Technical Tidbits™

Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Those of you who are my PC security (Introduction to PC Security) students don’t have to worry about this because in the first few lessons of the course you’ve disabled this!

However, many of you have not taken the course so I thought it was wise to post this.

Oh, and by the MAC users, this affects you too if you are using the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client to connect a MAC to a windows PC.

According to Microsoft’s Security Bulletin: MS09-044:

This security update resolves two privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if an attacker successfully convinced a user of Terminal Services to connect to a malicious RDP server or if a user visits a specially crafted Web site that exploits this vulnerability. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

via Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-044 – Critical: Vulnerabilities in Remote Desktop Connection Could Allow Remote Code Execution 970927.

There is also known issues after installing this update, so you may want to check the bulletin for a list of those.

I’ve been teaching the Introduction to PC Security course for over 5 years and from day 1 I’ve had the students disable this service! I wonder what else you’re missing?

This is a reprint of a recent article under our Business Bits section of the Technical Tidbits™ Newsletter. I was asked by a subscriber to put it online so it can be accessed by non-subscribers.

If you like the article, I recommend that you fill in your e-mail address on the upper right and click the subscribe button to subscribe to our newsletters.

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PERFECTION PARALYSIS
Technical Tidbits™ Newsletter
February, 2010

I was agonizing over what to write about in this portion of the newsletter when a conference call this morning provided me with the content!

This particular call involved me, a staff member that we call our resident marketing guru, and a gentleman he had connected with that needed some help. As it was explained to me, the man needed my help because he had all this content and was not selling a thing.

The first warning signal I received about this man’s issue was that he had published two books on his area of expertise and refused to sell them on Amazon because they require a commission. I asked if he had sold any on his own, to which he replied, “a few.”

Before I could hit him with the fact that Amazon would be much better at reaching an audience then he could ever hope to reach, he said something that made everything quite clear. He said that much of his accompanying material was not perfected yet and therefore he couldn’t proceed with his sales of the books or his courses until it had been “perfected.”

Now, to back step a moment here, my degree is in Applied Behavioral Science and I/O Psychology (Industrial/Organizational). I took that educational path because it is what corporate trainers do, which was what I wanted to do in my career – train people in technology. Much of what I learned was not only about how people learn, but barriers to learning. Often times, these barriers can be emotional or psycho-social within the person themselves.

For example, I was once hired by Motorola Corporation to personally tutor 1-on-1 an executive assistant in the fine art of using PowerPoint. Within two visits to this young ladies desk, I told Motorola that she was un-trainable. There was nothing wrong with her mind; she was a very bright young woman. What was wrong was she was unwilling to learn. She had a mindset that PowerPoint presentations were beneath her and therefore had no intention of ever learning it. Administrative assistants did PowerPoint presentations – not executive assistants!

That being said, I recognized a pattern in this gentleman on the conference call. So I probed further. The man has literally hundreds of training courses and material available but has not sold a single item. His insistence on the fact that none of the developed materials had been “perfected” and the constant reaffirmation that his content was so unique that it couldn’t be sold the way I was suggesting (online) led me straight to his problem.

So, I asked him if he knew of some very powerful people in his field and I named the names of 5 people I knew carried a lot of weight in his area of expertise. He agreed that he indeed knows of them and that they were fine examples of the field. I then went on to inform him that these 5 people were selling EXACTLY the way I was telling him to sell his material. These people were involved in online marketing, had a website, engaged in social media, and so on.

He reiterated that he could not sell online.

I know many of you reading this are shaking your head because you know how well online marketing and sales works and you know that your business probably lives and dies by it!

But the point I want to make is that this man was not blind to the opportunities technology is offering him, he’s suffering from Perfection Paralysis.

One of the comments he made during the conversation was that he was spending much of his time packaging and shipping his content. (To who, I don’t know because he still said he wasn’t selling anything!) So, I diffused this objection and told him to go check out CafePress.com. They have an excellent print-on-demand program that could free up his time.

But again, objection after objection when our marketing guru pressed him to take one step forward into the online arena, was always the fact that it needed “perfecting.”

