Jessta Roll

“SSL has two effects: First, it allows connections to be encrypted so they can’t be snooped. Second, it allows sites to be authenticated so they can’t be impersonated.”

No, they are the same thing. Encryption is useless unless you can gurantee that the public key you are using to encrypt your data is actually the public key of the trusted party you are trying to communicate with. Self signed certificate are worse than no encryption at all because people actually think they are secure.