Andy’s Technotes and commentary

Steve Gibson recommended the PayPal Plug-in Secure One Time use credit card on his great Security Now podcast a few weeks back.
It seems like a great idea and I have used it successfully a couple times.
I had trouble on Steve’s site using Firefox 3 and the new PayPal Plug in. The Plug-In requires a login but when I logged in I lost my order and the browser went to the Paypal site.  I have no idea why.
Today I ordered from an online company using the PayPal Plugin. All went smoothly until the plug-in failed to provide the vendor-required credit card issuer 800 number. The issuer is typically a bank There is no such number listed anywhere  on the PayPal site nor any reference to what bank issues the credit card. A phone call to PayPal help was answered promptly but the help representative admitted he did not know what the PayPal Plugin was or anything about one time use credit cards. He suggested I used the phone number on the back of my personal credit card. I objected and he put me on hold for a few minutes. Ultimately he told me to use the phone number of the main switchboard at PayPal!
If the order doesnt go through I will be unhappy because I will have missed the sale price on the LCD monitor I ordered. If the order does go through I will be worried that no one is checking the credit card information for accuracy and security.

Crippling slowdown in performance appears to have been alleviated by removing Microsoft pushware Silverlight. Excessively high CPU usage in both IE7 and Firefox 3 is gone on this 4200+ dual core, 1.5gig ram, ASUS A8V-VM SE Rev 1.xx with Nvidia 8400 video board. 

Anyone else getting slowdowns from Silverlight?

If you “ACCEPT” the Microsoft Live Safety Scan EULA (”Service Agreement”) and the page simply again and again presents itself again and asks you to Accept or Decline  check your “PRIVACY” settings in “INTERNET OPTIONS”. If the setting is “HIGH” check “Default” and try to accept the Service agreement  again.

Error 619 result following a dial-up attempt is often caused by a bad or poor quality modem.

Add the Nintendo Wii to the list of sources of WiFi 802.11x interference. The Wii shares the unregulated 2.4 ghz spectrum with such items as cordless phones, wireless keyboards, headphones, cell phones and older microwave ovens.

Consumer affection for expensive, slow and unreliable wireless networking is baffling to this blogger.