I don’t know about you, but I know I’m guilty of that same paralysis in my own business. The newsletter has to be just perfect or I can’t send it. The course has to be just perfect or I can’t post it and sell it. And so on…..

When you get caught in the trap of Perfection Paralysis in your business, there is a tip you can take away from Bill Gates and Microsoft. If Bill Gates and Microsoft waited for the operating systems and products they produce to be perfect, do you think you’d be reading this on a Windows operating system?  Do you think Microsoft would have become such a large corporation?

Now don’t get me wrong! I’m not telling you to plan your business model around Microsoft and issue products that require patch after patch and only works some of the time. That’s not my point.

My point is that sometimes it just has to be GEFN – Good Enough For Now.

And with that closing comment, I’m going to take my own advice and get this newsletter sent!

Warning: The language in this post may be offensive to Microsoft and it’s supporters.

Recently, on both The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert, I heard mention of the cost of the Recovery.gov website. According to these comedic – and often satirical – show hosts, the cost of the website was, $18 Million.

Well, I now totally understand not only the cost but the errors on the site. This quote from a recent Information Week article explains it all!

Earlier this year, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon began offering to host public data on their cloud services, and the competition will likely only heat up. Microsoft has touted the fact that SharePoint is the front-end platform for stimulus-tracking Website Recovery.gov, and clearly has a few other ideas up its sleeves.

via Microsoft Taps Into Open Government Market — Cloud Computing — InformationWeek.

Do you get the same picture I’m getting?

So, maybe Microsoft isn’t getting the full $18 million for the district creating website that’s supposedly tracking our stimulus money, but I have a few concerns about the site now that I know Microsoft is behind it.

But first, I want to know what web design company got this contract and what happened to small business in the government procurement process? But I digress.

Oh, never mind! I just looked at the “View Source” of one of the web pages on recovery.gov and saw this:

meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft SharePoint"
meta name="progid" content="SharePoint.WebPartPage.Document"

Microsoft obviously did get paid most of that $18 million! But again, I digress.

We all already know that we can’t trust Microsoft for security, nor accuracy. And that’s based on their software – not the recovery.gov website.

But now, we have them touting their crap to the government. How secure do you think your information is going to be now?

And now, we have Microsoft with both hands in our pockets. Suckering us to into buying their new Operating System and other products, and then using a reach around the back to grab our tax dollars by courting the government.

But as they say in the infomercials, “But wait! There’s more!”

On December 10, CNN Money announced that Microsoft plans to acquire health information-technology company Sentillion Inc.  According to the article:

Massachusetts-based Sentillion provides identity and data access management services to more than 500,000 caregivers across North America and Europe.

This is all part of Microsoft’s Health Care Solutions strategy. And if you don’t think that’s a scary proposition, look at what they have line up here: Microsoft Health Care Solutions.

Now, if you’ve ever applied for Health Insurance, you may or may not know that when you sign the papers for a policy, you give the health insurance company permission to input all your data on that form into a global health insurance industry database.  (That could explain why you suddenly start getting junk snail mail from health insurance providers once you investigate a policy!)

So, now your intimate health details are part of a global industry database. And if you have heath insurance currently, your data is already there!

How do you feel about Microsoft having access to that information?

Can you imagine the amount of money they can make from selling just the names and addresses to their partners? Which we all know they are famous for anyway! (READ YOUR EULA IF YOU’RE IN DOUBT!)

I won’t even get started with Government control or mandatory heath care either! That’s a whole other blog post.

And if the way the errors on the recovery.gov website are any hint to what we’re in for, imagine how erroneous information will affect your health care! I can hear it now…. “Oh, we’re sorry! The database said your husband had cancer. Don’t worry. The Chemo will wear off and he’ll get his hair and immune system back in time. Now what were we supposed to be treating him for?”

Suffice it to say that with the government in bed with companies like Microsoft and Google – whether health care or websites, we taxpayers are literally screwed.

There’s no amount of KY Jelly® that’s going to keep this from hurting.

And in case you don’t happen to enjoy The Colbert Report and haven’t heard the news about the governments recovery website, for your enlightenment:

The Colbert Report	Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Better Know a Made-Up District – Connecticut’s 42nd
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating