Mimentum Blog

Posted By Mimenta on July 30, 2010

Looking at a new computer?

Give this some thought . . .

I was in a large computer store yesterday and it was advertising software.  Here are a few of their prices (keep in mind this is Melbourne Australia):
Windows 7  Home Premium Edition ……$299.00
Windows 7 Professional Edition…………. $349.00
Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition $174.00
Microsoft Office Professional Edition……… $838.00

So if I bought a fully equipped computer, ready to do school or business work,  the software for it would cost ($299 + $174 = $473) $473 for the basement priced edition or ($349 +838=$1187) for the Super Duper Deluxe version. I can do everything except edit graphic images and compose music.
We have a range from $473.00 to $1187.00 . . . . remember these figures.

If I bought a computer as a bare bones unit (no software) and added Ubuntu, I can download it free (or pay a massive $15.00 for a DVD). It comes complete with Open Office.

I have everything that my Super Duper Deluxe computer has and a few extras too:
- It runs faster and cooler because Ubuntu (and all other Linux operating systems) use less processing power.
- My Internet experience will be better because the sites load faster (there are no virus threats to Linux on the Internet so files are checked and loaded faster).
- There are forums with real people who speak my level of language, who can give me advice that I can actually understand. I don’t have to call a number in Sydney and quote a 24 digit code to get customer service.
- I can configure my computer, upgrade the disks, processor etc and reload my operating system and Office software as often as I like (Windows allows only twice).
- My operating system and Office software is not sending secret user information back to it’s vendors so they can sell me more stuff later.

I went to the counter and asked if they could supply a laptop and a desktop without any operating system and they said yes but they would have to get them from the warehouse so it would take up to two working days for delivery but the good part was they would drop the price by $200.00 and even install Linux for me!

I think if I had really pushed it, and shopped around I could have shaved another $100.00 off the price.

So you really have ask, what was that extra $300.00 paying for?

Ignorance – there are literally millions of people out there, who are paying for their ignorance.

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Tags: Business information, business on line, business success, Computer security. computer fraud, computers, Internet security, Operating Systems, Software, Website design

Posted By Mimenta on July 19, 2010

You have a great Operating System, whether it is Windows, Snow Leopard or Linux.

How do you think it got that good?

Stop and think for a minute – do you really believe that some programmer slaved away one dark night over a keyboard and wrote it?

Software isn’t just designed then written on some keyboard – it evolves.

Let me illustrate:

If I want to write a program, I first have to write it for my computer – say a PC with an Athlon processor and heaps of RAM
Fred down the road, has a different computer – let’s say a PC with an Intel Duo processor and a wider screen.

If I want the “Freds” in the world to use my program, I have to write it to run on both types of computer.
There’s the “Bobs” with i5 processors, “Tony’s” with i7 processors, the “Janes” with Athlon Phenom processors, some have wide screens, some have normal screens, some have Nvidia graphics cards, others have theirs embedded. Then there’s the “Joes” who run laptops. The “A Type Joes” who use Intel processors and the “B Type Joes” who use AMD processors in their lap tops.

I’ll give the “Xaviers” using their MACs a miss. They are a small market share (a bit stubbornly weird) and need a completely different program code. (Also since Steve Jobs has forgotten about them since he launched the iPhone and the iPad, they will gradually get left behind and have to switch to a more mainstream brand anyway).

So my simple program has now had several rewrites and I haven’t catered for my customers with different system settings, less RAM, different video cards, running older operating systems and other variants of Linux etc.

The truth is, any software company needs people to prove out new software code over a wide range of computers. If it was left to corporations alone, half the software wouldn’t run on your computer and you would still be running a less buggy upgrade of Windows 98.

This is where the Open Source Community comes to the rescue.
I write my software program code and publish it on an Open Source Community site, like Sourceforge.net. I publish it without all the chrome trimmings of course. Other people will try it and give me feedback. Some folks are experts and will modify it, saving me the job. After a month or two, I retrieve the code, add the chrome trimmings and a fancy box, to flash it up and put it on the retail market. It is now reliable, having been tested on a wide range of computers. In return for their testing the people who use Sourceforge get free software -  everyone wins.

It’s not rocket science and it’s nothing new – without Open Source you wouldn’t have any new software. No corporation can afford to write software and test it on so many different variations of computers. Companies  like Microsoft, Adobe, Corel and a host of well known software names have all used open source to develop their code.

