Well, I guess even Clark Howard doesn't know everything.

Howard, for those of you not familiar with him, is a financial guru and consumer advocate with shows on both radio and cable TV. Generally I find him both knowledgeable and skilled in sharing his expertise, but then again, all I know about money is that I want more of it. However, I've got to blow the whistle and throw the flag for something he did at the start of one of today's telecasts-he joined the chorus of those chanting the mantra that using an open Wi-Fi link is inherently dangerous from a privacy and security standpoint, repeating the old chestnut that one shouldn't do online banking or the like except at home.

And now a brief pause for the facts. While it's easy for someone "sniffing" network traffic between your laptop and an open router to intercept data that is sent in the clear, this is plainly and simply not the case if the website you are accessing is secured by a properly configured SSL installation. Just think about it for a moment. Imagine you're sitting with a laptop within range of an open router and you're using a sniffer to monitor a session between me and the SSL-encrypted website of my financial institution. What do you think you're going to see? That's right-all you will capture is the encrypted traffic between me and the remote site, and you won't be able to decrypt it because you didn't exchange keys with the site; I did. The encryption occurs between my computer and the site, not either between me and the router or between the router and the site. The data is encrypted at my computer before it ever leaves for the router, just as data from the site is encrypted at the site before it ever gets to the router from the Internet. A properly implemented VPN is perfectly safe to use over open Wi-Fi for the same reason.

Just what part of this do the many so-called experts who spout this don't-bank-or-shop-over-open-wireless nonsense not understand? What do they think happens? Do they believe the router magically (i.e., without having exchanged keys with it) decrypts incoming data from the remote site, or that the client laptop, after establishing an encrypted session, then uplinks in the clear and that the router then magically re-encrypts the data before sending it on its first hop? Remember, SSL is intended to protect the data all the way from the remote site to the client. The router, just like all the other servers between the client and the remote site, neither knows nor cares that the data it passes is third-party encrypted-it merely needs to know where it came from and where it's going so it can do its job.

All of this is not to say, of course, that there aren't risks you need to watch out for when on an open Wi-Fi connection. Jumping online with file and printer sharing turned on (and as an aside, I can't think of any good reason to ever have them turned on with a laptop) is one. Exchanging sensitive information with a properly SSL-secured site, however, isn't.

And for those inclined to disbelieve that, ask yourself this: Why do AT&T and T-Moblie leave their play-for-pay routers unsecured? If SSL weren't sufficient to protect the credit card numbers customers have to enter on their login pages, I think they'd sell even fewer sessions than they probably are selling these days.

For $311 a day...

...I can think of better ideas for a six-week vacation, can't you?

Associated Press: Internet addiction center opens in U. S.

I love the way they start out with the "dog ate my homework" sob story about the kid who blew off his freshman year in college playing "World of Warcraft." Gotta suck in those worried parents with deep pockets first, right?

Let's also award style points for the eleven signs of Internet addiction they've already come up with. Dollars to doughnuts says we'll be seeing ads for a prescription drug to treat it as soon as the lobbyists finish buying off the FDA.

Here's the salient quote from the story, folks: "Internet addiction is not recognized as a separate disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, and treatment is not generally covered by insurance."

And if We the People are truly serious about reforming health care, keeping things that way would be a good start.

Have you seen that bank commercial?

Barnes & Noble
Country Club Plaza, 420 W. 47th Street, Kansas City

802.11g
SSID: attwifi

Okay, it's really not as bad as the bank commercial where the guy in the suit lets the kid play with the huge shiny toy truck for a few seconds, then snatches it away and answers the youngster's protests with "Well, that was a limited-time offer." However, be advised that B&N's new complimentary Wi-Fi does come with a string attached; you can only use it two hours at a time. It just would have been nice if they'd been up front about it, that's all.

It would also be nice if this place were a bit more laptop-friendly as well. So far I've found only one seat next to a power outlet, in the "Religion" section on the second floor outside Starbucks next to a pair of LCD-unfriendly windows facing 47th. I didn't see any seating at all on the first floor, and I'm not comfortable sitting in the cafe without making a purchase.

Searching out another location, however, might be advised; the signal strength here is terrible. I've been bucked off once already and had to resort to ye olde open-a-new-tab-and reconnect to keep from losing this post (you have to click through a pair of AUP consent pages to log on).

In short this one needs to get better. Here's hoping it does.

Oh, so THIS is what our young people fought and died for.

Associated Press: Iraq to impose controls on Internet.


I think I'll let the article speak for itself. I'm so angry that I'm speechless.

A fellow traveler weighs in

Interesting report from a freelance writer on the state of things around town in this morning's Kansas City Star Magazine. I find it particularly gratifying not only that all but one of the sites she mentions have been reviewed here at some point, but that consequently the article's emphasis is on locations that are free and open (take that, Starbucks, Borders and KCK Library!).

I'll second the writer's nomination of the Plaza Library as the best local hotspot at the moment-and while I'm at it, I might mention that it appears KCPL has either discontinued filtering its connection-at least for patron-owned clients-or has finally gotten it properly tweaked to avoid the overblocks that plagued it in its earlier years. Haven't run into any lately.

