Mozy Reseller Program

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Mozy is an web based data backup and storage service.

https://mozy.com/registration/reseller

contact sales@mozypro.com or call 1-877-MozyPro (669-9776)

  Berkeley Data Systems, Inc.
774 East Utah Valley Drive
American Fork, UT
Phone: (801) 756-2331
Fax: (801) 756-2576 Info: info@mozy.com
MozyHome Support: homesupport@mozy.com
MozyPro Support: prosupport@mozy.com
MozyPro Sales: sales@mozy.com

Mozy

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Mozy is an web based data backup and storage service.

Home Unlimited Plans start at $4.95/month per PC.

Mozy Pro Licenses are $3.95/month each and $.50 per GB.

Mozy has an affiliate and reseller program.

www.mozy.com  

Berkeley Data Systems, Inc.
774 East Utah Valley Drive
American Fork, UT
Phone: (801) 756-2331
Fax: (801) 756-2576 Info: info@mozy.com
MozyHome Support: homesupport@mozy.com
MozyPro Support: prosupport@mozy.com
MozyPro Sales: sales@mozy.com

 

US Government to Eliminate Competition in the Sale of Epson-Compatible Inks

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'The public needs to be made aware of a very anticompetitive, anti-consumer action about to be taken by the U.S. government' writes Mr. Roark, a Retired Federal Trade Commission attorney, in his Op-Ed article.

 

(PRWEB) November 9, 2007 — 'The public needs to be made aware of a very anticompetitive, anti-consumer action about to be taken by the U.S. government' writes Mr. Paul Roark, a Retired Federal Trade Commission attorney, in his Op-Ed article.

"It appears the fate of competition in the market for Epson-compatible inks is in the hands of the U.S. Trade Representative, if she does not act to stop the implementation of International Trade Commission (ITC) matter 337-TA-565," says Mr. Roark who uses specialty black and white inks in his color EPSON printer that are manufactured by a small innovative company in America. "The ability of other companies to sell ink to consumers of Epson inkjet printers may be blocked by the U.S. government and this would in effect, subsidize Epson's efforts to monopolize Epson-compatible ink sales by excluding inkjet cartridges from importation into the U.S.," warned Paul Roark.

The prices of Epson inks in its cartridges are vastly higher than the competing ink options. In addition to the pre-filled, competitive cartridges, many use easily-refillable, third-party cartridges or continuous flow ink systems and buy ink in bulk, such as 4 oz. bottles. When bought in bulk, the prices for competing inks are about 1/10th that of what consumers pay for Epson inks.

In addition to the huge price differential, the competitive options that allow the use of bulk inks do not cause the environmental problems associated with consumers throwing the small cartridges into our landfills. These options also will likely be eliminated by this ITC action.

"While some have claimed that third party inks are inferior, this is simply not true in many cases," said Mr. Roark. "In the small black and white, monochromatic ink market where I am most active the non-Epson inks are superior to Epson options", he added. "Epson makes no product that can equal the image quality, stability and lightfastness of the carbon inks I use for my fine art, black & white photographic prints, and the inks I use are far cheaper," he commented. U.S. companies have for years made very lightfast pigmented inks available for entry level printers where Epson sells only fast-fading dyes. In short, there are small, innovative U.S. companies that sell superior products for less. These companies are at risk of being put out of business by the combination of Epson's anticompetitive practices and the U.S. government.

The ITC Epson inkjet cartridge matter, now pending before the U.S. Trade Representative, is part of Epson's attempt to prevent others from entering into aftermarket ink sales for its printer base. Mr. Roark opined, "Epson is using its patents over the interface between the inks and printers to accomplish this." He added, "Even assuming these inkjet cartridge patents are valid, this is, in effect, an illegal "tying agreement" that ties subsequent sales of inks to the sale of the printer." Tying agreements have been prohibited by the antitrust laws for many years, although the burden of proving an illegal tying agreement has been made much more difficult in recent years. Realistically, small competitors and consumers simply cannot afford the legal fees and years of litigation such matters now involve. Nonetheless, where a government agency is called on to exercise discretion, the fact of the likely illegal conduct and the larger competitive picture should be considered. Sadly, the plight of competitors and consumers who were never parties to this action may never have come to the attention of the decision makers. "The U.S. Trade representative needs to consider these factors when she makes her decision," said Mr. Roark.

