Hill Top Information Technology

Adobe just killed off its boxed version of Creative Suite, which includes widely used software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver.  They’re replacing it with “Creative Cloud“.  So now instead of buying the normal retail box version of the software which can cost thousands of dollars, it gets rented for about $50/month.  It’s brilliant, actually…

Why?  Two reasons:  It gives Adobe an even cash-flow, and it effectively defeats software piracy.  But that’s not the bad news.  What’s really going to change is when other companies such as Microsoft, Autodesk, and many others start modeling their software distribution after Adobe.  In a few years, it’ll be cloud everything and retail software will simply cease to exist.

And why not?  Why pay $800 for Photoshop that’s going to be outdated in six months when you can rent the cloud version and always have access to the latest features for $20/month?  Why spend $3,000 on AutoCAD when you can get it for $15/month?  Why buy Microsoft Office for $400 when you can rent it for $10/month?  Do you see where this is going?

But it doesn’t stop there.  Dell and HP are changing their server business to support hypervisor hardware, and they’re slashing the PC offerings.  IBM is getting out of the server business just like they got out of the laptop and workstation business.  PC sales are falling year after year in favor of mobile devices.  A large percentage of the newest generation of young people don’t and won’t own a PC.  Exchange servers are being replaced with Google Mail.  Entire MRP’s and CRM’s are going to Google Apps.  Back-end servers are going to public cloud data centers such as Amazon and Rackspace, which is where websites have been going for years.  Because it costs less.  It costs less, and it works.

Where does that leave small and medium businesses?  Very soon now, workstations will be replaced by virtual workstations in the cloud and business owners can simply rent everything they need for a fraction of the cost.  Physical machines will still exist, but they’ll be replaced with very low-power laptops, tablets, and zero-clients.  The PC x86 architecture will be replaced with lower cost ARM units.  Data will automatically be backed up in the cloud data center.  Even phone systems will be switched over to cloud-based virtual-PBX’s.  It all sounds good, until we fall into the trap.

The Legacy Trap.  Imagine holding onto a VCR from 1985 and a bunch of VHS tapes with all those precious home movies.  Now in 2015, the VCR breaks.  Since VCR repair shops are long gone, the only thing left to do is find a specialist who can transfer those VHS tapes to Blu-Ray in 3D, or find a DeLorean.  Either one would be very expensive, maybe so expensive that you would just have to accept that those memories were gone forever.  When this happens to computers and business systems, it’s very expensive and very messy.  And while this all sounds a bit over the top, this is exactly what happens in small business all the time.  Things get put off because other things, like making sales, are more important.  Eventually, temporary becomes permanent, and the Legacy Trap closes over the throat of the now fatally-injured business.

I’ve seen the Legacy Trap kill businesses before.  Every time, it is quick and sudden, and the only thing that takes a long time is the irreversible death-spiral.  It happened to this one small high-tech electronics factory that employed 50-people, had $7-million/year in sales, and had been in business over 25-years.  All of their engineering files were literally on a Mac from the late 1980′s, and then that Mac died.  They thought they had backups and a way out.  They were wrong.  No one could help them, not even those $100,000 hard-drive recovery people.  It took them 5-years to die; they drained their contingency funds, blew their credit, crashed their retirement funds, killed their benefits, and laid-off employees.  They looked at the dust in their hands that had once been hope and refused to believe that all was lost.  They went out of business April 1st, 2013.  But their mistake wasn’t back in 2008 when the Mac died, is was back in 1991 when they stopped upgrading and the subsequent 17-years of doing nothing to fix it.

The trap happens because most small businesses and large alike treat IT and computer resources like a utility.  They treat it like something that should cost less if only they could find new and creative ways to contain those costs, and they only throw money at it when they absolutely have to.  In reality, Information Technology is supposed to be part of the business strategy.  IT is leveraged to innovate, attract new customers, and grow business.  IT is like a financial engine with a rate of return, so instead of spending less on it to “save money”, you invest as much as is reasonable and profit.

