+1. I got in the habit of using the control key to wake sleeping PCs a long time ago. Nowadays you'd hope that a sleeping PC would wake to a login screen, but I'm continuously amazed that I still see guys in IT shops that don't bother with locking their workstations...
It seems to me that if a human can correct for these variables out to a distance of two miles using only his eyes and brain, then if a computer with purpose built sensors is added to the equation, we ought to start seeing snipers making kills out to 4 or 5 miles now. I'm sure the Barret 50 cal has a lethal range farther out than that at which a human can currently successfully hit a target.
Mod parent up. I work for an organization with pretty much universal name recognition and our policy is interns get whatever happens to be sitting on the shelf somewhere. That usually means something like a pentium-D desktop with a gig of RAM or if they need a laptop a 4-5 year old core 2 duo with a gig of RAM and Win XP.
This is what I do, and it's worked well for me. For not really important stuff (i.e. hardcopies of cable bills that I've already paid online), I just toss them. I don't see a need to retain copies of that sort of document. For other stuff such as bank and CC statements and all the other stuff the OP mentioned, I scan them and e-mail them to myself. I just use my regular g-mail account, but you could just as easily set up a new gmail account for this purpose. When I e-mail the docs, I use the subject line to tag them (i.e. april 2011 bank statement). Gmail provides fast and searchable access to the docs from just about anywhere. I also have that gmail account configured for POP access in Outlook and every couple months, I fire up Outlook to download all the mail from the account and store it in a local PST file as a backup in case Gmail ever goes away or is inaccessible.
The biggest thing I've found is that it's absolutely worth spending a bit more on a quality scanner with a good ADF that allows you to quickly save documents directly to PDF. Any scanner will work, but you want something that requires the least amount of time and effort. If it takes a lot of time to scan and e-mail everything, then you won't stick with it.
Regarding consumer level gear - yes some of it has the ability to run multiple SSIDs out of the box, but many do not.
If your router doesn't support multiple SSIDs, what you can do is use two routers. Connect Router A to your modem and leave the wireless on this router unsecured. Router A will be your public access router. Now connect Router B's WAN port to one of the LAN ports on Router A. Secure the wireless on Router B - this will be your protected personal network.
Since any traffic on Router A can only get to Router B by way of Router B's WAN port (which is the NAT outside interface and has a firewall rule that denies all inbound traffic by default), traffic from Router A cannot get to the network on Router B.
One advantage here is that any host connected to Router B (your private network) can inherently talk to any host on your public network. For instance, if a friend came over and connected to your public wifi with his laptop, you would be able to connect to his laptop from any of your computers using VNC, file sharing, remote desktop, etc if you needed to (assuming his laptop's software firewall permits the connection).
A disadvantage is that since all traffic is exiting your network through Router A, all hosts will share a single public IP, so traffic from the two networks cannot be differentiated by IP address.
As someone else has already said, the ideal method would be to connect two routers directly to your Internet modem, where each router gets its' own public IP, but the vast majority of ISPs only give you one IP address so this isn't feasible.
The method I've outlined above will work with ALL ISPs and ALL routers. Keep in mind that even though you've segregated public and private networks, wireless security, even the best wireless security, is not infallible. If you truly must have a secure environment, turn off the wireless on Router B and only use wired connections on the private network.
It's dead simple, really. If you MUST use wireless, and you MUST also have security, place your wireless network outside of your firewall and use a software VPN client to access your protected network from the wireless clients.
WPA and mac filtering are indeed a good deterrent to keep people off of your WLAN (and thus away from your wireless clients), but as far as keeping the general public out of your private network, I will always choose the time tested encryption of VPN over wireless encryption any day. Sure, you can implement enterprise grade encryption/authentication on your WLAN, but given the rate at which WLAN encryption modes are broken, would you really feel 100% comfortable relying on them and be able to sleep at night? AES256 VPN is pretty much bulletproof. I guess someone could try capturing the traffic and decoding it later, but as far as someone gaining real time access to your network, it's pretty much undoable. You could further protect yourself from a capture/decryption attack by running secure protocols over the VPN tunnel. For instance, Windows file sharing supports IPSec encryption out of the box.
