Actually, hiding the SSID is not a good practice. It's worthless as a "security" measure. Worse, it's much better to let your neighbors see which channel you are on. Otherwise you can end up with a pile-up of several hidden SSID networks on the same channel, and, of course, with a horrible performance.
Local? Check again. Your ISP will assign you a whole prefix (/64 or even a/48). Each node in your network will have a *valid* *routable* IPv6 address. And those addresses can be assigned manually (this won't be common), or automatically. And automatically assigned addressed can be derived from the MAC address, or will be generated randomly as temporary addresses.
At the end, the publicly visible IPv6 address will indeed contain your MAC address unless the random generated temporary addresses are used.
"There's no big table of data somewhere that connects your MAC address to specific person. It's not even remotely the same as an IP address".
Correction: it's not even remotely the same as an IPv4 address.
Now, check the addressing schemes for IPv6. You'll find out that one of the mechanisms to create an IPv6 address, extender EUI-64, is _precisely_ building it from a MAC address, which indeed is fully readable in the reslting IPv6 address.
Of course there's a better scheme that uses temporary addresses, but let's see which one gets a more widespread usage.
It's very simple: back in the old days, when there was no monopoly, many chip manufacturers gave away thick, printed databooks. It was expensive for them, but they needed developers to use their products.
Now, however, there is a monopoly. You don't need to attract developers. The only concern is to have a driver for Windows, and having that driver included with the Windows install disk, so that your device, be it a soundcard, graphics card, or whatever, is "easier" to use. I wonder if there is a "dark hand" behind it...
Some years ago I sent a proposal to the European Comission: banning the sale in Europe of peripherals for which there is no public interface information available. It should not hurt the manufacturers, as the information can be made freely available in Internet (it's cheaper than shipping huge printed manuals), but it would have a side effect: the driver advantage for Window could disappear.
It's the same with BPL. Now it's more important to use the frequency spectrum for businesses, despite its critical importance for public services. We will see the consequences in some years; just wait for the coordination in case of a catastrophe failing due to HF pollution, or to miss the prediction of an important storm due to polluted data.
It seems that nowadays there is a sort of inherent "right" to turn anything into business, completely ignoring the impact to the public.
Of course. It is safer to have all your media stored in your computer, so that when the next virus/worm/software bug makes your filesystem unusable you loose everything.
I wonder why does not he suggest nuclear power plant operators and cruise missile software developers to use Windows XP (including IE, everyone knows it is part of the OS) as an embedded operating system.
Hardware standards in the PC world are written in a different ivory tower: Intel.
Microsoft, of course, has a lot to say about PC hardware standards. Look at the AMD Opteron-Intel 64 bit CPU driver support with the 64bit Windows edition...
This is the nice part of globalization. Companies can outsource manufacturing to foreign countries with lower wages to lower costs, destroying employment in their countries, but consumers cannot benefit of those price reductions buying directly to those cheaper countries.
Its funny to see my comment to this same question "copypasted". Fortunately, the copier has been kind enough to correct my typo in the original comment...:-)
If you have a look at the different service allocations in HF you will see something curious: instead of dividing the HF spectrum into four or five chunks (air band, maritime, fixed service, beacons and fixed service), each of the different services has smaller chunks scattered all over the spectrum.
There is a reason for this: to succesfully communicate with another location, you must choose the frequency taking into account the time of the day (solar radiation changes the ionosphere's conditions), solar activity (changes in more or less 11-year cycles) and the direction to which you will transmit.
This is why the *whole* HF spectrum must be kept free of harmful interference. If, for example, you allowed the usage of the 3-12 MHz spectrum for BPL usage, HF bands would be useless at night.
Of course, HF happens to be useful to communicate over long distances. For example, the central premises of a NGO can be in NY city (which has plenty of power lines, although unreliable) and locations in Africa, Asia...
It is not just a matter of "well, if there is a disaster here there will be no power". How can you communicate with a disaster are abroad if the HF spectrum at your location is completely useless?
HF radio is *the* communication medium for many life-critical situations. It is the only affordable communication line for many NGOs operating in third world countries, and HF equipment is much easier to setup and more rubust than satellite equipment.
Until now, the HF spectrum has been carefully regulated to avoid harmful interference. It is just not acceptable to sacrifice it simply to get a cheaper Internet access. There are a good set of broadband technologies available which almost do not interfere with HF users.
Let's hope politicians wait to notice it until a true emergency happens...
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Actually, hiding the SSID is not a good practice. It's worthless as a "security" measure. Worse, it's much better to let your neighbors see which channel you are on. Otherwise you can end up with a pile-up of several hidden SSID networks on the same channel, and, of course, with a horrible performance.
Local? Check again. Your ISP will assign you a whole prefix (/64 or even a /48). Each node in your network will have a *valid* *routable* IPv6 address. And those addresses can be assigned manually (this won't be common), or automatically. And automatically assigned addressed can be derived from the MAC address, or will be generated randomly as temporary addresses.
