Fight the WiFi tyrants

My plea to the residents of W. 46th St and 9th Ave. in Manhattan: free your WiFi!

I don't live in Manhattan, but my buddy Jim does. He lives in a studio in Hell's Kitchen just a few blocks west of Times Square where he fights his bouts of insomnia by chain smoking and kicking my butt playing Microsoft's painfully addictive game "Age of Mythology" online.

But a couple days ago someone in his building bumped him off the WiFi network he's been mooching. How selfish.

For those of you who've never played Age of Mythology, it's a strategy game set in ancient times where you create a population of villagers to dig for gold, farm and chop wood, and then raise an army of soldiers and nasty creatures to lay siege against your opponent. Very bloody, very nerdy.

We started dueling online a couple weeks ago. It has been my first foray into online gaming, and the experience has been terrific. There's little lag time on a broadband connection and you can play against your friends or join a random game against anonymous zit-ridden teenagers and agoraphobics around the world.

Jim's been beating me with cold-blooded patience, which is the worst way for a hot-head like me to lose. I've been racking my brain for weeks trying to figure out why I keep losing, and this obsession has turned into an addiction. Just when I thought I had him figured out, he got kicked off his network. Jim is considering posting a flier in his lobby offering to bribe the WiFi tyrant $20 a month to share the connection.

What's the big deal with letting someone else use your airwaves? Is it really that great a compromise to let someone borrow bandwidth to play video games at 2:00 in the morning? Be a good citizen.