Will magnets zap your data? Will turning off your PC without shutting down Windows hurt anything? Can hackers really hose your data? Do you really need one of those static wrist straps? PC World answers all of these questions and more. Are there any other myths that you’ve always wondered about? Post them in the comments!
How about the best myth of all..
Microsoft is watching everything you do.
Dispite the fact that newer Os’s have activation, very little spying is actually taking place. The activation is a means to avoid piracy and catolog the system. Windows update also transfers data to the Microsoft website (Product Key, Hardware profile, Patches), and So does Windows Media Player (Update codecs, playing information, and also Version #)
So one the myth scale, it’s about a 4, Microsoft has better things to do, then keep track of your system, and the DivX videos you watch.
I once heard that on a dark night, a *BSD user found… A DEAD OS IN HIS COMPUTER!
I’m sorry *BSD users… I’m making fun of the trolls more than *BSD.
To this day, people believe that if you don’t use a screen saver you’ll get an image ingrained on your monitor. That hasn’t been the case since monochrome monitors went out of style.
I recommend turning it off when not in use though, to save power.
No the best Myth of them all
Microsoft cares about security.
If MS cared about security then why does every MS product have swiss cheese for defences. When MS makes a secure product shivers will run down the spine of geeks everywhere.
Also to counter MS update, If you read their EULA then MS grants themselves the right to enter your machine and make changes. They don’t actually have to do so in order them to have the ability.
While I don’t think that Microsoft is currently examining every piece of data they recieve, I do believe they are storing all data received from their websites (inc Windows Update), product activations for future uses.
Damien
Sorry but even modern monitors can have burn in. I have several examples here at work. Of course it takes about 4 years longer but still can happen.
From the FreeBSD FAQ
:
7.18. Is there anything “odd” that FreeBSD does when compiling the kernel which would cause the memory to make a scratchy sound? When compiling (and for a brief moment after recognizing the floppy drive upon startup, as well), a strange scratchy sound emanates from what appears to be the memory banks.
Yes! You’ll see frequent references to “daemons” in the BSD documentation, and what most people don’t know is that this refers to genuine, non-corporeal entities that now possess your computer. The scratchy sound coming from your memory is actually high-pitched whispering exchanged among the daemons as they best decide how to deal with various system administration tasks.
If the noise gets to you, a good “fdisk /mbr” from DOS will get rid of them, but don’t be surprised if they react adversely and try to stop you. In fact, if at any point during the exercise you hear the satanic voice of Bill Gates coming from the built-in speaker, take off running and don’t ever look back! Freed from the counterbalancing influence of the BSD daemons, the twin demons of DOS and Windows are often able to re-assert total control over your machine to the eternal damnation of your soul. Given a choice, I think I’d prefer to get used to the scratchy noises, myself!
I had a weird problem with a usb zip drive on Windows once. I unplugged it without stopping it and the next time I plugged it in, all the data that was on the disk could not be deleted. I tried it a few more times and it ALWAYS happened.
PCDos is still sold by IBM. I think its about $100 (US currency).
“I once heard that on a dark night, a *BSD user found… A DEAD OS IN HIS COMPUTER!
I’m sorry *BSD users… I’m making fun of the trolls more than *BSD.
”
I was just sleeping (at the time).
To this day, people believe that if you don’t use a screen saver you’ll get an image ingrained on your monitor. That hasn’t been the case since monochrome monitors went out of style.
I recommend turning it off when not in use though, to save power.
No, actaully that is still true. I have a few machines at work that have this problem. The monitors are not more than 3 years old.
Agreed. I ended up with ghost images on a monitor that I was running the Seti@Home client on.
If I remove my flash drive from XP w/out first stopping it, my workstation freezes and requires a restart to get going again because explorer crashes.
I’ve never gotten a message “scolding” me for it. I’ll take that over a reboot anyday.
Under OS X, I got a message scolding me for not “ejecting” my drive first before removing it, but the OS kept on going just fine.
Yeah, they can screw things up if data is being written to the drive when you unplug it. I’ve never had that happen to me. I know people who have lost data before. If you have anything important on the drive then it is probley best stop the device just to be safe.