Expanding on my analogy:  If a person wanted to invest heavily in the stock market, they would be an idiot not to seek the advice of a professional financial adviser.  And when that idiot ends up poor, they blame the rich.  I feel that anyone who is running a business and wrangling their own IT resources without the aid of an IT professional is equally stupid.  And when their technology betrays them, they blame the very same IT people that could have helped them.   So please, look to the future and ask the advice of IT professionals that you trust.

Remember the old shell game?  Put a pea under one of three shells, move the shells around, and bet someone they can find the pea?  It’s really a confidence game to perpetuate fraud because the guy with his hands on the shells palms the pea and the player loses by design.

I think we may have a new shell game, the Computer Shell game.  But in this case [pun], it’s not illegal “fraud”, but legal “marketing”.  In my personal opinion, most marketing professionals are just confidence men.  The new game is “what’s in the computer shell?”  It’s probably not what you think.

In this picture is an HP P2-1374.  It’s detailed very clearly on HP’s website, and to their credit they are not hiding what’s really in the case.  It was brought in by a customer who purchased it from Best Buy, and when we first opened it, we were stunned and shocked at what we found. Continue reading »

This is straight from azcentral.com (Arizona Republic):

A Prescott man was arrested Thursday in connection to a fraud case at Quad City Computers, officials said.

Beginning in March 2011, Prescott Valley police received complaints from consumers relating to Prescott Valley’s Quad City Computers reportedly overcharging clients for repairs and computer parts, said Brandon Bonney, a Prescott Valley police spokesman.

Customers reported they were being charged large sums of money and at times, the repairs were not done or poorly done, officials said.

The most recent complaint came from a couple in their 80s stating that Jerry Jeff Martin had overcharged them for a new computer system. The pair claims Martin charged them between $8,000 to $12,000 for a job that should have cost them close to $1,300, Bonney said.

Martin was not willing to talk to detectives, Bonney said.

Martin was booked into the Yavapai County Jail on one count of vulnerable adult abuse, one count of fraudulent schemes and one count of theft, officials said.

Authorities are asking people who may have had similar dealing with Quad City Computers to contact Detective Daniel Oen at 928-772-5167.

Update: Daily Courier also reported on this with essentially the same information, plus this:

“On one occasion, they were told to go to Best Buy to purchase items for the computer,” Bonney said. “It was discovered that the items they purchased for the computer were not put into the system he was building for them.”

Wow, this is quite alarming.  This kind of news is why I always encourage people to seek out honest and ethical businesses and then spread the word.  Do your homework, check the BBB, read reviews, ask your friends and colleagues.  It’s easy, here’s how you do it:

Dr. Bower, great dentist, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Prescott Checker Cab, clean taxi’s, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Prescott Flower Shop, superb flowers, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Twin Lakes Automotive, terrific mechanic, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Hill Top IT, fantastic computer techs, honest, ethical, and affordable.

See how easy that was?  In a community like ours, it should be relatively easy for people to know good businesses by reputation.

The next time you need to connect your $200 Sony Blu-Ray player or $300 Xbox 360 to your $700 Sony Full HD 1080p 120Hz  TV, consider buying the $1,096 HDMI Cable from AudioQuest.  Think about the Dielectric-Bias System that reduces distortion and 100% Perfect-Surface Silver conductors for improved signal clarity, and the Direct-Silver-plated HDMI connectors that provide a simple connection and durability.  Consider it carefully, then laugh out-loud and buy the $6 one instead.

OMG, really?  $1,096 for a 3.3-foot HDMI cable?  Why??  Because Monster Cables was monopolizing the ridiculously overpriced and under-performing cable market?

Once upon a time, I used to be in the Audiophile business.  Audiophiles are the people who take their music very seriously and sometimes spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their equipment (CD players, amplifiers, speakers, wires).  I’ve even known a few to buy the $6,000 power cord for their turn-table because it sounded that much better than the $4,000 one they already owned.  And believe it or not, it actually can make a difference (if you can hear it).  So if anybody was going to spend $1,096 on that HDMI cable, it would be these guys (or videophiles).