Everything I've said here is free to implement assuming you have some hardware available.
It's kind of unfortunate that most people are scared off by anything that doesn't have a web UI. For instance, there's tons of perfectly decent used commercial networking gear available from eBay and Craigslist that will do all this and more. Most of the stuff you you want at a home isn't THAT much more than a higher end consumer level router.
For instance, say a high end Linksys router sets you back $150. You can grab a Cisco 861W for about $400 brand new. This gives you 802.11n, multiple SSIDs (up to 8 I think), network segmentation, QoS, bandwidth throttling, and a built in managed switch. You can do so much with one little box like this, and I'm sure if people put their minds to it, they could pick up an older router and an AP and get the same functionality for much less - probably at or below the cost of the high end Linksys router.
Sure, the average Joe is going to beat his head against the wall for a week or two trying to figure out the configuration, but there's lots of good information online, and most of us reading Slashdot either already know how to do it or know someone that does.
Switch to a different ISP. There must be at least one DSL or wireless provider that can service your address. After you switch, make sure you call Mediacom and let them know that you're cancelling your service because you find their traffic molestation practices unacceptable. Write them a letter to the same effect...sometimes a letter will actually get to someone who cares. Seriously though, voting with your wallet is just about the only thing that has a chance at making them change their ways...
As most others here are, I'm somewhat stunned that your IT staff would allow a user managed server inside the firewall, even with them having a login. If they actually do open the port, I'd seriously question their competence.
But the solution here is relatively simple - return the server you bought and go pay for a year of cheap calendar hosting somewhere. Or better yet, just tell everyone in your department to set up a free Gmail account and use that for calendaring. I find it kind of hard to believe that IT doesn't have any iPhone-compatible calendaring software. Most organizations are using Exchange, Notes, or Google Apps, all of which are compatible with iPhones.
Not to take anything away from them, because this is clearly a very cool development, but I have to wonder if they wouldn't have been better served by making a different series available, say...one who's fanbase isn't well versed in BitTorrent.
I can't even count how many other cars have been verbally ripped to shreds by Clarkson. Everyone knows that his reviews are supposed to be funny, so I'm not sure why anyone would take them seriously. I've always wondered how they've stayed out of legal hot water with regard to not getting sued by manufacturers whose cars get poor reviews. I always assumed that the BBC ran the episode by them before airing it to get their blessing, but I guess that's not the case.
At any rate, Top Gear is some damn fine television, in particular Clarkson's over the top sarcasm is wonderful. Without it, I'm not sure they'd have a watchable show. The cars are just supporting characters IMHO.
I guess more to the point, why not just make software available that would perform the same tests? This would seem to accomplish the same goal minus the cost and logistics of purchasing, deploying and supporting 10,000 routers. I agree that a router would be a more ideal testing platform since results from software on a PC would be affected if that PC is connected to a POS router, and the PC isn't as likely to be on 24x7, but surely those two things are worth some tradeoffs.
Consider that you could get a much larger sample size by going the software route. Instead of 10,000 routers, you may get 50,000 people that install the software. Maybe you could offer some sort of incentive such as a $10 prepaid visa card or something for installing the software and leaving it running for 90 days.
So, they just signed a deal, and expect fiber to be available to everyone in the city by 2012? I'm gonna have to call BS. There's a lot of red tape (permitting, bidding, etc) that has to be cut before they can even start construction which could easily take until 2012. I guess it could go faster since it's Google after all, and they have buy in from the city, but that'd have to be the fastest fiber build out of all time unless they're just leasing existing fiber and using that.
In the age of uniquitous connectivity, why is it that this data is stored locally on a laptop? BP surely has boocoo IT infrastructure, so why didn't they just set up a secure website that their minions could've used to input people's data instead of storing it in Excel on a laptop where it could be lost? Seems to me that it'd be a lot more difficult to lose the data when it's sitting on your SAN which is probably in an access restricted datacenter. Asshats...
Actually, it's not. To use a slingbox, you actually need to have a slingbox. To stream via TWC's streaming app, you presumably only need to have the stream exit your network on a TWC IP address. It's trivial enough for an intelligent person to set up a network that would allow them to use their iPad anywhere and have the traffic exit their home cable modem, so you could presumably watch streaming TV without needing to be at your home.
I doubt the cable channels realize this, it's entirely more probable that they're just pissed at TWC for offering their content on new devices without having to pay them additional fees. It sounds to me like TWC is in the clear here, so I say hats off to them for innovating and piss on the cable channels for whining about it when they pretty clearly have no legal basis for doing so.
According to wikipedia, in 2007 there were just shy of 255 million registered vehicles in the US. Let's assume that 90% of these are not brand new and will have to be retrofitted with these monitoring devices (this assumes that new cars will be required to have them, so the manufacturers will pass the cost on to the consumer and the government won't have to pay for the devices on new cars).
That means about 229.5 million cars will need to have these devices installed. Let's say it costs $25 per device for parts and installation (which is probably low, but I don't how to make a more accurate guess). That means it'll cost $5,737,500,000 or 5.7 BILLION dollars just to get the things installed. Granted, they'd offset that cost fairly quickly with the additional tax revenue, but do we really need to spend almost 6 billion dollars on this at this point?
If they only required new cars to have the monitoring devices, they'd save the case, but I'd say that's a pretty solid reason to buy a used car instead of a new one if it meant you avoided the tax.
Maybe they'd require all cars sold (new and used) to be fitted with a monitoring device. If that's the case, that's just another fee that further raises the price of our already overpriced cars.
This doesn't even take into consideration the cost of manpower and equipment that would be necessary to manage the program. If they're going to do electronic monitoring, then you have to add the cost of the infrastructure (I doubt AT&T or Verizon will be thrilled about adding that many devices to their networks). If they're going to do it via inspections, they'll have to pay for the states that don't already do vehicle inspections (Florida, for example).
Sheesh...
Around here (Florida) this happens pretty regularly. I know for an absolute fact that it's policy at my Lowes to put returned stuff that looks "ok" right back on the shelf. I've purchased several tools, decided they weren't what I needed, returned them, and saw the packages back on the shelf the next time I was there with no indication that they had been previously sold/returned. Granted, there isn't a whole lot you can do to a box of drill bits, etc to devalue them as long as they're not damaged, but if I was the guy that bought them and didn't find out they had been used until I got home, I'd be pretty ticked.
Best Buy and other stores like them seem to base their policy on how likely a customer is to realize the item had previously been returned. I always keep the box and all accessories for everything I buy in case I decide to return it, but some people don't keep everything or are careless when ripping a box open. If I return something that still looks new, they'll probably put it back on the shelf next to the new items, if someone returns an item with a ripped box, they'll probably put an open box sticker on it.
I think this is a pretty shady business practice, but they're a big box, so complaining to the manager may get you 10% off, but your complaint probably won't ever get to someone who can act on it. I don't see this policy changing unless someone starts a class action suit or the government steps in.
As others have already pointed out, a 10 year old PC will trounce a tablet for some things, while others will be more convenient on the tablet.
For instance, I am a network engineer, and in my laptop bag I have a laptop along with 4 or 5 different types of console cables to connect to network equipment. A tablet is totally useless for initially setting up these devices, because it does not have a serial port. It could be used in a pinch to work with devices that are already networked via an SSH app, but it's still not very ideal because it has no ethernet port so it can't connect to a network via any means other than wireless, can't do packet captures, etc.
But, none of those things are really what tablets were designed to do. So, on the other hand, my wife has an iPad and she loves using it to Facebook, look up recipes, read Perez, etc. It's perfectly suited to those applications.
So really, each has its place. I know other network guys that have iPads they only use for e-mail because it's a lot faster and easier for them to pull out an iPad than a laptop when they have 5 minutes of downtime to answer a few emails.
The answer is very simple:
1) Every SSL-enabled website must have a unique IP address, which makes it impractical for shared hosting environments where hundreds, or even thousands, of websites share an IP address. There aren't enough IP addresses available to make this feasible.
