Apologies for this but I am about to get political

I don't claim to be a died in the wool Labour voter but at the moment I see nothing about our current Liberal government that I like or would want to be a part of.  I hate their attitude to asylum seekers and their belief that anyone on a social security service is a liar and a cheat, and that everyone that uses Medicare is scamming the system.  I am intensely negative about their assumption that everyone that is out of work is only there because they are lazy and they just need to get out of bed and start applying for jobs (which in many cases do not exist).  It seems that unless you are the owner of a multimillion dollar business, you have no right to complain about the way the government behaves.  But most of all I hate the way they have gutted the NBN and set it up for failure.  

The Labour party had a vision for us all to take part in the 21st century and improve our telecoms infrastructure to one that was upgradeable with simple endpoint changes. Now this stupid government has walked in with their negative view on everything that Labour had done and assumed that it was Labour, therefore it is too expensive and technically faulty. When in fact it was technically the cheapest and simplest solution with the greatest return on Investment.
Despite every technical person in Australia pointing out that the copper network is well overdue for scrapping and that fibre is the technically superior solution, this government has buried its head in the sand and bought the reviews they wanted (first rule of government, never commission a review without defining the outcomes first).
As for cost, long term the copper network will cost more in maintenance than would be spent on installing Fibre to the Premise (FTTP). Given how often power poles and street lights get knocked over, it doesn’t take much imagination to see Fibre to the Node (FTTN) terminal boxes becoming victims to driver stupidity.
I have likened the NBN to the Snowy River Scheme in its scope as it is a project that may cost a lot up front, but was always going to deliver much more than fast Internet. It delivers new ways of learning, working and consuming that are far outside the scope of current Internet services. Given that Australia is fast turning into a service economy, with no manufacturing to speak of, surely the means of communication is of vital importance in keeping us at the forefront of technology and knowledge.
In short, the NLP are a bunch of Luddite fucks who are happy to drop shit loads of money on military toys and expeditions but are short changing the people who elected them.  Because of their negative politics, they assume that simply destroying anything that Labour put in place before the election is guaranteed to be better, instead of examining each item on its merits and evaluating it from there.  Cost Benefit analysis is an important tool in business, and while it can be useful in government, it is important to remember that the government is there to provide the infrastructure to all Australians, not just the privileged few in Melbourne and Sydney's eastern suburbs.   Expecting Companies to provide infrastructure in areas that are marginal or cost prohibitive is ignoring the principles of capitalism (that supply will try to match demand)

For more reading below are some articles expanding on why we should have a single wholesale supplier for our Infrastructure
https://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/11/20/technology/why-fibre-premises-nbn-still-matters
About to be archived but still relevant
http://boombroadband.com.au/nbn-explained/
http://www.afr.com/p/national/speed_copper_and_telstra_nbn_policy_zrrudTYeuYkcd4UVAHKN3I
Great article on the ABC
A very technical article about upgrade costs for the FTTN network

Ku Klux Klan p0wnd by Anonymous

In case you didn't see it, the Ku Klux Klan were stirring up trouble in Ferguson (where the recent riots occurred ) by taunting people via their twitter account.  As the self appointed guardians of decency, Anonymous have taken over the KKKUS twitter account leaving the KKK voiceless :)

Couldn't happen to more deserving A*holes

Further reading at 

The Guardian

IT helpdesks

Being an IT person can sometimes be very stressful.  Not because computer systems go down, but because they are used by people, who tend to get annoyed when they break.  As I have said many times, my IT systems are perfect, it is usually the users that break them.  :) Without users my world would be great



As an "IT Guy" the most annoying problems for IT are the "It will only take a minute" type ones, as they end up consuming days of your time and without being logged in the helpdesk system, are impossible to track.  Whilst I appreciate that most people don't like logging calls because they feel that they are ignored, the problem is that IT, like every other part of the business, has to provide metrics on how they are going and where they are improving for management. Our means of doing this is through the Helpdesk.

 If we provide a means for you to log calls, take advantage of it and provide all the information you can to ensure that your fix is 1. permanent, 2. appropriate, 3. as speedy as possible.  

If we have to log the call for you, it will take longer for us to help you as we will drag our feet as a form of negative reinforcement.   If you log a call that says only "it's broken, fix it" we will ignore it (or at least bump it down the queue), the same as you would ignore a sales call from someone that wants your services for nothing. 

If you provide us with sufficient information to speedily look at the issue, we will attempt to fix it as soon as possible as this improves our metrics (and provides those "feel good" references ).

I appreciate that as an Information worker (or ship driver, or stockbroker, or fire fighter) your computer being broken is an inconvenience and can stop you working. However screaming at the IT guy to "Fix it now, because I can't get my ...." is not going to motivate us to go above and beyond to get you working again.  IT are doing our part for workplace harmony by encouraging polite requests.  Feel free to ring us if your issue is urgent (I need to get this report out in the next 10 minutes and the printer is not printing) but make sure you have logged the job first.  It gives us a reference point particularly if you have noted that you have an urgent report to print.  Please understand though, that if the reason you cannot print is because the server has had a catastrophic failure, we may be a little pre-occupied.

In short, IT is a service area and like all service areas, a little courtesy can go a long way to making our task more pleasant and in turn, make us want to assist you.   Being rude or nasty is just going to guarantee that we are going to use the only means at our disposal to get back at you, because, after all, we are people too. 

