California passes Wi-Fi user protection bill

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Hot Coffee Myths cut both ways

Re: "On the face of it, it's like cautioning the coffee drinker that the beverage is hot," said another Wi-Fi industry analyst. "It seems like a solution in search of a problem."

This seems to be a reference to the McDonald's lawsuit. The problem is that McDonalds was aware that their coffee was considerably hotter than it's normally drunk, and had settled several similar lawsuits in the past.

This law is actually in the WiFi industry's interest, and in the long run against the consumer's. Why? Well, let's say that the law said that coffee served over a certain temperature was required to have a warning label. McDonalds would be in a better position to argue that they were acting in good faith... because they DID have a warning on the coffee cups that their coffee was hot.

So this law means that instead of following best practices and having the Wifi come up with at least 128 bits WEP* by default, they can simply put a useless warning in their software and when someone ignores it and gets mistakenly raided for child porn because some wardriver had piggybacked on them they can shrug it off.

* "Wired Equivalent Privacy" isn't: 128 bit WEP turns out to be breakable given enough traffic due to a flaw in the design... but it's secure enough to keep a wardriver out.

Posted by: Resuna   Posted on: 09/05/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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