Is IT an "extravagent indulgence"

I stumbled on the Age's Enterprise blog over the weekend. What a depressing read this post was.

Quite simply, the idea that getting IT support is an "extravagent indulgence" is silly. It's like saying your rent or car maintenance is an optional extra. It's not, it's a real business cost.

One of the biggest mistakes small business makes is to keep their IT in house. It ends up soaking hours of the owners valuable time. In the worst case it costs ten of thousands in lost time.

The worst case we've ever seen is a network where all the computers had to be rebooted every time someone wanted to print. A typical print job would involve the user warning everyone they were about to print, the other five staff would save their work and troop out for a smoke.

Once the print job had finished, the user would reboot his computer and wander out to have a smoke with the others.

Every print job was costing the business a man hour of work. Over a year we estimated it was costing the business over $30,000.

Small business owners have to understand that IT is essential to most businesses. The cost involved are a natural cost of doing business. Not factoring for these costs is like not factoring for insurance.

Another burning laptop

Matt from Melbourne woke up to his housemate screaming. His Macbook was on fire. Luckily he was able to put it out.

Luckily for him, and us, he took photos and posted them on a discussion forum.

It's sad that we have so little trust of big IT companies that it's necessary to post first and then ring the company. But that lack of trust has been well earned.

It's going to be interesting to see how Apple deal with this. According to Matt, his laptop wasn't on the Mac recall list and is still under warranty. It looks like we might have another battery recall approaching.

OneCare is bad news

Those of us in the industry with long memories stroked our beards sagely when Microsoft announced OneCare, we remember how well previous attempts by Microsoft performed.

So it wasn't surprising when the news came out that OneCare eats email files. It appears that the program correctly identifies infected attachments within an Outlook pst or an Outlook Express mbx file, finds it can't repair it and so deletes the whole file.

I'm glad we haven't encountered this. It sends a cold chill of horror through my blood just thinking about the cranky, distressed customers.


The silly thing is OneCare isn't particularly good at identifying viruses. It's another reason why Microsoft should stick to making their core products more secure rather than messing around with products like Defender and OneCare.

Refreshing scepticism

I was pretty cranky when reading some of the reviews for the new Norton 360 product. Norton have been the by-word for bad software over the last five years. So I was less than impressed reading sycophantic press reviews and dopey user comments about the new product.

The new Norton is going to have to be a far slimmer product than anything they've recently put out to convince me. The Norton Anti-Virus 2007 certainly isn't.

It's good to see I'm not alone in this. ZD Net Australia shares my view. While all technology vendor's claims should be treated with suspicion, Symantec's press releases are least reliable source.

Fat kids in England

According to the Kimbofo blog, fat kids are the current UK tabloid fad.

Now feeding your kids twenty chocolate bars a day might be child abuse, but I'd suggest letting a Sun reporter near your children is far more damaging to their well being.

While these parents are negligent. I'm not sure naming and shaming them and holding their kids up for ridicule is actually productive. But let's not let the interests of the kids get in the way of a good tabloid story.

Vista Activation problems

It's a shame Microsoft persist with the intrusive and buggy Windows Genuine Activation program. It seems to go from bad to worse. The latest problems with Vista show this is going to be a pain for those affected.

At least Microsoft have acknowledged the problem in their knowledge base. But the real concern is that a game can cause this problem. Isn't Vista supposed to stop things accessing critical system files?

The real disappointment is that Microsoft insist on treating their customers like thieves: A critical system file changes? Well, you must be try to hack our software.

The only comforting thought about this is it will tie up a few millions of Microsoft's money in supporting users who want to reactivate.

More Vista hall of shame

Australian Personal Computer adds to the Vista hall of shame with it's list of mobile phones that don't support Vista, which is pretty well every single brand with the exception of iMate and Palm.

It really is a joke.

Wasting taxes on technology

The state government is accused of wasting $100 million on a defective email program for NSW school students. It's a shame politicians have to waste scarce funds on gimmicks like this. There's a thousand other things this money could have been spent on in our state schools.