At the end, the publicly visible IPv6 address will indeed contain your MAC address unless the random generated temporary addresses are used.
"There's no big table of data somewhere that connects your MAC address to specific person. It's not even remotely the same as an IP address".
Correction: it's not even remotely the same as an IPv4 address.
Now, check the addressing schemes for IPv6. You'll find out that one of the mechanisms to create an IPv6 address, extender EUI-64, is _precisely_ building it from a MAC address, which indeed is fully readable in the reslting IPv6 address.
Of course there's a better scheme that uses temporary addresses, but let's see which one gets a more widespread usage.
Seems like they would enjoy some Sc(...)tology treatment, maybe?
It's very simple: back in the old days, when there was no monopoly, many chip manufacturers gave away thick, printed databooks. It was expensive for them, but they needed developers to use their products.
Now, however, there is a monopoly. You don't need to attract developers. The only concern is to have a driver for Windows, and having that driver included with the Windows install disk, so that your device, be it a soundcard, graphics card, or whatever, is "easier" to use. I wonder if there is a "dark hand" behind it...
Some years ago I sent a proposal to the European Comission: banning the sale in Europe of peripherals for which there is no public interface information available. It should not hurt the manufacturers, as the information can be made freely available in Internet (it's cheaper than shipping huge printed manuals), but it would have a side effect: the driver advantage for Window could disappear.
It's the same with BPL. Now it's more important to use the frequency spectrum for businesses, despite its critical importance for public services. We will see the consequences in some years; just wait for the coordination in case of a catastrophe failing due to HF pollution, or to miss the prediction of an important storm due to polluted data.
It seems that nowadays there is a sort of inherent "right" to turn anything into business, completely ignoring the impact to the public.
So, computers are expensive despite the fact that computer manufacturers have a very low profit margin (about 5 %)?.
Microsoft software, however, is really cheap!! They only have a margin of about 80 %, despite the huge number of pirated copies.
I wonder what will be hear next, just cannot imagine it!!
Of course. It is safer to have all your media stored in your computer, so that when the next virus/worm/software bug makes your filesystem unusable you loose everything.
I wonder why does not he suggest nuclear power plant operators and cruise missile software developers to use Windows XP (including IE, everyone knows it is part of the OS) as an embedded operating system.
I wondet what would be the Secunia diagnosis in this case:
Patient A's clinical history:
Headache
Influenza
A small scar in his hace
A broken arm
Patient B:
Stomach cancer
Which of the two patients is in a worse state? According to Secunia, patient A would be really bad, he has three lines in his medical record!!!!
Amazing, indeed
Despite contrary claims, Telefonica is *not* the only ISP in Spain. It is the biggest residential ISP, but not all mail comes from Telefonica.
Hardware standards in the PC world are written in a different ivory tower: Intel.
Microsoft, of course, has a lot to say about PC hardware standards. Look at the AMD Opteron-Intel 64 bit CPU driver support with the 64bit Windows edition...
This is the nice part of globalization. Companies can outsource manufacturing to foreign countries with lower wages to lower costs, destroying employment in their countries, but consumers cannot benefit of those price reductions buying directly to those cheaper countries.
Its funny to see my comment to this same question "copypasted". Fortunately, the copier has been kind enough to correct my typo in the original comment... :-)
You know, Bad English is the Official Language of Science :-)
Of course. It is late here, and my fingers betrayed me :-)
I mean, I hope politicians WILL NOT wait for some lives to be lost before taking the problem seriously.
If you have a look at the different service allocations in HF you will see something curious: instead of dividing the HF spectrum into four or five chunks (air band, maritime, fixed service, beacons and fixed service), each of the different services has smaller chunks scattered all over the spectrum.
There is a reason for this: to succesfully communicate with another location, you must choose the frequency taking into account the time of the day (solar radiation changes the ionosphere's conditions), solar activity (changes in more or less 11-year cycles) and the direction to which you will transmit.
This is why the *whole* HF spectrum must be kept free of harmful interference. If, for example, you allowed the usage of the 3-12 MHz spectrum for BPL usage, HF bands would be useless at night.
Of course, HF happens to be useful to communicate over long distances. For example, the central premises of a NGO can be in NY city (which has plenty of power lines, although unreliable) and locations in Africa, Asia...
It is not just a matter of "well, if there is a disaster here there will be no power". How can you communicate with a disaster are abroad if the HF spectrum at your location is completely useless?
HF radio is *the* communication medium for many life-critical situations. It is the only affordable communication line for many NGOs operating in third world countries, and HF equipment is much easier to setup and more rubust than satellite equipment.
Until now, the HF spectrum has been carefully regulated to avoid harmful interference. It is just not acceptable to sacrifice it simply to get a cheaper Internet access. There are a good set of broadband technologies available which almost do not interfere with HF users.
Let's hope politicians wait to notice it until a true emergency happens...
Perhaps they can launch a "Votefinder" service :-)