The Day After

Yesterday was the New Day. Microsoft did their official launch of Vista, Office 2007, and Exchange 2007. The presentations went off with very few opps. I was impressed by the presenter’s laptops. They were running Vista along with two or more virtual machines.

When the morning session was complete I promptly claimed my copy Office 2007 Professional. (Only to find out I had to download it.) Oh well, I went home, got on my ole faithful computer and started the download. Four hour later I install Office 2007 with very little trouble.

Do I regret going? No! Did I learn something new? Yes! Am I switching all my computers over to Vista? No! Am I going to learn and use Office 2007? Yes!

To Cut or Not to Cut

It is so easy to cut corners. It takes more displace to hold the line.

I have watched a guy delivering newspapers. He started tossing papers on doorsteps and front porches. He was going down one side of the street walking up the walk way and tossing the paper from about 6 feet away. After he pickup another arm load papers, he started on the other side of the street. He was standing farther away from the door before throwing the paper. When he finished the other side of the street the papers were landing about 10 to 15 from the door.

I can understand that he was getting tired and wanting to finish his delivery of papers.

• When is right to cut corners?
• How much to you cut?
  
• What is the reason you have for cutting corners?

CES is Over for 2007

CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in Las Vegas is over for another year. Companies from all over the world show off their new computer hardware, and software. Some for serious business lookers other are just toys to the tech inclined.

The bottom line for the average computer user?

• CD's and CD burners are out
• External hard drives are on there way out
• Portable data storage is the jump drive now under $40 per Gigabyte
• Regular DVD player is going to be replaced by HDTV and Blue Rae
• You car will be able to sync up with your computer.
• LCD monitor are getting cheaper and bigger.
  

Looking Back 50+ Year

Every year between Christmas and New Years you hear and read of a lot of "looking back on the past year". They cover who died, who did great things and who did bad things. This year I want to do something a little different. I want to look back at the last 50 plus years and the people who had affect on my life.

• My parents - They were poor, but they did the best they could. My dad had a work ethic of work even when your body did not feel like it. Mom always wanted the best morally and spiritually for my brother and I.
• Steve Hasting - Now dead, he showed me responsibility in a time when we were hitchhiking across the United States.
• Wally and Beverly Walrath - I saw in them Christian love when they had no reason when a skinny four-eyed kid walked up the hill to their goat ranch.
• L. S. Boardman - He encourage me to use E. F. Cussins, because I would get more respect from using my initials over my first name.
• Michael Silbaugh - How not to sell or run and business
• Chris Luck - How a business should be run
• Carlos Gurtezzes - A friend and co-worker
• Norma - I can love, I can love unselfishly
  

These are the 10 people who have had the biggest affect on me. Most are dead, so are still living. Their memories will always live in my mind.


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A Real Christmas

It is the season to be blinded by flashing lights of red, green, and yellow. The television hounds me with commercials saying that loved ones will be happy if I buy them their product. Which is by the way the perfect Christmas gift. My inbox is filled with colorful ads from suppliers all saying that I should sell their gadgets as great gift items.

I don't have the money to buy everything they want me to buy! What every happen to the true meaning of Christmas? What ever happen to the importance of family, and friends?

This past year has been one of roller coaster rides. We are ending the year better off than what we started. We got rid of some material goods that were just cluttering up our house. We are spending more time face to face as a family.

Yes, this is a good Christmas! We are rich in what matters most of all. I would not trade it for winning a million dollars in the lottery.

James Kim

In the past few days and man died in the mountains of Oregon in an attempt to find help for his family. They were stranded in the cold and rain. Food and fuel for the family were gone. Two small children and wife were facing a horrible death from freezing temptertures or starvation depending on what condition would overtake their bodies first.

I am writing about James Kim. A young geek who had passion on reporting techinlogy. Unlike so many of us, James was able to balance his professional career with his home life.

I remember, internship at Techtv, reporter at PC Magazine and Cnet.com. Then finally senior editor. I remember James Kim talking about pictures from the birth of his first child, to playing Ipod music to his daughter before she went to sleep.

This is one man I will miss for his techinolgical expertise and his devotion to his family, even at the end of his life.

For more about James Kim you can go to Cnet.com.


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To Many Media Players

Windows Media Player, Real Media Player, Quick Time, Win Amp, and I Tunes are the top media players. There are formats that well only play on a specific player. My hard drive is taken up with media players with each fighting to take control of my music, and video files.

Last week, I wanted to watch a training video. I had to download another media player to watch the training session. Come on let us break down to one or two standards, but this is getting ridicules.

A search on Google comes up with over 12 different media players. Some media players are designed for a specific company to play their training videos. Others were created for file sharing of pirated music.

The bottom-line is my frustration is when I go to delete unused programs from my hard drive, I am stuck with a least three media players. Windows Media Player plays my Microsoft training. I-Tunes play and manage my weekly podcasts. Real Player watches network news online.

I have tried to work with only one or two media players. I got frustrated. I had to spend valuable time working around odd configuration. The odd media formats don’t like being played outside their home media player. It all comes down to limit my resources or put up with these entire media player.

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Spam Me, Spam You

Over the last few weeks, I have been seeing an unprecedented about of spam and phishing emails. Old phishing email frauds and a few news ones done by obvious amateurs. I am worried that someone is falling for those emails otherwise spammers would not be sending out their spam.

I start to wonder if I am getting better at finding them and tracing their origin or the phishing email spammers are becoming more careless.

This past week I was at a customers home, where he was showing me some of the email he was getting. They were obviously phishing/spam email. They were sent out to several email address of the same internet service provider.

I was able to trace the source to a server in California. Being close to Halloween, I was tempted to send a denial of service attack on that server, for sending out such email. When I cooled down, I realized that would only aggravate them. The only way I could really, hurt them was notified that internet service provider. They cut off the spammer and started to tighten up their security.

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An Ounce of Protection

“An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure,” is one of those clichés that we have heard all our lives. When it comes to computer security, it is one thing many people do not think about or react in extreme paranoia.

A computer connected to the internet can be an open door to the whole wide world at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). Cyber criminals look for careless people. All they have to do is get one of three things from you.

1. Financial information: Credit cards and bank accounts, with passwords or authorization codes

2. Social Security number: Social Security card number along with date of birth is all a cyber criminal needs to open a charge account in your name.

3. Driver's license/other government issued identification: A pictured identification is not that secure. Get a cashier in a hurry, will not notice that the picture is replaced. A fake check or credit card will drain you bank account.

This information is obtained by filling out a form on a fake website. Another good source to get personal information is by dumpster diving in the early morning hours for bills or bank statements that were not shredded. Businesses that are entrusted you privileged information have to practice a much lower level of safe computer habits

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Never Give Up and Never Give In

Computers have become a very valuable part of our society. Computers are just for playing games, or data processing. They are how we get the daily news. Students in colleges and universities are required to have a computer to complete class assignments.

The average person finds discounts by receiving bills and paying them electronically. I can say there is not an area that is affected by the use of computers. Many companies want employment applications filled out digitally.

An electronic presence has become a must. Businesses are expected to have websites, before they are considered a serious business. Individuals are expected to have at least one email address to show their computer savvy.

I spend quite a bit of time teaching people when never grew up or took time to learn basic computer skills. They come to a point in their life where they have to learn some computer skills just to function in our world as it is today.

Many of my older students get frustrated very easy. Just the learning a new skill that other see as basic a reading or writing increases the learning stress. They find themselves making mistakes. Some forget how to send an email to look in a certain format, can cause a paralyzing stress. I try to encourage them to keep at it. Expect to make mistakes.

Don’t give up or give in to the frustration. I remind them what it was like to learning to ride bicycle. You cannot give up. The benefits down the road will make a big difference in ones self esteem.

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Battle to Secure Your Computer

Microsoft’s new operating system Vista is due out in just a couple of months. Norton and McAfee are angry. If Microsoft has it’s way third party security software products will no longer be needed. Microsoft put together an operating system that is so secure that Anti-virus, anti-spyware has programs are no longer needed.

The computer code was written by humans, but humans are imperfect. How can they create something that is perfect? It may look perfectly secure for a time. But I know the skills of black hat hackers will find a whole that break into the locked heart of the operating system.

A perfect product may sound like a great marketing sales pitch. It will have non-thinking sheep buy the product, but the reality of the situation will raise it’s not so pretty head to the embarrassments of corporate executives.

I believe it will be mid summer of 2007 before we will see some end to the wars between the computer security vendors and Microsoft. Will the courts allow Microsoft provide the security for their own operating system? Will the courts grant these other vendors force Microsoft to open the door for companies like Symantec and McAfee provide third party support when it comes to securing your computer?

I will not put Vista on my production computers until this issue is settled. I hope the issues will be resolved by mid 2007. Then I will feel more comfortable upgrading to Vista.


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Fall of 2006 is Depressing

The green leaves are turning to their golden yellow.
Making their descent to the ground,
Frost has not showed its self at the days first light.
However, I expect it to any morning now.

