Command Control Power: Apple Tech Support & Business Talk

- one of Joe's clients fell for a popup window claiming virus infection and imploring her to call phony tech support, who proceeded to run harmless utilities (ping test, CPU History, netstat, top) and claiming they were evidence of malware; paid $300 for two years of support from "Mac"; Joe removed LogMeIn, TeamViewer, and ran a full scan using Sophos Antivirus and removed 8 instances of malware - Sam's wife received a call from phony tech support; thankfully she proceeded to interrogate the guy about his badge number, company, and credentials until he hung up - Social Engineering techniques on the rise, demonstrated in this scene from Hackers - Network World reports: FTC takes out “tech support” scammers; $5.1 million in fines, retribution - Jerry reminds us to manually remove updates downloaded by Software Update service when no longer needed! - Joe recovered data from client ZIP disk, wrote AppleScript to convert old Word documents - xkcd: Automation - Joe discovered issue with Time Machine failing to complete a backup, with no error messages displayed, due to nesting of folders too deeply: "destination path too long"; not sure how long is too long, but in this case is was over 50 levels deep

- one of Joe's clients fell for a popup window claiming virus infection and imploring her to call phony tech support, who proceeded to run harmless utilities (ping test, CPU History, netstat, top) and claiming they were evidence of malware; paid $300 for two years of support from "Mac"; Joe removed LogMeIn, TeamViewer, and ran a full scan using Sophos Antivirus and removed 8 instances of malware - Sam's wife received a call from phony tech support; thankfully she proceeded to interrogate the guy about his badge number, company, and credentials until he hung up - Social Engineering techniques on the rise, demonstrated in this scene from Hackers - Network World reports: FTC takes out “tech support” scammers; $5.1 million in fines, retribution - Jerry reminds us to manually remove updates downloaded by Software Update service when no longer needed! - Joe recovered data from client ZIP disk, wrote AppleScript to convert old Word documents - xkcd: Automation - Joe discovered issue with Time Machine failing to complete a backup, with no error messages displayed, due to nesting of folders too deeply: "destination path too long"; not sure how long is too long, but in this case is was over 50 levels deep

- MacBook Air torqued - creative client interpretations of rates and service offerings - Managed Services discussion; revisiting Easing into Managed Services - Jerry recommends AJA System Test with the following settings: "MBytes/sec", File I/O API: Unix, "Round frame sizes to 4 KB", "Enable network volumes", Test: Disk Read/Write, Video Frame Size: 1920x1080 10-bit RGB, File Size: 1GB, "Disable file system cache" - Jerry's legal firm successfully replaced Mac mini Server with Synology - "working off the server" vs. copying files locally for editing and then copying back to server - scheduled server restart to work around SMB service interruption? Sam suggests scheduling a launchd job to stop and then start SMB using serveradmin command - Jerry recommends TP-LINK TL-WR710N 150Mbps Wireless N Mini Pocket Router with USB port for storage for streaming movies to iPad when traveling

- MacBook Air torqued - creative client interpretations of rates and service offerings - Managed Services discussion; revisiting Easing into Managed Services - Jerry recommends AJA System Test with the following settings: "MBytes/sec", File I/O API: Unix, "Round frame sizes to 4 KB", "Enable network volumes", Test: Disk Read/Write, Video Frame Size: 1920x1080 10-bit RGB, File Size: 1GB, "Disable file system cache" - Jerry's legal firm successfully replaced Mac mini Server with Synology - "working off the server" vs. copying files locally for editing and then copying back to server - scheduled server restart to work around SMB service interruption? Sam suggests scheduling a launchd job to stop and then start SMB using serveradmin command - Jerry recommends TP-LINK TL-WR710N 150Mbps Wireless N Mini Pocket Router with USB port for storage for streaming movies to iPad when traveling

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Jerry's main 13-inch MacBook Air gets depot'd; what to do when your primary machine goes in for repair? - OWC offers upgrades for flash storage modules in MacBook Air 2010-2011 and 2012 models - how to restore client data when a machine comes back from Apple with a wiped drive? clone? update & migrate? - This is the sapphire crystal display from the iPhone 6? - black screen at startup after migrating data to new MacBook Air; solution: delete loginwindow.plist - Jerry's black screen Mac mini: reinstalling Mavericks fixed it - processor throttling due to thermal protection on MacBook Pro #1: fallout from prior liquid damage, covered under 1-year warranty by MicroReplay - processor throttling due to thermal protection on MacBook Pro #2 after machine froze during sleep: fixed with SMC reset - Apple's Refurbished Outlet eBay Store - using SSD Fan Control to work around lack of temperature data on third party hard drives replaced in some iMac models

Jerry's main 13-inch MacBook Air gets depot'd; what to do when your primary machine goes in for repair? - OWC offers upgrades for flash storage modules in MacBook Air 2010-2011 and 2012 models - how to restore client data when a machine comes back from Apple with a wiped drive? clone? update & migrate? - This is the sapphire crystal display from the iPhone 6? - black screen at startup after migrating data to new MacBook Air; solution: delete loginwindow.plist - Jerry's black screen Mac mini: reinstalling Mavericks fixed it - processor throttling due to thermal protection on MacBook Pro #1: fallout from prior liquid damage, covered under 1-year warranty by MicroReplay - processor throttling due to thermal protection on MacBook Pro #2 after machine froze during sleep: fixed with SMC reset - Apple's Refurbished Outlet eBay Store - using SSD Fan Control to work around lack of temperature data on third party hard drives replaced in some iMac models

- Microsoft's takedown of 23 of No-IP's most common domains to stop malware, claiming their intention to keep "valid" subdomains resolving, but apparently they have been unable to handle the number of requests; Microsoft's statement - when it rains, it pours: how to cope - redundancy, fault tolerance, risk tolerance - Mac mini colocation via Macminicolo.net or Mac Mini Vault - running a mail server for clients: backup MX via Dyn.com or McAfee SaaS, or using a cheap mail server to forward messages to personal email accounts - clients sending banking info or passwords by email, forming bad habits

- Microsoft's takedown of 23 of No-IP's most common domains to stop malware, claiming their intention to keep "valid" subdomains resolving, but apparently they have been unable to handle the number of requests; Microsoft's statement - when it rains, it pours: how to cope - redundancy, fault tolerance, risk tolerance - Mac mini colocation via Macminicolo.net or Mac Mini Vault - running a mail server for clients: backup MX via Dyn.com or McAfee SaaS, or using a cheap mail server to forward messages to personal email accounts - clients sending banking info or passwords by email, forming bad habits