2) SSL isn't free. You have the cost of the certificate, which is usually $50-100. Then you have the additional CPU cost. SSL requires the server to encrypt every page request, which adds considerable CPU overhead for busy sites, or for servers that handle multiple sites. You can offload the encryption to an SSL appliance, but these also cost money in terms of initial capital outlay, and recurring management expense.
3) Encrypting websites that contain no sensitive information is a waste of resources and is a bad practice IMO. It makes things infinitely more difficult to debug since you can't see any of the data as it crosses the wire, which makes it difficult to trace network-related problems.
4) You can't cache encrypted content, so it would add significant overhead in terms of additional bandwidth. Network operators will not appreciate this.
5) The additional cost and manpower from all of the above make SSL by default impractical. Too much cost and complexity with not enough incentive.
The current model works well enough. SSL is dirt cheap on an individual basis. If someone runs a site that contains sensitive info and they want to secure it, there is a very low barrier to SSL adoption in terms of cost and complexity, which is good. Maybe not so low that everyone will run out and buy SSL certs for their blog, but every company with a public facing webmail site or extranet should definitely have SSL.
It depends on what you're talking about. Typically when I hear the words "speeding bullet", I'm thinking about rifles because handgun bullets are much slower. 1050 mph is around 1500 fps, which is relatively slow. It's faster than your average.22 long rifle, but is relatively slow compared to other common cartridges such as.223,.30-06,.243,.270, etc, which are all up past 2500 fps.
I don't claim to be a chemist, but I don't think Guinness is carbonated. It uses nitrogen to make the little bubbles, and it doesn't make you burp like a regular cabonated beer does. Wouldn't this accomplish the same thing without all the expense of creating and testing new beers in a zero G environment?
Your comment didn't really address the issue I brought up. If they provide the VPN service, then they're still issuing subscribers IPs from their IP space.
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+1. I got in the habit of using the control key to wake sleeping PCs a long time ago. Nowadays you'd hope that a sleeping PC would wake to a login screen, but I'm continuously amazed that I still see guys in IT shops that don't bother with locking their workstations...
It seems to me that if a human can correct for these variables out to a distance of two miles using only his eyes and brain, then if a computer with purpose built sensors is added to the equation, we ought to start seeing snipers making kills out to 4 or 5 miles now. I'm sure the Barret 50 cal has a lethal range farther out than that at which a human can currently successfully hit a target.
Mod parent up. I work for an organization with pretty much universal name recognition and our policy is interns get whatever happens to be sitting on the shelf somewhere. That usually means something like a pentium-D desktop with a gig of RAM or if they need a laptop a 4-5 year old core 2 duo with a gig of RAM and Win XP.
This is what I do, and it's worked well for me. For not really important stuff (i.e. hardcopies of cable bills that I've already paid online), I just toss them. I don't see a need to retain copies of that sort of document. For other stuff such as bank and CC statements and all the other stuff the OP mentioned, I scan them and e-mail them to myself. I just use my regular g-mail account, but you could just as easily set up a new gmail account for this purpose. When I e-mail the docs, I use the subject line to tag them (i.e. april 2011 bank statement). Gmail provides fast and searchable access to the docs from just about anywhere. I also have that gmail account configured for POP access in Outlook and every couple months, I fire up Outlook to download all the mail from the account and store it in a local PST file as a backup in case Gmail ever goes away or is inaccessible. The biggest thing I've found is that it's absolutely worth spending a bit more on a quality scanner with a good ADF that allows you to quickly save documents directly to PDF. Any scanner will work, but you want something that requires the least amount of time and effort. If it takes a lot of time to scan and e-mail everything, then you won't stick with it.
Regarding consumer level gear - yes some of it has the ability to run multiple SSIDs out of the box, but many do not.
If your router doesn't support multiple SSIDs, what you can do is use two routers. Connect Router A to your modem and leave the wireless on this router unsecured. Router A will be your public access router. Now connect Router B's WAN port to one of the LAN ports on Router A. Secure the wireless on Router B - this will be your protected personal network.
