Unfinished Windows 7 Hotspot Feature Exploited

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Engadget: "It wasn't all that long ago that Microsoft was talking up the Virtual WiFi feature developed by Microsoft Research and set for inclusion in Windows 7, but something got lost along the road to release day, and the functionality never officially made it into the OS. As you might expect with anything as big and complicated as an operating system though, some of that code did make it into the final release, and there was apparently enough of it for the folks at Nomadio to exploit into a full fledged feature. That's now become Connectify, a free application from the company that effectively turns any Windows 7 computer into a virtual WiFi hotspot — letting you, for instance, wirelessly tether a number of devices to your laptop at location where only an Ethernet jack is available, or even tether a number of laptops together at a coffee shop that charges for WiFi."

Comments

Re:Stealing

[Dogtanian]

Is Engadget going to instruct us on how to distract the employees while you pour free coffee into your thermos too?

Hrm... Bad analogy.

The Cofeeshop already sold you the coffee (bandwidth) by the temporary key and you are simply pouring it in someone else's cup free of charge by running windows 7.

Another bad analogy. Okay, my turn to play the silly moral analogy game...

This is more akin to visiting a place that gives free refills, and you constantly pouring it in someone else's cup, then doing the same for all your friends, in the process using far more coffee than you would reasonably have drunk yourself. You know damn well that wasn't the deal that was being offered. (*)

You're ultimately gaming the system- regardless of what "agreement" you think you have with them, it's probably against the spirit of the deal. Doing this type of thing with (e.g.) small businesses that aren't too assholish is ultimately what forces them to include irritating small-print restrictions on such services which I'm willing to bet people would be the first to whine about.

(*) Please *don't* say "that was the agreement I get an hour's free Internet with my $1.50 coffee, it's mine, I can do what I like with it, their bad business model isn't my problem". There probably wasn't an "agreement" in that much detail- lots of thing in a given society function on implicit understanding of how they work (e.g. you don't get arrested for trespassing if you enter some random shop because any reasonable person would say that's how shops work). Or they may well have some small print in some terms and conditions that you (understandably) didn't want to read before you took up their offer. Or whatever... even if it was "legal", see the final paragraph above.