The morning news is filled more than its usual stories.
Violent acts are making less sense.
Today, is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement,
It is acting like the beginning of an apocalyptic era.

The richest man on earth and his geeks tell us
When January of 2007 arrives,
He is going to push on us new software for our computers
Even if it is doesn’t work and inferior.

This may not be a physically long cold winter,
Many people will pray that it was one.
The emotions and tensions of this fall and winter will be with us
Especially after the spring has melted this winters snow.

How Mobile Is To Mobile?

This year has seen hundreds of cases where personal information lost were on mobile devices. Laptops and PDAs rank the highest risk device that gets lost carrying sensitive data. Cell phones and USB sticks come in third and fourth. All of them are small, easy to carry, thus being mobile they are very hard to make secure.

Every week we hear of private data theft, this is not limited to the federal government. We hear of a business entrusted with names, addresses, and credit card numbers losing the information. What about the traveling salesman who carries customers’ personal information on their sales route? A celebrity cell phone address stolen without touching her cell phone. What about the family on vacation that takes the family laptop to watch DVDs while wait to getting to their vacation location.

Taking important information out of the office or house must have good habits attached with the practice. When I go outside of the office or my house, with sensitive information, two things happen. First, the sensitive information is encrypted. Second, I do not let it out of my sight. Third, the information needs to transport for a purpose. Afterwards that information is return to the secure location where I kept it.

Taking sensitive information out of its assigned secure area is like playing with fire. The risk of it getting stolen is very high. Knowing how easy it is to lose and/or get stolen data, the best thing is to develop a group of secure habits for transportation of that data.



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326 Days - Time to Get Tough On Computer Users!

I received a call from a customer, who it had been about a year since I had looked at his computer. When I arrive the customer greeted me with the usual warmth of a hand shake and smile.

After I was led me to their computer, I set down in front of the computer and proceeded to go through my usual checks. The symptoms kept pointing to spyware or a Trojan issue. I open the spyware program. Then I checked for the last up date. To my shock it was 326 days since it had ran a scan or updated.

It is people like this customer, who did not take the time to verify that his spyware program was update and performing the needed scans that can promote the spread of malicious software. When I say malicious software I am talking about any computer program that reduces the operation or takes the control of the computer from the owner.

Maybe, it is time we need to get tough on computer user. Make them take responsibility for their actions. We hold car owners and truck drivers for the fitness of their vehicles’. These malicious programs are costing us millions and billions of dollars in damage. It is past time to get tough. A computer user needs to be held responsible for the malicious programs control his or her computer will put in danger other computers, networks, and websites to attack.

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Laptop Battery Recall

We all have been hearing one laptop manufacture after the other has to recall their laptop batteries. I heard of Sony and Dell recall their laptop batteries. This has prompted me to do some serious research on what is really going on at this point in time. We have had laptops for some time and not this degree of trouble.

Searching the web the bad batteries were found in Apple, Dell, Panasonic, and Hewlett-Packard laptops. The batteries are traced back to Sony, Sanyo and Matsushita the three major Japanese producers of lithium-ion batteries. They were manufactured between March of 2004 and September of 2004.

I like at a common thread in the manufacture of these batteries. What I found was that the chemical composition of the lithium-ion batteries has been a concern for sometimes. The focus of this of this concern was in the aging.

I quote from Battery University in their report. “Aging of lithium-ion is an issue that is often ignored. A lithium-ion battery in use typically lasts between 2-3 years. The capacity loss manifests itself in increased internal resistance caused by oxidation.”

The quote from Battery University was first created in February 2003, and last edited in August 2006. Notice before and the manufacture of these recalled batteries, and after the recall.
Is this the last of the battery recalls? Has the problem been solved? Is battery manufacture of lithium-ion batteries going to have to say not to use them after 2 years?

2006
E.F. Cussins
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Lots of Little Problems

After installing Internet Explorer 7, I could not view a any flash that is on a website. I have to fall back to Mozilla to watch the flash video on Nascar.com. Vista would not let me burn a CD. I had to use another computer. Word 2007 would not connect me with my blog. I had to switch back to my regular computer. You would think that Microsoft engineers would fix these important issues, before releasing them in beta.

Over the years I have learned that the bigger the project requires longer time needed to deal with start up problems. I got to admit with Internet Explorer 7, Vista, and Office 2007 being released within a six month period is quite a task. Each one is a major project.

I got to admit that with all the different eyes and testers will reduce the problems when it comes to release date. I may not upgrade for a year or two, but quality will be higher than when Windows 98 and XP were released.



