Question from a Newbie wireless user

Please excuse the naivete of this question. I'm completely ignorant on everything pertaining to wireless internet. My old Powerbook 400mHz G4 Titanium has never had wireless of any kind until this week when I bought a PCMCIA wireless adapter. Never used wireless, don't know anything about it.
I started following the instructions on the PCM adapter this morning to get it all set up. I plan to toggle back and forth between wired internet at home and the wireless adapter when I'm out on the road.
I was surprised when I saw the window where I enter my settings that there were no less than ten different internet services flying around the room in my house! I guess I have a lot of wireless neighbors and I could easily access their bandwidth.
I imagine the same would go when I'm in town sitting in the library. They welcome you to use their internet access, but it's in a busy end of town and I'm sure I'll see numerous services available there too.
So I'm clueless on this topic. Again, I've never used wireless internet before - but I've read about these guys who've been arrested in front of coffee houses for stealing bandwidth at WiFi hotspots when they weren't paying customers.
What's the deal with sitting in your living room and using your neighbor's internet access? I know it's not ethical and we should all get our own, but what are legalities? And say I hopped on to someone's internet access +quite accidentally+...how does one get caught if you do it quietly? And have people actually gotten into trouble beyond these two guys that made national news?
I guess my main question is exactly how careful do I need to be to set the correct access service when there are ten immediately available in a public place? Can I just click on whatever signal is strongest and log on without fear of being caught?
I hope somebody knowledgeable can set me straight on this.
Thanks.
-JOHN
ps. Here's the news item on these guys stealing wireless internet access:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/05/michigan-man-arrested-for-using- cafes-free-wifi-from-his-car.ars

You may find this technical article I've written helps you:
http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/notes/wireless.html
It is fairly long, but it was originally written in response to some questions from a non-technical friend, and so I've tried to keep it as straightforward as possible.

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