The Martian NetDrive Wireless: 40 gigabytes of small, silent, 802.11b filesharing
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Microsoft releases Windows update to handle Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA): WPA fixes the broken encryption and integrity model in 802.11a, b, and g (WEP + other details), and is the interim step on the road to 802.11i, a slightly broader set of standards of which WPA is a subset. By including support in the operating system, Microsoft has taken the onus off all Wi-Fi equipment makers who want to enable WPA but don't want to rewrite all their client software. Of course, this is a Windows XP/2000 and/or NDIS 5.1-only solution, from what I can tell, but it's a big step. (This is the first report, from News.com; more details expected later today.)
WEP won't be dropped, contrary to this article: This article states that the Wi-Fi Alliance will be dropping WEP support. In fact, WPA supports WEP. All machines on a network must use WPA, or they fall back to WEP.
Wi-Fi hot in hot spots, says Seattle Post-Intelligencer: This'll sound catty since I'm a regular contributor to the competing newspaper, The Seattle Times, but the reporter didn't nail down the technical details in this overview of what a hot spot is and who is using it -- the anecdotal and business details are mostly fine. First off, Wi-Fi is 802.11b (and a!), not 802.11. Second, Centrino is a set of three items: Pentium-M processor, support chips, and the wireless module. Third, a Wi-Fi card is more like $50 to $75, not $100. Fourth, Wi-Fi isn't free? Not at commercial locations, but what about community networks, libraries, and institutions that have donated wireless service to their area? Fifth, iPass and NetNearU aren't creating hot spots, but aggregating and/or providing hardware. Sixth, Boingo is going to sell software to T-Mobile to manage Wi-Fi/2.5G connections, but it's not the present tense yet. Seventh, Joltage didn't follow Boingo's business model, requiring its network affiliates to use its own hot spot system. (Boingo supports anyone's authentication system.) Eighth, most of the time you don't have to configure your computer to use different networks: just select the network that you're near.
Starbucks says results strong, but won't share details: This article slightly mischaracterizes who is doing what. Starbucks isn't installing hot spot service at all; T-Mobile is. Note that the executive says that results are strong, but releases no numbers, and then makes it clear they don't know whether the fact that people using the hot spot service stay in the store longer results in more consumption of their products. For monthly subscribers, just like AOL, the longer someone stays in the store, the less value Starbucks extracts from that T-Mobile customer while that customer consumes a valuable resource: a table or seat.