Good thing you aren't a SysAdmin then. I guess you haven't noticed that wireless authentication/encryption can be setup to be as secure as wired VPN. Try reading about WPA2 using AES encryption and mutual authentication using PEAP-GTC. Try RSA 2-factor authentication with infrastructure side public certificates (through Radius). No different from wired VPN. Wired/Wireless, it's just a transport mechanism for your encrypted data. As long as you have proper mutual authentication and suitable encryption (AES) it's irrelevant whether you are on wired or wireless.
How is an encrypted wireless 'signal' any different from an encrypted VPN 'signal'? Have you even heard of wireless AES encryption and PEAP-GTC with mutual authentication and 2FA? Wireless is no less insecure than VPN as it *can* use the same authentication and encryption mechanisms. It's just most organisations don't use them, so are more exposed. Don't assume because you don't understand something there is no way to do it as securely over wireless as over wired. They are both just transport mechanisms. What you layer on top can be the same in both cases.
Come on, this is basic.
If by using a polluting technology causing damage of X Greenpeace can result in a reduction of another polluting 'thing' by an amount Y, then if the reduction in Y is > the increase in X, they have had a net benefit.
A friend of mine was always feeling guilty about sometimes driving to places to give talks about environmental issues (it wasnt feasible to take public transport in some cases). I told him that as long as the effect his talk had caused people to reduce their 'impact' by more than the impact he had by using his car he was doing the 'Right Thing'(tm)!
Why do some people use such silly and easily refutable arguments to make excuses for their own lack of action?
Telecom Italia already carries 80% of its national backbone telephone calls on an IP based network infrastructure, and something like 40% of their international calls.
This is the back-end of the service, multiplexing together thousands of calls over high speed (2.5 and 10Gb/second) network links. The network also uses class of service and many other configuration setups to ensure a consistent quality of service for the traffic flow. You can be sure everything will be massively resilient. In addition this traffic won't traverse the public Internet at all, but will be on a private network (though gatewayed to the Internet for connectivity to other services). This will allow BT to guarantee they wont be hit by Internet related issues like congestion, black-hole routing and so on. Dont compare this service to public Internet VoIP, its NOTHING like it.
Personally I think this is a fantastic move, and will really help the UK take advantage of up and coming technologies over the next decade.
PS there is already an Internet standard to map IP addresses to public phone numbers, and there is also work on integrating VoIP into the DNS infrastructure!
Come on, who are you kidding: "current model of scientific publishing... is in serious danger of becoming irrelevant because of the rise of the internet"
The Internet has enabled the major publishing companies, who were trapped in a cycle of dropping circulation and increasing subscription prices, to offer new services to researchers, and provide new features they now find massively useful. The publishers are investing hundred of millions of dollars each year in electronic products and services - these electronic services are driving the scientific publishing world right now (Having worked in IT for a rather large global publishing company for several years I've seen this first hand - though I am not a slave to the machine just yet!).
When I was at college Inter-library loans were a pain in the neck, on-line searches of scientific papers almost non-existent, and hunting for information very time-consuming. The Internet itself doesn't solve these issues - try searching for research on Viagra if you are a clinician, you'll soon give up on finding anything useful for your work - you might find a good deal though:-) Now try that search in a publishers scientific search engine - they're not free to setup, but are free to access - where do you think their funding comes from?
Open Access (or more accurately Publisher pays) is a big topical thing in the UK currently, with a UK Government Parlimentary Committee reviewing the subject. There's some relevant information here: http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb040322-3.sht ml
Here's just one question: once you've paid to publish your article, what guarantee is there that it will be archived for future reference? Where is the ongoing income for this. Will the Open Access journals come back and ask you for more money so they can upgrade their systems, produce new search tools, cross reference your article regularly, archive the data securely for generations to come?
The editor of 'Science' calculated they they would have to charge $10,000 for each article published. That's the COST to publish the article, not including any profits! You would move from a world where researchers can aim to publish as many articles as are deemed publishable by a journal to a world where you can only publish if your department has enough funds! Bad luck if you work in a badly funded field, or your department isn't well off. 'Open Access' doesnt solve the cost issue - the cost to publish is a real cost, where would Open Access cut these costs? Less reviewing? Less secure archiving? Cheaper what? Something would have to suffer, and there's then the temptation to accept sub-standard articles just to pay the bills.
