Cafes, restaurants unplug Wi-Fi to combat 'cyber-squatters'

Chrisort -are you always so negative? I have yet to see anything positive from you on anything. I feel sorry for you.

Why don't the restaurants just grant about 30 minutes of free use and then charge for the time after that? They can use a HotSpot management system themselves or outsource that to a company, similar to what hotels provide to their guests. The software can be found at http://www.hotspotsystem.com/ and can be installed on a router. Think outside the box!

Personally, if a Restaurant, Cafe, or other place of business doesn't offer what I'm looking for whether it is Quality Food, Coffee, or Wi-Fi, I'll just seek out one that does. Treehorn, I agree completely about how computers are screwing up our ability to communicate. We are loosing our ability to work with others. Many major corporations have commented on this very issue. I remember when everyone was scared to death computers were going to take over the world. Now we can't do without our computers. Has the PC/Laptop taken over?

Teach them a lesson. Run Wireshark, sniff their logins and passwords, then own them. Do this to enough dumb@sses and eventually they will learn their lesson and leave.

maybe some unintended consquences or just not thinking these things through. some libraries have great services and you can hang out, the one in New Braunfels sells snacks and drinks right in middle of the library and allows covered drinks, who knew

Long Cat......WHA?? How "lack of reading skills" of you to completely miss the part where I said, "I LOVE technology." Which part of that sentence did you interpret as me saying I "despise" the interwebz and that the internet was DESTROYING society?? Just because I like something doesn’t prove me incapable of recognizing problems that involve technology. Enjoying something should not equate a person with wearing blinders. You took a huge leap in logic to come up with your interpretation of what I said, and I don’t appreciate it.

This is a big problem kids steal a signal from anywhere now. Problem is they can access your system through your wireless access.

treehorn makes me LOL. How ironic of you to accuse the interwebz of destroying society while you type away on the very technology you despise.

It's a shame that this had to happened. Free WI-FI is okay providing you or someone else don't abuse it. Regardless, all it takes is those few people to screw up everything for the rest of us. This sort of reminds me when there was free computers with internet connections at H.E.B. Central Market when it first opened. That has long been removed. But I was told by some folks at Central Market that the computers were removed since they had encounter problems with this extended courtesy. One of the problems is that Central Market had its shares of peopel who sat at the computers for hours. Not giving anyone else an opportunity to use the free computer with internet access. And in some cases it was college students who abused this service. Sort of like Border Books at Huebner Oaks as well. When I use to go in to browse or purchase out-of-state periodicals and CD's. I noticed that just about every chair in the cafe and retail floor was taken up by UTSA and other students. One of the managers mentioned that they had a problem as well with some of these students who took books from their shelves and laid them all around the the retail floor. Apparently, they did research and what have you with their merchandise. Regardless, they did not re-shelve their books. And in some cases the books were damaged with coffee stains and other markings ontheir books. So it had to be returned to their warehouse or distributor. Or discounted at a loss on their "AS-IS" book cart. But getting back to this WI-FI Freeloaders they just had to do their thing with no good results for the rest of the customer base.

freehorn....agree. Folks used to talk to people around them. Live in the moment.