Category Archives: Business

2013 Australian Election: Rudd vs Murdoch

Computer Aid Posted on by

I am a strong believer in education, free speech, and open markets.

Which is why I’m a strong believer in the Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN).

It is a visionary project which could change Australia’s future.

It will give Australia its best chance to embrace the future digital age and become a bigger player in that field.

In my daily work, meeting people to fix their various computer problems, I notice one consistent attitude: They can’t wait for a faster internet.

Most people regard a faster internet as more important than other issues, as it has a more immediate impact on their lives.

Which is why I am very disappointed by the Liberal party’s “alternative”, which is slower, slightly cheaper in the short term, but massively more expensive in the long term.

murdoch3And recently, there has been another twist: Murdoch has decided that a fast internet for Australia will be a problem for his profitable Foxtel network, as it will allow people to get movies and content without being locked into a foxtel contract.

So what has he done?

Murdoch has decided to try to hobble Australia’s digital future by aggressively campaigning against the proponents of the NBN: the Labour party.

He has thrown out any semblance of unbiased political reporting, and is going all out against Kevin Rudd.

Up until now, I was thinking: oh, it looks like the Liberal party might win with a small majority.

But now, I am really hoping the Liberals do not win.

A Liberal win will hobble Australia’s chance for a better digital future where we can compete with the digital powerhouses of USA and Europe.

I urge everyone to spread the new about Rupert Murdochs plan, and about the guy that he has employed to try and undermine Australias digital future: Col Allen (AKA Col Pot)

 

murcoch2murcoch1

Windows 8 experiences, and the future

Computer Aid Posted on by

Although I haven’t “upgraded” to windows 8 just yet, I have encountered it many times in the real world, with real people using it.

Given that I am technically savvy, I was able to find my way around the OS, and get my work done, but in doing so, I can now see why so many people are avoiding Windows 8

I can understand that microsoft want to push people to using the “metro” interface, but in this case, 2 things are obvious:

  1. The metro interface is still very “unpolished” (ie few apps, many apps do not have the functionality that most people expect, etc)
  2. The classic desktop has been hobbled in such a way, that it keeps trying to force people into the “metro” system.

Now, if the classic desktop was functionally identical to Windows 7 (ie with the start button, and without flicking people into “metro”), then it wouldn’t matter that metro was unpolished… some people with touch screens would still go there, and everyone else would avoid it until it improved, and was worth using.

On the other hand, given how the current classic desktop works, most people probably wouldn’t mind, if the new “metro” system was an awesome feat of functionality and useability (ie like MacOS or IOS, or even Android!).

So, it seems that, with Windows 8, Microsoft have split windows into 2 parts, and have tried to accelerate the move to “metro” by damaging the classic desktop.

My opinion, is that MS have pushed a bit too hard, and they have also underestimated how attached many people are to the start button, and the classic desktop system.

And this is without even considering how the classic desktop is still a wonderfully functional and productive environment.

My prediction for the future:

Microsoft will publicly say that Windows 8 is the best ever… but behind the scenes, they already know that they have another “Vista” on their hands.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if MS is furiously (and urgently) developing Windows 9… mostly in an effort to fix the “problem”.

If common sense prevails, they will probably re-introduce the start button, and minimise the automatic jumps to metro… this would be the quickest and easiest solution, which would only require a Service Pack update to fix.

However, if MS is unable to see the obvious, they they will probably try to tinker with metro, in an effort to make it all things to all people (and fail).

Given the rise in smartphones and tablets over the last few years, I believe that MS have taken a wrong turn, by trying to unify their OS on phones, tablets, and desktops.

The desktop still has its place, so MS should have kept going with a split OS line:

  • Keep evolving windows desktop for power users
  • Run a parallel phone/tablet OS

Since the phone OS wasn’t working well enough, bringing it to the desktop is just asking for trouble.

MS needs to focus on true functionality, so that computers are properly useable, rather than holding on to the idea that you get the most profit by upgrading windows every 2 years.

China is hacking anyone they can

Computer Aid Posted on by

About 1 year ago, I had setup a NAS server (Linux-based), for a small company.

I set it all up, including remote access to the admin area, and to an online file manager (so that employees could do some work from home, if needed).

Well, a few days ago, the backups started giving error messages, so while fixing the issue, I also upgraded the firmware, and I was also asked to see if it was possible to track user access to files (eg which file was accessed, and when).

So I enabled the system connection logs, hoping they would show the information needed.

Well, the logs didn’t show what I wanted, but a few hours later, I noticed an unusual number of failed login attempts…

About 25 attempts per minute… and this would continue for about 5 to 10 minutes

They would try typical usernames like “root”, “admin” and “bin”, as well as others.

The really interesting part was when I looked up the country of origin for the logged IP addresses of the hackers:

Most were located in China

Although this particular company didn’t have huge secrets, the server had IP property, which might have been useful to some Chinese companies.

So, it looks like is any company has servers that can be accessed externally, they they will be subject to hacking attempts (and consequently: industrial espionage) from China.

In this case, the solution was easy, The NAS server has a Network Access Protection system, where I can specify if a particular IP address generates more than 5 failed login attempts within 1 minute, then the IP address is blocked from any further attempts.

Some of the IP addresses captured are:

58.215.56.110: China
117.21.208.26: China
117.79.91.55: China
183.136.128.217: China
211.94.161.84: China
114.205.1.149: Korea
117.79.91.209: China
And after implementing the Network Access Protection:
113.163.22.170: Vietnam
65.164.153.141: USA
189.112.236.116: Brazil
217.174.152.147: Bulgaria
85.31.105.66: France
61.234.146.22: China
80.252.241.37: Ukraine
111.74.82.33: China
221.13.34.3: China

Obviously not enough data here, but there are strong indications of Chinese (individuals, or companies, or even Government) involvement in hacking for company secrets.

I’m not exactly sure why lots of different countries started appearing in the hacking logs only after the Network Protection was enabled… but I’ll check again in a few weeks, and see if there is a more definite pattern.

After thinking about this for a few days, my paranoia got the better of me, and I implemented similar security on this blog… The Computer Aid blog represents over 900 blog posts (most personally written by myself), and thousands of hours of work over 7 years… I don’t want to lose it.

Beware Linkedin advertising !

Computer Aid Posted on by

Back in January 2012, I got an email saying that linkedin is now implementing advertising (ie something similar to google and facebook advertising).

They also offered a free $50 “promotion”… OK, its less than the $100 that google offers, but it should be good to see what kind of return it gives.

Then it started getting weird:

I setup a campaign for my website design business, only to find limits like:

  • maximum daily budget cannot be less than $10
  • minimum cost per click (for a CPC campaign) is $2.00

Wow, I could be looking at, at least, $10 per day, per ad campaign.

Lets do the maths: with just 1 campaign, I could use up my “gift” $50.00 in just 5 days

I could be looking at $300 per month.

I’d need to be selling some high profit-margin goods or services to justify advertising in linkedIn.

As a comparison, Google have a minimum cost per click of $0.01 (yep, 1 cent), and the max daily budget also starts at $0.01. You you could limit your google advertising to just 1 cent per day, and then alter it if I want to get more views, traffic and clicks. And then Google also has a huge audience for showing these ads.

Facebook is similar: minimum Cost Per Click is $0.01, but the max daily budget is at least $1.00 (which I personally think is too high for some situations). But then again, facebook also has a huge audience for showing these ads.

So, I just try out the campaign, and as usual, I forget to check until about 2 weeks later (maybe this is what linkedin are planning: that people will forget).

Luckily it only cost me an extra $10 or $15, as I sometimes didn’t get to spend the full $10 per day.

Anyway, I switch off the campaign, and promptly forget about the LinkedIn advertising scam.

At the start of September 2012, I get an email from linkedIn, saying: “Your LinkedIn Ads campaign has been feeling a bit lonely recently. Come back to LinkedIn Ads and reach out to your customers!”.

They offer another $50 bonus, which expires on 19 Sept.

I figure: I’ll take another look.

I notice the click costs are still $2 per click, and I cannot set a max daily spend of less than $10…

Anyway, I guess I’ll just run the ad for a few days… I login and using the $50 code they sent me, I re-activate my ad campaign on the 12 Sept (before the 19 Sept deadline)…

I also add a campaign for my name-brand mobile phone look-alikes (iphone, Galaxy, HTC One X, etc).

Within 1 hour of activating my campaign, I get 7 clicks on my ads ($14 out of $50 gone already!)… and 29,000 impressions… ie my ads get shown 29,000 times!

