the original design specks for WPA included the ability to flash/bios upgrade the code on the wireless adaptor to support these new fangled protocols...pending the original hardware has the processing ability to support the new stuff (256 bit aes encryption for eg. might be difficuilt on really early adaptors)..although i might add aes encryption is actually less cpu intensive than say wep, but it could remain a problem.
Theses things are going to be the bain of secure corporate networking. Anyone can EASILY popup a AP leasing out IP's on your companies network. Not to say it's hard to do already, but this just makes it WAY to easy.
time to fire up the old ipaq with wififofum and start bashing some heads.
Where's the 'aimjuice' aka beer intakes on this baby? Not to mention, does it smoke and enjoy country music as well? What about karaoke!?
ALL IM ASKING IS THAT IT PARTICIPATE WITH THE REST OF US HUMANS.
Mod me down as robot-insensitive.
VoIP for home users might have these issues..
on
VoIP Questioned
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· Score: 1
I have a unique prospective on this issue as I'm actually installing business grade avaya voip equipment for a living (in hawaii atm no less!).
Now, for home users, yes, I can see if these could be an issue, but for business users, the advantage is simply amazing. We have failsafes in place so each location either has few hard phone lines (using cisco fxo cards) or for the big sites we've got a 24 channel PRI circuit, so all local outgoing calls and 911 still works as expected. Interoffice communication which used to cost a ton of money now rides over the wan circuits at little to no cost. Plus, the features with the new voip systems are amazing and really useful for business users.
I guess what I'm saying is that the issues outlined in the article really don't effect large business users AT ALL, which is where a very large portion of the money going towards voip is being spent.
The immediate gain of cheap, clean and dependable power far exceeds the temporary problem of spent fuel. Our universe and solar system is PACKED with radiation, our planet is bombarded with it every second of the day, yet people can't seem to get past the fact that storage of the waste is trivial if done properly. Chernoble is a classic example of Soviet basackword design and training, and that it should have never happened. Catastrophies like it are extremely improbable when the reactor(s) are well designed and the staff is trained properly. I mean, we've been doing this for 50 years, I think we've got it pretty well figured out.
Eliminate all fossil fuel power plants (and there polution and dependence on foreign fuel!) and switch everything over to nuclear (or atleast have the guarenteed capacity to do so). The waste can be properly stored here on earth, until we have the technology to either neutralize it completely or safely ship it off to the sun/planet/enemysolarsystem (you've all seen superman right?)
... Having meeting rooms, bathrooms, and a kitchen is also nice. The traditional approaches to work spaces are done because they work well enough.
I agree, bathrooms are overrated.
This was actually posted on the register early this week sometime..on top of that the original article is nearly 2 years old, but I won't get into that.
I would like to say though, wouldn't it be a great idea to use this concept to protect our skyscrapers? How hard would it have been to retrofit simplistic buildings like the WTC with this type of technology, on the most vulnerable parts of the building? I mean, granted the windows would have been difficuilt to protect, but if you could have kept a good portion of the fuel and raw momentum of the planes from crushing into the inside of the buildings, could they have been saved? I'm saying apply this idea to a greater scale..like our buildings to protect against GIANT-ASS (tm) projectiles.
Here's an article stating Intel had planned to intruduce WiMAX 802.16d chips right around this time: http://news.com.com/2100-7351-5144887.html? tag=nl
I really don't think people understand the as yet unknown implications of a MAN wireless network you can connect to ANYTIME, ANYWHERE (in a given area). In addition to the technolgies P2P capabilties, I think we really have no idea how this technology will change things 10 years down the road. It's just like cellular phones, once the technolgy matures and is standardized and available anywhere, we're going to start seeing the real benifits of it. We're going to start to see everything we own apart of the internet.
Hmm...lets see, what else do people usually carry around with magnetic media applied to them which would be wiped out..oh yeah, credit cards.
Actually, it might be amusing to see the collection of rings, keys, lose change (oh wait, nm) and people with pacemakers stuck to these magnets you describe.