Computers and the Internet are useful educational tools. But they are not substitutes for good teachers or well resourced schools. It's far more important for kids to be taught to read and write rather than just learning powerpoint and how to rip stuff off Wikipedia.

The real problem is that parents and voters are easily impressed by this stuff. Politicians know it wins them votes and school administrators know it allows them to get away with higher fees. We all need to question these people more on what exactly they intend to achieve with technology.

It's the Active X stupid!

The US CERT advisory that common support tools have security problems is barely a surprise. Anything that uses ActiveX is a risk to the computer. It's no surprise that much of the malware that causes us so much grief uses it to infect victims.

While thinking that Firefox, Opera and other browser users are totally immune from bugs is a mistake, Internet Explorer's inbuilt support for ActiveX makes it by far the biggest and easiest target.

Why support companies have to use ActiveX based programs is beyond me. Given the known problems and prevalence of spyware you'd think they would avoid them. Instead they seem to rely on them.

The biggest joke is Symantec, where their Norton products are ActiveX dependent. When a Norton machine is infected with ActiveX based spyware, Norton crashes which in turn crashes the computer. To add insult to injury, the damaged system won't even let you uninstall Norton properly because, surprise, it requires ActiveX.

It's really time for ActiveX to get the flick, it's buggy, slow and vendor specific. Programmers and website designers who use it are lazy and letting down their users.

Why you shouldn't inherit office computers

I've spent the last three weeks struggling with a neighbour's dead computer, what started as a simple dead hard drive has turned into a nightmare as the thing was supplied by the neighbour's ex-employer.

This means everything is based upon it being on a corporate network: Windows Updates, anti-virus, security, admin passwords and installation folders. It's turned a six hour pain in the backside into dedicated trench warfare. And I still can't get the #$%^ing Microsoft Office source location fixed.

We've always recommended not buying second hand computers. But corporate computers are even worse. It's a shame customers don't listen to us before buying these things.

Big business and Vista

A neighbour had to buy a copy of XP to repair a computer that came without a disk. Almost every large IT outlet claims "Microsoft don't sell XP anymore". This wasn't one shop, this is a number of places, all big outlets.

He eventually got one, but was told "you were lucky, Microsoft don't sell this anymore."

What's going on here? Tech Pac seem to have plenty of copies in stock and Microsoft have made no formal announcement. Where is this line coming from?

Microsoft's list of Vista compatible apps

Information Week reports on Microsoft's list of software that's achieved the "Certified for Vista" or "Works with Vista" logo. In picking that all current Microsoft products qualify, they miss the point that many of their older products miss out.

This is going to be one of the biggest barriers for many users adopting Vista. Along with the cost of a new system, they will be looking at spending another $300 on a new version of Office. That's a big reason for holding back.

Alexander Ponosov acquitted, but the Julie Amero gets sillier

The Russian teacher accused of software piracy is acquitted. Which is a victory for common sense. Even the Vladimir Putin described the case as utter nonsense.

The man himself announced he was off to drink champagne. Having faced a penalty of up to five years in a Russian prison, that would be the least I would do.

Things have come to a pretty low state of affairs when the Russian legal system is showing the US an example of common sense and justice. Because the Julie Amero case just gets more stupid.

PC World claims to have an email from a juror on the case where the juror says she was convicted because ""she made no effort to hide or stop the porno, not just because she loaded the porno onto the machine. Going to the history pages it was obvious that the paged were clicked on they were not the result of pop-ups."

If this is the case, that the jury felt she didn't do enough to stop the kids looking, where does this leave the school principal, the teacher who normally used that computer and the administrators of the network. These people knew the machine was compromised and did nothing to protect the students either. Surely the brave protectors of Connecticut justice should now prosecute them for the same crime.

Even more disturbing is the comment, "If a 40 year old school teacher does not have the sense to turn off or is not smart enough to figure it out, would you or any other person wanting her teaching your child or grandchild?"

