why do mac users......

[dead.cell]

Why do mac users turn and leave on there broadcaster ... they are sending out a wireless signal to connect to ... most of them being WEP why? is it a standard on thing? it annoys me ... I am sitting in a cafe right now and Im so restrained

Maybe they wanted to play on their Nintendo DS, as it only works with WEP if I recall correctly. :p

[.Neo]

It is also not-at-all trivial to disable said authentication.

By default nobody can access OS X without authentication. So unless SPEhosting turned File Sharing on himself, added his whole Macintosh HD to the "Shared Folders" list and specifically gave "Everyone" "Read & Write" access I have no idea what he's moaning about. Even in such a bizarre scenario things are easily corrected by either turning File Sharing off completely or removing whatever sensitive folders are added from the list.