Since any traffic on Router A can only get to Router B by way of Router B's WAN port (which is the NAT outside interface and has a firewall rule that denies all inbound traffic by default), traffic from Router A cannot get to the network on Router B.
One advantage here is that any host connected to Router B (your private network) can inherently talk to any host on your public network. For instance, if a friend came over and connected to your public wifi with his laptop, you would be able to connect to his laptop from any of your computers using VNC, file sharing, remote desktop, etc if you needed to (assuming his laptop's software firewall permits the connection).
A disadvantage is that since all traffic is exiting your network through Router A, all hosts will share a single public IP, so traffic from the two networks cannot be differentiated by IP address.
As someone else has already said, the ideal method would be to connect two routers directly to your Internet modem, where each router gets its' own public IP, but the vast majority of ISPs only give you one IP address so this isn't feasible.
The method I've outlined above will work with ALL ISPs and ALL routers. Keep in mind that even though you've segregated public and private networks, wireless security, even the best wireless security, is not infallible. If you truly must have a secure environment, turn off the wireless on Router B and only use wired connections on the private network.
It's dead simple, really. If you MUST use wireless, and you MUST also have security, place your wireless network outside of your firewall and use a software VPN client to access your protected network from the wireless clients. WPA and mac filtering are indeed a good deterrent to keep people off of your WLAN (and thus away from your wireless clients), but as far as keeping the general public out of your private network, I will always choose the time tested encryption of VPN over wireless encryption any day. Sure, you can implement enterprise grade encryption/authentication on your WLAN, but given the rate at which WLAN encryption modes are broken, would you really feel 100% comfortable relying on them and be able to sleep at night? AES256 VPN is pretty much bulletproof. I guess someone could try capturing the traffic and decoding it later, but as far as someone gaining real time access to your network, it's pretty much undoable. You could further protect yourself from a capture/decryption attack by running secure protocols over the VPN tunnel. For instance, Windows file sharing supports IPSec encryption out of the box. Everything I've said here is free to implement assuming you have some hardware available.
It's kind of unfortunate that most people are scared off by anything that doesn't have a web UI. For instance, there's tons of perfectly decent used commercial networking gear available from eBay and Craigslist that will do all this and more. Most of the stuff you you want at a home isn't THAT much more than a higher end consumer level router.
For instance, say a high end Linksys router sets you back $150. You can grab a Cisco 861W for about $400 brand new. This gives you 802.11n, multiple SSIDs (up to 8 I think), network segmentation, QoS, bandwidth throttling, and a built in managed switch. You can do so much with one little box like this, and I'm sure if people put their minds to it, they could pick up an older router and an AP and get the same functionality for much less - probably at or below the cost of the high end Linksys router.
Sure, the average Joe is going to beat his head against the wall for a week or two trying to figure out the configuration, but there's lots of good information online, and most of us reading Slashdot either already know how to do it or know someone that does.
Switch to a different ISP. There must be at least one DSL or wireless provider that can service your address. After you switch, make sure you call Mediacom and let them know that you're cancelling your service because you find their traffic molestation practices unacceptable. Write them a letter to the same effect...sometimes a letter will actually get to someone who cares. Seriously though, voting with your wallet is just about the only thing that has a chance at making them change their ways...
As most others here are, I'm somewhat stunned that your IT staff would allow a user managed server inside the firewall, even with them having a login. If they actually do open the port, I'd seriously question their competence. But the solution here is relatively simple - return the server you bought and go pay for a year of cheap calendar hosting somewhere. Or better yet, just tell everyone in your department to set up a free Gmail account and use that for calendaring. I find it kind of hard to believe that IT doesn't have any iPhone-compatible calendaring software. Most organizations are using Exchange, Notes, or Google Apps, all of which are compatible with iPhones.
Not to take anything away from them, because this is clearly a very cool development, but I have to wonder if they wouldn't have been better served by making a different series available, say...one who's fanbase isn't well versed in BitTorrent.
