Quote from the article at Tom's Hardware: "As with almost everything else
in the world today, it is obvious that quality costs money, but over the long
haul, if you can continue to recycle your case every time that you build a new
system you will not only help the environment, but have a case that is more
like an old familiar friend that you have come to count on."
Not only is this poor writing (because of the pontificating about quality),
but it's wrong. You should keep your old computer. It probably represents many
hours of tweaking. You may need it if you have problems with your new
computer. Quite possibly you will need a new power supply because of new power
requirements, as with the Pentium IV. Probably you are upgrading almost all
your components, so you will only pay a little extra to keep your old
computer.
Here is another quote from the article: "If cost were the overriding
factor, we would most likely purchase the Antec 1080, but would have rather
purchased the Direction 201S, which is what we ultimately would have rather
purchased to begin with."
A lot of writing on Tom's Hardware is just filler. It is an attempt to take up
as many pages as possible, so you will see as many ads as possible. Someone
should write a Perl script to process Tom's pages into something sensible.
We need comparisons of features. It is enormously laborious to do the
comparisons ourselves. So, we accept the poor quality of Tom's Hardware.
I've considered cases from 40 manufacturers, and I've never seen a good case.
All cases I've seen have a problem with fit. Antec cases don't have fan
filters, so in a few months your components are covered with heat insulating
dust. The Antec drive mounting system is poor. Their replacement power
supplies are expensive, and some of them don't have switches on the power
supply to turn off the power in case nothing else is responding. (This is a
hassle when you are putting a new computer together, and you have a component
installation problem.)
Another manufacturer I considered has a good fan filter, but their power
supplies go bad after about two years.
It's not a crack pipe. He's deliberately trolling. Anyone who is smart enough to know that capacitors have electrolytic is smart enough to know that the quantity is not an issue.
The people who say that heavier power supplies are better are trolling, also. To get a sure impression of quality, it is necessary to examine the components inside, and know what you are seeing.
If people begin judging power supplies by weight, manufacturers will just use thicker metal in the power supply cases.
About 10 years ago I found that all the local distributors were selling pirated copies of MS-DOS. All of the copies of "MS-DOS" had small, or large, printing irregularities. The Microsoft legal department verified that they were pirated. (In those days it was possible to call the Microsoft legal department and talk with someone.) These were not swap meets; these were computer parts distributors, the largest in the area.
The large Taiwanese DOS pirates ran the legitimate alternatives to DOS out of business. Microsoft seemed to be allowing that.
Effectively, the Microsoft anti-trust case is actually a smokescreen to hide the inaction of the U.S. government. The issues in that case are one-twentieth of the real issues of anti-competitive behavior.
My company only supplies business customers. When friends need computers, I take them to a regular dealer. I discovered that it is possible to buy a pirated copy of MS Office for $50.
It would be VERY easy for Microsoft to find all the pirates. (I have no trouble finding them, and I'm not looking.) The fact that they don't is the reason that there is no other word processor. Lotus WordPro is dead. Word Perfect is experiencing very slow sales. Other companies can compete at $500; they cannot compete when the $500 product is also sold at $50.
Offtopic, I know, but sometimes being offtopic is justified.
Responding to the sig in the above post: "begin happy.exe See Microsoft KB Article Q265230 for more info." (Note that two spaces are required after the word "begin".)
Once I sent someone at Microsoft an email message that had a period as the first character in the body. This has a special meaning to some email servers, apparently, because Microsoft sent me hundreds of identical email messages in response. I had to call my ISP to get it stopped.
On Topic: In a way, this is on topic, because my experience is that Open Source software is less quirky and weird than Microsoft software. So that is another reason to use Star Office and Red Hat or Mandrake.
Another on-topic comment: It looks like Rekall with PostgreSQL would solve any word processing database needs.
I wrote a (free) book that collects links from the world's most respected news sources to show corruption of the U.S. government by the secret agencies of the U.S. government: What should be the response to violence?
Subject: What are the limits of web site visitor tracking?