It is a ridiculous idea that not shutting down your computer properly is without risks. What computer magazine is that which claims running 30 tests is enough to gain certainty in that area?
The reality is, you will AT LEAST loose all data which has not been flushed to disk if you suddenly switch off. It is true that modern filesystem can nearly guarantee that no filesystem corruption will happen on that occasion, on the other hand.
But think about editing configuation files: What happens while just in the middle editing a critical section the computer is switched off? That could mean, e.g., that there are syntax errors in that file. Now when it is a configuration file of some critical system component this could mean that your entire system is rendered unusable.
How about the biggest myth of all..
that BSD is dying.
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/
http://www.openbsd.org/
http://www.freebsd.org/
http://www.netbsd.org/
http://www.opendarwin.org/
I didn’t see the green magic marker and the CD myth.
I have a couple of Dell 21″ trinitron monitors that have the SETI@Home screensaver burned into them (obviously, a static image like your desktop would do the same). Happened in less than 3 years.
Oooops…
To this day, people believe that if you don’t use a screen saver you’ll get an image ingrained on your monitor. That hasn’t been the case since monochrome monitors went out of style.
Last year I went on vacation and forgot my monitor on, with no screensaver, and I got a “ghost” image of the login dialog. Quite strong actually, I had to switch the monitor.
You should try yourself
PPPPP
Anyway this article reminded me a practical joke we used to do with the students of “introduction to computing” at the university, asking them not to shake the floppies too much, since it could “scramble the data”. There was always 1 or 2 falling for it
I don’t know. But I guess if you are really not doing anything on your PC and you turn it off all can be well but try that with 5 or 6 apps open then then have one of them lock up. In Xp if you have a lot of data on your machine it will ack all kinds of funkey!
And defraging does help tons in Windows. Another thing I noticed is that if you use norton system works to defrag it doesn’t work as well as the one in Windows.
Windows has come a LONG way but I think this one is still a big problem. (Not if you just put Windows on a machine use it for a little while then turn it off but if you really use it die hard)
You definately *can* lose USB data on a flash drive if you don’t tell Windows to stop it before you unplug it. I was working for several hours writing a final exam for my database class this spring and saved the file to my flash drive. An hour or more later I returned and unplugged the drive without stopping it. You would figure after that amount of time surely all activety on the drive would be finished. When I went to the school to print it out all the data on the drive was trashed (not just the file I had been working on)!! I am now very careful to stop before I unplug the drive.
“If I remove my flash drive from XP w/out first stopping it, my workstation freezes and requires a restart to get going again because explorer crashes.”
Interesting. I dont have any problems under Windows if I remove without stopping, aside from the message warning me to stop it next time. Havent seen what happens under Mac OS X yet. Linux likes to crash when I remove it. Even removing my mouse will crash my system and require a restart.
>To this day, people believe that if you don’t use a screen saver you’ll get an image ingrained on your monitor. That hasn’t been the case since monochrome monitors went out of style.
They’re definately wrong on this one. You can very much so burn images into your monitor. It may not be so likely to happen these days but I’ve seen it happen in the workplace where applications are sometimes left running for extended periods and there was very visible burn-in.
And while it may be mostly okay to shut off XP without powering down (I still think you’re gambling though) I don’t think that holds for older versions of Windows.
My favorite Myth: If you post that monitors are no longer subject to burned-in images you won’t receive a single contradicting post.
Fact: The site’s database will be plagued with people’s monitor stories.
‘To this day, people believe that if you don’t use a screen saver you’ll get an image ingrained on your monitor. That hasn’t been the case since monochrome monitors went out of style.‘
You really can get an image burned into your screen. To be honest, I’m not sure about LCDs, but I’ve seen modern CRTs with the Windows NT ‘press ctrl-alt-del’ window burned in.
Now, it’s true that you really need to leave the same image up on the screen for months or something. Monitors aren’t as fragile about it as they used to be, but it still happens.
