general and Windows in particular gets a lot of grief for being evil or stupid or may evil-stupid or whatever. Some of the criticism is surely warranted, but a lot isn't. But hey, everyone likes to pick on the 800 pound gorilla. Just when I start to think a bit more positively of Microsoft, I find out about their amazingly bone-headed WiFi design.



This article points out just about the craziest thing I have seen about Microsoft Windows. I know that Microsoft inRead the linked article if you're really interested in the details, but basically Windows XP and friends areto pretend to be certain kinds of WiFi networks that you might have connected to in the past (a so-called AdHoc or peer-to-peer WiFi network). AdHoc networks aren't that common, but the point is that if youtried to connect to one with your WinXP laptop, later on it will broadcast to the world that it is that network.Then other laptops will see that network, and some will try to connect, and they are then "infected" with this broadcasting "virus." It's not a traditional computer virus of course, just a set of behaviors that spread virally. The most widely spread early names will continue to spread even more because of the nature of this system. Ever see a network called " Free Public WiFi " but when you connect, it didn't work? Congratulations, you are now part of the problem....This isn't a bug -- it was designed to work that way.Now folks with WiFi enabled laptops -- nearly everyone -- try to connect to "Free Public WiFi" and it doesn't work. They are not only spreading the behavior virus, but are convincing themselves and others that public WiFi must be rife with evil people setting up nasty WiFi access points to infect computers with avirus, and they have just been duped. They tell others "don't connect to open public WiFi networks." Fear of public WiFi spreads, and so it becomes less used and hence less valued and so less valuable, and then goes away.