As much as this feature seems annoying to most people reading slashdot, it might actually come in handy in certain situations:
That said, this is obviously only going to work in certain situations, namely dark rooms or at night, but what I find interesting is the fact it will be VERY easy and obvious for someone to pick you out of a crowd of people when your waving this around. Imagine emergency situations where it might be difficult to discribe your exact location and someone that is despirately trying to find you (At a concert, park, out lost in the wilderness etc), or even something as simple as alerting someone driving around trying to find you (and have never meet you before perhaps?), you could easily attract their attention, plus include a message they understand.
Now, granted 99% of the time it's going to be completely useless, but for the fact that the other 1% of the time this allows you to communicate more effectively, I think it's really not a bad idea.
I would also like to point out that the average slashdot reader should have no problems waving the phone around for extended periods of time (granted they use their right hand).
The mere thought of invading ones personal bubble, let alone touching another persons hands is unacceptable. Dear God, think of the germs! It's no coinsidence they named one of the games the "death star"!
Fully inverted muli-touching acts should be made illegal!
Taking games seriously like this is like... whining to death when I purposely TK you in a game of Desert Combat.
I guess what I'm saying is that the Chinese gov't reminds me of a bunch of 14 y/o whiners. Wake up people! It's a game!
Btw, if anyone else is interested, I find after a long days work, nothing beats TK'ing the shit out people playing DC, or just about any other game. Words cannot describe the level of enjoyment I experience blowing up a plane right before a teammate wishes to hop into it, blowing him/her up in the process. Also, don't for get the manditory "Attention: Flight 402 has been cancelled".
Just imagine, not only will you be sweating off those 3 extra big macs you ate for lunch, but you'll also be providing hours of endless laughter and entertainment those around you!
I used to live in an apartment less than a mile from a major mall/retail shopping area and major community college http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/. You might expect that I'd have great coverage, but this was far from the case. I had T-Mobile (Nokia 3600 el-cheapo) and could barely get signal inside the front door, calls would come in occasionally (while I was inside), but would usually end up dropping after short amount of time. This same problem happened with all of my other friends on Cricket (specifically, a roommate with nokia 5600), friends on ATT (nokia), Qwest (motorola), and just about anyone who had the misfortune of stopping by and needing to make a phone call (schedule a chron job, ahem)
Eventually, my employer sprang for a work phone, which just happened to be from Verzion. The phone was cheap ass Kyrocera (sp?), but none the less it made a world of difference. Not only could I receive and dial calls inside the apartment, but I even put it to the ultimate test. I shoved the phone under the couch (1st floor apt btw) and had someone call it from outside. Your damn right it worked. I've since moved, but none the less the service has been excellent, no delayed text messages or anything random/stupid like that. And I can't remember the last time I dropped a call (except when I went down to puerto rico, that's a whole other story).
I'd almost be willing to recommend Verzion, if it wasn't for there damn cliche spawning annoying ass commecials.
Afterall, they *are* profit centers. Once you get past the price of building one of these out (which is currently unknown), it's all reconstituted gravy .
Seriously, I bet theres enough of Doc's fuel factories (solid waste producing factories/farms) to fuel thousands of these already, infact they could simply augment the factory and help each companies bottom line. Imagine of instead of companies throwing out all their shit (literally in some cases), they all start building out these TCP factories as part of their business unit, which would eventually turn a profit. Everybody would be happy.It's probably going to happen sooner or later. I can just imagine when people start opening up old land fills to "extract the fuel".
Oh who am I kidding.
Re:Sounds like FUD to me.
on
Out of Gas
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· Score: 1
When I wrote this, it was the first thing that came to mind. Yes, the sun is a giant nuclear reactor. The problem is the energy it emmits just doesn't cut it with our current technology. We need lower frequencies...hmmm
I say we make the case modders figure out a way to hack the sun. They could turn it into a giant microwave emitting thingie.
Don't get me wrong, Oil IS a finite resource. I just find it a problem that we still don't even know where the heck it came from, fossil fuel? WTF, who actually thinks this makes any friggin sense? Your telling me millions of dinosours crawled up into a hole an died, which subsequentially turned their decaying organic bodies into hydrocarbons? Not to say this couldn't happen, but it's an unnacceptable answer to this question. We need to find out the fundemental way's that oil is created so we can synthesize it (granted, this might take a million years as well).
