Virus emails

It's amazing how everything old becomes new again.

A mail in my inbox this morning titled " Order Approval Notification" from Spysoft Central. Given the attachment has a .jpg.exe suffix, it's obvious that it's a virus.

A quick Google reveals this is the Bancos Trojan and this particular one has been around since mid July.

We've been seeing a lot of this sort of thing, from "e-cards" to warnings that the NAB is about to go bust. All are trying to install Trojan programs on to victim's computers.

It's another reason why we are recommending all users move to Limited User accounts. The nuisance value is less than the risk of these things.

The ATO and viruses

We changed this week's ABC 702 Weekend computer spot to discuss the Haxdoor virus and the ATO admitting users have had their details compromised.

In researching for the show, I stumbled previous warnings from the ATO about Trojan problems.

What worries me is that the ATO are the only big organisation admitting to this problem. There is no doubt banks are affected in a similar way. How much fraud is going on is a serious question.

It certainly has settled in my mind that all users should be Restricted Users and bugger the inconveniences.

Microsoft stuffed up XP by not introducing Restricted Users as the default. The question is how they are going to handle user permissions in Vista.

Reverse charge scam

A poster on the Whirlpool forums has pointed out a nasty new scam using reverse charge calls.

The scam involves a caller asking if you will accept a reverse charge call. If you do, the caller says "hello" and hangs up.

This costs you over $8.00.

Like the dialler, SMS and 1900 scams, these involve the scammer doing a deal with a telco. You'd think the telcos would be learning how to avoid these things.

tech TV is back

The Age reports that tech tv shows are back with not one, but two new programs.

Australian TV hasn't been kind to computers. Most of the coverage in the past have been superficial and boring advertorials. Outside of that, computers only get a mention when viruses are going to eat your granny's computer.

The ABC effort is confined to ABC 2, so it won't draw much attention. I would imagine the gamer community will be on their machines anyway. Good luck to them.

Channel Ten are no strangers to the IT advertorial scene. Their Internet Bright Ideas program was the best example of the genre. The new program, Cybershack, appears to offer untold opportunities for taking advertorials further.

The show itself is a joint venture between Chic Media, a division of Chic Model Management and CBN Media. While Cybershack is a great improvement on Hot Dog's Up Late Show, it doesn't appear that it will be a source of critical, unbiased reviews.

One day we'll figure out an entertaining way to talk about technology. For the moment, I guess we'll just have to content ourselves with ill concealed adverts.

It's a bug, not a feature

ZDNet have shown us another reason for avoiding Internet Explorer in their article showing how programs can be run from IE.

What is unbelievable is Microsoft's reaction. "Organisations or individual users may require or desire to automate part of the process for application connectivity with IE." Said Peter Watson, head of security at Microsoft Australia.

Again, we see how Microsoft just don't get security.

Price Wars

Dell and Apple dragged the US stock markets down last night. Investors are quite rightly concerned about the risk of a price war breaking out in the PC industry. The margins are so tight that no vendor is in a position to fight such a battle.

The concern was so great that Asian stocks were dragged down by Dell and Apple's suppliers. This is with good reason as any pain suffered by Dell is going to be shared with it's suppliers. It could even be that we are seeing the last of any fat, or profit, that existed in the PC industry.

It's not good for Dell in Australia either, the entry of JB Hifi into computer retail is going to put pressure on retail prices. This is going to hit Dell along with Harvey Norman and Woolworths/Dick Smith.

Another issue facing Dell is the three month warranty. Anyone who buys a computer with a three month warranty is almost as dumb as the retailer who tries to sell it. This not going to fly with the ACCC or state fair trading departments.

Personally I'm amazed Dell are continuing to cut prices. It seems to me this is a strategy doomed to failure. It would make far more sense to position the brand as offering good quality at reasonable prices rather than the cheapest.

Then again, I'm not a high paid corporate warrior.

The profits of spyware

Another article illustrates the profits to be made from spyware. The good news at least is that this mob, Direct Revenue, not only infected their business partners, but are now facing serious legal action. We can only hope the people behind this rubbish get long jail sentences.

If anyone has any doubt about the morals and ethics of the people who write spyware, then the latest trick by our friends at 180 Solutions should settle it. They are using Myspace to con teenagers into installing their malware.

It's getting harder to remove this rubbish from people's computers, so hopefully the legal system is going to get the message through to these people.

Windows Activation Blues

There's no doubt Microsoft has done the wrong thing with the Windows Activation Notification debacle. But some of the rhetoric is getting silly.

Today's Australian IT has a ramble about this. What really caught my eye was the comment by a computer tech that "no-one had been warned." We were, the fact people with pirated systems didn't get the message (or even knew they had crook systems) isn't MS's problem.

The simple fact is that all the people getting WGAN messages are getting them because they bought computers from dodgy companies or hired a crook tech. In some cases they've been ripped off, in some cases they bought the cheapest system.

What surprises me is how few systems I'm seeing with the warnings. It probably shows just how over-stated piracy is by the software companies.

Norton update problems

We continue to see Norton Anti Virus problems.

Nearly every Norton installation we currently see encounters a live update problem. The real concern with this problem is that it stops Norton updating it's virus definitions. We've seen machines completely out of date, with the customer having no idea their system isn't updating.

Symantec have a solution to the 1875 problem at their website. It's easy, it's quick and it works. Although the subject line is slightly wrong (just to make it harder to Google) and the file path is not necessarily correct.

Once again, I'd point out this shouldn't happen and I won't be recommending Symantec products until they strip out the complexity that allows this sort of thing to happen.

Crook Business

Today's Smarthouse News has an article which discusses why the home automation business is broken. The conclusion: It's a cottage industry dominated by small operators.

http://www.smarthousenews.com.au/Smart_Ideas/Installers?Article=/Smart%20Ideas/Installers/T5E5K5C2

The same can be said of our industry.

The Wireless Home

"Wireless devices poised for home invasion" predicts today's Sydney Morning Herald.

Having spent the morning in an unsuccessful battle with a dodgy Linksys router. I really don't think so.

Windows becomes spyware

Microsoft don't get it. Their Genuine Advantage notification rings home and spies on users. Brian Livingston at Windows Secrets and David Berlind at ZD Net do a much better job than me demonstrating how bad this is.

What amazes me is David Lazar, the director of the Genuine Advantage program, admits the function is there partly to turn off if the thing doesn't work.

So Microsoft launched a program which put potentially buggy software on millions of computers?

Trustworthy computing indeed.

More Aussie domain shenanigans

auDA, the Australian domain administrator, is in a blue with one of the the biggest registrars, Netregistry.

What has upset the auDA is what they consider to be Netregistry's failure to comply with the .com.au policies.

The demand by the auDA that the ws.com.au domain be deregistered is deeply unfair. A look at the company's website shows it is a legit business. Imagine having your domain pulled after spending ten of thousands on design, marketing and stationery?

Netregistry deserves a pat on the back in standing up for the customers. We can be sure their biggest competitor would have pulled the domain without any thought for their customer's business.

Microsoft licensing

Rotten effort is a good look by Computer World at how MS conducts it's licensing compliance and how many software vendors use compliance to drive sales.

In my view it is unethical, but a wholly predictable result of the push to put license breaches on a par with terrorist acts. In fact, a cynic like my selfishly might even suggest it's one of the reasons for big corp to push changes to IP laws.

The real fear for most companies though is that these threats are real. The complexity of many software licenses means many business would be caught out. If I'd been Dale Frantz of Autowarehousing, I wouldn't have been so confident an audit wouldn't have found something.

All companies need to take licensing issues extremely seriously. But companies like Microsoft and AutoDesk need to understand that restrictive, or marketing driven licenses only encourage their customers to look elsewhere.

Windows Vista patch

Microsoft announce the first patch to Windows Vista. It involves compatibility issues with Symantec Anti Virus. What a surprise.

Google Spreadsheet

Some differing views on Google's new spreadsheet application.

Phil Sim thinks it's a great idea and possibly a killer app, particularly for collaboration.

On the other hand, Jeremy Wright thinks it's all a load of nonsense.

I haven't seen it yet, but where I think it will make a difference is for small offices and homes that don't want to buy MS Office or where they are running older systems that won't play nicely with the latest Office versions.

Where I see Google and others threatening MS Office is by putting out simple and fast software.

Complex software is killing us at the moment: Office, Norton Anti-Virus, Adobe Acrobat and all these other applications are slowing machines and way too complex for the average user.

If Google can put together a basic web-based spreadsheet and word processor package then the reason for 80% of Office purchases vanishes. Particularly in education and workplaces.

It won't kill Office, because Microsoft will still make money selling Office to people that need a word processor that offer mail merge tools and a spreadsheet that can calculate the mean from a range of sub-totals.

What I see a Google Office doing is taking the cream off Microsoft's profits, but not killing it.

Managed services

One of those ideas that's really good but never seems to work out is the concept of managed services or hosted applications. In theory, they should put us out of business. So why aren't we worried?

Webcentral certainly has some good marketing people getting one of their case studies into today's Australian IT.

Having someone else host your system is good idea on a number of levels. It means your data is more likely to be backed up, you don't have to employ pesky IT people to make sure backups run and data is saved and it doesn't require spending tens of thousands of dollars on servers and stuff.

So why hasn't it taken off?

There's a lot of reasons. One is that all your data is now in someone else's hands, if you don't pay the bill or they go bust you've lost your data.

The second is that you are now wholly reliant on Internet access. No more getting away with a domestic 256/64 plan. The moment the Internet connection goes down, your business does too.

With your entire office using the Internet connection, it means it's going to be slow. So you're going to have to get a fast connection.

All of a sudden, you're looking at over a $1,000 a month for a business grade 1500 ADSL connection or more.

Now of course this means your connection and network are more important than ever. So you are going to need someone reliable to keep your network running. That's why you'll have to call us and why we're not worried.

Is Microsoft panicking?

Claims that Microsoft are dropping features from Vista are not a good sign.

Information Week claims MS are dropping various features from Vista.

Given Vista is running extremely late and many of us don't think they are going to make their early 2007 release date it's understandable they would drop features. Dropping accessories allows them to focus on the core product. But a bare system reduces the reasons for users to upgrade.

It's a shame they are dropping the synchronisation feature. This is a feature that many users need and MS seemed to be getting it right with their Synchtoy utility. We can only hope they don't try to bring back the briefcase feature.

We'll have to watch what other features they drop in the race to get Vista to market.

The decline of maths

ABC Radio reports that there's been a massive decline in the number of HSC students doing advanced maths.

This can't be a surprise given the message to our kids is quite clear, why bother studying maths when we have an economy based on selling real estate to each other. I can't help but feel this is going to bite us all on the bum in a few years time.

Online advertising the way of the future

Newspaper Association of America reported online ads growing at 35% compared to only 0.3% for print ads. While the print ads are still eighteen times the size of online ads, the future is clear. Ads are going online, an article in a US real estate newsletter shows this trend in that industry, and job ads are probably even more online than real estate.

I've been wondering for sometime much of the distribution price is paid for by newspaper sales. No-one should be predicting the death of print newspapers, but the one's who aren't adapting to this new age are going to go the way of the dodo, which makes the AFR's new venture much more interesting.