But over the next 5 days, I get no more clicks, and the number of impressions drops to about 200 – 500 per day… It all looks a bit suspicious.

And I also find that the amount of information about my advertising performance, stats, etc is scant…I just cannot figure out why I got so many impressions, and then a sudden drop.

I then take a look over at the billing details, and I see that the $50 credit that linkedin gave me, has a “grant date” of sept 12, and an expiry date of sept 12… A reasonable person would think they mean the “coupon” has been used on that day… but being a suspicious person, I see it as: my “gift” of $50 expired on the same day I activated it, and any clicks after that date, I will need to pay for out of my own pocket. Thanks a lot LinkedIn! 🙁

When dealing with larger companies, it pays to be suspicious, and assume the cards are always in their favour.

So I suspended all my linkedin ads (again)… even though I still have a theoretical $36 in my account… I just can’t be sure about that. I’ll think I’ll just forget this whole linkedin advertising scam (again).

mapping network drives on a qnap NAS vpn

Computer Aid Posted on by

I have recently installed a few QNAP NAS servers far various business customers.

Since I’m not very familiar with NAS servers in general, and since one customer specifically requested VPN access via the NAS server, I decided to see what was achievable with this type of NAS server.

The number of options available is staggering, and its all Linux-based.

The QNAP servers can do:

  • Microsoft, Linux and Apple networking
  • Webserver file serving
  • itunes server
  • Apple time machine support
  • VPN
  • Joomla, WordPress, phpMyAdmin, vtigerCRM, Magento, etc
  • print server
  • database server
  • backup server
  • uPNP media server support for various protocals
  • Multimedia Station for serving Audio, Video, and Photos
  • Surveillance camera support

In this particular case, I just wanted to enable VPN support, and map a network drive, so that a remote application could access data files on the server

Enabling and configuring VPN is quite easy, as the QNAP website guides you through the process (I decided to use PPTP, as it seemed much simpler to setup).

But once I had established a VPN connection, what next? How do I map a network drive?

I eventually found the solution as follows:

While you are configuring the server via the web admin panel, go to: Application Servers -> VPN Service

make a note of the VPN client pool. it should be something like:

172.19.0.2 – 192.19.0.254

That means the server will appear on the VPN client as: 172.19.0.1

After that, mapping from the windows command line (cmd.exe) is quite easy.

Lets assume that the servers folder share is SDRIVE, the server username is joe (password is pass), and you want to map the folder share to drive W:

You type:

net use w: \172.19.0.1SDRIVE pass /user:joe /persistent:yes

after that, you can use the w: as if it was a local (albeit slower) drive.

Although I haven’t been able to test it yet, I have heard that you can lose internet access unless you go to the advanced ipv4 settings of your network settings, and disable the setting: use default gateway on remote network.

An unexpected boost in new customers

Computer Aid Posted on by

Most people running a small business in Australia will know that times are difficult.

For me, its been quieter than usual since around June 2011

However, there was a sudden boost in the number of new customers around May this year (2012), and for a few weeks, I thought: wow, this is great, maybe the small business environment is improving.

After about a month, I realised the real reason: A local computer repair and sales company had suddenly closed down.

The company (YCD – Your Computer Doctor in Burpengary) had a shop, and many local people would go there to buy computers and to have their computers fixed.

So now, I’m getting the benefit of extra customers that would have gone to a competitor.

This effect could last a year or two, but eventually, I will need to change the nature of my business.

As some of you already know, I am diversifying into many different areas, and I’ll see which one works out best.

Currently, the most promising areas for me are:

– Website design and SEO (but I don’t seem to be doing well in this area, as it seems to be a very crowded market, with many experts spending big dollars.

– Selling tech gadgets like computers, laptops, PC parts, tablets, smart phones, etc. This seems more promising, but with lower margins than a purely service only business, and with the need to constantly keep up with changes, but there is also the possibility of large volumes, and large profits.

Qnap re-launch process smbd and stunnel

Computer Aid Posted on by

While setting up a QNAP NAS server, I cam across an unusual problem.

Apparently its quite common to have the server generate warnings that say:

  • Re-launch process [smbd]
  • Re-launch process [stunnel]

This happens every minute, so it makes it difficult to monitor for “real” problems.

At first, I decided to just re-install the firmware, and that got rid of the warnings until I restored the configuration backup file… then it was generating the usual of warnings again.