It’s good to see some common myths explained; too many nonsense is often done based on non-existing ‘facts’. But once again, electro-static discharge is described badly:
“To be safe, (..) ground yourself (..)”
Nonsense. Static discharge is a real, important problem, but you can avoid damage just by considering some simple facts:
-Any component, and yourself, will probably have a voltage (potential) difference, at ANY time.
-When you touch, most of that difference will be equaled through a discharge
-How bigger (mass, size) each component (or you!), and voltage difference, the bigger the discharge.
-Any damage depends on the path that is used for that discharge; if sensitive parts are in it, they may be damaged
-Damage often doesn’t kill parts, but degrades them, shortening their lifespan or reliability
To prevent damage, you just have to limit the size of the variables above:
-Limit the size of a system that you touch, by unplugging from power outlets, network, and other equipment first, before touching components inside
-Think of what path a discharge will take, when touched; if you touch some random contact of an IC on a motherboard that’s inside a PC, any discharge could be big (you -> entire PC+monitor eg.) and go through the single IC pin you touch -> BAD, don’t do this
-What you often see on computer fairs: a salesman hands a memory module in plastic bag directly to customer. Not smart! Any discharge between customer & salesman will go through the bag+module, probably some through the memory module. Better: put module on a desk, let customer pick it up. Any discharge will then only be person-module (=small)
-Touch metal case, connector shieldings first; discharge will then be through low-resistance, non-sensitive metal
-When inserting components: grab component, touch grounding point of system, then insert component. Any voltage difference between component and system gets discharged through you (=non-sentive). To remove components, touch ground point first.
When you observe these points carefully, an anti-static wrist strap doesn’t add anything, and you can work safely without one. In general, to more high-tech, smaller structures (IC’s), the more sensitive to static discharge. Any high-integrated IC should be considered very sensitive, things like power-supply components are mostly not bothered by static discharge.
“The government reads everyone’s e-mail.”
While they can’t intercept all email, the existence of the monitoring organisation ECHELON is leaving the realms of the cranks and starting to become accepted fact.
The European Parliament resolution on ECHELON includes the text: “the Temporary Committee concluded that there was no reason to doubt the existence of an interception system of communications on a world level, of which the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand formed part”
http://www3.europarl.eu.int/omk/omnsapir.so/pv2?PRG=DOCPV&APP=PV2&L…
More informative and in depth is their white paper on the subject, but I can’t seem to find that on the net any more.
Linux likes to crash when I remove it. Even removing my mouse will crash my system and require a restart.<p>
That sucks. I have no such problems with my flash drive on Linux. I guess it all just depends on the specific hardware involved.
Magnets zap your data.
Ask my last computer I had in my old car that had an unfortunate run-in with the $2500 sound system in the car.
If you don’t ‘stop’ a USB device before unplugging it from a PC, you’ll screw things up.
A friend of mine did this and it ruined the flash drive, not just the data.
Opting out of spam gets you even more spam.
I have opted out of spam only to get spam from some other company just after.
Terrible things happen if you turn off your PC without shutting down Windows.
I have never broken windows this way, but I have nuked Linux distros more than once doing this. I have not had this problem since I started using ext3 though.
Don’t know if it falls into the same category as these (mostly hardware) stories, but I like the one about the walled up server. “During renovations a server was put in a room which was then closed up. The server continued to run and then when they needed to move it nobody could find it. After following the wire there it was happily serving data. The moral : this computer/os XXX is just that stable”
If heard several people claim it happened to a friend of theirs. Classic urban myth if you ask me.
“It is a ridiculous idea that not shutting down your computer properly is without risks.”
Depends on the OS. You can switch an Amiga off at the power switch at any time you are not actually saving a file to disk. This is very useful if you are teaching an evening class and want to get away promptly.
“The reality is, you will AT LEAST loose all data which has not been flushed to disk if you suddenly switch off. ”
You would only lose work in a program which has not been saved to disk, unless you are using some OS that is so badly designed that it has a write cache as well as a read cache.
Cookies track everything you do on the Internet.