I can't even count how many other cars have been verbally ripped to shreds by Clarkson. Everyone knows that his reviews are supposed to be funny, so I'm not sure why anyone would take them seriously. I've always wondered how they've stayed out of legal hot water with regard to not getting sued by manufacturers whose cars get poor reviews. I always assumed that the BBC ran the episode by them before airing it to get their blessing, but I guess that's not the case. At any rate, Top Gear is some damn fine television, in particular Clarkson's over the top sarcasm is wonderful. Without it, I'm not sure they'd have a watchable show. The cars are just supporting characters IMHO.
I guess more to the point, why not just make software available that would perform the same tests? This would seem to accomplish the same goal minus the cost and logistics of purchasing, deploying and supporting 10,000 routers. I agree that a router would be a more ideal testing platform since results from software on a PC would be affected if that PC is connected to a POS router, and the PC isn't as likely to be on 24x7, but surely those two things are worth some tradeoffs. Consider that you could get a much larger sample size by going the software route. Instead of 10,000 routers, you may get 50,000 people that install the software. Maybe you could offer some sort of incentive such as a $10 prepaid visa card or something for installing the software and leaving it running for 90 days.
So, they just signed a deal, and expect fiber to be available to everyone in the city by 2012? I'm gonna have to call BS. There's a lot of red tape (permitting, bidding, etc) that has to be cut before they can even start construction which could easily take until 2012. I guess it could go faster since it's Google after all, and they have buy in from the city, but that'd have to be the fastest fiber build out of all time unless they're just leasing existing fiber and using that.
In the age of uniquitous connectivity, why is it that this data is stored locally on a laptop? BP surely has boocoo IT infrastructure, so why didn't they just set up a secure website that their minions could've used to input people's data instead of storing it in Excel on a laptop where it could be lost? Seems to me that it'd be a lot more difficult to lose the data when it's sitting on your SAN which is probably in an access restricted datacenter. Asshats...
Actually, it's not. To use a slingbox, you actually need to have a slingbox. To stream via TWC's streaming app, you presumably only need to have the stream exit your network on a TWC IP address. It's trivial enough for an intelligent person to set up a network that would allow them to use their iPad anywhere and have the traffic exit their home cable modem, so you could presumably watch streaming TV without needing to be at your home. I doubt the cable channels realize this, it's entirely more probable that they're just pissed at TWC for offering their content on new devices without having to pay them additional fees. It sounds to me like TWC is in the clear here, so I say hats off to them for innovating and piss on the cable channels for whining about it when they pretty clearly have no legal basis for doing so.
Err, that's supposed to say *hate* but I can't figure out how to edit my post :-P
And they have a busted old Nortel phone sitting on the desk. I guess the telcos really do have VoIP.
According to wikipedia, in 2007 there were just shy of 255 million registered vehicles in the US. Let's assume that 90% of these are not brand new and will have to be retrofitted with these monitoring devices (this assumes that new cars will be required to have them, so the manufacturers will pass the cost on to the consumer and the government won't have to pay for the devices on new cars). That means about 229.5 million cars will need to have these devices installed. Let's say it costs $25 per device for parts and installation (which is probably low, but I don't how to make a more accurate guess). That means it'll cost $5,737,500,000 or 5.7 BILLION dollars just to get the things installed. Granted, they'd offset that cost fairly quickly with the additional tax revenue, but do we really need to spend almost 6 billion dollars on this at this point? If they only required new cars to have the monitoring devices, they'd save the case, but I'd say that's a pretty solid reason to buy a used car instead of a new one if it meant you avoided the tax. Maybe they'd require all cars sold (new and used) to be fitted with a monitoring device. If that's the case, that's just another fee that further raises the price of our already overpriced cars. This doesn't even take into consideration the cost of manpower and equipment that would be necessary to manage the program. If they're going to do electronic monitoring, then you have to add the cost of the infrastructure (I doubt AT&T or Verizon will be thrilled about adding that many devices to their networks). If they're going to do it via inspections, they'll have to pay for the states that don't already do vehicle inspections (Florida, for example). Sheesh...