So they even convicted her for being dumb and ignorant of computers. Where does that leave the jury, defense, judge, prosecution and the "expert" police prosecution witness? If stupidity is a crime, these people are looking at life.

I really hope this email to PC World is a hoax. If this really was the reasoning of the jury, then the case is an even bigger debacle. This is truly starting to look like a witch hunt.

Apple join the ranks of the shamed

In checking my facts for the previous post, I stumbled on this gem.

No Mac product has been updated for Vista compatibility?

None, nada, zilch, zip?!?

According to their web page, updated on February 2, 2007 not one product is Vista compatible.

I know flogging vapourware to the ranks of adoring kool-aid drinkers is fun, but Steve, how about getting your minions to do some work making their products fit for purpose?

Apple reseller blues

Local Apple reseller Total Recall Solutions has gone to the wall. This is a great shame as Adam ran the best Mac shop in the district. In my experience most of the Apple resellers around Sydney give service that ranges from mediocre to abysmal.

In fact, using the word "service" in the same sentence as "Apple reseller" makes me uneasy.

With the looming opening of the Sydney Apple Store many of these guys are going to find their business models under a lot of pressure. Ben Morgan, the proprietor of Sydney's biggest single Mac shop, has been less than enthusiastic about Apple's plans. Australia's biggest Apple reseller, Next Byte, is a bit more relaxed.

Next Byte will take a hit from the Apple Stores in their four Melbourne and Sydney city stores, but having stores all over Australia will cushion the overall blow. Academy's a bit more vulnerable, but their Eastern suburbs location makes them far more attractive to the cashed up locals who loathe travelling into town. I'd say both are probably pretty safe, unlike smaller stores.

The real question though, is who would be an Apple reseller? Charles Wright in his sadly defunct Melbourne Age column asked this question nearly five years ago. If anything matters have got worse since then for Apple resellers with declining margins, your main supplier opening stores to compete with you and not even being able to use the Apple name.

It's a tough industry flogging computer hardware. Apple certainly don't make it easier for their people.

More disgraceful Vista support

More outlets are picking up on the disgraceful state of Vista support.

Smarthouse discover Logitech have no intention of supporting their equipment. They also mention Abode, Creative and nVidia. A good point is how empty this talk of "convergence" with home hi-fi is when the stuff doesn't work.

Over at Eastwood Hi-Fi, they've found that not only Yamaha have problems, but the Panasonic website won't even work for Vista users. I find Steve Niell's naivete about the professionalism and planning of the IT and electronic industries rather touching. He should try dealing with ISPs.

Australian Personal Computer has a rundown on ISPs and their hardware vendors. Taking the cake are the country's two biggest Telcos: Bigpond won't connect Vista users while Optus take the cake with the comment they "already supported six operating systems but "only recently learned that Vista brings with it some elements that require us to change our systems."

Truly breathtaking. You'd think Vista suddenly appeared out of the ether and onto computers. The contempt vendors and ISPs have for their customers is disgraceful.

Mark Curban doesn't understand spam

As a subscriber to Crikey's newsletter I enjoy their daily links to blogs that have caught their reader's attention so I visited Mark Curban's comment on Donald Trump sending him spam.

Ummm Mark, that spam is as likely to have come from your granny as it was from Donald Trump. See my previous post on compromised computers.

Home PCs attack the Internet

Last week's attack on the Internet root servers is being blamed on botnets of zombie computers. And why not, the number of computers being compromised by spyware is horrendous. We see a half a dozen each week.

Convergence is a buzz word in the IT industry. The worrying thing about the malware epidemic is how the bad guys are converging: Spammers, phishers , spyware, phishers and virus writers are all coming together and sharing tactics and compromised machines.

The spam epidemic is a good example. One of the best protections from spam were the black lists of compromised servers and open relays. The problem now is that we have hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of compromised home PCs.

Unsecured wireless networks are also to blame. One client of ours was getting regularly disconnected for abusing their service. It turned out their wireless router (not setup by us) had no security and someone was using it to send spam.