Yes , and Google does not have a cookie on my harddrive that expires in 2028 , and if the cookie gets deleted Google does not link me back to my profile when I access my adwords account .
Another myth : things on the internet are free (email accounts , web-hosting ..etc) .
Spammers can know when you open your email if you allow your email client to download any external links in an html email. The email sender can just include a link to an image with a unique id in the URL to the image. Then they just watch their http server to see when that link is hit. This is called a “web bug” I think. Any good email client allows you to block loading of remote links. Unfortunatly it isn’t always enabled by default in otherwise very good email clients (it wasn’t enabled in mozilla thunderbird when I installed it.) How many spammers actually make use of the data they can glean from web bugs is open to debate I suppose.
This article is purely irresponsible. They offer anecdotal evidence to “prove” that some things are myths. They may not have experienced problems form their limited testing and research but, that does not mean that it won’t or doesn’t happen.
Let’s start with magnets and disk drives. It is true that most times a 99 cent magnet won’t affect your hard drive and it is true that the drive itself contains a tremendously powerful magnet to control the read/write heads. However, while a 99 cent magnet may not be strong enough and the head control magnets might not seem to have an effect, it is because neither one causes a changing or moving(the head control magnets are stationary) magnetic field to affect the platters themselves. However, there is an extreme likelihood of data corruption if you were to take a head control magnet and move it around on a working drive. Magnets do affect hard drives! All of your data is created by using tiny electromagnets just above the surface of the disk platters. Those are the heads. If those tiny magnets can create or change the magnetism of the platter’s surface, do you really think that a more powerful magnet at close range won’t also change the magnetism and thus affect the data?
Unplugging USB devices: The USB specification stipulates that devices can be hot plugged, in or out. However, when working with files such as with a USB hard drive, unplugging during a write operation can be devastating. The problem is that you do not know with certainty when a write operation is going to happen or when it is completely finished. Remember that most modern operating systems including Windows rely on caching of disk reads and writes. Windows 2000/XP use a feature called lazy or delayed writes to delay slower disk operations until the system is less active. You may have saved and closed the file you were working on but, that does not mean that the file has been committed to disk 5 seconds or 60 seconds later. If you unplug the drive before the file is committed and the file handles are properly closed then data loss and corruption must be expected. Stopping the USB drive prior to removal flushes the cache and disk buffers, making sure that everything that needs to be written to disk is written at that moment and not sitting in cache until a later time. Once the buffers have been flushed and the file handles are closed, then you can remove the drive safely.
The above, also holds true for powering off the system. Pulling the power doesn’t give the buffers a chance to flush to disk and if the power is removed in the midst of a write operation, corruption is a risk and data lost is almost guaranteed. New versions of Windows have countless services running in the background. These services are constantly doing things like making log entries or updating performance counters, swapping memory pages to disk, even when you are not actively using them. If you power off the system prematurely then you can lose data and corrupt files. Now, suppose the file in question happens to be the Windows registry. Well, unless you have a recent backup, you’ll be re-installing Windows because a corrupted registry is a no boot situation.
Perhaps these things have never happened to you or the morons at PC World but, that doesn’t mean that they don’t commonly happen. Just take a quick look at Google, search for corrupt registry and you’ll get an idea of how often it does happen. All the time!
Then there is the opt-out spam issue. Do these guys have their head in their rectums or what? Of course if you opt-out of a reputable business they will honor your request. This is not a problem with Amazon or Bank of America. But the vast majority of spam is from unscrupulous companies that filter their penis enlargement offers through China and Russia. It is a fact, that many/most such organizations use your opt-out request simply as a means of confirming your address to be legitimate, what they call “Golden”. “Golden” addresses are then resold to other spammers for a tidy sum. If you respond to one of these, you will most definitely see an immediate increase in the volume of spam that you receive.
This article lists a lot of things as myths that are indeed fact. There are some correct points in the article but the amount of false myth busting is irresponsible.