Around here (Florida) this happens pretty regularly. I know for an absolute fact that it's policy at my Lowes to put returned stuff that looks "ok" right back on the shelf. I've purchased several tools, decided they weren't what I needed, returned them, and saw the packages back on the shelf the next time I was there with no indication that they had been previously sold/returned. Granted, there isn't a whole lot you can do to a box of drill bits, etc to devalue them as long as they're not damaged, but if I was the guy that bought them and didn't find out they had been used until I got home, I'd be pretty ticked. Best Buy and other stores like them seem to base their policy on how likely a customer is to realize the item had previously been returned. I always keep the box and all accessories for everything I buy in case I decide to return it, but some people don't keep everything or are careless when ripping a box open. If I return something that still looks new, they'll probably put it back on the shelf next to the new items, if someone returns an item with a ripped box, they'll probably put an open box sticker on it. I think this is a pretty shady business practice, but they're a big box, so complaining to the manager may get you 10% off, but your complaint probably won't ever get to someone who can act on it. I don't see this policy changing unless someone starts a class action suit or the government steps in.
As others have already pointed out, a 10 year old PC will trounce a tablet for some things, while others will be more convenient on the tablet. For instance, I am a network engineer, and in my laptop bag I have a laptop along with 4 or 5 different types of console cables to connect to network equipment. A tablet is totally useless for initially setting up these devices, because it does not have a serial port. It could be used in a pinch to work with devices that are already networked via an SSH app, but it's still not very ideal because it has no ethernet port so it can't connect to a network via any means other than wireless, can't do packet captures, etc. But, none of those things are really what tablets were designed to do. So, on the other hand, my wife has an iPad and she loves using it to Facebook, look up recipes, read Perez, etc. It's perfectly suited to those applications. So really, each has its place. I know other network guys that have iPads they only use for e-mail because it's a lot faster and easier for them to pull out an iPad than a laptop when they have 5 minutes of downtime to answer a few emails.
The answer is very simple: 1) Every SSL-enabled website must have a unique IP address, which makes it impractical for shared hosting environments where hundreds, or even thousands, of websites share an IP address. There aren't enough IP addresses available to make this feasible. 2) SSL isn't free. You have the cost of the certificate, which is usually $50-100. Then you have the additional CPU cost. SSL requires the server to encrypt every page request, which adds considerable CPU overhead for busy sites, or for servers that handle multiple sites. You can offload the encryption to an SSL appliance, but these also cost money in terms of initial capital outlay, and recurring management expense. 3) Encrypting websites that contain no sensitive information is a waste of resources and is a bad practice IMO. It makes things infinitely more difficult to debug since you can't see any of the data as it crosses the wire, which makes it difficult to trace network-related problems. 4) You can't cache encrypted content, so it would add significant overhead in terms of additional bandwidth. Network operators will not appreciate this. 5) The additional cost and manpower from all of the above make SSL by default impractical. Too much cost and complexity with not enough incentive. The current model works well enough. SSL is dirt cheap on an individual basis. If someone runs a site that contains sensitive info and they want to secure it, there is a very low barrier to SSL adoption in terms of cost and complexity, which is good. Maybe not so low that everyone will run out and buy SSL certs for their blog, but every company with a public facing webmail site or extranet should definitely have SSL.
It depends on what you're talking about. Typically when I hear the words "speeding bullet", I'm thinking about rifles because handgun bullets are much slower. 1050 mph is around 1500 fps, which is relatively slow. It's faster than your average .22 long rifle, but is relatively slow compared to other common cartridges such as .223, .30-06, .243, .270, etc, which are all up past 2500 fps.
I thought it was just the last flight for Discovery? Isn't Atlantis supposed to be up next, assuming the government actually gives NASA money for it?
I don't claim to be a chemist, but I don't think Guinness is carbonated. It uses nitrogen to make the little bubbles, and it doesn't make you burp like a regular cabonated beer does. Wouldn't this accomplish the same thing without all the expense of creating and testing new beers in a zero G environment?
Your comment didn't really address the issue I brought up. If they provide the VPN service, then they're still issuing subscribers IPs from their IP space.