[04-05-17] The WGAN Morning News

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Transcript

WGAN_2017-04-05

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 04/05/2017

(WGAN EARWORM)

Ken Altshuler: Hi, it’s 8:37 on the WGAN Morning news. Ken Altshuler, Matt Gagnon has a day off. Phil Harriman sitting this. Actually Matt Gagnon is up testifying on the Tip Credit Bill and the Minimum Wage Bill so he’s serving some political purpose.

Phil Harriman: He’s volunteering his time for the sake of humanity.

Ken: Exactly. But Phil Harriman’s here from Lebel & Harriman.

Phil: Good morning everyone.

Ken: Please welcome in as we do normally at 7:38, today at 8:38, Craig Peterson our tech guru. Good morning Craig. How are you?

Craig Peterson: Hey good morning. Obviously politics is the lead because you bumped me for a senator? What’s going on?

Ken: Well, I know Craig, technology is important but now particularly with all the wire-tapping the president’s been doing of Donald Trump, you know we do, technology is on the forefront of the news is it not?

Craig: Yeah. I’ll give you that.

Ken: So let’s talk a little technology stuff. Backing up PCs, I mean everybody says you’re supposed to do it. What are like the most important things to know about backing up your PC?

Craig: Well, March 31^st was declared International Backup Day. Now I’m not sure who declared that.

Ken: Well I didn’t know that. Did we have the day off?

Craig: Well yeah. Did you send the card? I think Hallmark is the card.

Ken: No I didn’t. Yes exactly.

Craig: No, no. But yeah, it’s important to back up. Ken, to answer your question, there’s a few key things to remember. First of all, if you’re a business and you don’t backup, you’re in deep trouble. If you’re a business and you think you’re backing up but you’re not testing the backups, you’re in deep trouble because many times they don’t work. Especially if you’re using the old tape backup systems. But this applies to consumers as well as businesses. If you have a computer, you don’t want to lose the data, right? Ken you don’t want to lose all those photos of your kids.

Ken: No, absolutely not.

Craig: Yeah and videos you shot at Christmas or wherever at vacation. You don’t want to lose that. So, if you want to have a good backup, first of all, make sure that you have an off-site backup so it’s going to a cloud, for instance. Also, make sure it’s automated. Because if you’re using something like Dropbox, for instance, or Google Drive where you’re dragging files into it and then it gets copied to the cloud, the odds are really good that you’re going to forget to do it one day and then that data is not going to be backed up. So now when you need it, when you need that document, the trust, the will, the financial papers, or anything else, believe me. They’ll be gone. I’ve been through this too many times over the decades, Ken, where you think you’ve got a backup. It wasn’t automated and now your life has come to an end. I used a few, there’s a few out there. I’ve been using Mozy for quite a while. And also Carbonite. Those are two that listeners might want to look into. They’re inexpensive. They’re automated. They work on pretty much every computer whether it’s a Mac or a PC nowadays as well.

Ken: You mentioned there’s backup things that I used to use Carbonite but so much of my valuable stuff is in the cloud, Dropbox, is that sufficient or do I need to do a Carbonite backup which is what I use for to do that?

Craig: Well some people say that I’m a little on the paranoid side. My actual recommendation, if you really do care about your data is to do it two-fold. First of all, set-up a local backup because if you do lose your files or your machines, it can take days or a week or more to restore it, right? So I always do a backup locally to an attached little hard drive. So I’ve got it. So if the cloud service loses everything, which does happen from time to time. So if the cloud services lose everything you still got it. You can restore it quickly. So personally, what I do is I don’t use Carbonite or Mozy anymore because we provide backup services for our clients. But I keep a backup on a local hard disk. I push it to one of our cloud services. And then I push it from that to yet another cloud service. All automated but you know, I’m Mr. Paranoid nowadays after hearing what happened with Susan Rice. You know.

Phil: Ok. We’re talking with Craig Peterson. Craig, let me shift gears for a minute. You said that the technology has so revolutionized our lives in every positive way. Particularly as it relates to our ability to access online content, download music and so forth. How is that affecting technology and how is it affecting the profession?