These people are obviously new to computers and don’t realize that the “power button” doesn’t turn the computer off, it tells Windows to shut itself down gracefully, all be it quicker than usual. It still remains very much true that turning off your computer without shutting down Windows can lead to catastrophic data loss. It’s just that pressing the power button IS shutting down Windows now. To test this they should have yanked the power cord out of the back of the machine and then seen if they lost any data. I’ve seen Windows XP horribly scramble hard drives when the power is lost if it is actively writing files.
They are, however, correct in their conclusion that shutting down Windows gracefully by pressing the power button is entirely safe as long as you have a computer with a software power switch! Anyone with an old AT based computer (rare these days but they still exist, I have one running Win2K) don’t just turn your computer off. Their suggestion of switching the computer to “Hibernate” when you press the power button underscores their ignorance of what is really the source of and reason for the recommendation to shut down Windows properly.
Also, their justification for giving “turning off the PC shortens it’s life” 4 on the bogus-O-meter is flawed. They back it up with information about the reliability of the CPU but that’s a bogus argument. If one single critical component of that computer fails then the whole thing fails regardless as to whether the CPU is still working. The key is not to check on the effects of powering down on a single component but on the whole system. In computers, the things that tend to dislike power cycling are the hard drives, especially at the end of their lives. Gathering information on how power cycling effects that would be a much more valid basis for any argument.
Electrostatic Discharge damage is not a myth. If PC World had done any real research, they would have learned that only the most serious discharge causes immediate failure. They only tested for immediate failure.
ESD weakens devices. They may operate for a while, and fail later. ESD shortens component lifetimes. How much depends on the type of device and the energy of the discharge. Failure may happen next week, next month, or next year.
“Terrible things happen if you turn off your PC without shutting down Windows.”
Depends on wether you wish to lose data which isn’t safed regulary on disk (depends per program) and wether you use FAT or NTFS. The test claims this is totally bogus on Windows; untrue. It is _mostly_ bogus on Windows XP with NTFS, or Windows NT-based with NTFS; not with Windows 98 which uses FAT, or any other Windows version using FAT (as i said that includes XP).
“Opting out of spam gets you even more spam.”
No proof is stated to justify the 4/5 bogus meter.
“Hackers can destroy data on your computer’s hard drive.”
Indeed true, however any sane person backs up important data elsewhere. Also keep in mind that normally deleted data isn’t really gone so you might be able to recover it. If it’s overwritten 25-30 times the chances are extremely small, near to 0 (when not using a journaling FS). There are companies which specialize into this.
“Advice for discharging built-up static ranges from the humorous-but-effective (put a metal sewing thimble over a finger, then touch the thimble to the metal object) to the ludicrous: Wrap aluminum foil over the soles of your shoes. We tried the foil method, and ended up falling on our you-know-what while trying to walk across carpet.”
If you go to a colo here, you’ll have to wear special bags around your shoes to prevent this. Afaik touching something metal with a wet finger should also work.
I know for a fact (because my Real Time Systems Lecturer told me – who develops the software for avionics systems) that mobile technologies can interfere witht eh avionics in planes. I find it absolutely astonishing that they can claim otherwise based on a chat with a pilot who knows nothing of the technology behind his interface.
Does the oils covering your fingers actually damage XIO connectors?
Firstly @hmmm yes – its not so much the oil as the acidity of it.
Why Ext3 and NTFS are more robust? Simple they are journaling file systems – that is, they make a record of the changes to be made before they make them, in the event of a system crash the journal is checked up until the last valid entry – you either get the changes, or you dont get the changes, not half and half. That is to say if the journal entry is valid, but not marked complete, the operation is reversed, if the journal entry is invalid then the operation never took place. It makes the entire system of writing to disk an atomic operation.
Static has already been dealt with so I’ll skip it.
Monitor burn in – if it wasnt a problem there wouldnt be screen blanking routines.
Unplugging USB devices – this has to do with voltage levels along certain circuity in the device. Essentially unplugging it causes a sudden drop in the voltage as the device is being removed, and correspondingly overheats and can burn out the device the same way a brown out can destory your fridge, microwave or computer.
