Wi-Fi in New York (as opposed to Autumn)

I am posting this with somebody’s Wi-Fi (not mine) from an apartment building in mid-town Manhattan. Before leaving LA, I had made a note of the Earthlink dial-up numbers for NYC, expecting expecting to use one of them. But as soon as I turned on my laptop, about seven Wi-Fi connections popped up (some of them with pretty amusing names). Two of them were “unsecure,” so here I am. The truth is – it spooks me. Almost everybody’s going wireless these days and we’d better all password protect our networks – I believe that’s called WEP – or we’re in for trouble… not that I’m voluntarily going to dial-up while I’m here. That’d be like going back to the Stone Age.