And for some humour

Things IT people would never say

Cheers

Hazmoid

Why Australians are the wealthiest people on Earth

The following is a link to Troy Gunasekera's weekly blog, highlighting property as the chief reason why Australians are the richest in the World according to Credit Suisse.  

For many people, the idea of investing for their future seems to be foreign as they struggle week to week to pay their bills and put food on the table.  For many of these people, a simple talk with The Property Club could help them see that investing is not just for high net worth individuals and family trusts, but can be done by average people as well. 

The idea of compound interest is appealing, when we first hear about it at school, but it seems that the average person does not equate this with building a property portfolio that can help with their retirement.  Given the way current governments are attacking pensions and retirement benefits, it is important that we look to other ways of building our assets to help us when we retire.  At least with a property portfolio, it gives you options when you retire, either sell it all and live off a managed fund, or hang onto some of them as an appreciating asset.  The thing to remember with property is that it is not a get rich quick scheme

I Received This Email and Was Instantly Suspicious.

I recently received the above email and was instantly suspicious. Why , you ask? 

Because I am based in Australia and have never flown with United nor am I likely to in the near future. 

The above is an example of a phishing scam that is mis-targetted.  Unfortunately there are many people who are sucked in by these seemingly authentic emails and end up losing lots of money.  The danger comes when we become complacent about our communications and assume that all of them are authentic.  Anyone who has had the “pleasure” of being on an unfiltered mailbox will quickly recognise the danger in this (how many times do you need to receive an invitation to view the photos of someone you don’t know or to purchase Viagra®)

What is phishing?

Phishing is a form of social engineering (manipulation of people using psychology and deception), by using emails and websites that look exactly like the real thing (eg banks, airlines, Apple, Microsoft, charities, etc) to get you to open a file or website.  Many have links that look like they should be correct, but have underlying links to malware or sites that attempt to get your bank details. 

Malware can range from the inconvenience of a virus to keyloggers and remote control applications (often used to turn your machine into a “zombie” as part of a large botnet).  The nasty viruses that are coming out now are the cryptoviruses that encrypt your files and demand a payment before you are given the key.  Many times the only solution is to rebuild your computer and lose any work saved locally, because even if you pay them, there is no guarantee that the villains can or will send you the decryption key.  These are the best encouragement for offline backup that I have seen.

A couple of recent phishing scams that I have seen are of the form “you have made a purchase, please confirm your credit card details”.  One was from Apple and had all the correct logos and the link in the email appeared to be correct.  However it did not open the iTunes website but a very clever copy, asking for the credit card details to be entered. 

Another was the above email from an airline saying that I had made a booking and my credit card had been debited a sum of money.  A link was provided to cancel the booking, which no doubt would have requested credit card information to “confirm” the refund.

How will this affect me?

If you fall for these scams you can expect that your credit card account will be run up to the maximum limit (or beyond, many times the charges are not rejected because they are done through foreign banks).  This can be extremely inconvenient if the bank takes a hard line on credit card misuse.  It can also affect your credit rating making it difficult to obtain loans or finance.  You can also lose control of your login for a site (eg banking or other sites) resulting in identity theft. All of these are extremely inconvenient and, in the case of business accounts, devastating.

What do I need to do?

Be wary of any email or communication (Facebook and social messaging sites are also being used as vectors now) that is unexpected.  Banks will not send you an email saying that you have to click a link to reset your password or confirm your credit card details (they may send you an email to let you know that they have reset your password containing the new password).  If the email address is from a domain other than that belonging to the company, this is an instant “red Flag” ie professional companies do not send emails from gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc.

Generally if you have any suspicions about an email, investigate the links to make sure they are not redirecting you.  This can be done in Outlook by right clicking in the text field and selecting the option to “view Source”.  This will bring up the source code in notepad.

As you can see below, the actual link (Href highlighted in yellow) to which you are being sent is different to the link being displayed (outlined in red) which is a sure sign that the email is bogus. The href link below is a compromised server that the scammers are using to host a replica of the United site so that it appears to be legitimate.

If you attempt to open the above links in Chrome, you will be prevented by the built in phishing filter.   Most other browsers may also have these filters, but relying on any of these alone to keep you safe at all times is like assuming that all cars can be stopped by a red light. Better to recognise what could be a phishing scam email or message and investigating until you are sure.

Also if you receive unexpected emails with .zip attachments then it is likely that these are malware (Eg the “Emily” emails we were bombarded with). Simplest option in these cases is to delete the email.

If you think you may have clicked on one of these links or opened a malware then you need to run an antivirus scan and an anti-malware scan.  Make sure you have the latest signatures for your antivirus software. The anti-malware scan can be done after installing malwarebytes  http://www.malwarebytes.org/ which has a free version available. 

Keep an eye on your credit card statements for bogus entries (most online sites will let you know who the billing will appear from on your statement).  Many smaller companies bill through a larger entity so may not appear on your statement under their own name. However they will usually let you know if this is the case at the checkout, so that you do not cancel the transaction later on.

Many times if you have inadvertently given your credit card details out, it is better to call the bank and inform them as soon as possible. For most banks, from that point on, any losses are the responsibility of the bank (check with your bank on this as different banks have different rules and regulations regarding credit card liability). 

If you accidentally enter your username and password into a bogus website, go to the legitimate site (enter the website address manually in your browser address bar) and change your login details as soon as possible.

Unfortunately in this world, there is always someone trying to scam other people and the Internet just makes it easier for the crooks to scam more people.  By exercising a bit of care when dealing with unexpected communications, you can save yourself a lot of grief.

Cheers for now

Hazmoid