"From a legal standpoint, there are cases that deal with these concepts," said Mr. Roark. "The Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in Image Technical Services v. Eastman Kodak (125 F.3d 1195 (1997)) addressed for the first time the relationship of intellectual property rights and the antitrust laws," he added. The court held that a monopolist who has achieved a dominant position through its patents and copyrights can nevertheless be held in violation the Sherman Act by exploiting that dominant position to attain a monopoly in another market. As a subsequent court noted, "Properly viewed within the framework of a tying case, (Image Technical Services) can be interpreted as restating the undisputed premise that the patent holder cannot use his statutory right to refuse to sell patented parts to gain a monopoly in a market beyond the scope of the patent." (CSU v. Xerox, 203 F.3d at 1327) Also in Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of AM., Inc.: "(A) patent owner may not take the property right granted by a patent and use it to extend his power in the marketplace improperly, i.e., beyond the limits of what Congress intended to give in the patent laws." (897 F.2d 1572, 1576 (Fed. Cir. 1990)) In the full text if his Op/Ed published on hios website Mr. Roark urges interested individuals to read the excellent article on this subject by Nicholas Economides and William Hebert that can be found through a link on the full text of his op/ed.

"Most consumers as well as many businesses use printers that might be affected and they need to be aware of the problem and convey their concerns to the policy makers involved" said Mr. Roark. "Using dubious patents to monopolize adjacent markets, and having the ITC help in this effort is not what Congress had in mind when these legal regimes were put in place" he added. "Susan Schwab is the US Trade Representative who's signature is required on or before December 19, 2007 to enact this law" said Mr. Roark who is urging consumers and small businesses that may be affected to contact her with their concerns. "Her office is at 600 17th Street, N.W., Washington D.C. 20508 (202) 395-3063," he added.

Mr. Roark believes strongly that consumer opinions in this matter may make a difference and urges anyone who is potentially affected to read his entire op/ed which can be downloaded at http://paulroark.com/Epson-ITC-Draft-Letter-2.zip

Paul Roark is a former US Federal Trade Commission antitrust attorney residing in Solang, CA where he is known today as a photographer assisting other interested photographers in using carbon based inkjet inks in EPSON printers. His work can be seen at http://www.PaulRoark.com

 

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The Internet’s Most Expensive Advertisement

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Internet Entrepreneur Aaron Davison is selling what he believes is the Internet's most expensive ad space. It's a crazy idea that might actually work.

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) November 10, 2007 — Aaron Davison, an Internet entrepreneur and musician, has recently launched a new website called "The Million Dollar Advertisement.com". The goal of Aaron's site is to attract one advertiser to pay one million dollars to advertise on his site permanently. Why would anyone do this? Well as Aaron states, "this idea is so freaking stupid that if it actually works there will be an immense amount of publicity for myself and the advertiser."

What inspired Aaron's crazy idea? "I'm a musician and I've been looking for creative ways to finance my music career." said Aaron, " I read about a website called the Million Dollar Homepage where the web designer sold tiny ads for one dollar a pixel. There were one million pixels in all and he sold all of them! I thought it was a brilliant idea, but the ads were so small that you could barely see them. My concept is far superior because I'm only selling one ad, so it will be totally visible."

To advertise on Aaron's site, or for more information, visit http://www.themilliondollaradvertisement.com/

Association of Computer Repair Business Owners (ACRBO)

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Founded in 2007 as NACRBO, The Association of Computer Repair Business Owners (ACRBO) is a trade association of Computer Repair Business owners, dedicated to the advancement of the Computer Repair Business through the building of trust and professionalism of its members. Every association member pledges to adhere to the Code’s standards as a condition of admission and continuing membership in the Association.

NACRBO is dedicated to raising awareness through communities that those in the Computer Repair Industry are professionals in a field that requires expertise.

The typical Computer Repair Business Owner typically has a difficult time getting discounts on some of the products of the trade, due to not being able to buy in volume. At ACRBO we are continually getting members discounted priced on things such as data recover, web hosting, remote software, and more.

 

Contact:

www.acrbo.com

10513 Big Horn Drive

Fredericksburg, Va 22407

540-786-1144

 


IPCop Installation Guide

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IPCop Installation Guide
-Eric J. Vititoe

IPCop “is a complete Linux distribution whose sole purpose is to protect the networks on which it is installed”.  It is very easy to install.  It is very easy to configure.  And, best of all, it is FREE.

IPCop and its add-ons include DHCP routing, VPN capabilities, anti-spyware, anti-spam, anti-virus, proxy, URL filtering, and much more.

IPCop is able to run on hardware that we would normally think of as being obsolete.  I have personally never installed it on a machine with anything slower than a 700MHz CPU, but others have installed it on 200-233MHz machines with only 32Mb RAM.  Even at slower speeds, it is very robust.

Today, I will show you how to set up a basic configuration of IPCop.  My example configuration assumes:
    a) you have a static IP from your ISP
    b) you need to use DHCP for your LAN
    c) you need VPN capabilities for roaming users
    d) that the users above have Windows
    e) that you know a little bit about computers and networking

The rig I am using is a 1.3GHz AMD with 256Mb of RAM and a 20Gb hard drive.  I have two network cards installed, one for the WAN, and another for the LAN.  The computer also has a floppy drive and CD-ROM.

Section 1 – Installing IPCop

Go to www.ipcop.org and download the ISO image.  It’s approximately 45Mb in size.  Use your favorite burning software to put the ISO to CD and load it into your CD drive.

Turn your machine on and we’ll begin the tutorial.  I will walk you through the install, step by step.  Keep in mind that your mouse will not function with IPCop.  You will use the tab, space, and enter keys to move the cursor and select an item.

Note: Connect the LAN cable, but do NOT connect the WAN interface cable yet.  I will let you know when to connect the WAN cable.

1) The first menu is the boot menu.  Simply press enter to boot.

2) Select your language, move to and select OK.

3) The installation will erase all information on your hard drive.  If this is OK, move to and select OK.  Not selecting OK will cancel the installation.

4) Since we burned a CD for installing, we will select the CD-ROM as our installation media.  Move to and select OK.

5) You are now at the disk prep dialogue.    Select OK to continue.

At this point, you will see several dialogues appear and disappear, such as partitioning, installing log file system and root file system, installing files, swap space, etc.  Just be patient.

6) The next step asks if you would like to make a backup.  I see no need to backup yet, so I just skip this step.  You can backup if you like.

7) Now we are going to configure our green interface.  The green interface is going to be used on the LAN, or local, side of the IPCop box.   To configure the green interface, move to and select Probe.  It will detect which network interface is connected and use that one for your green interface.  Select OK after it has been detected.

8) Enter your green interface IP address.  Normally, you would enter 192.168.1.1 as this is going to be acting as our new router, as well.  You could enter a different address for now and change it later, in case your new IPCop box isn’t going live just yet.  Select OK.

9) At this point, the installer will install GRUB bootloader and then eject the install CD.  Place the CD in a safe location.

10) “Congratulations!”  The initial setup is almost complete.  Select OK.

11) Choose your keyboard layout and select OK.

12) Now, select your time zone and select OK.

13) For host name, just use “ipcop” (without the quotes).  That will make it easy to remember.  Select OK.

14) Unless you know what you are doing, just use the default domain name and select OK.

15) Most do not use ISDN, so select disabled.

16) Now, we are at the network configuration menu.  For this example, we will choose “Green + Red”.  Select OK.  IPCop will now push down the local network.

17) Choose Drivers & Card Assignments, then select OK when prompted to change settings.  IPCop will once again push down the network.

18) IPCop will prompt that it has found an unclaimed network card and will ask if you want to assign it to the red interface.  Select OK to assign it.  It will prompt that All cards have been successfully allocated.

19) Back at the menu, choose address settings, then green interface and OK.  Read the warning, change numbers if needed, and choose OK.

20) Select red interface.  Input your settings for DHCP, static addresses and select done.

21) Now, select DNS & Gateway settings.  Input parameters and select OK.

22) Choose DHCP Server Configuration, input settings, and select OK.

23) The next few dialogues will prompt you for various passwords.  For simplicity, you can enter them all the same.  However, if you have more than one network admin, you may want to use different passwords for each.  You will have to enter each twice, but won’t be able to see what you are typing.

24) Now, you can connect your WAN interface cable.  Choose OK to reboot.  After IPCop has rebooted, do not touch anything at the boot menu.

Now that IPCop has been set up, you can remove the keyboard and mouse from the computer.  IPCop can now run headless. *Exception: if you entered a different IP address in step eight, you will need to run setup locally again from the IPCop machine to change the address.

From another machine on your LAN, open your web browser and visit https://192.168.1.1:445 (or whatever address you entered in step 8).  Notice we’re using secure http.  If you prefer, you can use the unsecured address http://192.168.1.1:81.

Enter the admin username and password when prompted.  From the drop down menu, you need to enable SSH.  Click system > SSH Access then check SSH Access.  Now click on Save.

You have now configured your IPCop router.

Section 2 – Installing VPN

If you want to take things even further, you can now install Zerina as your VPN server to give roaming users the ability to see and use local resources remotely, while keeping your data secure.

To install Zerina from a Windows box, you will first need to download a few things.  

First is Zerina itself.  Download Zerina from http://www.zerina.de/zerina/?q=download .  

Secondly, download WinSCP from http://winscp.net/eng/index.php .  

Last, download Putty from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html .  

If one or more of these addresses no longer work, simply search for them using your favorite internet search engine.

A great animated installation guide for Zerina can be found at http://www.zerina.de/zerina/files/flash/ZERINA-Install.htm .

Section 3 – Configuring Your VPN Server

Once you have installed Zerina, you will need to create the host certificate.  From the menu, go to VPN > OpenVPN.  Click the box called “Generate Root/Host Certificate”.  Enter all information and click generate.  This may take a few minutes.

Now, we can create certificates for your VPN users. From the OpenVPN menu, under client status, click add.  Select host-to-net VPN > add.  Now, fill in all relevant information, including password, and click save.  After a moment, you will now see that user’s account.  Repeat for all VPN users.

NOTE: Be sure to click the “enable VPN on red” check box on the OpenVPN menu.

Section 4 – Installing and Configuring Your VPN Client

As a client, you will need to download OpenVPN’s client software from “http://openvpn.net/download.html”.  Install using all default options.  If you are using Windows XP, you will receive a prompt that the drive has not passed Microsoft testing.  Just click continue anyway.  The client is now installed.

To configure the client, we need to download the PKCS12 file that was generated from the server.  Browse to the IPCop GUI > VPN > OpenVPN.  Locate the user’s file.  It is the blue button to the right of the user name labeled “O VPN”.  Click on this button to download the user’s package file.

Once downloaded, transfer the package file to the client machine and unzip.  It should contain two files.  Both of these files should be moved to the “C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config” directory on the client machine.

To connect the client to the remote VPN, click on the OpenVPN GUI from the program menu.  You will see a new network icon with two red screens in your system tray.  Right click on that icon, then left click on connect.  You will be prompted to enter your password.

You are now connected!

Good luck and happy installing!

OnForce Experiences Online Outage

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(TheForceField.Net ) November 8, 2007 — OnForce experienced a system outage today when its online services went offline. Sometime after 11 AM EST OnForce Providers began to have trouble accessing the online forums. At 11:50 AM the main site went down but was back up five minutes later.

According to a customer service representative some of the subdomains went down, affecting chat, forums and the Canadian site, which went live early this fall. He was unaware that the main site also went down for nearly five minutes.

The representative was unable to provide an ETA for repair. "We are aware [of the problem] and working on it", he said.

Around 12:15 AM EST the entire site went down again. Another representative provided an ETA between fifteen and twenty minutes. The system was back online by 12:40 PM. 

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Techinsurance

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Techinsurance is a web based insurance agent. The company was founded in 1997 and caters specifically to IT businesses and professionals. They specialize in general liability insurance and Errors and Omissions (E&O).

Jim Cochran, President of Techinsurance was interviewed on The Force Field Podcast in Episode 14 – Insuring Your Business .

Techinsurance
1301 Central Expy South, Suite 115
Allen, TX   75013
www.techinsurance.com

email: becky@techinsurance.com
office: (972)390-0025
toll free: (800)668-7020
direct: (469)854-3903
fax: (972)390-8484
hours: 8:00am – 5:30pm Central

Episode 7 – The Women of IT

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This week we talk with two female techs and ask them what it is like to work in a field dominated by males.

Intro 1:19
Billboard 2:27

News and Comment segment 2:37
Apple recently pushed a firmware update for the iPhone to disable hacks which allowed
users to choose other service carriers. The position of Apple to lock users into proprietary service is somewhat ironic given Steve Jobs’ recent stand against DRM.

Commercial Break 1:00
Sponsored by PC Doctor Service Center 6. 1-866-BUY PCDR. Mention The Force Field podcast for $49 discount. Offer good until November 15.

Intro to calls 1:54

This week we are going to talk with two female techs, each with their own view of and experience in the IT field.

Renee Interview 7:15
Kapi Interview 12:35

Wrap up and Close :46

©2007 Savoia Computer. All rights reserved.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (27.3MB) | Embed

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The Force Field Episode 7 Released

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(TheForceField.net ) November 2, 2007 — After an extended hiatus from production, The Force Field with Rick Savoia™ was released this morning at 8 AM EDT. This latest episode marks the first of a new series of podcasts to include more focused interviews and streamlined production techniques. The show also marks the "official" launch of new features on The Force Field web site and a greater emphasis on topical features that tie-in with the current episode.

The show can be downloaded and heard in The Force Field podcast blog . You can even download and play it directly on your iPhone .

The Force Field is listed on iTunes and syndicated on over 20 podcast networks and directories including Yahoo, Google Base and iBizRadio . It is also listed by Small Business Trends Radio as one of the 100 Small Business Audio Podcasts .The Force Field is a proud member of The Tech Podcast Network .

 TechPodcasts.com player!

techpodcasts.com

  

podcast 100
 

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