I find it curious, however, that the author apparently didn't visit the Crown Center atrium, one of ath64's favorites and a place I also often like to unwind before heading home on Friday nights.

Her endorsement of the Johnson County Library's network also gives me pause. From the founding of this blog up until a couple of years ago, ath64 extensively documented this connection's shortcomings, which my few visits to JCL branches served to confirm. Unless it has undergone significant improvement since then (and if it has and we're just not aware of it, fill us in!) we'd still list it as one to avoid, if for no other reason than that its restrictions and limitations may get in the way of protecting yourself and your computer from snooping, malware and other threats-especially if (I know I'll get in trouble for this, but I'll say it anyway) you're running Windows.

I wouldn't quibble with any of the author's "rules," especially those reminding us of our obligation to reward proprietors for their courtesy and not to wear out our welcome. I'm not really sure that's a problem around here-at least not yet-but let's endeavor to keep things that way.

Finally I'm a little puzzled that with so much free and open Wi-Fi readily available, she'd even mention cellular broadband as an option-and that she'd fall for the "free aircard" gimmick. Sixteen hundred bucks-which over the course of the two-year contract you'll have to sign is about what you'll spend on average in order to keep your "free" aircard fed (on a five gigabyte per month diet over a much slower connection)-will buy a lot of sandwiches and lattes, with plenty left over for gas and parking.

Of course, there are beginning to be some interesting alternatives to the above. I'm told you can now hop onto Verizon's 3G network for $15 per day with no further commitment if you pay full retail for the aircard. There's also Virgin Mobile's newly announced Broadband2Go offering; pay $150 outright for the aircard at Best Buy, then pay as you go for as little as $10 for 100 megabytes over ten days. If it weren't Windows-only at present and if I really needed it badly enough, I might be tempted.

Bada bomp-bomp-bomp...Another one bites the dust...(Sorry, Freddie Mercury, wherever you are)

Another big bunch of play-for-pay hotspots, that is-more than 700, in fact. Glenn Fleishman over at Wi-Fi Networking News reports that bookseller Barnes and Noble has joined the free world.

Look for a review as soon as Mac or I can get away to visit a local store and write one up-unless one of you beats us to it.

And here's hoping we can look for Borders to quickly follow suit, and for Books-A-Million to do away with its half-baked free-if-you-join-our-discount-club effort.

Remembrance and reflection: July 20, 1969

One of my most enduring memories from forty years ago today is the Bible verse the Kansas City Star published below the fold on its front page that morning, as it traditionally did on Sunday. That day they chose Isaiah, Chapter 65, Verse 24: "And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear."

The rest of the day is a blur. I recall the anxiety of the powered descent-which became my favorite part of the moon missions-given that nothing like it had ever even been tried with a manned vehicle up to that point. A rocket flying backwards to descend softly onto the surface of an alien world? That only happened in the movies. Well, to be fair, it had been done with unmanned spacecraft, but even then we had only gone 5 for 7 with our Surveyor program. If the Russians had even tried it again after their one announced success, they weren't saying. And the Lunar Module, unlike any of its robot predecessors, would then have to perform the feat in reverse as an encore.

The exhilaration of hearing Armstrong's proclamation that "the Eagle has landed" was indescribable. I immediately resolved to call in sick to my evening job so as not to miss the start of the main event (the moonwalk had originally been scheduled for the early hours of the next morning, and I suspect I wasn't alone in not being surprised it was moved up). Like everyone else, I puzzled over the grammatical ambiguity of Armstrong's first-step words-and I'm sorry, Neil, but I've got to say it: You flubbed the line, pal. I really feel for you. That pause after you realized it must have seemed like an eternity.

(Just for the record, I watched the day's proceedings on NBC. I was never really a big fan of Walter Cronkite, but his reaction to the touchdown, which I've often watched since, was a great moment. Cronkite set an example many of today's so-called broadcast journalists would do well to follow. My condolences to his family and friends.)

All right, I'll admit it. I was a space buff and a hopeless astronaut wannabe as a kid. But you know, I don't regret that. Even though I wasn't successful in obtaining the engineering degree I was inspired to pursue, I'm only sorry I wasn't successful, not that I went after it. We must test ourselves through striving to achieve in order to discover our limits. That is the most important lesson I have taken away from the example of the space program.

Sometimes, however, I do wish I had been a bit more prescient. I wonder whether I'd still have followed the path I did had I known that the year of the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing would also be the year of the 37th anniversary of the last one. It's too bad there weren't big headlines trumpeting another 1969 event that in some ways became more important to us today than those footprints in the lunar dust-the establishment of ARPANET. Oh, why couldn't I have gazed into a crystal ball and seen not moon bases and suborbital spaceliners flying from New York to Beijing in 45 minutes, but ubiquitous computers and a maze of global networks linking them, with the prospect of largely obviating the need to physically travel to Beijing at all?

If I had, I might even be able to afford my own moon base by now.