Thursday, September 15, 2005
I wish Bluetooth were as insecure as WiFi
So I am riding the train home from NYC and the guy sitting right next to me, let's call him Franklin, has a PC, I have my 12" PowerBook. After a few minutes of using his PC, Franklin rumages through his bag and pulls out a bluetooth card the he plugs into a PC Card slot. You can spot these suckers a mile away with the stubby fat antenna.
I am intrigued cause I have bluetooth on the PowerBook, and I have tried to get an internet connection through the Blackberry, but it looks like the Blackberry can't do, though OS X Bluetooth Assistant finds it no problem. But I start wondering if Franklin is going to use his cell phone to get net access.
Sho'Nuff, Franklin does a little incantation on the cell phone, can he starts browsing. Like a shark to chum, I immediately activate my bluetooth hardware (I normally disable it to save juice) and tell the Assistant to go russle me up a device. Hey, I had the World of WarCraft 1.7 patch to download! Not more than 30 second later, the v**** device is listed and I can move to the next step in the process.
But here is where things get weird. See I had forgot that Bluetooth wants the device you are connecting to to type in a CODE to complete the connection. Bluetooth doesnt just willy nilly allow any devices to mate, bluetooth uses contraception. What I am used to is slutty WiFi, it will hook-up to anything, and I had grown to used to its free spirit.
As soon as the assistant tells me this, I know I have to bail, but its too late. Win XP has already let Franklin know that its been thinking real hard enabling a bluetooth connection, and that all he has to do is click on XP's "idea" and Franklin can make it happen.
There is no cancel request button on the OS X bluetooth assistant, and I can't remember the Force Quit key stroke in time, so Franklin notices the thought bubble, and you can see him get a little alarmed and start looking around before we make eye contact.
I have 2 choices. 1) Admit I was trying to leech off Franklin's expensive cell data minutes for free or 2) Feign ignorance and blame it on the computer.
To choose option 2. No muss, no fuss, Franklin of course accepted their was a "ghost in the machine" and went back about his business and I disabled the Bluetooth so I wouldnt try that again. :-)