An Analogy To Prepare You For Another Woo-Woo Story
Let’s face it. I love woo-woo stories much more than I love ordinary traveling tales or ordinary, around-the-house reports, which is about all I have going on at the moment. So prepare yourself for as much woo-woo as I can muster up, if only to keep my own self entertained.
But, I’m going to play games with you as well, whenever possible. This one will be a guessing game because the subject of this particular blog is not woo-woo; it simply sets the stage for one that will be along those lines. This is a physical analogy to a non-physical reality which I have just now become aware of and am diligently educating myself about. Later blogs will share this new understanding of mine.
Just for fun, see if you can anticipate what the subject of those future blogs might be. Can you second guess me?
As a matter of fact, I am supremely unqualified to make any comments about wi fi domains (the topic of today’s blog) and I am also too supremely lazy to ask an expert to explain it to me. So those of you who do know the science behind this will simply have to rearrange what I say to fit the actual case. The rest of us will be able to use my description adequately to prepare for the analogy which it will eventually illustrate. So, let’s play fast and loose here just to get the story told…because part of the analogy deals with an ordinary person’s common ignorance concerning all of these invisible factors.
I can’t remember when my son and I had our wi-fi domain installed to operate within our separate living quarters here at the house. A year or two ago. I do remember the technician making sure that this was a secure domain, covering roughly the area of our yard, so that it wouldn’t leak out across the street and possibly cover someone else’s house as well. For one thing, I believe he said that if such happened that others could not only mess around in our computers and track the websites we might frequent, but that they could coattail on our signal and use our wi fi domain rather than subscribing to one of their own.
Previously, people have been known to jerryrig an electrical attachment or to steal someone’s television dish signal to get around paying for their own, so I’m sure that free computer use has now become a common practice, as well. In fact, I’ve heard of folks who drive around with their laptop trying to find domains that they can use; either those which are inadvertently spilling out into the street from someone’s house or more and more nowadays, in parks, libraries, hotel lobbies, coffee shops, and businesses, such as the big book stores, which openly encourage that.
Someday in the future probably, there will be citywide wi-fi domains for everyone’s free use, eliminating the need for household domains and it will be as normal as breathing the air of the surrounding atmosphere to simply use your computer everywhere and anywhere. We might be billed monthly, as we are now, for any city utility. No one will go without and no one will have to maintain their own private domain with its pesky instability.
Because it’s that pesky instability that is the center of today’s blog. Nowadays, there are five other household domains within a small radius of our yard and one of those is unsecured. I don’t know all the ramifications of that….whether they are exposing themselves to our possible snoopiness or usurpation, or whether they can invade ours. I simply know that it’s much harder to get online because that leaking domain is being recognized by our equipment, which then tries to log on there but because we are located at the edges of their signal, all it can do is prevent us from using our account without going into the innards and manually putting our own domain first in line again. Pain in the neck!
I’m considering walking around to the nearby houses and knocking on doors until I find out who owns the domain that identifies itself by its nickname on our list. Then, hoping that when they realize there’s a problem that they will take the steps necessary to secure themselves. I wonder what people living in apartments do about this, when there isn’t as much space between them as a house and yard afford? This must happen all the time.
Okay, this is an unintentional and completely understandable annoyance, simply caused by a lack of information on the part of well-meaning and totally innocent neighbors. When it becomes enough of an inconvenience to prompt me to get us all back on track, then I’ll probably get myself out of my easy chair and take some sort of action, even though I barely know enough about the mechanics of the thing to speak intelligently… or certainly to advise that neighbor about necessary securing actions, assuming that they happen to be just as clueless as I am about the computer realm.
In the meantime, we jiggle things a lot in order to eventually get online. We are living with the situation. But, what if a sixth domain appears? Also unsecured? At some point, our system might not work at all, in which case, the luxury of silence will no longer be an option.
A more malevolent form of such intrusiveness happens all the time to many people: identity theft or a slow siphoning away of a bank account or unauthorized usage of someone’s credit card. This can go on until a monkey wrench gets thrown into the equation. Our recent economic meltdown exposed many such practices, just as a receding tide will finally reveal what lies beneath those innocent-looking waves. Only then, will folks who are being deliberately preyed upon wake up to that fact.
Okay, now you are set up for my future blogs. Can you figure out what the subject will be? Do you know what I mean by woo-woo? Stay tuned.
Tags: , 1, wi-fi domains, Tag Index
lindajbrown
May 19th, 2009 at 7:24 am
An unsecured network has nothing to do with your internet access. You could have 400 unsecured networks within a block of your house and it wouldn’t make any difference. Apparently, your router isn’t set up right, or your computer isn’t. But, that unsecured network isn’t doing anything to your access.