Bottom line:
Build out the biggest friggin nuclear reactor ever created, stick it a few hundred miles in space, microwave that power back to earth. What's wrong with this? Nuclear power plants explode? who cares? Microwave power not beeming correctly? Have some friggin sense and build in error correcting and clear to send windows(eh, yeah im a network guy).
This isn't a flame bait, I just think the world energy crisis is so lame, because their's so many way's we can get around it NOW, yet nobody seems to care.
Personally, I think these high oil prices are just to jack up the profits for the oil company. Who would have thunk it!
Lower Frequencies = Better reception, wall piercing bandwidth. This is two fold, as your signal is going to simply work "better" for not only you, but john q. hacker sitting outside your building (or say 4-5 stories down inside your building should still get great reception.)
Then again, this isn't really being sold as residential grade wireless, but rather transit links to and from customers. This is really where it's going to shine.
If they do come out with AP's that run on this sub 700mhz spectrum, I'd be the first to buy them and ditch the near-microwave oven freqnency of 2.4ghz. That just seems like we're asking for trouble.
If we actually had info on the physical topology of your community it would make things easier.
But, here's what I would suggest:
Each house should have multiple pairs of dry copper running to the SAME CO. You can probably use this as your physical medium for all 30+ homes, using VDSL or "HDSL T1/E1 Modems" (ADC Makes these).
I'd find cheap VDSL ethernet Bridge/modem (which is what they are anyways) setting up one in each residence, then you can find rack mount vdsl "concentrators" or chassis which mux all of these together and give you a few ethernet ports for uplink purposes. Either that or you can use use another vdsl modem on the telephone CO side and connect them all to a standard switch (a cheap cisco 3548-XL, or a bunch of cheap 16port switches uplinked to eachother).
tut systems makes these (which ived used in the setup i've descibed)
http://www.videotele.com/index.cfm
Note that there's actually a bunch of competition in this VDSL (last mile) market and prices are always fluctuating. I've found single tut vdsl modems (good for hundreds of feet, 1.5mbits over a pair of copper) go for 20 bucks a peice.
I would advise against 2.4ghz wireless as it sucks. Just trust me on this. Anyone who's recommending setting up a Metro LAN on this is talking out of their ass and doesn't realize how shitty this would be (i've seen it, CDMA collisions out the ass, 200pps limit for the whole friggin network, all of your traffic cleartext, one user with the right equipment can shut it down, lmr200 or 400 cable is expensive, 2.4 sucks thanks.)
Keep to the KISS rule, use cheap CAT5/6 or pre-existing infrastucture if at all possible.
Step 1: Equip Slashdot sponsored TinFoil Hat....
Step 2: Ramble about how long term exposure to 2.4ghz microwave frequency has shown to cause cancer, memory loss, and reduced coordination in labratory rats.
Step 3: Remember that the FCC has approved such 2.4gz equipment, and that the radiation from such devices is non-ionizing and should cause no harm.
Step 4: What freqencies does a microwave oven work at again. Oh crap, i just spilled my drink.
Step 5: what was i talking about again?
Step 6: Oh, potential law suit ata tobacco companies down the road???
Step 7: Who cares about profit!!??? (WHEN WE'RE MAKING BILLIONS ELSEWHERE)
What about Protected-EAP, PEAP, aka MS-CHAPV2-EAP? This works right out the the box with Cisco AP's and a MS Windows IAS and AD. Also, it borrows a bunch of the features of EAP-TLS, including TLS encrypted password exchanges with an optional certificate based authentication (authenticates YOUR pc to YOUR AP, preventing q. hackers AP from spoofing your AP's SSID etc and stealing your domain username/password).
Ok, I agree, this is slightly off the topic.
BUT THERE'S MORE!! PEAP supplicants are built into windows wireless zero configuration (WIN2k SP4 and WINXP), and works with Linux via xsupplicant.
Oh, did I mention it actually works?
I haven't been this enthusiastic about a MS-endorsed product since..well, Cisco's LEAP was cracked and the dude who did it could only recommend PEAP as an alternative. (personally, forget all this BS about EAP this or that, they all suck ass, IPSEC VPN's over wireless, plus WPA with AES encryption is the only wifi system I would ever consider.)