There is a very interesting story in this, but the Slashdot editors didn't think so.
RedSheriff tracks visits
to web sites, and claims to be "the world's largest interactive media business
intelligence specialist". RedSheriff claims "incomparable accuracy" using
"superior patented technology" that "records user activity at the source,
giving clients unprecedented access to data that accurately describes user
behaviors". This raises a question: How much can they know about you?
To investigate RedSheriff claims, I visited the web sites of two of
RedSheriff's clients, Telstra and
Virgin Direct's Virgin Money.
(I prepared by turning off JavaScript and Java in Opera's
File/Preferences/Multimedia menu, and selecting "Throw away new cookies on
exit" in Opera's Privacy Preferences.)
I went to the Telstra home page and
downloaded the HTML source. (Wow, the Telstra home page is ugly.) In the
source I found mention of a RedSheriff JavaScript file,
http://telstra.imrworldwide.com/a1.js. I downloaded that. (Save the effort
of re-configuring your browser by just right-clicking on the link and
selecting "Save target as".) Virgin Money's site has a different RedSheriff
Javascript file, http://server-uk.imrworldwide.com/a3.js. Do a search for "Red Sheriff",
with a space.
Then I downloaded a RedSheriff Java program that I found mentioned in the
Telstra and Virgin Money home page sources,
http://server-au.imrworldwide.com/Measure.class. Embedded within this
binary is RedSheriff's privacy policy web page address:
http://www.redsheriff.com/privacy.htm. ("RedSheriff Cares about Your
Privacy", it says, humorously trying to have it both ways in the same web
site.)
Basically it seems that RedSheriff is carrying visitor tracking to the
limits, including tracking unsuspecting novices who may foolishly but
voluntarily give them personal information. Looking at the code, I don't see
any attempt to go beyond the narrow boundaries of what the JavaScript and Java
languages allow. However, I'm not sure I see everything the code is doing. Can
someone help with this? What are the limits?
Slashdot had a story about RedSheriff, Sun
Java Runtime Uploads Usage Data to RedSheriff? Judging from the comments,
there is some doubt about who is RedSheriff's client in that situation. The
story submitter defended
his information, and no one seems to have done a verifying test. (It would
be easy to hide encrypted references to RedSheriff sites within binary. It
would be easy include something in the binary that was not in the freely
distributed source.) Note that the first part of one of the RedSheriff
Javascript URLs above contains the name of the client, Telstra.
I turned off JavaScript and Java in Opera's File/Preferences/Multimedia
menu. I selected "Throw away new cookies on exit" in Opera's Privacy
Preferences.
Then I went to the Telstra home page
and downloaded the source. (Wow, The Telstra home page is ugly.)
In the source I found mention of a RedSheriff JavaScript file,
http://telstra.imrworldwide.com/a1.js. I downloaded that. (You can
download the file by just right-clicking on the link and selecting "Save
target as".)
Basically it seems that RedSheriff is carrying visitor tracking to the limits,
including tracking unsuspecting novices who may give them personal
information.
Looking at the code, I don't see any attempt to go beyond the boundaries of
what the JavaScript and Java languages allow. However, I'm not knowledgeable
enough to see everything the code is doing. Can someone help with this?
Many student users don't "learn Linux". They just write reports and term papers. Open Office is fine for this, and less quirky than Microsoft Word.
One problem with Microsoft software is that users dink around with the OS instead of doing their school work. In that case, it helps that Linux is less well known.
The explanation needs to be longer. They are only running part of their services using Linux, only the services listed. There are still file servers at other locations. Services not listed still use other software, also.
I called Eric Harrison and got the correct information. I was rushing to write my first post to the story (I should have been working for a customer.) and I made two mistakes. The correct statistic is that the administration time was cut in half. Also, they replaced other Unix software as well as Microsoft software.
Note that the people who help users are in a separate facility, and are not counted. The statistic is only for admin of their computers. Programming and other functions are not included.
Eric Harrison and Paul Nelson did the work. They are very friendly. Contact them for a better explanation. Obviously, I can't post their e-mail addresses here.
