Disaster Preparedness

I know that the Upstate SC/NC region is not going to get the brunt of the "Frankenstorm," but some of you still work in the areas affected and we WILL have need to be prepared for future events, even if it is just our "house business."  Most of you know I am on the SBA staff to respond to declared federal disasters.  I receive various alerts and emails from time to time, and I just got one I want to share with you:

Prepare Your Business for Hurricane Sandy with Our Checklist

Did you know that 40% of businesses do not open after a disaster? Now is the time to prepare your business for Hurricane Sandy. We have tips to get you started. > Print our hurricane preparedness checklist [PDF] > SBA.gov/Prepare

Share This Information!

If you know someone who might be impacted by Hurricane Sandy, please share this message.

No Hurricane In Your Area?

If your business is not at risk of a hurricane, you should still prepare for emergencies and natural disasters. Check out these critical preparedness tools:

• How to set up a crisis communications plan for your business
• Enroll in the Red Cross’ Ready Rating Program
• Visit Ready.gov/Business for information from our partners at FEMA

Register Now for Free Winter Weather Preparedness Webinar

As we look ahead to the Winter Weather Season, now is the time to prepare for the threats posed by colder temperatures and frozen precipitation. Join the SBA and co-sponsor Agility Recovery as we share the long range winter weather forecast for our nation, as well as practical, applicable tips and best practices to mitigate the risks posed by winter weather.

• November 13, 2012
• 2pm ET

> Register now

Your Private Info In South Carolina Dept of Rev has been hacked

You can read the news stories.  In summary
"The South Carolina Department of Revenue has announced that millions of Social Security numbers and debit/credit card numbers have been compromised.

Hackers from outside the United States recently penetrated the website for South Carolina’s Department of Revenue and reportedly made off with 3.6 million Social Security numbers and 16,000 unencrypted credit and debit card numbers.

According to the statement, investigators discovered that a hacker attempted to access the system several times in August and September. The statement said it is believed the hacker successfully obtained data for the first time in mid-September.

“We are taking immediate steps to protect the taxpayers of South Carolina, including providing one year of credit monitoring and identity protection to those affected.”

Haley says Friday was the earliest they could announce the breach to allow law enforcement personnel to do their jobs and keep the chance of catching the hacker.

Haley says the most important thing for South Carolinians to do is be overly cautious. She recommends everyone who has filed a tax return in South Carolina since 1998 to call 1-866-578-5422 then visit www.protectmyid.com/scdor with the activation code they receive from calling the phone number."

An entry in Molly Mail, "Identity Theft Protection" provides that password.  If you don't subscribe to Molly Mail and want the password, contact me by email.  

By the way, BOTH husband and wife should apply, because both social security numbers could have been stolen.  Do this even if you filed a joint return.  

I've encountered a rather relaxed attitude about security and the transfer of information on the internet in other state agencies; eg, the election commission and the early voting process.  I hope this is a wake up call to all South Carolina state agencies.  We should be "on their back" until they take the security threat seriously.  

New Computer Technology and New Computers

I've mentioned that the semiconductor world (eg Intel) has been converting to a new technology that provides some significant anvantages over today's technology.  For Intel, the new technology is code named "Haswell."  References:

• Wiki article
• A layman's article on Haswell (unfortunately nothing is layman when it comes to explaining what is changing!

The bottom line is (1) power management like we haven't seen before, giving us 20 hour ultrabooks and huge increases in smart phone functional performance; (2) much improved graphical performance; (3) another leap in speed.

The first ultrabook I've seen in this technology is the Acer Aspire S7 Ultrabook.  I actually can't find a web page that describes this device.  Strange??  But it is under 1/2" thick, has the new generation processor, 4G RAM, 256GB SSD drive (a huge flash drive) plus reasonable ports, such as USB 3.0, etc.  The screen is touch and it ships with Windows 8.  Battery life?  12 hours!