The Open Source Community even has a rating guide to let you know how far down the testing track the software has come:

Alpha means new code – best left to the expert programmers and developers.
Beta – this software has been tested on some machines and is cutting edge stuff but you may have problems. This is best left to the experts.
Stable – this has finished it’s testing and should work on your machine. This is the stuff less the chrome and fancy box (often it has the chrome too!)

Keep in mind that in return for getting the software free, you are part of the testing cycle and as such are obliged to report any glitches. After all it is a community and it’s success depends on all of us doing our share.

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Tags: Business information, business on line, computers, Internet security, Operating Systems, Software, Website design

Posted By Mimenta on July 14, 2010

Did you hear about the IT underdog, who released a faulty product and overtook Microsoft as the biggest IT company in the world?

If you forked out for an Apple iPhone 4 , the latest, allow me to offer you some sympathy.

Firstly your phone has a design fault and a serious one – that stylish metal band.
If you hold the phone and make contact with the metal band, the metal acts like a Faraday cage and neutralises the incoming signal. The result is the call breaks off. Apple has received many complaints but that’s only half of the problem . . .

Why is it that smaller IT corporations nurse their customers and rapidly respond to complaints but when they get to the top of the ladder, they become arrogant. Apple is no exception. Rather than admit their latest product is actually flawed, they choose to accuse customers of holding their phone wrongly!

The whole idea of a mobile phone is ease of use. You shouldn’t  need lessons to know how to hold one!

So far Apple’s attitude is you, the customer, should adapt to compensate for their design fault or alternatively buy a genuine accessory – a cover for your iPhone. In other words, pay extra for an add-on to rectify a product fault. Apple you’ve lost the plot – a successful design is one that meets the customer’s needs – the customer dictates the design. A poor design is where a product does not meet customer’s needs or requires additional training or modification before it meets customer’s needs (like a genuine cover?).

I can’t help wonder, when an accessory stops being an accessory and becomes a fix?

If you make a faulty product and it requires an insulating case for your product to be used successfully, then you should supply the case as a component for every phone.

Let’s get real folks, if Toyota had made the iPhone, it would have been recalled by now.

Maybe Toyota should run a customer satisfaction training course for Apple?

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Tags: Add new tag, Apple iPhone, Business information, computers, consumer advice, faulty products, gadgets

Posted By Mimenta on June 29, 2010

Maybe I’m cynical but I never update my software until the updates have been around for a while. It comes from being a Microsoft user since the GWBasic and Windows 3.1 days.

For illustration work, (or “graphics” if you want it in “Geek-speak”) I used to use Corel Draw which evolved into Paintshop Pro. At work I had to use Adobe which was very professional but for a lot of the jobs I was doing, it seemed very complicated compared to Paintshop Pro. That was until I stumbled onto the GIMP. It did everything that my high priced software did – for FREE!

Until recently the only thing I couldn’t do with my graphics software, was make Windows Icons. Most other graphics software I saw couldn’t do that either, except Ulead’s Photoimpact.

For a while I have been getting messages that there were updates available and I ignored them. Last night I decided to update my copy of The GIMP. I did a quick scan of a couple of the forums, found no negative comments and updated my GIMP software.

This morning I was working on some web graphics and went to save the file. I was surprised to see I could now save an image as an .ico file – used for Microsoft Icons.

Now my free edition of the The GIMP actually out-performs all the other bitmap graphics editors.

It doesn’t take up as much memory as Ulead’s Photo Impact or Adobe Photoshop but does everything they do.

Another point I like about The GIMP – I want a graphics editor and I get one. It doesn’t come with another photo album, video editor and a heap of other software that I didn’t ask for.

If software vendors stopped selling their products in bundles, the price could come down to more affordable levels.

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Tags: Business information, business on line, business success, Computer security. computer fraud, computers, Creating a business, Online Business creation, Phishing, Software, Website design

Posted By Mimenta on June 26, 2010

When Microsoft started to hide spyware in their software, I switched my operating system to SuSe and linux for Internet and everything except web design. I had become conversant with Dreamweaver and have never found anything to replace it. They say it runs on Linux (by using the Wine emulator) but it’s not 100% functional in my opinion, I keep an old copy of XP (with the Windows Genuine Advantage spyware disabled) for running Dreamweaver. Because I don’t use it for the Internet, I don’t need to update it either, so there’s no annoying nag messages.

