Joining their network and using the internet or anything similar to that is akin to going into someone's house and sleeping on their couch while they're not home.

The problem with your analogy is that they are transmitting beacons frames without the privacy bit set. This frame basically says: "Hi I am a WiFi network, here is my name and all the other info you need to connect to me if you want to!" If you set the privacy bit it basically says: "Hi I am a WiFi network, here is my name and all the other info you need to connect to me if you are authorized!"

In the case of your analogy, the beacon frame sans privacy bit is the eqivalent of posting a sign that says: "Feel free to sleep on my couch if you want to!"

Whether or not the default mode should be open or private is another debate, and I understand that most new consumer wifi equipment has been addressing this from the should private point of view for quite a while. (see WPS)

This idea might be better implemented as an EOMA-68 to android phone converter. Then you could use any EOMA-68 compatible devices with it including, but not limited to, clamshell keyboard/screen/touchpad devices. (I.E. a netbook shell)

As far as the RPi; I'm much more interested in this EOMA-68 compatible card which uses the more powerful Allwinner A10 CPU. That gets you the capability to run a complete open source stack (including GPU) and a datasheet! (Something which Broadcom refuses to give you for the RPi even though it was designed by Broadcom employees!)

Shamelessly copy-pasted specs for the Allwinner A10:

        1.2ghz Cortex A8 ARM Core
        MALI400MP OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU
        DDR3 Controller 800MHz 1GB max
        2160p Hardware-accelerated Video playback (4x the resolution of 1080p)
        a NAND Flash Controller that is capable of 8-way concurrent DMA (8 NAND ICs)
        4 SDIO interfaces (SD 3.0, UHI class)
        USB 2.0 Host as well as a 2nd USB-OTG Interface (USB-OTG can be reconfigured as USB 2.0 Host, automatically)
        24-pin RGB/TTL as well as simultaneous HDMI out
        SATA-II 3gb/sec
        10/100 Ethernet (MII compatible)
        a 2nd 24-pin RGB/TTL interface that is multiplexed (shared) on the same pins for a standard IDE (PATA) interface.
        GPIO, I2C, PWM, Keyboard Matrix (8x8), built-in Resistive Touchscreen Controller, and much more.

Then there's the reason to run Windows at all - the 3rd party apps that are x86 only (many are not even x86_64 yet) and they won't run either.

The solution to this is something like Qemu's user mode emulation. For those that don't know it will emulate a different processor for the binary, but syscalls are made using native system code.

The Apple approach is actually quite good here, provide emulation support for a while until everybody has time to migrate to native applications. I don't know the details of Apple's emulation, perhaps they are doing something similar to Qemu's User Mode.

-Mysteryvortex

I just got off the phone with Best Buy's "dedicated Nexus S Help Line at 1-866-813-2021." Where I confirmed the Dec 16th release date, and found out that the pricing will be:

$529 without contract
$199 with 2yr T Mobile contract

The guy on the phone couldn't provide any info about ETFs, (early termination fees) and said that it seems to be a Best Buy exclusive for now. (He said something about Google partnering with Best Buy to introduce the Nexus S)

I'd rather not give Best Buy any money, so hopefully it will come to T Mobile soon.

If anybody has info on whether ATT will pull the same thing with this phone as they did with the Nexus One and start charging people using it on their slow edge network the "smart phone data rate" it would be appreciated.

Link to Best Buy's Page

-Mysteryvortex

I've always said: "Why should [X] be connected to the public internet in the first place? Isn't connecting [X] to the public internet a really bad idea?"

Where [X] is any number of things: (list not exhaustive)
a power plant control system
a waste water treatment plant control system
an electrical plant control system
an electrical substation control system
a train station control system
a traffic control system

There are many things besides control systems, but for this post I am thinking of basic infrastructure. If these things need to be networked, they should be on their own private network with limited access. These problems also occurred before the internet existed. For example by connecting them to the public telephone system. (sometimes with no password, relying on the obscurity of the phone number to limit access)

It is not just the public sector that needs to learn this, but also private industry. If it is vitally important, limit physical access to it. Private networks exist for a reason. There is no need to do anything to the public internet.

-Mysteryvortex

I seem to recall being able to insert a floppy disk, type "dir a:", and get a virus under MS DOS. You probably don't need autorun turned on to get infected.

Off the top of my head, a buffer overflow in the code that reads and displays embedded icons would be a juicy target, along with the file system parsing code.

-Mysteryvortex

You could get some delicious ectoplasm or have them help you in the lab.

Learn more about ghosts here (video link)

I would be surprised if there was a *single* item on TPB that wasn't copyrighted, whether it's legal or not.

Linux distros? Perfectly legal, but still copyrighted.

I couldn't resist, this one is too easy...

George Romero's 1968 classic "Night of the Living Dead" is in the public domain. This is mentioned in the pirate bay description. Here is a more detailed explanation from wikipedia.

-Mysteryvortex

This appears to me that it will weaken the existing prohibition against this practice by providing the "in writing" loophole. Calling without a real person on the other end was already illegal except in limited circumstances due to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA)

[...]
(1) Prohibitions

                It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States, or
        any person outside the United States if the recipient is within the
        United States--
[...]
                        (B) to initiate any telephone call to any residential
                telephone line using an artificial or prerecorded voice to
                deliver a message without the prior express consent of the
                called party, unless the call is initiated for emergency
                purposes or is exempted by rule or order by the Commission under
                paragraph (2)(B);
[...]

How much do you want to bet that consent to robo-calls will quickly be added to the boiler plate in all sorts of contracts as well as privacy policies and TOS notices.

If it doesn't show up in everybody's mail box as part of a change to their credit cards' privacy policies, that might actually surprise me.

-Mysteryvortex

Pair this with Cortado, instant flash killer!

I played around with Cortado a few years ago, it was impressive at the time. Java applets in the browser is a much more appealing alternative to me than flash. With the option of having embedded video with a fall back to the Java applet in the future, this is a win all around.

The Wikipedia page tells me somebody is already doing this.

I needed to fill out a PDF form, (was not allowed to do it by hand) but couldn't find anything under Linux besides acrobat which would do this. I tried xpdf, evince, and GhostView. Google was of no help. I had to resort to actual Acrobat (not on my computer) which at the time had *unpatched* vulnerabilities! Any alternatives would be welcome.

System memory too? Sounds like Torrentspy could use one of these.