I didn’t want to re-enter all the settings manually, so I tried deleting and re-created the RAID system (didn’t help)

I saw a brief mention on a forum, that a bad RAID setup can cause these errors.

So I tried the following:

  • Restore to factory defaults
  • Initialise the drives (and wait until the initialisation is complete… it can take hours)
  • retore configuration backup file

That worked!

It looks like I might have done some important configuration changes while the drives were initialising… I guess patience is the key in this case!

australian government slugs small business

Computer Aid Posted on by

So here I am, struggling to make a living at repairing computers, so I decide to diversify into selling computers, smartphones, and Android tablets via No Nonsense Computers online.

With the tablets and smart phones, I research various suppliers, and obviously I cannot compete unless I buy from China.

I then start to import small amounts of good, to check for quality problems, and gradually increase my purchases.

The last shipment I ordered cost me $1500 (plus $180 in freight cost, plus 3.3% ($50) for paying via paypal).

Since I’m ordering something thats over $1000, customs jumps in and hits me with $241 for Duty and GST.

So, I’m now paying an extra $471  (31%) extra for the goods!!!

Now, who am I competing against?

Lets see: If an average person buys the exact same stuff from ebay, direct from china, they pay no duty (the goods are less than $300 each), no GST, and often the shipping costs are reduced due to economies of scale by the seller in china.

I now have to try to sell my goods for an extra 31% (just to break even, and make no profit!!)

So what options do I have?

I’m left with attempting drop-shipping, so that each individual item is shipped directly to the customer, and I avoid paying 14% in GST and duty costs… I also cannot check the goods for quality and cannot do any value-adding (like install software, and extra configuration).

It doesn’t sound legal, but you could look at it as me acting as a “facilitator” between the manufacturer and the end-customer…

So, does this sound like the Australian Government cares about encouraging small businesses? Not if the business needs to start by importing goods for resale, and particularly when people can buypass government taxes by buying direct from overseas.

This is probably going to fall on deaf ears in Camberra, but the $1000 limit before you get hit with duty and GST should be raised to $5,000 or even $15,000

This will encourage small businesses to start and then establish a local market before then they can start paying duty and GST.

Even a sliding scale (similar to income tax) would be great: up to $5000 per shipment is tax free, then every dollar over $5000 is taxed at 25% up to, say $100,000, and every dollar over $100,000 is taxed at 35%

If the government was serious about encouraging small businesses, then they need to change how they implement import duty and taxes.

Great ADSL internet plans

Computer Aid Posted on by

This one will only apply to people who live in Australia.

I don’t often advertise goods and services for other companies, but after 7 years with the same ISP, and having helped many people with changing their current plan to a much cheaper one, all without asking for anything in return, I decided to become a TPG reseller.

I’m hoping to generate a small amount of revenue from being a reseller, but my main aim is to let you know that I’m so happy with my own personal experience with TPG over such a long period, that you can genuinely save a lot of money by switching to TPG.

I regularly look around for cheap internet plans, but in the last 7 years, I’m yet to find a company that provides a better value internet service than TPG.

Since I do a lot of my work on the internet, and I also design websites, I find I spend most of my time on the internet… probably more that most people.

Yet it might surprise you to find that I am using TPGs cheapest internet plan at $29.99 per month

For that, I get 50GB per month, which I rarely exceed. And on top of that, the 50GB is actually split into 25GB peak, and 25GB off-peak… So I rarely exceed 25GB per month during normal daily hours.

And the internet is used by 3 active PCs, 2 mobile phones, and a few android tablets.

Now, if you want to check out the details, go to:

Great value internet plans

Please note:

What you pay will be the same, regardless of whether you go to TPG directly, or if you signup via my reseller links, except:

  • with TPG direct, TPG gets to keep all your money
  • with me, you will be helping out a struggling computer repairer (me)

Amazing mobile phone plans

Computer Aid Posted on by

OK, this one will only apply to people who live in Australia.

I don’t often advertise goods and services for other companies, but after 7 years with the same ISP, 2 years with the same ISP for my mobile phones, and having helped many people with changing their current plan to a much cheaper one, all without asking for anything in return, I decided to become a TPG reseller.