The lesson, as the EETimes article linked above says, is that all computer users have a responsibility to secure their computers. If they don't, they may be responsible for spam, phishing scams and attacks on the Internet DNS servers.

When the rivers of gold stop flowing

"Rivers of gold" was the term to describe the profitable classified advertising businesses of the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age. There's been another river of gold in the Sensis monopoly of directory advertising. If anything, the Yellow Pages has been far more profitable for Sensis/Telstra than the classified have been for Fairfax.

The launch of Google Maps Australia is direct threat to both these rivers of gold. By linking into the News Limited classified system, it threatens Fairfax's advantages. For Sensis/Yellow Pages, their monopoly is threatened by a viable alternative directory.

Google certainly does the job better than Yellow pages. I searched "Computer Repairs" and "Neutral Bay", Our business came up first and there was only one paid ad above us, all the other listings were in the immediate area. The map was clear and concise.

The same search on Yellow Pages Online didn't take us directly to the listings. We first went to a category page. Multiple categories for the one business type is another Yellow pages tactic to get more money out of us.

Once we were in the correct category there were SEVENTEEN premium ads ahead of us. To add insult to injury, almost all the listings ahead of are the "may not be located in the area" type. Many of them are on the other side of Sydney, which makes specifying a suburb stupid and pointless.

On those results, it's difficult to see why a small IT shop would bother with anything more than the basic Yellow Pages listing. Given the price of a single Yellow Pages category listing, let alone four or five, is prohibitive and you'll always be outgunned by bigger advertisers it's barely worth it. Even more discouraging is the fact Yellow Pages own one of your competitors.

The biggest threat to Sensis though is that Google have tied up with News Limited's True Local service. Being able to combine online listings with local and metropolitan newspaper advertising is a pretty formidable selling proposition. If News and Google don't get greedy then Sensis has a serious problem.

It's ironic that the Australian Google Maps appears the same week Fred Hilmer released his tale of being the Fairfax CEO. The tie up between Google and News illustrates how badly Fred got it wrong with separating the Australian Cityseach from the Fairfax newspapers. Had Fred got it right, Google might have been partnering with a dominant Fairfax.

Fairfax and Sensis should be very worried about the Google Maps-News Limited partnership. This really has the potential to divert much of the "rivers of gold" away from the established players. It's going to be interesting to see how Fairfax and Sensis respond.

Who'd be a teacher?

I'm not wholly convinced about the use of computers in class rooms. I don't believe any computer is a substitute for a competent teacher. As a taxpayer and someone who supports these evil things for a living, I'm not even convinced it's a good investment of my tax dollars.

Now teachers might agree. First we had the Julie Amero case where a Connecticut school temporary is facing 40 years in jail for a spyware infected computer. Now we have the Alexander Ponosov case where a Russian school teacher is facing a spell in Siberia for buying computers with pirated software.

The injustices in both of these cases is breathtaking. In the Ponosov case, the spectacle of provincial school teacher being used an example so Russia can prove it's worthy of joining the WTO is a digrace. I'd like to know what happened to the people who sold him the computers.

Julie Amero's predicament is also disgraceful. The real villains in this are the local school board who allowed filters to expire and accepted pop-up ads on classrooms computers as being normal. It really seems the charges were only a butt-covering exercise by these incompetents.

Incompetent is the best description of the prosecution's "expert" witness, Detective Mark Lounsbury who claimed Amero musts have "physically clicked" on pornographic links. The frightening thing is Detective Lounsbury recieved training from the FBI in basic network intrusion and advanced network intrusion in Unix. He admit even admits he's not an expert and relies on Computer Cop software.

It surprises me that more schools and businesses haven't fallen foul of the law because of malware infested PCs. Given it's considered sexual harrassment to have a girly calendar on an office wall, hard core porn on a computer desktop must beyond the pale. Every office and school should have proper filtering and spyware protection and policies to deal with the unexpected.