While the ability to do this is a plus for Phishers, it is also a plus for those of us soon to be living behind Conroy's[1] Great Firewall of Oz. I'd be betting that this would get straight past their filters. With this feature, just as long as they don't block DNS lookups of "banned" sites, the firewall will be a minor annoyance.
[1] Conroy - Senator Stephen Conroy -- Australian Minister for Communications and the Digital Economy -- He's in charge of building a fiber to the node network to give all of us here in Australia high speed connectivity, that won't be worth much because of the bottleneck imposed by the filter he wants to put in to keep us pure. Was made an Honorary Member of the Australian Computer Society which says more about them than him.
In a former life, I was a site hardware support engineer
for a petroleum company. They had laptops that were used
on Oil Drilling Platforms. (Steel, everything in sight
earthed really well.)
I was handed a complaint that someone was shocked on one
of these PCs. And, on testing, there was a potential of
75-150 volts between some of the exposed screws and earth.
BUT, and this is the important point, the current was in
the milli- to micro- ampere range. So, it meant that the
electricity was perceptible, but not dangerous since the
current involved was below the accepted threshold for danger
to humans.
On the other hand, a spark, any spark, on an oil rig is not
a good thing. The final result was that the PCs continued
to be used in the office, but were banned from the oil rigs.
The above comments with respect to the current may not be
the same as the situation reported in the original article,
but I'd be curious to know what the measured current actually
is.
When I measured current on the machines I tested, I
started with the meter in it's highest possible current
setting and gradually worked downwards to more sensitive scales
to make sure I didn't let the "smoke" out of the meter.
But if you're not sure about the method, don't try this
at home kids.;-)
I seem to remember that O/S2 Warp did a really good job of Windows 3.0 compatibility. Windows apps ran quicker and with greater stability. (provided you had enough RAM to put each in a separate VM). The same was true for Win 3.1. But 95 had a new and different API that meant that 95 apps didn't run. (There were code access issues for IBM and a bunch of other stuff but the big point is that changes to the API seemed to be for reasons other than technical.)
M$ has had a l-o-n-g history of changing APIs to force the competition to either chase the "API du jour" or lose compatibility.
I believe that this needs to be considered in this or any case where compatibility with M$ is an issue.
There are some possibly interesting points in the article, but it is definitely a bit short on details of the testing. Given the suggestion that ozone production occurred in a cage that had earthed(aka grounded) water in the bottom, I'd be very interested in seeing some carefully tested samples of the ozone level around power lines under a number of different conditions, including over water(both salt and fresh).
Of course, there would need to be a careful check to make sure that the problem was due to the power line and not some other extraneous factor such as an expressway, industry or something similar.
Re the comments about kV versus power -- the question is whether the problem is an electrostatic field or an electromagnetic field -- the electrostatic would depend on voltage where the electromagnetic depends on power, IIRC.
My current feeling is that these various studies that are somewhat short on hard science are simply a rationale for the NIMBY argument.
IIRC, there have been some problems with the Linux drivers for Intel networking. Is this a common experience? Are people having problems with the Intel pro 1000 MF network adapters under Linux? And what about drivers for the SmartArray SCSI running on the HP/Compaq boxes? Would I be correct in thinking that at least some of this is proprietary?
I am prepared to believe that an optimised Windows system can be significantly faster than a Linux system, but the difference seems a unreasonably great unless there were some other factors at work here, IMHO.
Also, I would be really interested in knowing the kernel build options that were used for the Linux system and what applications besides Samba were running on the Linux system. For example, if we are assuming that this is a pure file server, then it would be reasonable to be runnning the Linux system in text mode since Linux doesn't require a GUI to operate.
There are a few questions that need answers as far as I can see.
Slashdot Mirror
While the ability to do this is a plus for Phishers, it is also a plus for those of us soon to be living behind Conroy's[1] Great Firewall of Oz. I'd be betting that this would get straight past their filters. With this feature, just as long as they don't block DNS lookups of "banned" sites, the firewall will be a minor annoyance.
[1] Conroy - Senator Stephen Conroy -- Australian Minister for Communications and the Digital Economy -- He's in charge of building a fiber to the node network to give all of us here in Australia high speed connectivity, that won't be worth much because of the bottleneck imposed by the filter he wants to put in to keep us pure. Was made an Honorary Member of the Australian Computer Society which says more about them than him.
In a former life, I was a site hardware support engineer for a petroleum company. They had laptops that were used on Oil Drilling Platforms. (Steel, everything in sight earthed really well.) ;-)
I was handed a complaint that someone was shocked on one of these PCs. And, on testing, there was a potential of 75-150 volts between some of the exposed screws and earth. BUT, and this is the important point, the current was in the milli- to micro- ampere range. So, it meant that the electricity was perceptible, but not dangerous since the current involved was below the accepted threshold for danger to humans.
On the other hand, a spark, any spark, on an oil rig is not a good thing. The final result was that the PCs continued to be used in the office, but were banned from the oil rigs.
The above comments with respect to the current may not be the same as the situation reported in the original article, but I'd be curious to know what the measured current actually is.
When I measured current on the machines I tested, I started with the meter in it's highest possible current setting and gradually worked downwards to more sensitive scales to make sure I didn't let the "smoke" out of the meter. But if you're not sure about the method, don't try this at home kids.
What can MS do to stop mono to .NET compatability?
Interesting question...
I seem to remember that O/S2 Warp did a really good job of Windows 3.0 compatibility. Windows apps ran quicker and with greater stability. (provided you had enough RAM to put each in a separate VM). The same was true for Win 3.1. But 95 had a new and different API that meant that 95 apps didn't run. (There were code access issues for IBM and a bunch of other stuff but the big point is that changes to the API seemed to be for reasons other than technical.)
M$ has had a l-o-n-g history of changing APIs to force the competition to either chase the "API du jour" or lose compatibility.
I believe that this needs to be considered in this or any case where compatibility with M$ is an issue.
There are some possibly interesting points in the article, but it is definitely a bit short on details of the testing. Given the suggestion that ozone production occurred in a cage that had earthed(aka grounded) water in the bottom, I'd be very interested in seeing some carefully tested samples of the ozone level around power lines under a number of different conditions, including over water(both salt and fresh).
Of course, there would need to be a careful check to make sure that the problem was due to the power line and not some other extraneous factor such as an expressway, industry or something similar.
Re the comments about kV versus power -- the question is whether the problem is an electrostatic field or an electromagnetic field -- the electrostatic would depend on voltage where the electromagnetic depends on power, IIRC.
My current feeling is that these various studies that are somewhat short on hard science are simply a rationale for the NIMBY argument.
IIRC, there have been some problems with the Linux
drivers for Intel networking. Is this a common
experience? Are people having problems with the Intel
pro 1000 MF network adapters under Linux? And what
about drivers for the SmartArray SCSI running on the HP/Compaq boxes? Would I be correct in thinking that at
least some of this is proprietary?
I am prepared to believe that an optimised Windows
system can be significantly faster than a Linux system,
but the difference seems a unreasonably great unless there
were some other factors at work here, IMHO.
Also, I would be really interested in knowing the
kernel build options that were used for the Linux
system and what applications besides Samba were running
on the Linux system. For example, if we are assuming
that this is a pure file server, then it would be
reasonable to be runnning the Linux system in text mode
since Linux doesn't require a GUI to operate.
There are a few questions that need answers as far as I
can see.
-Don