Sir William Stewart, head of the Health Protection Agency in the U.K., wants a probe on whether the use of Wi-Fi in schools poses any danger on students. Such action is also being sought by the Professional Association of Teachers — the group has called on Secretary of State for Education Alan Johnson to launch an official investigation into the issue. Current figures indicate that wireless networks are now deployed in over half of primary schools and four-fifths of secondary schools in the country.
The calls mirror the growing concerns that Wi-Fi has ill effects on health some scientists believe it can cause cancer and premature senility. According to Professor Olle Johansson of Karolinska Institute in Sweden, scientific literature confirming Wi-Fi’s “adverse health effects” abounds. He remarked: “Do we not know enough already to say, ‘Stop!’?” Dr. Gerd Oberfeld, chief of the environmental health and medicine in Salzburg, agreed and described the technology as “dangerous.” Authorities from the said Austrian province is now mulling a ban and, has been advocating against installing Wi-Fi in schools over the last 16 months.
Via [news.independent.co.uk]
Continue reading ‘Wi-Fi: Children At Risk From ‘Electronic Smog’’
Leaving a wireless access point (WAP) open is generally considered a bad idea. Experts suggest you could be opening yourself to criminals by not password protecting your WiFi Network. But if you are a criminal then keeping and open WAP may become your defense. A growing number of file sharers believe they can throw reasonable doubt into any lawsuit by demonstrating that anyone could have been accessing their computer through an open WAP. But this may not be the case. Recently a Texas man, convicted of possessing child pornography, tried to use this defense stating that the original evidence used to get the search warrant was based upon an email that could have been sent by his roommate over the man’s open WAP. In this case the District Court and the US Court of Appeals disagreed and the man was convicted. So, file sharers beware, an open WAP may not provide any protection from criminal prosecution.
Continue reading ‘Child Porn Case Shows That An Open WiFi Network Is No Defense’
Sir William Stewart, head of the Health Protection Agency in the U.K., wants a probe on whether the use of Wi-Fi in schools poses any danger on students. Such action is also being sought by the Professional Association of Teachers — the group has called on Secretary of State for Education Alan Johnson to launch an official investigation into the issue. Current figures indicate that wireless networks are now deployed in over half of primary schools and four-fifths of secondary schools in the country.
The calls mirror the growing concerns that Wi-Fi has ill effects on health some scientists believe it can cause cancer and premature senility. According to Professor Olle Johansson of Karolinska Institute in Sweden, scientific literature confirming Wi-Fi’s “adverse health effects” abounds. He remarked: “Do we not know enough already to say, ‘Stop!’?” Dr. Gerd Oberfeld, chief of the environmental health and medicine in Salzburg, agreed and described the technology as “dangerous.” Authorities from the said Austrian province is now mulling a ban and, has been advocating against installing Wi-Fi in schools over the last 16 months.
Via [news.independent.co.uk]
Continue reading ‘Wi-Fi: Children At Risk From ‘Electronic Smog’’
Southwest Airlines is looking to add WiFi services to its flights. They’re hoping to begin rolling out a prototype within the next nine months. Eventually, the plan is that travelers will not only be able to access their email but also have more entertainment options during their flights. The appeal of WiFi during long flights is apparent and several other airlines have responded by saying they are also looking into offering this service.
Via [denverpost.com]
Continue reading ‘Southwest Reaching For Wi-Fi In Sky’
The city of Redditch in the UK has two unlikely criminals. The pair were recently arrested for using other people’s WiFi broadband internet connections without permission. Neighbors had become frustrated at the man parked in front of their home on his laptop and called the police. The police arrested the man and cautioned him for dishonestly obtaining electronic communications services with intent to avoid payment.
Via [techworld.com]
Continue reading ‘WiFi Thieves Busted In The UK’
Locating a HotSpot has been made easy by the new Asterisk WiFi Hotspot Finder plugin. All you need to do is get Asterisk — an open source VoIP phone system — and install it in your PC. You also need to have a VoIP-to-POTS (normal phone service) provider, a phone system, and the Flite voice synthesizer or Asterisk-based telephony platform application TrixBox. Once the PBX is activated, download the plugin. Modification of the Asterisk dialplan is required to enable extension 9434 to call the plugin script. After installing the script, compose a directory for the speech files, then reload Asterisk. Now you are ready to use the application. Once you dial W-I-F-I or 9434 and key in the zip code, the plugin will perform a quick search, pass the text to the voice synthesizer and utter the information over the phone.
Via [arstechnica.com]
Continue reading ‘Find WiFi By Phoning Home Using Asterisk’
The Italian Province of Brescia will soon become a Wi-Fi zone, thanks to a network being developed by Cisco Systems. The mesh extends over 4,800 square kilometers and covers over 200 rural towns.
Cisco put about 600 access points on light poles, and plans to deploy 200 more to complete the project. It also installed switches in town halls and a management system for the network. Aside from Internet connection, the Cisco-built network will offer VoIP and videoconferencing to city agencies and local businesses.