Internet Explorer Blank Screen But No Errors

I ran into this problem: I entered a web site address (actually, it was to the Windows Update page) and there was the green busy icon at the bottom of the browser flashed for a minute. Nothing! The screen was blank and the browser status was that it was done! I futzed with this for a day and got to the point I was ready to reload the operating system. (I had tried EVERYTHING!) As I was copying the hard drive to a backup for safety, I tried one last time to find a hint on the internet. Long story short, I found the solution and here it is:

A couple of DLL’s were not properly registered. To solve this problem, enter the following two commands in the cmd window.

(For XP, click the Run icon on the Start Menu, type cmd and hit enter. For Vista and up, type "cmd" in the search field and click on the icon when it shows up on the search list.)

regsvr32 jscript.dll
regsvr32 MSXML3.dll  

After following the above steps restart Internet Explorer and everything should work!

Problems with Windows Live Mail

I have been contacted about unwanted, sudden changes to Windows Mail… like the font changes, you can’t access attachments, or the frame that showed the content of the current message you are on in the message list goes away. Here is some information:

{From http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1207873&posted=1#post1207873, AnneMarie}

Windows Mail relies on functions provided by Internet Explorer for many of its features. Internet Explorer 9, which is installed automatically in Windows Vista via Windows Update, changes some of those functions so that Windows Mail features are adversely impacted and no longer work properly. Users see the following impairments:
a. The default message viewing font is no longer what is specified in Windows Mail via Tools | Options | Read | Fonts (for instance, the user may have Arial selected but with IE 9 installed sees Times New Roman instead).
b. Messages which include attachments no longer indicate they have attachments and the attachments cannot be saved (no paperclip indicator is present and File | Save Attachments is disabled).
c. Messages which have linked images embedded in them no longer display the yellow information bar to enable showing the images.
Uninstalling IE 9 rectifies these problems. Workarounds also exist to overcome some of these bugs:
a. For the font specification issue, one can go to Tools | Internet Options | Fonts in IE 9 and then change the default font there and then the default font in Windows Mail will be that font. One can also use MS-MVP Grzegorz Niemirowski's OE Power Tool (http://www.grzegorz.net/oe/oept.php) to create a custom css file and dictate the proper font that way.
b. For the attachments issue, if the user goes to Tools | Options | Read and checks the option to read messages in plain text only, then after reopening the message one can again see the paperclip and save the attachments. Or one can open the message in a separate message window, rather than reading via the preview pane window, and then one is able to save the attachments from the attachment toolbar (but not from File | Save Attachments).
c. For the infobar issue, if one opens the message in a separate window, then the info bar will appear again. One could also go to Tools | Options | Security and uncheck the option to block linked images, but that would then reopen the user up to spam, so it is not advised.
Microsoft has been largely unresponsive to MVP requests for fixes to these bugs, so the user is stuck with either employing the workarounds or just uninstalling IE 9.

And then I got this from another website, regarding the missing preview pane:

On my version of Windows live I clicked on "view/ then in the top center of the window are four boxes. One of the boxes says "reading pane". Just click on that then select "off". It worked for me. I imagine there are different versions of Windows Live mail out there but this worked for me. Most trojans that were caught by my anti virus software were trojans coming through my email. Leaving the preview pane open is a bad idea.

I just bought a new computer with Windows. Question about Microsoft Office and Alternatives

If you purchased a computer running the Microsoft Windows operating system, you may or may not have purchased Microsoft Office.  You have to closely examine the fine print before you buy.  Most, if not all, new Windows computers have Microsoft Office Starter edition installed.  A window may pop up from time to time, and will pop up if you try to open an Office document type (eg, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx) advising that you need to either buy Office or install the Starter Edition.  This Starter Edition is a new Microsoft Offering.  Read about it here.  Essentially Starter Edition has reduced functionality compared to the full Office product AND it has ads.

As an alternative, there are two fully functional and free Office replacements:

• LibreOffice  (Video)
• OpenOffice (Video)

These are in the class of software called "open source."  They are no cost and are developed by a combination of  company and individual effort.

I don't see much difference between the two, though you might have a preference.  Let me know what you think.

PS.  Delete the MS Office Starter using standard program deletion (eg, Start, Default Programs, Programs and Features).