[Talk] Re: [Linux-aus] Chilling effect?

[Adam Donnison]

David J N Begley wrote:
> Earlier today, David Lloyd wrote:
> 
> 
>>Suddenly, we get a heap of South Australians getting shut out of BankSA
>>unless they masquerade as a closed source browser. And the SLUG guys are
>>starting to complain about St George Bank.
> 
> 
> Well, SGB's Web site clearly states:
> 
> "If you choose to use an operating system or browser not listed above
> you may experience difficulties."
> 
> http://www.stgeorge.com.au/int_bank/about/system_information/requirements.asp
> 
> In many respects, that could just be the usual cop-out clause that _everyone_
> uses (even in the open source arena) to minimise their support load (ie.,
> we've tested x, y and z - if you choose to use q, be it on your head not
> ours).
> 
> Admittedly, their "System Test" doesn't appear to work with Mozilla 1.6 (under
> WinXP), but I haven't look far enough to see if that's a problem at their end
> or mine (or if masquerading as another browser is enough to allow the test to
> proceed).

Their system test also assumes that if you are on UNIX (well,
Linux actually but that would be being picky) then you obviously
don't have either Javascript or Java, even though the page is
accessed via a Javascript popup.  I'd say it is a very naive
test based upon the browser User-Agent header, although I haven't
tried masquerading.

Adam


-- 
Adam Donnison                                  email: adam at saki.com.au
Saki Computer Services Pty. Ltd.
93 Kallista-Emerald Road                        phone: +61 3 9752 1512
THE PATCH  VIC 3792    AUSTRALIA                fax:   +61 3 9752 1098