Its fairly apparent from the article as a whole that no real research was done – a few calls were made and thats about it. Of note was the testing was limited to just windows XP, and none of the earlier incarnations many of which are still in significant use. Windows 95 was particularly susceptible to file system corruption if you turned off the computer without shutting down.
It also is of note that frequently in the article they give reasons why the statement is not a myth and then give it a 4 on the bogus-o-meter anyway.
In short the article was irresponsible and totally without merit.
but the point of USB was that you could safely remove devices.
Bogus is the entire article. Most of the so called “myths” they classified as Bogus have been proved true.
1) Not shutting down correctly the OS: there is no guarantee whatsoever that the unwritten data will be written. And especially bearing in mind that OS’s do use cache, which only writes data to disk periodically. All that data would be lost.
2) Cell phone use in air planes: Yes, it is true. As anyone ever hold a cell phone near a computer screen? When periodically it checks the network, it will interfere with the CRT and cause the image to “dance” up and down. There are registered cases of planes (IIRC a boeing 737) having to turn around and land (and the pilot was unable to use avionics, it had to do everything in “the old fashion) because some guy forgot to shut down the cell phone, which, at some time, started to ring and interfered with the avionics.
3) Turning off pc power shortens pc life: YES, it is true. I have pc’s that have been on for 4 years now. They didn’t have a single problem. And some of other pc’s, that are switched on and of on a daily basis, have already had problems, specifically the PSU. PSU’s don’t like beeing switched on and of. They contain powerfull electrolytic condensers, that stress out if being constantly completely charged and discharged . Then they blow out, litterally. I’ve seen it.
…And a lot more of those myths… I’m just not in the mood to write them all. PCWorld should be a magazine with some credit and respect, but lost all credibility and all my respect. Now I can laugh at the slogan they use: “Technology advice you can trust”… right…
Last year I did a part time course in a local college and used a USB RAM drive to transport data. The college admins had disabled the ability to stop and safely remove hardware as they had heard that it was a security risks, so I had to pull the drive without first stopping it in Windows.
I was very careful not to remove the drive when there was any obvious activity, yet I lost all my data 4 times during the year. There were a number of other times when individual files were corrupted and eventually the drive stopped working. I’d been using it for about a year before that without any trouble as I’d been careful to remove it properly.
In my experience telling people that it’s OK to simply remove USB drives is very bad advice that could lead to them losing data.
“It makes the entire system of writing to disk an atomic operation.”
Uhm, that cannot be (entirely) true:
ReiserFS3 == journaling filesystem
ReiserFS4 == journaling filesystem
ReiserFS3 doesn’t have atomic writes.
ReiserFS4 does have atomic writes. (Said to be one of it’s greatest features.)
(Not starting about WinFS.)
Hence …
I build traveling exhibits for children’s museums, science museums, and the like.
These exhibits are shut down by the exhibit staff flipping the breakers in the evening, and then flipping them again in the morning to turn them on. I’ve had more problems than I can count with systems getting borked because of this… so much so that I have to add UPSes and scheduling software to every system I send out to make sure they shut themselves down in an orderly fashion when the power goes away.
Which leaves the rest of the article extremely suspect.
According to The Economist, the main reason to shut off cell phones is that several hundred cellphones flying at 300mph would cause havoc on the cell network below. Really, if cellphones were such a risk, passengers would be made to surrender them upon boarding.
Electronic gizmos can and do affect aviation electronics. However, most jets aren’t fly-by-wire, so distruption of the electronics isn’t fatal. Newer fly-by-wire jets use better shielding on the electronics that are vital to keeping the plane in the air.
If you’ve ever had to make a product you designed pass FCC (like I have), you’d understand this whole thing a bit better. My board was clean, but the printer we brought along for the test put out more radiation than a microwave oven.
It had a HUGE spike at 79MHz. The FCC guy suggested dumping it in the river on the way out of town.
PC World seems to have neglected a simple test that would have told them that yes, some spammers really will use opt-out requests to build their lists:
Create a new, random email account on a mail system you (a) control or (b) trust. Make sure it’s not likely to be guessed by a dictionary attack ([email protected]), and make sure you know it was never in use before (Sure, we used to have a [email protected], but they cancelled their account years ago because they got too much spam.)
