Absolutely. Look for me lurking outside an Apple Store when I'm visiting the US! You don't even have to go inside and it works outside office outside, e.g., at the SF AppleStore. (Roaming charges are the major remaining telco rort on the planet.)
Sorry to step on your setup, but the chasteness of the Jesus's parents had nothing to do with the "Immaculate Conception."
(...which says nothing about the silliness of the "concepts" -- pun intended -- of virgin birth or "original sin.")
An interesting mystery solved, nonetheless.
Oops. Never mind. Looked again and saw that you were talking about Mary's parents.
For those whose religious education is as weak as mine, this link may shed a bit more light on what is considered the "immaculate conception."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception#Common_misinterpretations
The article almost explains. Catholic Doctrine teaches that Our Lady was born without Original Sin, thus immaculately conceived. She remained without sin all throughout her life. A better reference is:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm
Uhm, I would consider this "feature" a reasonable security hole. Because I can set up a WLAN hotspot at a public place with the same SSID and run tcpdump there...
This is a well-known issue with public Wi-Fi, and even has its own cute name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_twin_(wireless_networks)
It shouldn't be a hole because you shouldn't trust any network you don't own/control! Sadly not enough services enforce/offer ssl :(
I have to tell you that I took this picture of the Immaculate Reception in 1996
http://www.stanstudio.com/immaculate_reception.jpg
(Hopefully the link comes through)
Enjoy (but please don't download)
Stan
I'm more interested in Madonna's Immaculate deception, myself... '-)
In religion is the doom of the world... to misquote a source! I mean this in humor, be not offended.
The same thing applies to 'attwifi' networks in Starbucks. Once you connect in one Starbucks it will automatically connect in any Starbucks.
I'm from Pittsburgh and The Immaculate Reception is a whole different story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_reception
Heh. "Immaculate Reception" is how I feel every time AT&T doesn't drop a call when I'm downtown.
It's even more fun once you've connected your iPhone at one of those coffeshops who doesn't know how to set up their "Free WiFi with purchase!" router. You know, the ones where the SSID is still "linksys" or some such. Then you'll occasionally find yourself pulling out the phone in random places you've never been to and wondering why you're on WiFi.
I have a related mystery...
The only time I ever use the Kindle app on my phone is when I'm on the Tube. At the end of my journey I quit the app and lock the phone before going aboveground. When I open the same book on my iPad at home, it somehow syncs to the place where I finished reading on my phone. How does Amazon know that info when I never ran their app in a place with wireless reception?
It's evil, I tell you. Evil.
Amazon sends updates as you read. Even in the Tube, there's some cell signal. (When you quit the app, do you really double-tap the Home button, then tap the X in the Kindle app? If so, why, given that you've already bought into the Kindle world and are reading using the system?)
Nothing new there. I've done this all over the world with Apple Stores, as global roaming is painfully expensive. Firesheep freaks me the hell out, but otherwise, it works great.
If you don't know what firesheep is, google it NOW, and never use another open network again.
Now, the REAL bug was in iOS 4.0, which even if you had roaming turned off (the default), it would still allow transmission of some data when it was going from airplane mode to normal mode.
Over 3G. At £6-10/meg. Ouch.
this happened to me a number of times. Just enough data to download my mail. Nearly impossible to reproduce.
I filed a bug with apple, who closed and fixed it in (I think) 4.1.
um ... maybe you should just turn WiFi off when out and about, except when you actually want to use it and know what is happening with it? is that too obvious?
I will have an iFone as soon as it comes out on Very-Zone. How easy is it to turn the wifi on and off?
Very fone-y. Wi-Fi can be turned off and on with a software switch. You can also disable 3G roaming, and mobile data, all separately.
I am wondering why you had not switched off Wifi altogether? Apart from the battery drain, you would constantly had to dismiss the 'Do you want to join network xyz?' messages as your iPhone came across a new network.
I suppose that the optimist in me hoped I might come across an open network, although in my limited international travel experience they've been quite rare.
You can turn that prompt off in the settings.
Hi Jim - I wrote a followup post you might find interesting about something similar that happened to me: http://fscked.co.uk/post/2923600961/immaculate-reception