But they don’t.  Why?  Because it’s the signal going through the HDMI cable is “digital”.  That’s important because traditional “analog” audio signals are sensitive to their environment; things like light-ballasts, vacuum cleaners, old electronics, and even electromagnetic waves from other cables can make the audio sound bad.  None of that happens with digital.  Digital is ones and zeros, on and off.  Another way of thinking of digital is you get 100% or you get zero percent, there’s no in-between.  In fact, most Audiophiles hate digital because of the absolute rigidity of the digital signal.

So if there’s no in-between, then why all the buzz about extra-special digital cables?  Because uninformed people are taken advantage of.  My advice to anyone is that before dropping thousands of dollars on equipment, give us a call, or somebody you trust with tech, or Google it at the very minimum.  Do a little fact-checking.

Via: Geekologie

Google recently introduced a new service to detect if a user’s computer was infected with malware and then inform the user. The warning appears as an in browser pop-up above the Google search bar. The warning is bright yellow and contains a link to another Google page where the user can learn what to do about their possible malware problem.

The service is the product of an investigation to determine the source of unusual activity patterns that were detected in Google’s data centers. It turns out that the activity was actually coming from machines that were infected with malware. Since it was a simple matter to detect the individual activity patterns, Google’s engineers capitalized on the opportunity to warn users of the potential threat in real time. Continue reading »

Mac Defender is a fake anti-virus program for the Mac OS and it’s designed to steal people’s credit card information and other personal information.  It’s MalWare.  It’s on a Mac.  It’s very real.  I know there’s a lot of people that think that Mac’s are virus-proof, but that’s simply not true.  Apple has removal instructions on their website.  The 1st virus for Mac OSX appeared in February 2006:

Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos’s global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have announced the discovery of the first virus for the Apple Mac OS X platform. The virus, named OSX/Leap-A (also known as OSX/Oompa-A) spreads via instant messaging systems.

How is Apple responding to the flood of customer calls about installations of the Mac Defender malware?  Apple continues to tell support reps: do not help with Mac malware.  Now that may sound bad, but in reality it’s not Apple’s responsibility to teach users how to use a Mac properly or how to secure it. 

We see this kind of thing on Windows all the time.  Fake anti-virus programs that suddenly appear warning of massive infections that can only be corrected with a Visa or MasterCard.  They can instantly disable Internet access, interrupt normal program function, erase system recovery points, lock users out of administrative access, and transmit confidential information.  They all have one thing in common: no significant anti-virus protection, which is exactly where most Mac users are at.

Mac users have enjoyed virtual immunity from the cyber-criminals who have focused almost all of their efforts on Microsoft products.  But now that Apple has become a tech name bigger than Microsoft, and the Mac OS is now on millions of computers, that time is no more.  Cyber criminals have no brand loyalty, they are only motivated by theft and greed.  The Apple is ripe for the picking.  Mac Defender isn’t going away.  It will be copied, changed, altered, replicated, and will inspire other cyber criminals to succeed where Mac Defender failed.

While there is a small part of me that will enjoy watching that smile getting slapped off the smug faces of those self-important Apple religious-fanatics (you know who you are), I also feel a great swell of pity for the many innocent people who will be victimized in the near future because some fool told them Mac’s were virus-proof.  Well, if you own a Mac, you can now switch to a Linux because it’s “virus-proof” too.  Or you can get a real anti-virus program for the Mac OS.  Here’s what I found that’s available:

It works like this:  You have a wireless access point for your computer to connect to the Internet.  If you do not set a password on that wireless connection, then anyone with a wireless device can connect to it and use your Internet connection.  That means a person who enjoys child-pr0nography can use your Internet connection, and then you get arrested for it.  And yes, I misspelled pr0n on purpose because I don’t want that word on my website.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch the MSNBC video and see how it happened to one innocent person.  Luckily, the authorities figured out what really happened.  But still, getting arrested in your place of business is exceptionally inconvenient, even if you are completely innocent.  Security is always important.  Please consult your IT professional about your security and remain vigilant.

