll always be a p2p leech on McD Wi-Fi.

Also, the network is centrally managed by AT&T Wi-Fi (formerly Wayport). It's not like they're just throwing up a $50 router and forgetting about it. Certain activities may get their attention...

I've used lots of different services and ports at McDonald's and they've never been blocked. HTTP, HTTPS, cisco VPN, SSH2, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, FTP, SFTP and Remote Desktop. And I've connected to many those services on non-standard ports > 10,000.

They also have no porn filter.

Even if you don't like McDonald's food and creepy clown statues (who can blame you), McDonald's is the biggest Wi-Fi network in the US. It used to be pay-to-play. Soon it will be free.

I believe this will be the watershed event that forces the remaining paid Wi-Fi networks go free or become irrelevant.

My apologies- the Starbucks link doesn't discuss how to get free Wi-Fi at their stores. Here's a better link:

http://www.starbucks.com/retail/wireless.asp

Thanks for your consideration of my submission.

I know firsthand how poorly IE7/8's JavaScript performs compared to Firefox and WebKit. I created a 75+ printed page article where, in pursuit of my fluid and near tableless design, used JavaScript primarily to resize XHTML elements on the page.

Processing takes around 5 seconds on Firefox, less than 10 on Chrome. IE8- easily over 30 seconds. It was unusable.

To get processing down to around ~30 seconds, I did all I could to optimize the script, using recommendations to from the IE Blog. I cached DOM elements I'm interested in, only modified each element once and cached function pointers (why calling a function directly in IE is a costly performance hit is beyond ridiculous).

In the end, when you visit my article using IE, I do some initial caching which takes about 5 seconds. Then I resize the elements slowly over time using simulated multithreading (setTimeout()). You actually see the progress in the caption bar.

Visit with any other browser and I run the script all at once. You hardly notice.

Check it out yourself if you'd like.

Most of the comments here sum it up nicely: The craft of and the demand for good journalism hasn't changed. The means of distributing it is changing rapidly.

I read great stories all the time. In the LA Times, on the Reuters and AP wires, in the New York Times.

I read all of their stories exclusively online. I have not dirtied my hands nor killed any trees by picking up a newspaper in many years.

Paying for news in today's free-for-all Internet is another subject. All things being equal, it's hard to justify paying for something you can get free somewhere else.

In a way, I hope this changes. It leaves news outlets to rely entirely on advertising for revenue on the Internet with implications that should be obvious.

I think micropayments would make a great counter to reliance on advertising revenue but we're a long way from that being feasible.

Good luck finding your niche!

Google's practice of leaving software in beta for years gives them an excuse if you lose your data, etc when the software fails. However, revealing the names millions of (GMail) users who weren't even using the application (Calendar) with the security flaw sounds like a nightmare for Google.

Good thing GMail is still in beta too after, what, 4 years?