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.

Design pricing

Some very good comments about the price of good design at the Pearsonified blog.

The comments are quite right: Good design costs. The problem is that most users don't understand this. But it's not just a design issue.

The problem is right across the technology based industries. Pretty graphic interfaces make everything from web and database design to computer networking look easy. The fact doing properly is a skill just like a plumber's or a carpenter is lost on many users.

Unfortunately I don't see this attitude changing in the near future. All I can suggest to Chris Pearson and other designers is to just hang on in there and find those customers that value service and good content. Let the other guys fight it out for the cheap charlie customers.

iiNet's travails

Internet provider iiNet saw it's stock value halved after slashing it's earnings forecasts due to the poorly executed takeover of Ozemail. Of course, making a conditional share placement at half the market price has a tendency to make existing shareholders nervous about the value of their shares..

iiNet's problems are a classic case study of how the IT industry gets it wrong so often. Ozemail was always going to be a problem child having been run down by it's previous owners. By buying a competitor bigger than itself, iiNet simply bit off more than it could chew.

The lesson is clear to IT businesses, big and small: Don't seek new customers if you are having trouble satisfying existing customers.

For customers, there's also a lesson. If there's an hour wait to get through to support, then that provider has a problem. Unless that provider is extremely cheap then you should be taking your business elsewhere.

Computer hijacking

The Sydney Morning Herald's tech section has a breathless article on the risks of ransomware. Ransomware is a virus or trojan that locks you out of your data and demands a ransom to unlock it. The first occurrence of ransomware was reported a year or so ago.

Ransomware is way overstated as a risk, for the writers the money trail would quickly lead the authorities to them and certain jail or a visit from some unhappy victims. Spyware writing and system hijacking are far more profitable and less risky pursuits. The funny thing is that no-one seems to have been affected by it, as the article admits.

"Computer emergency response team Auscert, said it had received no reports of ransomware trojans in Australia but because they tend to be spread via malicious websites rather than via email it was a difficult area to monitor."

Computers being hijacked is common. Spyware and virus writers do it all the time. A hijacked computer is then used to spread spam, viruses and plaster ads everywhere.

There's no need to be hysterical about computers being hijacked because it's happening right now. I get sick of repeating all the warnings about how you should protect your computer. But here's the instruction on the PC Rescue website.

Cyber sex

Charles Wright gives columnist Ruth Ostrow a serve about online sex in his Bleeding Edge blog. Ruth gets her knickers in a twist after she and her significant other posted their details on a raunchy website. Charles is quite right to point out that this happened before the arrival of the Internet.

Where I would criticism Ruth is that she's got the wrong end of a serious issue. We all hear warnings about children being stalked on line, but we find the kids are quite savvy with online creeps. The people who trash their lives due to someone they met on the net are more likely to be adults in unhappy relationships.

Personally, I've seen almost a dozen families broken by the results of an online affair. One client in Sydney had his wife leave him to join a bloke in Wisconsin: She left the kids but took the computer. Her new relationship turned out to be worse, which is a typical result.

It's not just affairs either. I've never heard of a kid sending millions of dollars to a Nigerian scam or blowing the mortgage on online gaming, but I know of adults who've done both. This is probably as a big a problem of online stalking or philandering.

The real story here is that you need to watch all your family member's computer use. Your husband, wife, girlfriend or boyfriend is as likely to get into trouble on the net as your kids are. If you are concerned about anybody's use, you need to talk to them and take measures to reduce or monitor their use.

Dell race to increase growth

Dell intend to "ignite growth" after being caught "flat-footed" by competitors' aggressive price cutting.

It's a difficult situation the PC manufacturers find themselves in. Until recently, the growth in the market has offset falling margins, but now PC sales are slowing and the manufacturers are finding their cashflows tightening. My guess is we are going to see further rationalisation of the market.

One of the biggest problems facing manufacturers is that their rock bottom margins leave them nowhere to move. The pressures on costs have been enormous and the vendors have been lucky that cheap Asian parts have seen the cost of systems drop dramatically in the last five years. Even that hasn't been enough and Dell have sought to cut support costs to make up for their falling margins.

This didn't work and Dell's reputation started to suffer as callers found the support lines were poorly staffed, badly trained and spoke poor English. These problems have been slightly fixed but the mud has stuck. Which makes it interesting that Dell have also announced they will spend $100m on customer service operations.

Dell customers will be thankful for that $100m investment, but I wonder how sustainable the model of increasing support while further slashing prices can be. If Dell want to have a low cost, low margin business model then support is going to suffer. It seems to me Dell want it both ways.

The big problem Dell have is their headline pricing: Desktops at $699 with notebooks and servers at $999. Of course they try to upsell customers for better warranties, more memory or bigger drives which helps pad the margin. But those headline prices are conditioning consumers to expect unrealistically cheap systems from Dell and their competitors.

