Oh, so THAT'S why they don't have power outlets.

Barnes and Noble
19120 East 39th Street, Independence

802.11g
SSID:  attwifi

Full disclosure:  I'm not posting this from there.  Instead I'm reporting what I found when I dropped in yesterday while I was in the neighborhood (sales taxes are a little less in that part of the metro, which is important when you're buying your biggest gift) and decided not only to see if B&N had dropped their onerous two-hours-at-one-whack limit which I discovered when I reviewed their Country Club Plaza location a couple of years back, but also to find out if someone constrained to use a VPN, as I am when using my work laptop, could actually connect and...well, you know, work.  I am pleased to confirm that the answer is yes on both counts.  Too bad I also have to confirm that you'll need to charge up your laptop before leaving work, because there appear to be no power outlets in the cafe, which has the only convenient seating in the place. 

And I'm not sure if we should really take heart at this news, but mine was the only laptop evident there.  Seems as if everyone else was busying themselves with-dare I say it?-books.  You remember books, don't you?  Those things made up of leaves of paper with printed words on them?  That don't require external power or an Internet connection?  That you have to operate by hand and actually engage your brain to use?  Yeah, that's right, those.  Hmmm...maybe the era of movable type isn't as dead as some would have us think. 

Something to contemplate, at least.  Season's greetings, everyone!

The other shoe has dropped...

...in the case of the Michigan miscreant who, as I reported here back in August, went to extremes in order to hook into an open public library network and access That Which Should Not Be Accessed.

And it seems as though it could have dropped a little harder, if you ask me. Just six months, and only on a state charge? Where are the feds? Well, if the stuff really didn't cross state lines, here's hoping that the unnamed party of the second part-the creator of the downloaded material-is promptly reeled in and given a much more appropriate sentence.

While we're on the subject of libraries and yucky stuff, I thought I'd note in passing this item from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Curious how they wait until the third-from-last paragraph to point out that the patron in question might have been using a laptop and therefore possibly could have been on the Wi-Fi, which, of course, means that the library's ability to do anything about the situation would have been limited in that the computer wasn't one they owned or managed. And has it dawned on anyone out there that if the patron was using a laptop, he may have brought the questionable material into the library with him to start with?

Finally, why do so many of these my-kid-got-porned-in-the-library stories fall into the category of second-hand after-the-fact reports? At some point, you've got to wonder.