I’m hoping to generate a small amount of revenue from being a reseller, but my main aim is to let you know that I’m so happy with my own personal experience with TPG over such a long period, that you can genuinely save a lot of money by switching to TPG.

Honestly: when I first found out that TPG had mobile phone plans, I was skeptical (I was with Virgin at the time).

At the time, there were 2 companies that I did not trust: Dodo and Soul (due to very bad customer service)

And TPG purchased Soul… So I decided to stay away from TPGs mobile phone offerings for about 2 years.

I eventually noticed that they had a $15 per month plan, that seemed similar to my Virgin $29 per month plan (both use the Optus Mobile Network)

When I looked more closely, I found it was actually MUCH better.

$550 of calls per month, 1.5GB of data per month (so I could actually use my android phone as a modem if I really wanted to).

So I tentatively tried 1 of my phones, and didn’t have a single problem.

There were no unexpected “gotchas”, and no need to worry about going over my call or data limits.

I then decided to get a phone for my 9 year old son, and try out the TPG $1 per month plan.

I figured that there had to be some sort of catch with this one… most likely the calls and SMS TXT messages would be much more expensive (per minute), compared to other plans.

Instead it was just the opposite: 9.9¢ TXT messages, and phone calls were 10¢ flagfall and 9.9¢ per minute. How good is that!

I now have 3 phones with TPG, and I’m paying a total of $31 per month (actually a tiny bit more, as the $1 plan sometimes involves paying an extra $1 or 2, and calls are made).

Now, if you want to check out the details, go to:

Cheap mobile phone plans

Please note:

What you pay will be the same, regardless of whether you go to TPG directly, or if you signup via my reseller links, except:

  • with TPG direct, TPG gets to keep all your money
  • with me, you will be helping out a struggling computer repairer (me)

If you are also looking for a good, and inexpensive android smartphone, I also sell those.

Scam warning: Terry Riley bettennis.com.au

Computer Aid Posted on by

By now, most of us can pick a well-polished scam quite quickly.

With Terry Riley (bettennis.com.au), its a not well-polished, so initially, it fell into the realms of: “unlikely, but possible”.

I got a call from a “Cathy White” just before I was going to visit a customer. It sounded like a scam, but since she just wanted my email, and permission to send 1 week of betting tips, I decided: why not. She said Terry “lives and breaths tennis”.

So I ended up getting 3 tips from Terry and (without actually betting anything), I checked the outcome, and all 3 were winners.

There is very little information about Terry Riley on the internet.

Since his email tips also show his Varsity lakes address (gold coast, QLD), I figure: a real scammer wouldn’t do something like that.

To prove his past track record, he sends you a scan of hand-written tips for 4 months (Jan 2011 to April 2011), and the results seem reasonable: between 1 and 4 losses per month, and about 14 to 21 wins per month.

Overall, the wins more than cover the losses.

After a lot of thought, I decided that the yearly payment of “only” $600 was a reasonable risk, as I could bet at whatever level I wanted … I was just buying tips, so I wasn’t locked in to losing many thousands of dollars… and I could stop anytime I liked.

So I started a betting account (with a modest amount of money that I could afford to lose), and started receiving Terry’s tips.

After a few months, it I got the feeling that Terry was a big tennis fan, and that someone might have convinced him to use his knowledge of tennis to make some money.

After a few months, it also became obvious that Terry could not pick winners as well as he thought he could.

Sure, in the 10 months since I started receiving his tip, I’ve probably had 2 months that were profitable, and 2 months that were break-even, but otherwise its been a downward slide.

After a few months, Terry decided to introduce 2 tiers of tips: tier1 = tip is likely to win, but tips are less frequent, while tier2 is more frequent, but less likely to win. Obviously I started ignoring all the Tier2 tips.

I’m now down to 15% of the initial money deposited into my betting account. If I had started with the “recommended” $10,000, then I’d be down to just $1,500. Luckily, I used a much smaller starting amount.

To his credit, Terry doesn’t make excuses for any incorrect tips, but when I received 5 losing tips in a row, followed by 10 tips of alternating win-lose outcomes, it became obvious that Terry has either taken his eye off the ball, or he exaggerated his abilities.

After having done some research in this field, Terry’s results are no better than if you randomly pick results yourself, or if you follow a simple rule like: only bet on players whose odds are between 1.1 and 1.2

Verdict: Terry tries hard, but just doesn’t deliver.