If I were a Dell shareholder I'd be asking why they are spending billions on marketing so they can sell on price. Surely all that marketing spend could be spent trying to sell the message that Dell computers are better and deserve a premium price. That way they could ship a decent, well specced product, provide competent support and make a decent margin.

Microsoft Privileges

I was absolutely stunned to read that Microsoft gives its users Administrator rights and is only now thinking about removing them.

Every Windows users is assigned a security level, this can vary from a Restricted User who can't do things like add software or access system files up to an Administrator who can do anything and go anywhere.

Windows sets users up as Administrators unless it's told differently. In other operating systems like Mac OS X you do not get Administrator (or Root) privileges unless your specifically given them. If Windows set up restricted user accounts out of the box then we wouldn't be seeing the tidal wave of spyware and rubbish on Windows computers.

The main reason we don't set kids and office workers as Restricted Users is because many Windows applications don't run well without Administrator rights. We've tried it at many offices and homes and people have begged us to give them rights. Sadly, many of the worst offenders are Microsoft products.

Realising that Microsoft workers themselves have admin rights explains why this has happened. Microsoft's internal testing would never pick up the mess that restricted users find themselves. What's more they wouldn't know which of the software and hardware companies were supplying bodgy code that won't work without full rights.

The fact that Microsoft workers aren't forced into Restricted or Power User groups only confirms to many of us that Microsoft just doesn't get it when it comes to security. We can only hope that the upcoming Microsoft Vista does a better job than the previous attempts.

Diana Epps has a far more well thought out view on this on her blog. It makes good reading and explains the issues well. The comments also put forward some good perspectives on this.

Rootkits wreck havoc. Or do they?

The AusCert annual computer crime survey has some very alarming statistics: One in five corporate networks and twice as many public sector systems are infected with rootkits.

That's a serious statement. A rootkit is a set of files that hides itself deep in the system and is very difficult to find, they are often installed by spyware or hackers to take control of a system without the user knowing. One of these on your system means you have been bad infected with a virus, spyware or something much worse.

Personally, I don't believe a word of it. Given most corporate networks have some degree of security, if 20% of them were infected we'd be seeing 50% of home systems likewise affected. Tens of thousands of Australian computers would be pumping out spam, attacking the Pentagon and being a generally nuisance.

I suspect the replies to the survey have been misinterpreted. Many system administrators might have said "yes, we've had a virus infection" because they found a few java.byte trojans in a contractor's Mozilla cache. Either way, it's a silly and hysterical statement which the media thankfully hasn't picked up.

Mind you, I might use it in our market to scare up some work.

Only joking. Maybe.

Beating the Microsoft Word bug

Microsoft have warned of a serious bug in Word 2003 that is being exploited by a Trojan horse. Apparently one large US organisation has been targeted by it. Microsoft recommend only opening word attachments in Word Viewer.

This might be an opportunity to switch to sending attachments in PDF format. This is a far more secure and compact way of sending attachments. The free CutePDF is one of our favourites or you can buy a commercial product like Adobe Acrobat or PDF Factory.

Another alternative is to switch to Open Office or another office substitute. While the alternatives are good, they are not always compatible with all the features in MS Office. This is particularly true if you use the tracking features in Word.

If you need to exchange Word documents for editing, we'd recommend setting up a Restricted User account on your computer and doing your work in that account. Naturally you should have a firewall and an up-to-date antivirus. Being careful about who sends what is also important.

To date, it appears this exploit only works in Word 2003. Unfortunately we have no further details of the exploit or how to work around it. For the meantime you should be very careful about what you open.

How spyware gets on your computer

Two interesting links this weekend show how the spyware writers get their wares onto people's computers. An article in The Enquirer explains the most common spyware terms for getting infected. Anti-virus company Sophos announced how it's detected and stopped a rootkit exploit based on an online poker game.

The most common spyware terms only confirm what us techs see every day. The bulk of the terms are music download terms, others are screensaver and ringtones. Do a search on any of these, and you can be sure the top results will all be spyware related.

Sophos' detection of a rootkit using an online poker game illustrates the risks with online games. The only positive thing I can think of with this is that it targets adults instead of kids.

If people must go to these sites then it's important to run your Windows system in a restricted user profile, have an up to date antivirus and a firewall.

MYOB and VOIP

Accounting software company MYOB is reselling Engine VOIP boxes. Apart from asking just what experience MYOB has as a reseller, I can't help but being irritated that they are neglecting their core business on silly diversions.

Our MYOB customers outnumber Quickbooks by five to one. So MYOB is the leader in Australian small business accounting software, however their product has basically not changed for nearly ten years. There's been a few add-ins bolted on, but someone familiar with the bugs and quirks of MYOB 7 would not be lost on MYOB 15.

I guess we should be happy MYOB sticks with a stable product. But there are quirks which should have been addressed years ago. A decent form editor and better integration into MS Office would be a nice start.

I can't help but thinking this deal with Engin is just another example of management seeking buzzwords rather than improving their core product.