Slashdot Mirror
the original design specks for WPA included the ability to flash/bios upgrade the code on the wireless adaptor to support these new fangled protocols...pending the original hardware has the processing ability to support the new stuff (256 bit aes encryption for eg. might be difficuilt on really early adaptors)..although i might add aes encryption is actually less cpu intensive than say wep, but it could remain a problem.
WPA-2 with AES 256bit encryption and Protected Extensible authentication protocol (PEAP).
Deal.
I still prefer a wired connection.
Theses things are going to be the bain of secure corporate networking. Anyone can EASILY popup a AP leasing out IP's on your companies network. Not to say it's hard to do already, but this just makes it WAY to easy.
time to fire up the old ipaq with wififofum and start bashing some heads.
Where's the 'aimjuice' aka beer intakes on this baby? Not to mention, does it smoke and enjoy country music as well? What about karaoke!?
ALL IM ASKING IS THAT IT PARTICIPATE WITH THE REST OF US HUMANS.
Mod me down as robot-insensitive.
I have a unique prospective on this issue as I'm actually installing business grade avaya voip equipment for a living (in hawaii atm no less!).
Now, for home users, yes, I can see if these could be an issue, but for business users, the advantage is simply amazing. We have failsafes in place so each location either has few hard phone lines (using cisco fxo cards) or for the big sites we've got a 24 channel PRI circuit, so all local outgoing calls and 911 still works as expected. Interoffice communication which used to cost a ton of money now rides over the wan circuits at little to no cost. Plus, the features with the new voip systems are amazing and really useful for business users.
I guess what I'm saying is that the issues outlined in the article really don't effect large business users AT ALL, which is where a very large portion of the money going towards voip is being spent.
The immediate gain of cheap, clean and dependable power far exceeds the temporary problem of spent fuel. Our universe and solar system is PACKED with radiation, our planet is bombarded with it every second of the day, yet people can't seem to get past the fact that storage of the waste is trivial if done properly. Chernoble is a classic example of Soviet basackword design and training, and that it should have never happened. Catastrophies like it are extremely improbable when the reactor(s) are well designed and the staff is trained properly. I mean, we've been doing this for 50 years, I think we've got it pretty well figured out.
Eliminate all fossil fuel power plants (and there polution and dependence on foreign fuel!) and switch everything over to nuclear (or atleast have the guarenteed capacity to do so). The waste can be properly stored here on earth, until we have the technology to either neutralize it completely or safely ship it off to the sun/planet/enemysolarsystem (you've all seen superman right?)
This was actually posted on the register early this week sometime..on top of that the original article is nearly 2 years old, but I won't get into that.
I would like to say though, wouldn't it be a great idea to use this concept to protect our skyscrapers? How hard would it have been to retrofit simplistic buildings like the WTC with this type of technology, on the most vulnerable parts of the building? I mean, granted the windows would have been difficuilt to protect, but if you could have kept a good portion of the fuel and raw momentum of the planes from crushing into the inside of the buildings, could they have been saved? I'm saying apply this idea to a greater scale..like our buildings to protect against GIANT-ASS (tm) projectiles.
Here's an article stating Intel had planned to intruduce WiMAX 802.16d chips right around this time:? tag=nl
http://news.com.com/2100-7351-5144887.html
I really don't think people understand the as yet unknown implications of a MAN wireless network you can connect to ANYTIME, ANYWHERE (in a given area). In addition to the technolgies P2P capabilties, I think we really have no idea how this technology will change things 10 years down the road. It's just like cellular phones, once the technolgy matures and is standardized and available anywhere, we're going to start seeing the real benifits of it. We're going to start to see everything we own apart of the internet.
Hmm...lets see, what else do people usually carry around with magnetic media applied to them which would be wiped out..oh yeah, credit cards.
Actually, it might be amusing to see the collection of rings, keys, lose change (oh wait, nm) and people with pacemakers stuck to these magnets you describe.
Hey, that's funny, I didn't see anything reminding users to "not look directly at laser with remaining eye".
Ok, ok, so the fiber is multimode and is lit up with LEDs, give me a break.