I’ll say it up front, I don’t like AVG.  In fact, I don’t like most anti-virus programs.  I’ve personally seen fake AV programs and other infections walk right past AVG and infect a computer.  I know some people have had nothing but good experiences with AVG; however, I’ve been doing hard IT for 15-years, so maybe I’m just unlucky.

And now update 3292 released yesterday has caused 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 to go “Blue Screen of Death”.  The BSoD is technically a Stop Error; usually a missing or inaccessible system file that is critical to the operation of Windows.  Most users are not technical enough to execute a system restore, and have to pay a lot of money for professional help.

Personally, I find this event completely unacceptable and way past the red line.  People count on AV software for protection and piece of mind.  It is supposed to prevent catastrophic failure, not cause it.  Product updates are supposed to go through testing cycles before being released to the general public.

Professionally, I recommend Norton Internet Security or Kaspersky Internet Security.  If a free version must be used, then I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials.  But don’t take my word for it, or anybody else’s.  Go lookup the hard numbers for yourself at AV-comparitives.  They regulary test AVG, avast!, AVIRA, BitDefender, eScan, ESET NOD32, F-Secure, G DATA, K7, Kaspersky, Kingsoft, McAfee, Microsoft Security Essentials, Norman, Panda, PC Tools Spyware Doctor, Sophos, Symantec, Trend Micro, TrustPort, and others.

The first known and confirmed cyber super weapon has been discovered.  It’s called Stuxnet and technically it is a logic bomb.  It is capable of spreading like a virus or worm, and can rewrite the operating systems controlling powerplants including nuclear.  It is specifically designed to sabotage power plants, and it wants to do it too.

The CIA used a logic bomb in 1982 to destroy the Siberian gas pipeline in the Soviet Union; that explosion was visible from space.  But that was a long time ago before the internet and USB sticks.  Now things are much easier to destroy.

Stuxnet’s new abilities including being able to rewrite the logic system in, say, the machinery of a power plant and then covering its tracks. The result? All manner of things could happen to the plant, including a meltdown, and a meltdown is something you do not want to happen at a site with a nuclear reactor. The kind of supervisory control and data acquisition (or SCADA) components Stuxnet targets are used in everything from chemical, electric and nuclear power plants to factories all over the world. In other words, this thing could seriously damage a country’s physical economy, power grid or production capabilities.

In other words, all those movies we’ve seen where terrorists or governments use hackers to destroy the infrastructure of the United States; well it’s all possible now, and Stuxnet is the first REAL example of this.

Via: DVICE

The W32.Imsolk.B@mm virus (actually a worm), a.k.a. the “here you have” virus has recently plagued major companies including ABC, Disney, Google, Coca-Cola, and NASA.

E-mails that carry the virus contain a link that encourages readers to click on a PDF document file. But rather than a PDF, the file  contains a Windows script that transmits a virus and spams the entire contact list of the person who opened the file.

Anti-Virus rule #1:  If you don’t know the sender, or were not expecting a file, don’t open the file.  E-mail worms impersonate people you know.  Be safe and call the sender and ask them if they sent you a file.

Anti-Virus rule #2:  Have anti-virus software.  Free anti-virus software such as Avast and AVG are grossly insufficient to protect your computer.  Don’t use free AV programs, go buy something.

Anti-Virus rule #3:  Keep your computer up to date.  Download updates for the operating system and every piece of software you have installed on it.

Anti-Virus rule #4:  Don’t buy anything that runs Mac OS.  Apple users think they’re invincible because most virus authors focus on Windows and Linux.  This false sense of security has resulted in totally inadequate protection for Mac OS.  Many Apple users have virus infections now and don’t even know it.

Via: MSNBC