The result is a massive improvement in security. Virus writers target the common operating systems – Windows is their prime target. Those viruses can’t work in Linux and in order to get a virus into my Windows system it has to go through Linux. I design the site in Windows, save the site and then use an FTP program from SuSe Linux to load the program to my web hosting account.

There’s a few other advantages too.

• My computer runs much smoother in Linux, than Windows. Linux uses less processor power to do the same tasks as Windows.
• My software is free. I saved over $400.00 just on my operating system and it’s more slick, secure, faster and customiseable than Windows 7!
• If I need help, I can get it in technical Geekspeak that is still not as baffling as Microsoft’s help messages but I can also get help from real people at my level of skill (or ignorance) in language I can understand.
• I have as many desktops as I want in Linux and using SuSe, with the KDE desktop, each one has a different wallpaper – no confusion.

One of four SuSe 11.2 Desktops

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Tags: business advice, Business information, business on line, business success, Computer security. computer fraud, computers, Creating a business, gadgets, Internet security, Making money, online business, Online Business creation, Operating Systems, Software, starting your own business, Teaching advice, Website design

Posted By Mimenta on June 15, 2010

Maybe I’m cynical but I never update my software until the updates have been around for a while. It comes from being a Microsoft user since GWBasic and Windows 3.1.

I heard that Microsoft was introducing more spyware into it’s Office Suite and started to examine the alternatives. I was surprised to find Open Office, which was actually better than the software I has been shelling out a small fortune for!

I had more colours to use for text and backgrounds than MS Office and the added bonus of files that anyone could open, whether they had the same software or not, (unlike Office 2007 files which won’t open in XP unless you get another add on!). This was a massive issue in the Education Industry. Some schools and Universities had updated to Office 2007, others had not and were mailing documents that others couldn’t open with their version of Office! I never had that problem – the Office 2007 files opened without the pretty formats but there was enough there to get the idea.The MS Office user got unknown format errors, (which makes you wonder what the MS marketing morons were thinking when they came up with that one!)

I discovered an added bonus, Open Office also has a native file format that MS Office cannot read. I can work on a document in this format and if I get interrupted or have to stop for added research, I can save it knowing no-one will alter it until I get back. When it is finished, I can publish it in the MS .doc or .xls format for public viewing.

I didn’t realise what a winner I was on until I bought my notebook.

I asked for one with no operating system at all, no MS Office trial version either. It took $150.00 off the price and now it runs SuSe 11.2 with Open Office. It does everything the others do and is noticeably faster than the same versions in the shop, running Windows 7.

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Tags: business advice, Business information, business on line, Computer security. computer fraud, computers, create a business, Creating a business, Internet security, online business, Software, Website design

Posted By Mimenta on June 9, 2010

In case you just got back from another planet, there is a cyber war going on. on two fronts nd we are all in danger of becoming victims of war.

1. Everyone wanted to tap into the Chinese market. A massive population who could make stuff cheaper than we could at home, was an irresistible target for manufacturers. This also meant that these people would become more affluent and want to spend that affluence – a colossal consumer market was waiting to be tapped in the near future. The only problem was the cultural and political differences.

On the cultural side there are some major differences:

• China had been closed to the International Press for centuries. The news the population received was heavily censored and as a result there is a bit of “dirty laundry” out there that the leaders did not want the public to know about; things like Tiananmen Square and the other side of the Tibet and the Wiga people.
• China has experienced centuries of war and poverty under Warlord rule and the most stable times had come under Communist rule. Whether we liked it or not, Communism had worked in China and Chinese and as a result, were willing to put up with some inconveniences like censorship, if it meant harmony.
• The West had long been portrayed as the evil doers, just as we had portrayed communism as entirely evil and the enemy of our democracy.

You cannot rapidly reconcile these differences; it will take time. Some differences cannot be reconciled at all, (for instance the censorship of  the Tiananimen Square Protest).

The solution was to censor the Internet within China and filter out any politically sensitive material. However no society will condone censorship purely for political reasons, so a facade was introduced to persuade the public that this censorship was for their own benefit. The Chinese claimed that their filtering was to remove decadent Western material like pornography from the Internet to remove the corruptive influence of Western decadence from the Chinese public. (This was partly true, the Chinese filter, Green Dam, screens sites that have large areas of flesh tones an effective filter against pornographic sites). However unless you read everything on the screen, it is impossible to filter everything and as a result there were many instances where material that the Chinese Communist Party didn’t want known, reached the people.  In an effort to tighten their censorship, they demanded that Google filter all their content as well.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) believed that no company would walk away from such a massive market and therefore would do anything the CCP demanded.

Google, the largest search engine in the world felt that it already had enough market share and if it couldn’t work in China, no-one else could either.

The outcome was a clash of Titans and to everyone’s surprise, Google did not back down. In fact it did the opposite; it reduced all it’s filtering and Chinese people got their Internet – “warts n all”.

This is the first time that someone has stood up to China. It’s important to keep the Internet free from political influence and only time will tell what effect it has had.

In China there are small cells of dedicated programmers and hackers who write new programs to bypass every new wave of filtering that the Chinese Government  invents. They do so at great personal risk to themselves, all in the name of freedom.

Today we honour those who refuse to bow to political pressure – those who have contributed to the world’s greatest resource that remains free to all.

Sadly in Australia we have people like Senator Steven Conroy who wants to remove those freedoms and decide for all of us what we should see on the Internet by making Internet service providers install government designed content filters.

When you consider the same people who killed 15 young insulation installers with their ill conceived program, reneged on their emissions   trading scheme and created educational league tables, will be choosing this new Internet filter, you have be afraid – be very afraid!

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Tags: anti-fraud advice, Business information, business on line, business success, Computer security. computer fraud, computers, Internet fraud, Internet security, Online Business creation, Problems in Australian Education, Software, Website Traffic

Posted By Mimenta on May 24, 2010

Cheap item, shame about the shipping price !

Buyers Beware, especially on eBay. They don’t seem to scrutinize their auction listings for inflated shipping charges as rigorously as some other on-line auctions.

When my son wanted a saxophone, we trolled around the music shops, mainly to narrow it down to a brand and size. Of course, being active eBay sellers we went on the Internet and compared prices. I was in a hurry to go out and placed a bid for a saxophone at $450.00.

When I came home later, I discovered my bid had been beaten by a whopping $25.00. That was unusual because generally the bids compete by a dollar or maybe $10.00 on high priced items but $25.00 is strange, but that’s another story.

Like most bidders I was miffed at being beaten and went to enter a new bid but stopped, realising I hadn’t read the whole listing. I was curious about the delivery time because my son wanted it before a recital. I was shocked when I read the Postage and Handling section.

The delivery was $99.00 US and that did not include insurance or tracking!

Effectively I would be about $10.00 better off buy a saxophone from my local music store where I would get to actually insepct it before I paid for it plus it would come with a warrantee.

This is a common auction trick on eBay. While eBay claim to investigate exessive shipping fees (probably because they get final value fees on the sale price, before shipping costs are added) this practse common. The seller uses a low bidding price to entice bids and bumps up the shipping to increase the profit margin. Many bidders become so preoccupied with their search, that when they see the same product listed several times they assume the shipping fees will also be similar.

Often people do what I did, hastily place a bid before reading all the listing. Make sure you read all the listing, the Postage & Handling and Shipping especially.

If eBay was genuinely trying to stop fraud and scams, they would display all the costs on the first screen of the listing. It would also make it easier to check for scam listings. Since this scam has been around since 2006, I guess you have to ask, do they really check their listings?

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Tags: anti-fraud, anti-fraud advice, business advice, business on line, Computer security. computer fraud, Creating a business, eBay, ebay scam, eBay scams, fraud, Internet fraud, Making money, online auctions, online business, Online Business creation

Posted By Mimenta on May 15, 2010

“Shill never know it was a bogus bid.”

A while ago we noticed that eBay sales were very low but there were two suppliers also selling the same products as us and their auctions always had several bidders. We usually only had one. It was odd, because on several occasions we had almost identical products but their’s always sold higher than ours. We had better photos, more positive feedback (happy buyers) and yet they always sold for higher bids than we did. As an experiment we dropped our postage and although our products attracted more “lookers”, we noticed that none of the bidders that were bidding for their stuff, never bid for ours.

Considering eBayers are bargain hunters, this looked very suspicious. We tracked their auctions and noticed a recurring pattern. The bidders fell into two distinct groups, one group of about 6 ID’s would place a bid within a day or two of the item being listed, another member of the same group would bid a day or so later . If a stranger bid, eitrher one of the first bidders would put in another bid and start a bidding war until the price was above the cost price and then they would pull out, leaving the stranger with the highest bid. Because we sold the same product, we knew what the cost price was and miraculously so did the bidder who pulled out each time. We complained to eBay and within a few days, the sellers all vanished. I suspect that it was a couple of friends, trading on eBay, each with several ID’s, shill bidding on each others auctions.

What we were seeing is called shill bidding. It is where a bid is placed without any intention to buy, just to up the ante – to raise the bidding price. The shill bidder then backs out leaving the real bidder paying a higher price for the item. Shill bidding is illegal on all the auction sites.

On eBay it is very easy for sellers to have multiple ID,s where they can list an item for sale, using one ID, then bid on it using another ID. Because bidders Ids were displayed, it was easier to see shill bidders. For some strange reason, eBay decided to allow secret bidding where the bidder’s ID is not displayed. Now we have no way of identifying shill bidding.

A seller with a lot of sales and a high proportion of no paying buyers can indicate a shill bidder. The non paying sales are where the shill bidder was the highest bid. Unfortunately, although eBay will follow up any accusations of shill bidding, they have rely on members to report it and with anonymous bidding, how can we tell if it is going on?

The only sure way of stopping shill bidding is to restrict all sellers and buyers to one identity only. None of the on-line auctions do this

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Tags: anti-fraud, anti-fraud advice, Business information, business on line, business success, Computer security. computer fraud, computers, create a business, eBay, ebay scam, eBay scams, fraud, Internet fraud, online auctions

Posted By Mimenta on April 29, 2010

Looking for a career change?  Have you considered TESOL Training?

All schools and recognised training providers in Australia have to become an RTO or Registered Training Organisation. It is this strictly enforced rule that has won Australia an overseas reputation as an important education destination. This is an involved process that requires the applicant to meet stringent criteria in areas of admininistration, planning, Occupational Health and Safety and qualifications standards of their course material.

To teach in any Registered Training Organisation, (RTO) in Australia, in addition to a Police Criminal Records Check, you officially require either a Diploma in Teaching or a Certificate IV in training. Cert IV is easier to obtain and thus ranks lower than a teaching diploma. At secondary school level, VET teachers usually only have a Cert IV qualification rather than a Dip Teaching. These teachers usually teach trade related subject material although they may also teach business administrative material and accounting.

To teach overseas is much easier because coming from an English speaking country puts us far ahead of any qualification locally obtained. For this we only need a TESOL Diploma.

Vacancies are usually advertised through agencies, as a package that includes accommodation and all travel. If you are considering this career move, check out the agency thoroughly. Ask to contact other trainers who have gone before you. Make sure the travel is booked as “return” and not “one way” or if they go broke while you are on the job, you could end up stuck there. Also this is good insurance against large currency fluctuations. Make sure your pay is in Australian or US Dollars and not local currency. Becoming a millionaire in a third world currency may sound good but when you convert it, to AUD or USD you may become very disappointed.

It’s a great career change that adds to your resume, gives you a whole new perspective on life as well as puts some cash in the bank. I did it and although there were moments of cultural shock, I cherish the memories. I came back home to a land full of opportunities, that I never would have recognised before.

Some countries are so desperate for English teachers they will accept people with a TESOL Certificate!This creates some shifty advertising for TEOL courses, here in Australia. Many training businesses advertise a TESOL Diploma with blurbs about teaching as a new career path. They carefully avoid saying that this is not teaching within Australia, where you need a Certificate IV.

Some TESOL Training providers will package a TESOL Cert IV course together for between $2,500 to $3,00.00. (eg. April 2010, Seek Learning offered me a special price at $2695 for TESOL Cert IV – normally around $2900). That is not an excessive price for the whole package.

However, look carefully because by doing a Certificate IV on line, separately (for around $1,000.00) and a TESOL Diploma course on line, for $990 USD (approx $1,100 AUD), you come out with the whole qualification for $2,100 – saving $900.00. The results are considered identical for recruitment purposes.

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Tags: Business information, Career Change, Career in Education, Making money, online business, Problems in Australian Education, Teaching advice