Another error: The word "insure" should have been "ensure".
The story is even better than it appears. Check out The K-12 Linux Project, also in Portland,
Oregon. (Moderators: Please don't mod down people who mention this project in
other contexts. Mod them up.)
Linux Terminal software is used with diskless workstations to create a 5
workstation network for under $1,000.
Here is a quote: "All
applications run on the terminal server. The workstations are "thin." They
have no software or hard drives. Thin clients are perfect for schools because
they are easy to install and require little maintenance. They are reliable and
immune to malicious tampering and viruses".
It's all set up and ready to go. Just download the software and follow the
instructions.
"The Multnomah Education
Service District [Portland, Oregon, again] has moved most of it's core
network services to Linux. Linux powers DNS, DHCP, mail relays, proxy servers,
web filters, and directory services for the 45,000 administrators, teachers,
and students within our agency and the school districts we support . For our
agency and a couple of our districts, Linux powers the web, mail, FTP, and
file servers."
I was told that it took 4 full-time people to maintain the MESD system when it
was using Microsoft software. Now it takes 1 person half time.
Government administrators should note that it is their duty to insure that all
government work be done on completely open systems. The citizens and taxpayers
of a democracy must have full access to all documents, even 40 or a hundred
years from now. There is NO room in a democracy for proprietary, hidden ways of doing things.
The bouncing paperclip speaks very loudly, even when you have the sound turned off. It is Microsoft saying that we are stupid and will be happy to be distracted by cute animations. It is Microsoft saying, ha ha, we can abuse you anytime we want.
But we aren't weak and stupid, and enough of us complained that Microsoft made a way of turning off the paperclip.
Actually, there is no one called Allchin at Microsoft. Allchin is a
descriptive term for All Chin, Jabba the Hutt.
Even though he also works for George Lucas, All Chin has a long history of
eating cute, squeaky animals for Microsoft, too. For example, in the
December 12, 1994 edition of Computer Reseller News, page 269, column 1,
fourth paragraph, he said that a software emulation patch for the Pentium
floating point processor bug would not affect performance greatly. This was
true, as long as customers didn't use it. If the program they were running
used that part of the floating point processor, however, the processing would
be far slower.
Now he's telling us that war is a good reason for us to let Microsoft do
what it wants to do anyway. To Microsoft, we are all cute, squeaky animals.
Someone wrote the following e-mail message to me. I decided to remove his name and company, but post the messages, so that everyone could benefit.
______________________
G.T. wrote:
Just read your slahsdot posting on CAT5 cables. I am at the moment
constructing an ethernet to fiber converter for long haul applications.
I have been looking at various application notes from different ethernet
chip companies, and I have noticed that some (but not all) designers does
just what you writes: they connect the unused ethernet pairs via a
resistor to ground, and after reading your post I finally understood
why....
Soooo, where did you learn this? I have read (or browsed trough) the
IEEE ethernet standards, and have not seen this anywhere. I believe
that there are other tricks like this that I really should know. Do
you know of any good resources for ethernet from a hardware point of
view ?
Best regards
G.T.
____________________________________
G.,
I am happy to help. The attached information is very difficult to find on the internet. That's why I carefully saved it to PDF files. If you need more information, let me know.
My information about the likely causes of problems with noise comes from having been an electronics circuit design engineer. You would not use a resistor to ground the unused Ethernet pairs, that would defeat the purpose a little bit. You would ground them directly. You can ground two wires, one from each pair, at one end and the other two at the other end. You should not ground any wire at both ends, because there may be a voltage difference between the two grounds.
My experience with 100 BaseT Ethernet is that it is generally problem-free. That's what led me to suspect a problem with grounding. Something is overcoming the common mode noise rejection of the Ethernet receiver, I guessed. That is most likely to be a loose ground. For example, maybe the computer in the Slashdot example is not grounded at all. It could be that the outlet to which it is plugged has a bad ground connector. I would suspect something simple like that.
Often with ground problems, people have symptoms which cause them to look in the wrong place. Before I was a design engineer, I was a repair technician. I repaired aircraft automatic flight control systems. One day an aircraft came in with 4 very serious malfunctions. Partly lucky and partly smart, I said, hey, wait a minute. I don't believe 4 malfunctions happened in one flight. I began to look for one thing that could cause all 4 malfunctions. The only thing they had in common was the ground. I told the crew chief to look for a bad ground. They found that someone installing some equipment had not remembered to re-attach the ground to the entire bay of equipment.
Again, it seems reasonable to repeat that Ethernet and 100 BaseT are very well-designed, robust technologies. Anyone who has problems should suspect something simple. Shielding of the Cat-5 and grounding of the unused pairs is only necessary when the noise is extreme, such as when doing arc welding 1 foot away.
I accept that he has a trojan. I accept that Sun may not be the source of the trojan.
The principles stand, however. The principles do apply to all the big companies that actually have abused our trust this month, such as Microsoft (with Hotmail) and last month, such as Yahoo (with Yahoo mail).
Also, I note that no one who has commented has actually run the same test. I presume you are only guessing.
I used the latest version of Quicken that came with TurboTax. I was amazed at how undeveloped the software was. There were numerous ways that it could have been improved. Maybe the company is preserving some shortcomings so that it can make money on later upgrades.
Plus, the company believes that you are a fair target for numerous money-making schemes.
That's why I like open source software. It's not adversarial. I don't want to play games with stupid people who believe that I am stupider than they are.
If the story is true: It wouldn't take an intelligent person to encrypt or obfuscate the information in such a way that a string search would not find anything.
Yes, but how is the noise signal getting into the computer? Generally, there is some problem with the ground. The noise from outside wags the entire computer around because of the bad ground.
If there is a bad ground, the noise on the ground side can overwhelm the common-mode capability of the differential pair.
When I discover that a person or a company has been sneaky, their reputation with me falls to zero. When I know someone has done one thing that is sneaky, it is very difficult or impossible to know if they are doing other things that are sneaky. It is difficult to put upper or lower bounds on their abusiveness. So, I end the relationship, or limit it as much as possible.
Is Sun's sneakiness worth the enormous negative publicity of being featured as a sneak on Slashdot? It's difficult to imagine that it could be.
Is Sun having financial problems, so that the company needs to scrape for nickels and dimes?
Exactly true. Shielded Cat-5 is more expensive. It is more difficult to find a
supplier. And, in this case, shielding would almost certainly not help. The
noise is definitely not coming from some electromagnetic connection with one
wire inside one of the twisted pairs.
The problem is probably a ground loop; probably the noise is being conducted
along the ground wires. More directly grounding the components to each other
may help.
Also, it seems to me that Wake-on-LAN is a technology that is usually not
implemented well. I've seen cases where it was a selling point, but caused
problems.
One thing that helps stop Cat-5 noise is grounding the unused four wires.
There are 8 wires in Cat-5, and only four are normally used. (It is possible
to buy adapters that allow one Cat-5 to carry Ethernet for two computers, but
that is not normally done.) There is electrical capacitance between one Cat-5
pair and the others. When you ground the unused two pairs, you are grounding
most of the common-mode noise that would otherwise be experienced on the two
pairs that are used. In a low-noise environment like the one mentioned,
grounding the unused wires would be the equivalent of having shielded Cat-5.
This is something you can try without cost if the Ethernet signal travels
through an accessible wall or other connector.
However, as I said, the problem sounds to me like noise conducted along the
ground wires, a "ground loop".
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for your considerate language.
Your suggestion does not work in a commercial environment. Customers must be able to remove and clean the filter from outside the case.
Also, good filtering requires consideration of all the airflow, not just one fan.
Quote from the article at Tom's Hardware: "As with almost everything else in the world today, it is obvious that quality costs money, but over the long haul, if you can continue to recycle your case every time that you build a new system you will not only help the environment, but have a case that is more like an old familiar friend that you have come to count on."
Not only is this poor writing (because of the pontificating about quality), but it's wrong. You should keep your old computer. It probably represents many hours of tweaking. You may need it if you have problems with your new computer. Quite possibly you will need a new power supply because of new power requirements, as with the Pentium IV. Probably you are upgrading almost all your components, so you will only pay a little extra to keep your old computer.
Here is another quote from the article: "If cost were the overriding factor, we would most likely purchase the Antec 1080, but would have rather purchased the Direction 201S, which is what we ultimately would have rather purchased to begin with."
A lot of writing on Tom's Hardware is just filler. It is an attempt to take up as many pages as possible, so you will see as many ads as possible. Someone should write a Perl script to process Tom's pages into something sensible.
We need comparisons of features. It is enormously laborious to do the comparisons ourselves. So, we accept the poor quality of Tom's Hardware.
I've considered cases from 40 manufacturers, and I've never seen a good case. All cases I've seen have a problem with fit. Antec cases don't have fan filters, so in a few months your components are covered with heat insulating dust. The Antec drive mounting system is poor. Their replacement power supplies are expensive, and some of them don't have switches on the power supply to turn off the power in case nothing else is responding. (This is a hassle when you are putting a new computer together, and you have a component installation problem.)
Another manufacturer I considered has a good fan filter, but their power supplies go bad after about two years.
It's not a crack pipe. He's deliberately trolling. Anyone who is smart enough to know that capacitors have electrolytic is smart enough to know that the quantity is not an issue.
The people who say that heavier power supplies are better are trolling, also. To get a sure impression of quality, it is necessary to examine the components inside, and know what you are seeing.
If people begin judging power supplies by weight, manufacturers will just use thicker metal in the power supply cases.
About 10 years ago I found that all the local distributors were selling pirated copies of MS-DOS. All of the copies of "MS-DOS" had small, or large, printing irregularities. The Microsoft legal department verified that they were pirated. (In those days it was possible to call the Microsoft legal department and talk with someone.) These were not swap meets; these were computer parts distributors, the largest in the area.
The large Taiwanese DOS pirates ran the legitimate alternatives to DOS out of business. Microsoft seemed to be allowing that.
Effectively, the Microsoft anti-trust case is actually a smokescreen to hide the inaction of the U.S. government. The issues in that case are one-twentieth of the real issues of anti-competitive behavior.
Exactly. And Open Office seems to be the best word processor for both features and file interchange with MS Turd^H^H^H^HWord.
My company only supplies business customers. When friends need computers, I take them to a regular dealer. I discovered that it is possible to buy a pirated copy of MS Office for $50.
It would be VERY easy for Microsoft to find all the pirates. (I have no trouble finding them, and I'm not looking.) The fact that they don't is the reason that there is no other word processor. Lotus WordPro is dead. Word Perfect is experiencing very slow sales. Other companies can compete at $500; they cannot compete when the $500 product is also sold at $50.
Well said!
When libraries became common, the sales of books almost stopped. Why would anyone buy a book when they could read a library copy free?
Offtopic, I know, but sometimes being offtopic is justified.
Responding to the sig in the above post: "begin happy.exe See Microsoft KB Article Q265230 for more info." (Note that two spaces are required after the word "begin".)
Once I sent someone at Microsoft an email message that had a period as the first character in the body. This has a special meaning to some email servers, apparently, because Microsoft sent me hundreds of identical email messages in response. I had to call my ISP to get it stopped.
On Topic: In a way, this is on topic, because my experience is that Open Source software is less quirky and weird than Microsoft software. So that is another reason to use Star Office and Red Hat or Mandrake.
Another on-topic comment: It looks like Rekall with PostgreSQL would solve any word processing database needs.
Great post!
The Supreme Court is now part of the corruption of the U.S. government. See Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 by Alan M. Dershowitz and The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President by Vincent Bugliosi, Molly Ivins (Foreword), Gerry Spence
I wrote a (free) book that collects links from the world's most respected news sources to show corruption of the U.S. government by the secret agencies of the U.S. government: What should be the response to violence?
Subject: What are the limits of web site visitor tracking?
There is a very interesting story in this, but the Slashdot editors didn't think so.
RedSheriff tracks visits to web sites, and claims to be "the world's largest interactive media business intelligence specialist". RedSheriff claims "incomparable accuracy" using "superior patented technology" that "records user activity at the source, giving clients unprecedented access to data that accurately describes user behaviors". This raises a question: How much can they know about you?
To investigate RedSheriff claims, I visited the web sites of two of RedSheriff's clients, Telstra and Virgin Direct's Virgin Money.
(I prepared by turning off JavaScript and Java in Opera's File/Preferences/Multimedia menu, and selecting "Throw away new cookies on exit" in Opera's Privacy Preferences.)
I went to the Telstra home page and downloaded the HTML source. (Wow, the Telstra home page is ugly.) In the source I found mention of a RedSheriff JavaScript file, http://telstra.imrworldwide.com/a1.js. I downloaded that. (Save the effort of re-configuring your browser by just right-clicking on the link and selecting "Save target as".) Virgin Money's site has a different RedSheriff Javascript file, http://server-uk.imrworldwide.com/a3.js. Do a search for "Red Sheriff", with a space.
Then I downloaded a RedSheriff Java program that I found mentioned in the Telstra and Virgin Money home page sources, http://server-au.imrworldwide.com/Measure.class. Embedded within this binary is RedSheriff's privacy policy web page address: http://www.redsheriff.com/privacy.htm. ("RedSheriff Cares about Your Privacy", it says, humorously trying to have it both ways in the same web site.)
Basically it seems that RedSheriff is carrying visitor tracking to the limits, including tracking unsuspecting novices who may foolishly but voluntarily give them personal information. Looking at the code, I don't see any attempt to go beyond the narrow boundaries of what the JavaScript and Java languages allow. However, I'm not sure I see everything the code is doing. Can someone help with this? What are the limits?
Slashdot had a story about RedSheriff, Sun Java Runtime Uploads Usage Data to RedSheriff? Judging from the comments, there is some doubt about who is RedSheriff's client in that situation. The story submitter defended his information, and no one seems to have done a verifying test. (It would be easy to hide encrypted references to RedSheriff sites within binary. It would be easy include something in the binary that was not in the freely distributed source.) Note that the first part of one of the RedSheriff Javascript URLs above contains the name of the client, Telstra.
I wrote a (free) book about how corruption in U.S. government agencies contributes to violence: What should be the Response to Violence?
Note that the FBI is now a world-wide police agency, operating in numerous countries.
I did as you said.
I turned off JavaScript and Java in Opera's File/Preferences/Multimedia menu. I selected "Throw away new cookies on exit" in Opera's Privacy Preferences.
Then I went to the Telstra home page and downloaded the source. (Wow, The Telstra home page is ugly.)
In the source I found mention of a RedSheriff JavaScript file, http://telstra.imrworldwide.com/a1.js. I downloaded that. (You can download the file by just right-clicking on the link and selecting "Save target as".)
Then I downloaded another RedSheriff Java program that I found mentioned in the Telstra home page source, http://server-au.imrworldwide.com/Measure.class.
Embedded within this binary is RedSheriff's Privacy policy web page address: http://www.redsheriff.com/privacy.htm.
Basically it seems that RedSheriff is carrying visitor tracking to the limits, including tracking unsuspecting novices who may give them personal information.
Looking at the code, I don't see any attempt to go beyond the boundaries of what the JavaScript and Java languages allow. However, I'm not knowledgeable enough to see everything the code is doing. Can someone help with this?
Many student users don't "learn Linux". They just write reports and term papers. Open Office is fine for this, and less quirky than Microsoft Word.
One problem with Microsoft software is that users dink around with the OS instead of doing their school work. In that case, it helps that Linux is less well known.
See my earlier post, 5 workstations and a server, less than $1,000. (#3561613) for more explanation.
The explanation needs to be longer. They are only running part of their services using Linux, only the services listed. There are still file servers at other locations. Services not listed still use other software, also.
I called Eric Harrison and got the correct information. I was rushing to write my first post to the story (I should have been working for a customer.) and I made two mistakes. The correct statistic is that the administration time was cut in half. Also, they replaced other Unix software as well as Microsoft software.
Note that the people who help users are in a separate facility, and are not counted. The statistic is only for admin of their computers. Programming and other functions are not included.
Eric Harrison and Paul Nelson did the work. They are very friendly. Contact them for a better explanation. Obviously, I can't post their e-mail addresses here.
Another error: The word "insure" should have been "ensure".
The story is even better than it appears. Check out The K-12 Linux Project, also in Portland, Oregon. (Moderators: Please don't mod down people who mention this project in other contexts. Mod them up.)
Linux Terminal software is used with diskless workstations to create a 5 workstation network for under $1,000.
Here is a quote: "All applications run on the terminal server. The workstations are "thin." They have no software or hard drives. Thin clients are perfect for schools because they are easy to install and require little maintenance. They are reliable and immune to malicious tampering and viruses".
Intel is giving free processors to schools.
It's all set up and ready to go. Just download the software and follow the instructions.
"The Multnomah Education Service District [Portland, Oregon, again] has moved most of it's core network services to Linux. Linux powers DNS, DHCP, mail relays, proxy servers, web filters, and directory services for the 45,000 administrators, teachers, and students within our agency and the school districts we support . For our agency and a couple of our districts, Linux powers the web, mail, FTP, and file servers."
I was told that it took 4 full-time people to maintain the MESD system when it was using Microsoft software. Now it takes 1 person half time.
Government administrators should note that it is their duty to insure that all government work be done on completely open systems. The citizens and taxpayers of a democracy must have full access to all documents, even 40 or a hundred years from now. There is NO room in a democracy for proprietary, hidden ways of doing things.
The bouncing paperclip speaks very loudly, even when you have the sound turned off. It is Microsoft saying that we are stupid and will be happy to be distracted by cute animations. It is Microsoft saying, ha ha, we can abuse you anytime we want.
But we aren't weak and stupid, and enough of us complained that Microsoft made a way of turning off the paperclip.
Actually, there is no one called Allchin at Microsoft. Allchin is a descriptive term for All Chin, Jabba the Hutt.
Even though he also works for George Lucas, All Chin has a long history of eating cute, squeaky animals for Microsoft, too. For example, in the December 12, 1994 edition of Computer Reseller News, page 269, column 1, fourth paragraph, he said that a software emulation patch for the Pentium floating point processor bug would not affect performance greatly. This was true, as long as customers didn't use it. If the program they were running used that part of the floating point processor, however, the processing would be far slower.
Now he's telling us that war is a good reason for us to let Microsoft do what it wants to do anyway. To Microsoft, we are all cute, squeaky animals.
Someone wrote the following e-mail message to me. I decided to remove his name and company, but post the messages, so that everyone could benefit.
______________________
G.T. wrote:
Just read your slahsdot posting on CAT5 cables. I am at the moment constructing an ethernet to fiber converter for long haul applications.
I have been looking at various application notes from different ethernet chip companies, and I have noticed that some (but not all) designers does just what you writes: they connect the unused ethernet pairs via a resistor to ground, and after reading your post I finally understood why
Soooo, where did you learn this? I have read (or browsed trough) the IEEE ethernet standards, and have not seen this anywhere. I believe that there are other tricks like this that I really should know. Do you know of any good resources for ethernet from a hardware point of view ?
Best regards
G.T.
____________________________________
G.,
I am happy to help. The attached information is very difficult to find on the internet. That's why I carefully saved it to PDF files. If you need more information, let me know.
My information about the likely causes of problems with noise comes from having been an electronics circuit design engineer. You would not use a resistor to ground the unused Ethernet pairs, that would defeat the purpose a little bit. You would ground them directly. You can ground two wires, one from each pair, at one end and the other two at the other end. You should not ground any wire at both ends, because there may be a voltage difference between the two grounds.