Slashdot Mirror
Good thing you aren't a SysAdmin then. I guess you haven't noticed that wireless authentication/encryption can be setup to be as secure as wired VPN. Try reading about WPA2 using AES encryption and mutual authentication using PEAP-GTC. Try RSA 2-factor authentication with infrastructure side public certificates (through Radius). No different from wired VPN. Wired/Wireless, it's just a transport mechanism for your encrypted data. As long as you have proper mutual authentication and suitable encryption (AES) it's irrelevant whether you are on wired or wireless.
How is an encrypted wireless 'signal' any different from an encrypted VPN 'signal'? Have you even heard of wireless AES encryption and PEAP-GTC with mutual authentication and 2FA? Wireless is no less insecure than VPN as it *can* use the same authentication and encryption mechanisms. It's just most organisations don't use them, so are more exposed. Don't assume because you don't understand something there is no way to do it as securely over wireless as over wired. They are both just transport mechanisms. What you layer on top can be the same in both cases.
Come on, this is basic. If by using a polluting technology causing damage of X Greenpeace can result in a reduction of another polluting 'thing' by an amount Y, then if the reduction in Y is > the increase in X, they have had a net benefit. A friend of mine was always feeling guilty about sometimes driving to places to give talks about environmental issues (it wasnt feasible to take public transport in some cases). I told him that as long as the effect his talk had caused people to reduce their 'impact' by more than the impact he had by using his car he was doing the 'Right Thing'(tm)! Why do some people use such silly and easily refutable arguments to make excuses for their own lack of action?
Telecom Italia already carries 80% of its national backbone telephone calls on an IP based network infrastructure, and something like 40% of their international calls.
This is the back-end of the service, multiplexing together thousands of calls over high speed (2.5 and 10Gb/second) network links. The network also uses class of service and many other configuration setups to ensure a consistent quality of service for the traffic flow. You can be sure everything will be massively resilient. In addition this traffic won't traverse the public Internet at all, but will be on a private network (though gatewayed to the Internet for connectivity to other services). This will allow BT to guarantee they wont be hit by Internet related issues like congestion, black-hole routing and so on. Dont compare this service to public Internet VoIP, its NOTHING like it.
Personally I think this is a fantastic move, and will really help the UK take advantage of up and coming technologies over the next decade.
PS there is already an Internet standard to map IP addresses to public phone numbers, and there is also work on integrating VoIP into the DNS infrastructure!
Come on, who are you kidding: ... is in serious danger of becoming irrelevant because of the rise of the internet"
:-) Now try that search in a publishers scientific search engine - they're not free to setup, but are free to access - where do you think their funding comes from?
t ml
"current model of scientific publishing
The Internet has enabled the major publishing companies, who were trapped in a cycle of dropping circulation and increasing subscription prices, to offer new services to researchers, and provide new features they now find massively useful. The publishers are investing hundred of millions of dollars each year in electronic products and services - these electronic services are driving the scientific publishing world right now (Having worked in IT for a rather large global publishing company for several years I've seen this first hand - though I am not a slave to the machine just yet!).
When I was at college Inter-library loans were a pain in the neck, on-line searches of scientific papers almost non-existent, and hunting for information very time-consuming. The Internet itself doesn't solve these issues - try searching for research on Viagra if you are a clinician, you'll soon give up on finding anything useful for your work - you might find a good deal though
Open Access (or more accurately Publisher pays) is a big topical thing in the UK currently, with a UK Government Parlimentary Committee reviewing the subject. There's some relevant information here: http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb040322-3.sh
Here's just one question: once you've paid to publish your article, what guarantee is there that it will be archived for future reference? Where is the ongoing income for this. Will the Open Access journals come back and ask you for more money so they can upgrade their systems, produce new search tools, cross reference your article regularly, archive the data securely for generations to come?
The editor of 'Science' calculated they they would have to charge $10,000 for each article published. That's the COST to publish the article, not including any profits! You would move from a world where researchers can aim to publish as many articles as are deemed publishable by a journal to a world where you can only publish if your department has enough funds! Bad luck if you work in a badly funded field, or your department isn't well off. 'Open Access' doesnt solve the cost issue - the cost to publish is a real cost, where would Open Access cut these costs? Less reviewing? Less secure archiving? Cheaper what? Something would have to suffer, and there's then the temptation to accept sub-standard articles just to pay the bills.