Wi-fi phones and stealing bandwidth
One of my favorite debates comes front and center in a New York Times article written by Matt Richtel today, which initially focuses on the wave of wi-fi enabled phones. Belkin has a new wi-fi phone out and T-Mobile as announced a trial in Seattle where their wi-fi enabled phones will switch out between cell coverage and wi-fi coverage as needed to extend coverage areas, particularly in hard-to-reach areas such as homes and businesses.
At the heart of this new wave of coverage extension lies the question of switching between wi-fi networks. In the case mentioned at the beginning of the article, a reporter tests the Belkin on the front lawn of a New York Times employee, essentially “stealing” his bandwidth. Didn’t even leave a quarter on the front steps out of courtesy. 
I’m a big fan of using bandwidth I’ve paid for. Others don’t seem to mind and use the argument “whoever setup the wi-fi router didn’t configure security to be enabled, so they must have been ok with me using it” or something like that. That argument and others like it are not taking into account the ease of installation of one of those devices and ignorance of the need to set it up. Do-it-yourself technology is great in one way, but it creates a lot of neophite adopters in the process - and unfortunately the more sophisticated seem to take advantage of disparity in the knowledge delta.