Building municipal and city-wide wireless networks has become a global trend. In the U.S., over 300 municipalities are looking at rolling out WiFi networks. A similar phenomenon is seen in Mexico, China, and Taiwan.
Via [informationweek.com]
Continue reading ‘Cisco Builds Massive Wi-Fi Network In Italian Province’
Uganda will see its first WiMax service by the fourth quarter of 2007. Wateen Telecom is nearly done with a similar network in Pakistan, where coverage will extend over 22 cities. Its sister company, Warid Telecom, will start offering GSM service at the same time as the WiMax implementation as “the licence in Uganda covers both GSM and Wimax deployments,” according to Wateen Telecom CTO Shohidul Islam Miah. He expects the project to begin in the next two months.
Miah said Motorola is providing the infrastructure for Wateen Telecom’s Pakistan Wimax network. The company, he added, plans to expand the coverage beyond 22 cities. “We see Wimax as one of the many access technologies that can be used in Pakistan. In rural sectors, in particular, we will provide connectivity using a combination of Wimax and satellite technology,” Miah remarked.
Via [itp.net]
Continue reading ‘WiMAX Services To Launch In Uganda Soon’
Lexmark printers are going wireless. The company, along with Ipsos, carried out a study showing that half of 9,000 respondents in 18 countries consider wireless networking as the biggest time-saving technology, beating broadband, faster computers and smart cards. The conclusion led Lexmark vice president Najib Bahous to state that “wireless is the technology wave of the future.”
Bahous hopes the company’s new products will pave the way for increased uptake of wireless printers. “Because of the high price of existing wireless printers and the complexity of use, consumers have been slow to adopt wireless printing,” he said. By the end of June, Lexmark will start selling printers with wireless capabilities for as little as $80, such as the Z1420 colour printer without scanner and X3550 all-in-one with an optional wireless feature. With corporations still relying on wired LANs, Lexmark’s printers are intended for the consumer and small enterprise markets.
Via [techworld.com]
Continue reading ‘Lexmark Loads Printers With WiFi’
A new study by In-Stat shows that more Americans prefer WiMax over 3G and Wi-Fi. Of the 1,200 surveyed, 50 percent affirmed they are willing to leave their current broadband provider for another if the latter can offer a wireless broadband package. In addition, many lose their interest in 3G/cellular due to the price of the service.
Vendors are taking note of this trend. At the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Beijing, China, the chipmaker provided details of its plans for its Centrino products. This May, it is due to ship the Santa Rosa chipset a package containing a Core 2 Duo processor, the Mobile Intel 965 Express chips, Intel Next-Gen Wireless N, Gigabit Ethernet and Turbo Memory. But this chipset will be replaced by “Penryn” and later by “Montevina” in 2008.
Phone manufacturers are also developing products supporting WiMax. Nokia, Samsung and Motorola are supplying the equipment and handsets for the mobile WiMax service that Sprint Nextel plans to roll out in the U.S. next year.
Via [wi-fiplanet.com]
Continue reading ‘WiMax In Your Pocket’
A metro-scale WiFi is the talk of the town and the dream of the future. Currently meshes are the answer to large scale WiFi networks but meshes may not be able to provide enough capacity for multiple classes of users and multiple applications on the same infrastructure. To combat this problem the mesh vendors are adding additional radios to their system. This could be the solution to several problems with mesh technology and may lead WiFi into an entirely new direction.
Via [computerworld.com]
Continue reading ‘Making Metro-scale Wi-Fi Meshes Fly’
Vonage has publicly admitted that it may be on the brink of bankruptcy. They blame the cost of fighting several patent lawsuits for their financial troubles as they report their shares have dropped another 6 percent. Since Vonage went public last May at $17 per share they have lost over 80 percent of their value and currently rest at just over $3 a share. In March the a jury ruled that Vonage infringed on three of Verizon’s VoIP patents and ordered them to pay more than $58 million in damages plus an additional 5.5 percent on future sales.
Via [msnbc.msn.com]
Continue reading ‘Vonage Shares Plunge On Bankruptcy Fears’
Actually we haven’t, and at this rate we won’t be ‘Web 2.0’ until 2014.
Anyways, as you might have noticed NetStumbler.com has undergone some more changes.
There are several new features that we are very pleased to bring you. Here are some highlights:
Comments!
Live Search
Live Archive Page
Category Browsing
Tags
Easy Bookmarking (Add to Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, etc.)
Please feel free to let us know what you think.
Thanks for your support over the last six years.
-NetStumbler.com Staff
Continue reading ‘NetStumbler Goes Web 2.0? Say It Ain’t So!’
Going To Town With WiFi
A new WiFi alternative may be on the horizon. Local governments are looking at companies that can provide wireless throughout their entire city or county with the use of wireless transmitters in the public right away. Some customers will be able to use their existing wireless receivers but people who are more than 100 feet from the transmitters will need to purchase a special receiver. The cost per user for this service is similar to DSL and dial up but the service is significantly faster, offering downloads and uploads of 1 million bits per second.
Via [washingtonpost.com]
Continue reading ‘Going To Town With WiFi’