My experience with 100 BaseT Ethernet is that it is generally problem-free. That's what led me to suspect a problem with grounding. Something is overcoming the common mode noise rejection of the Ethernet receiver, I guessed. That is most likely to be a loose ground. For example, maybe the computer in the Slashdot example is not grounded at all. It could be that the outlet to which it is plugged has a bad ground connector. I would suspect something simple like that.
Often with ground problems, people have symptoms which cause them to look in the wrong place. Before I was a design engineer, I was a repair technician. I repaired aircraft automatic flight control systems. One day an aircraft came in with 4 very serious malfunctions. Partly lucky and partly smart, I said, hey, wait a minute. I don't believe 4 malfunctions happened in one flight. I began to look for one thing that could cause all 4 malfunctions. The only thing they had in common was the ground. I told the crew chief to look for a bad ground. They found that someone installing some equipment had not remembered to re-attach the ground to the entire bay of equipment.
Again, it seems reasonable to repeat that Ethernet and 100 BaseT are very well-designed, robust technologies. Anyone who has problems should suspect something simple. Shielding of the Cat-5 and grounding of the unused pairs is only necessary when the noise is extreme, such as when doing arc welding 1 foot away.
Regards,
Michael Jennings
I accept that he has a trojan. I accept that Sun may not be the source of the trojan.
The principles stand, however. The principles do apply to all the big companies that actually have abused our trust this month, such as Microsoft (with Hotmail) and last month, such as Yahoo (with Yahoo mail).
Also, I note that no one who has commented has actually run the same test. I presume you are only guessing.
I used the latest version of Quicken that came with TurboTax. I was amazed at how undeveloped the software was. There were numerous ways that it could have been improved. Maybe the company is preserving some shortcomings so that it can make money on later upgrades.
Plus, the company believes that you are a fair target for numerous money-making schemes.
That's why I like open source software. It's not adversarial. I don't want to play games with stupid people who believe that I am stupider than they are.
If the story is true: It wouldn't take an intelligent person to encrypt or obfuscate the information in such a way that a string search would not find anything.
Yes, but how is the noise signal getting into the computer? Generally, there is some problem with the ground. The noise from outside wags the entire computer around because of the bad ground.
If there is a bad ground, the noise on the ground side can overwhelm the common-mode capability of the differential pair.
When I discover that a person or a company has been sneaky, their reputation with me falls to zero. When I know someone has done one thing that is sneaky, it is very difficult or impossible to know if they are doing other things that are sneaky. It is difficult to put upper or lower bounds on their abusiveness. So, I end the relationship, or limit it as much as possible.
Is Sun's sneakiness worth the enormous negative publicity of being featured as a sneak on Slashdot? It's difficult to imagine that it could be.
Is Sun having financial problems, so that the company needs to scrape for nickels and dimes?
Good idea. Use WinHex Binary Editor to edit the file. It has a search facility.
Exactly true. Shielded Cat-5 is more expensive. It is more difficult to find a supplier. And, in this case, shielding would almost certainly not help. The noise is definitely not coming from some electromagnetic connection with one wire inside one of the twisted pairs.
The problem is probably a ground loop; probably the noise is being conducted along the ground wires. More directly grounding the components to each other may help.
Also, it seems to me that Wake-on-LAN is a technology that is usually not implemented well. I've seen cases where it was a selling point, but caused problems.
One thing that helps stop Cat-5 noise is grounding the unused four wires. There are 8 wires in Cat-5, and only four are normally used. (It is possible to buy adapters that allow one Cat-5 to carry Ethernet for two computers, but that is not normally done.) There is electrical capacitance between one Cat-5 pair and the others. When you ground the unused two pairs, you are grounding most of the common-mode noise that would otherwise be experienced on the two pairs that are used. In a low-noise environment like the one mentioned, grounding the unused wires would be the equivalent of having shielded Cat-5. This is something you can try without cost if the Ethernet signal travels through an accessible wall or other connector.
However, as I said, the problem sounds to me like noise conducted along the ground wires, a "ground loop".