As much as this feature seems annoying to most people reading slashdot, it might actually come in handy in certain situations:
That said, this is obviously only going to work in certain situations, namely dark rooms or at night, but what I find interesting is the fact it will be VERY easy and obvious for someone to pick you out of a crowd of people when your waving this around. Imagine emergency situations where it might be difficult to discribe your exact location and someone that is despirately trying to find you (At a concert, park, out lost in the wilderness etc), or even something as simple as alerting someone driving around trying to find you (and have never meet you before perhaps?), you could easily attract their attention, plus include a message they understand.
Now, granted 99% of the time it's going to be completely useless, but for the fact that the other 1% of the time this allows you to communicate more effectively, I think it's really not a bad idea.
I would also like to point out that the average slashdot reader should have no problems waving the phone around for extended periods of time (granted they use their right hand).
The mere thought of invading ones personal bubble, let alone touching another persons hands is unacceptable. Dear God, think of the germs! It's no coinsidence they named one of the games the "death star"!
Fully inverted muli-touching acts should be made illegal!
Taking games seriously like this is like... whining to death when I purposely TK you in a game of Desert Combat.
I guess what I'm saying is that the Chinese gov't reminds me of a bunch of 14 y/o whiners. Wake up people! It's a game!
Btw, if anyone else is interested, I find after a long days work, nothing beats TK'ing the shit out people playing DC, or just about any other game. Words cannot describe the level of enjoyment I experience blowing up a plane right before a teammate wishes to hop into it, blowing him/her up in the process. Also, don't for get the manditory "Attention: Flight 402 has been cancelled".
So this virus can infect the whole 3 people on this planet who actually run 64bit intel procs and win64...
Just imagine, not only will you be sweating off those 3 extra big macs you ate for lunch, but you'll also be providing hours of endless laughter and entertainment those around you!
I used to live in an apartment less than a mile from a major mall/retail shopping area and major community college http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/. You might expect that I'd have great coverage, but this was far from the case. I had T-Mobile (Nokia 3600 el-cheapo) and could barely get signal inside the front door, calls would come in occasionally (while I was inside), but would usually end up dropping after short amount of time. This same problem happened with all of my other friends on Cricket (specifically, a roommate with nokia 5600), friends on ATT (nokia), Qwest (motorola), and just about anyone who had the misfortune of stopping by and needing to make a phone call (schedule a chron job, ahem)
Eventually, my employer sprang for a work phone, which just happened to be from Verzion. The phone was cheap ass Kyrocera (sp?), but none the less it made a world of difference. Not only could I receive and dial calls inside the apartment, but I even put it to the ultimate test. I shoved the phone under the couch (1st floor apt btw) and had someone call it from outside. Your damn right it worked. I've since moved, but none the less the service has been excellent, no delayed text messages or anything random/stupid like that. And I can't remember the last time I dropped a call (except when I went down to puerto rico, that's a whole other story).
I'd almost be willing to recommend Verzion, if it wasn't for there damn cliche spawning annoying ass commecials.
Afterall, they *are* profit centers. Once you get past the price of building one of these out (which is currently unknown), it's all reconstituted gravy .
Seriously, I bet theres enough of Doc's fuel factories (solid waste producing factories/farms) to fuel thousands of these already, infact they could simply augment the factory and help each companies bottom line. Imagine of instead of companies throwing out all their shit (literally in some cases), they all start building out these TCP factories as part of their business unit, which would eventually turn a profit. Everybody would be happy.It's probably going to happen sooner or later. I can just imagine when people start opening up old land fills to "extract the fuel".
Oh who am I kidding.
When I wrote this, it was the first thing that came to mind. Yes, the sun is a giant nuclear reactor. The problem is the energy it emmits just doesn't cut it with our current technology. We need lower frequencies...hmmm
I say we make the case modders figure out a way to hack the sun. They could turn it into a giant microwave emitting thingie.
Hack the sun!111one
Don't get me wrong, Oil IS a finite resource. I just find it a problem that we still don't even know where the heck it came from, fossil fuel? WTF, who actually thinks this makes any friggin sense? Your telling me millions of dinosours crawled up into a hole an died, which subsequentially turned their decaying organic bodies into hydrocarbons? Not to say this couldn't happen, but it's an unnacceptable answer to this question. We need to find out the fundemental way's that oil is created so we can synthesize it (granted, this might take a million years as well).