Now, take some of your own spam and look for unsubscribe links that don’t look like they have tracking codes in them, or that asks you to send mail to an unsubscribe address. Use your brand new, unguessable, unpublished address on a bunch of these. Some sites will tell you they don’t recognize the address, others will feed you a line of bull about how you’ve been removed (since you know the address wasn’t on the list before).
Now this part is important: never, ever publish this address anywhere. Do not use it for mail, do not post it on a website, do not subscribe to anything with it. Only use it for opting out of spam that you’ve received at another address.
Chances are pretty good that you’ll start getting spam sent to that address.
Don’t believe me? Check out this story about someone who tried it with mortgage spammers: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general/51671
Or better yet, try it yourself!
@tech_user:
USB is a bus and you can stick lots of things on it; the hardware spec may be hot-(un)plugable, but not all hardware is. For example, (provided I’m not using it,) unplugging a printer/scanner/fax all-in-one is fine as long as the drivers are not broken. Unpluging a USB-ethernet adapter makes me lose the connection.
USB disks / other storage devices should be disabled due to possible write caches (as mentioned above); although, as far as I know, Windows (XP) defaults to not using a write cache on removable disks. If you are running Windows XP, see device manager -> removable disk -> Properties -> Policies (complete with explainatory text).
I am astonished that a magazine can get away with an article like this. Compare with this:
Myth: Drunk driving is dangerous. This is false. We conducted a test with 10 drivers who were given large amounts of alcohol and then drove their cars for a while. Nobody got killed, so we can conclude it is absolutely safe to drive while drunk.
Specific to the USB thing: I screwed up a memory card in my camera by unplugging it from my Win2000 machine after unloading – apparently, Windows still writes something to the card (perhaps “these files were already unloaded” or something).
Better safe than sorry.
What – you calling me a liar boy?
No but seriously, there are two kinds of atomicity here:
True atomicity on the write operation itself, where all the data is written in one pass, and atomicity in that the journal allows an atomic like behavior for the process of multiple write operations in sequence.
Its the latter that ensures that complex write operations that are interrupted do not cause file system corruption on power off.
“I build traveling exhibits for children’s museums, science museums, and the like.
These exhibits are shut down by the exhibit staff flipping the breakers in the evening, and then flipping them again in the morning to turn them on. ”
This is why you don’t use an OS with write caching for this type of application. You should be building exhibits which can be shut down at the power switch without any problems. Try a more suitable OS, or at least a suitable filesystem.
Also, do not use a swap file. A swap partition which is initialised on bootup may be OK.
“It makes the entire system of writing to disk an atomic operation.”
Uhm, that cannot be (entirely) true:
ReiserFS3 == journaling filesystem
ReiserFS4 == journaling filesystem
ReiserFS3 doesn’t have atomic writes.
ReiserFS4 does have atomic writes. (Said to be one of it’s greatest features.)
(Not starting about WinFS.)
Hence …
Well that’s good, because FYI WinFS is not a filesystem.
“A magnet powerful enough to disturb the electrons in flash would be powerful enough to suck the iron out of your blood cells,” says Frank.
Funny they put this remark in an article about urban legends. The iron atoms in your blood cells can not be attracted by a magnet.
Iron is only attracted by a magnet because of the way the atoms glom together in large numbers. Hemoglobin does not contain a chunk of iron, and an iron atom by itself is not going to be sucked out of your blood by a powerful magnetic force.
Caj
I call BS on this one. Half the monitors where I work have ‘Press Control-Alt-Delete to Login’ burned into them.
the saddam hussein bought playstation 2 is just hilarious, and even sounds like it was fabricated by some of the people in the bush administration in the white house, to stir up support for that illegal war, by confusing the common, stupid people who believe anything they are told. Where are the WMD? maybe in a bunch of ps2 in Iraq.
I suspect this supercomputer-WMD-missile controller PS2 myth is a fabrication of Sony’s marketing department. Or perhaps of some rabid PS-fan. It’s in no way a coincidence, though.