Will,
     I am not exactly sure what you mean by expose themselves, but I
will take a stab at explaining what might have happened.  With the
macs that you saw, there could one or more protocols at work.  Bonjour
which used to be named Rendezvous that tries to discover and connect
to other devices.  That would be the most obvious one.  More details
here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_(protocol)
I guess the closest thing in the PC world would be Netbui in the old
9x clients and File and Printer Sharing in XP.  The issue of seeing
the Mac address is probably unique to the Mac world since it is based
on BSD Unix and has more internal configuration information available
to use and can be hidden by the way.  On the PC side though there are
freeware utilities that can scan wireless network connections and give
you all the same information you may not know how to access in
Windows.  However, if you use an Intel wireless card and use the Intel
wireless utility you can get some pretty good information.  (like
seeing hidden SSID access points and such)

(mind you this is my experience, and should not be taken as definitive
fact for all issues and protocols brought up)
DerekBuchanan


On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 8:23 PM, Will Stephenson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hello all!
>
> I was talking to a friend at the local coffee emporium this afternoon. She
> likes Macs and has a Mac Book with OS X Tiger installed. She showed me her
> Macs version of Network Neighborhood, and was I surprised at the amount of
> information presented there. For example, the Mac address of the coffee
> shop's router (I'm assuming the wireless card) was shown. All the other Macs
> in the room (on the network I suppose) were also visible, and could be
> connected to (albeit with a password, she said, that would pop up a dialog
> box on the host Mac's screen). The Mac address of these machines wireless
> card's was also shown.
>
> Here's the amazing part to me: although there was a Windows machine online
> in the same room, it was not even hinted at on the Mac. And as far as I
> know, a Windows PC would never be able to see another Windows PC unless they
> were by chance in the same workgroup (and would the router also have to be
> in the workgroup?).
>
> Would anyone have an idea why Macs expose themselves so readily? And why
> Windows PCs don't? Most Windows machines have software firewalls also, was
> one of my theories.
>
> Thank you for time and thought on this.
>
> Best, Will
>
> Will Stephenson
> "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -- Aldous Huxley
>
>                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
>                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
>                        Mark Rode<[log in to unmask]>
>

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