Bottom line:
Build out the biggest friggin nuclear reactor ever created, stick it a few hundred miles in space, microwave that power back to earth. What's wrong with this? Nuclear power plants explode? who cares? Microwave power not beeming correctly? Have some friggin sense and build in error correcting and clear to send windows(eh, yeah im a network guy).
This isn't a flame bait, I just think the world energy crisis is so lame, because their's so many way's we can get around it NOW, yet nobody seems to care.
Personally, I think these high oil prices are just to jack up the profits for the oil company. Who would have thunk it!
Lower Frequencies = Better reception, wall piercing bandwidth. This is two fold, as your signal is going to simply work "better" for not only you, but john q. hacker sitting outside your building (or say 4-5 stories down inside your building should still get great reception.) Then again, this isn't really being sold as residential grade wireless, but rather transit links to and from customers. This is really where it's going to shine.
If they do come out with AP's that run on this sub 700mhz spectrum, I'd be the first to buy them and ditch the near-microwave oven freqnency of 2.4ghz. That just seems like we're asking for trouble.
If we actually had info on the physical topology of your community it would make things easier.
But, here's what I would suggest:
Each house should have multiple pairs of dry copper running to the SAME CO. You can probably use this as your physical medium for all 30+ homes, using VDSL or "HDSL T1/E1 Modems" (ADC Makes these).
I'd find cheap VDSL ethernet Bridge/modem (which is what they are anyways) setting up one in each residence, then you can find rack mount vdsl "concentrators" or chassis which mux all of these together and give you a few ethernet ports for uplink purposes. Either that or you can use use another vdsl modem on the telephone CO side and connect them all to a standard switch (a cheap cisco 3548-XL, or a bunch of cheap 16port switches uplinked to eachother).
tut systems makes these (which ived used in the setup i've descibed) http://www.videotele.com/index.cfm Note that there's actually a bunch of competition in this VDSL (last mile) market and prices are always fluctuating. I've found single tut vdsl modems (good for hundreds of feet, 1.5mbits over a pair of copper) go for 20 bucks a peice.
I would advise against 2.4ghz wireless as it sucks. Just trust me on this. Anyone who's recommending setting up a Metro LAN on this is talking out of their ass and doesn't realize how shitty this would be (i've seen it, CDMA collisions out the ass, 200pps limit for the whole friggin network, all of your traffic cleartext, one user with the right equipment can shut it down, lmr200 or 400 cable is expensive, 2.4 sucks thanks.)
Keep to the KISS rule, use cheap CAT5/6 or pre-existing infrastucture if at all possible.
Step 1: Equip Slashdot sponsored TinFoil Hat.... Step 2: Ramble about how long term exposure to 2.4ghz microwave frequency has shown to cause cancer, memory loss, and reduced coordination in labratory rats. Step 3: Remember that the FCC has approved such 2.4gz equipment, and that the radiation from such devices is non-ionizing and should cause no harm. Step 4: What freqencies does a microwave oven work at again. Oh crap, i just spilled my drink. Step 5: what was i talking about again? Step 6: Oh, potential law suit ata tobacco companies down the road??? Step 7: Who cares about profit!!??? (WHEN WE'RE MAKING BILLIONS ELSEWHERE)
What about Protected-EAP, PEAP, aka MS-CHAPV2-EAP? This works right out the the box with Cisco AP's and a MS Windows IAS and AD. Also, it borrows a bunch of the features of EAP-TLS, including TLS encrypted password exchanges with an optional certificate based authentication (authenticates YOUR pc to YOUR AP, preventing q. hackers AP from spoofing your AP's SSID etc and stealing your domain username/password). Ok, I agree, this is slightly off the topic. BUT THERE'S MORE!! PEAP supplicants are built into windows wireless zero configuration (WIN2k SP4 and WINXP), and works with Linux via xsupplicant. Oh, did I mention it actually works? I haven't been this enthusiastic about a MS-endorsed product since..well, Cisco's LEAP was cracked and the dude who did it could only recommend PEAP as an alternative. (personally, forget all this BS about EAP this or that, they all suck ass, IPSEC VPN's over wireless, plus WPA with AES encryption is the only wifi system I would ever consider.)
Dude, where's my card?