2006
E.F. Cussins
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OMT (One Minute Tutorials)

TEN Solutions, from its beginning, has worked to help people work with their computer’s. TEN Solutions has now opened a library of One Minute Tutorial’s. These are online for easy access. Each tutorial is written for quick reference. They sit on a server waiting you to access them as a reminder on how to do certain procedure.

Many of us have seen some neat trick or way of doing something on the computer. When we got home, we forgot how it was done. OMT (One Minute Tutorials) is the answer for that situation. Now all you have to do is go online and login to OMT find the subject and see how it is done. You can even reduce your web browser window and following the instructions from the tutorial.

OMT is $30 for 12 month subscription for access to the entire library. That is just $2.50 per month. If you feel that you don’t need access to the full library, you can subscribe to individual courses on specific topic. The individual courses will vary from $7.00 to $15.00 depending on length and popularity.

You can see sample lessons by clicking here. Many of these lessons will no longer be free on September 1st. You can find a complete list of current tutorials at http://tensolutions.biz/courseslist.htm. Sign up and subscribe just click on the OMT Learning Hub .

Any questions or concerns you can email me at Everett@tensolutions.biz.


E.F. Cussins
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Evidence Not Bias

This past week I saw 5 computers with identical symptoms. The root varied slightly. Just when I had it figured out, another root cause came up. Four were due to a downloader Trojan, the fifth was mechanical. It took me some time to figure out that the fifth was a mechanical issue and not an infection.

I am amazed at how I can let my own bias take minimal fact to get a conclusion where if I look for all the facts, I would get lead in another direction. I need to be continually aware of my own partiality. Personal human bias shades the facts to a conclusion that I want.

I see this same thing happening with computer security protection software vendors. The vendors rely on their reputation and little or no supporting evidence from independent labs. They are rated by magazine and trade journal tests. The very same publications are where the computer security vendors buy ad space.

Many of the less popular computer security software vendors have an A+ rating by independent labs. They don’t get the same level of attention. You rarely hear about these vendors in the press because they play it low key. They do not have security breaches, because they are doing their job. When the trade magazines review the less popular software it is usually below the more popular vendor products.

Bias and money does make the decisions. When it comes to computer security decisions should be made on logic and evidence. In the words a CSI, Gil Grisham, “Follow the evidence.”


2006
E.F. Cussins
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Getting the Word Out

A few years back I had the idea for writing a small book. It was to fulfill the need of low-tech individual and new computer user. I repaired computers, after a while started to notice a pattern. The users and computers with minor problems and those that had noting but problems.
Everything really started to come to light when I worked on two certain computers. The one computer was a mother who had nothing but problems from viruses and other malicious spyware. The other one was from her daughter. The daughter’s computer had very little trouble.

I not only examined the computers of this mother and daughter. I took note of computer and habits of other computer users. To confirm my conclusions, I read white papers and listen to podcasts from computer security experts around the world. Safe Computer Habits became the result of all that research.

I wanted the book to be easy to read and user friendly. I engaged some low-tech and intermediate tech individuals to read it and give me feedback on the way the material was presented. Then I took it to some friends who work in IT. They gave it two thumbs up. Mike Maxwell of Tech Help Weekly, in Austin TX raved about Safe Computer Habits on his podcast.

Now, I am getting an independent publisher/agent to help further promote the book. The bottom-line, for me, is to get people practicing Safe Computer Habits. By doing this, everyone can be a little more secure from malicious attacks on their computer. That is why I wrote the book Safe Computer Habits. I am committed to promote Safe Computer Habits through writing, speaking, teaching, and encouragement.


2006
E.F. Cussins
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Black Hat 2006 is Over - What Have We Learned?

Black hat hackers, along with white hat, blue hat and gray hat hackers have left Las Vegas. What was seen in Vegas this year only confirms the changes that are taking place in the world of computer technology.

Microsoft, FBI and Cisco Systems were all there. Not as spying out for future arrests. They were visibly there asking for help and learning hacking techniques. Microsoft brought Vista (their new operating system) to be hacked, and it was. The FBI stood up, in front of a group of hackers and asked them for help against cyber-terrorist. Cisco Systems was asking for help. They are looking ways to improve the security level of their products.

At one time it was unheard of having people from both sides of the established computing world working together. Something like this can only be good for the end user. Think about it. More secure computer thanks to the individual hackers and Microsoft. But after seeing what has happen in Vegas it could happen. Realize this is from the desk of the eternal optimist.

If you don't believe me check out the following links.
The home website of Defcon
Information Week about hacking Vista
The list of speakers and topics from Defcon