Craig: Well, the online world in the cloud if you will is changing everything. The cloud, just for a basic definition, means that your data, maybe your processing, your computers, are not local. So if you’re going online and you’re listening to, right now, if you’re listening to TuneIn and you’re listening to us talking right now, you’re using the cloud service. If you have an iPhone, and you use iCloud to back-up your iPhone, you’re using a cloud service. The same thing with Google android, all of these things are in the cloud. So, whereas just a few years ago, my number 1 advice to businesses was to steer clear of the cloud. It’s not there. It’s not reliable. To today we’re on the same, you know, be careful because if what you’re putting into the cloud is essential for your business, the cloud could go down. And we’ve seen that. Microsoft, various parts of their cloud, their Office 365 service goes down weekly. We’ve seen that happening still with Amazon, with all of these cloud service providers. So if you are a doctor’s office, for instance, you may want to think twice about moving to the cloud. But it’s so attractive guys because it’s so much cheaper. You don’t have hardware to worry about. You don’t have to worry about the power for that hardware. You don’t have to worry about having somebody coming in fixing things because really all you have on your desktop nowadays is a web browser that’s connecting to the cloud. Give it a couple more years and I think things are going to be very reliable. Businesses changing in a big way. And I think it’s ultimately for the good.

Now, you’ve got the other side of this which is how safe is my data in the cloud from a security standpoint? And if you are a professional corporation, you know, you sell insurance or you’re an attorney, etcetera, etcetera, be very careful because Microsoft is an example again, has various cloud offerings. And you can get it for as little as 5 bucks a month. But that doesn’t give you compliance with HIPAA regulations or PCI regs or Sarbanes-Oxley. You have to pay more like 50 bucks a month. So it’s kind of today a buyer beware sort of n environment. It’s very attractive because it’s so inexpensive. And as of yet, most of the computer consultants out there don’t really understand the offerings, the pricing, and how it’s going to affect you. So it’s not quite there yet but it’s happening.

Ken: Craig Peterson, our tech guru, joining us Wednesdays usually at 7:38. And you can go to http://CraigPeterson.comand get his, sign up for his newsletter and stuff. Last question for you Craig. The music industry, you know it’s interesting. I have a, I use this radio, I think it’s called Paradise Radio, something like that, and we keep it online virtually 24 hours a day. How much do the artists get? Are the artists not complaining more about not getting paid enough for what music gets played streaming?

Craig: Well that’s such a good point. It’s a huge issue in the music industry. You know the music labels were complaining that people weren’t buying albums anymore. They were illegally sharing online music. So the music industry responded by suing everyone they could. That is not a business model and I’ve been saying that for a long time. They finally decided to move to the streaming model that you were just talking about Ken. And I have music streaming all of the time. And what happens is the streaming companies are paying the RIAA, the Recording Industry Association, who then divvies up the money based on some basic audits. But, you know, if you’re Taylor Swift, you’re guaranteed to get a lot more money than if you’re some band out of Portland, right?

So yes, the complaints are there Ken. The small artists are not getting fair money frankly from the recording industry. They just had their best year, the RIAA, their best year in 2 decades. It’s growing. Their money is starting to come in. their business model is working. But, you know, if you’re a small artist, you’re not going to be able to fight these guys. And the way to make money is in the backend. So basically, if you’re in music, and you have a small band, you should seriously consider giving away your music for free, if you’re not already doing it. And then make your money on performances, in concerts, in having your t-shirts. In having your other really cool things that your fans want to buy because that’s the only way you’re going to make money. Believe me, the RIAA is not about to give you your fair piece of that pie.

Ken: Craig Peterson, our tech guru, joining us as he does every Wednesday. http://CraigPeterson.com, to get all of that updated information, and newsletter and email alerts. Thanks Craig. We’ll talk to you next week.

Craig: Gentlemen, take care. Bye-bye.

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Show Notes

Joined Ken and Phil Harriman in another Wednesday of tech updates. We discussed the top choices in PC Backups, as well as how the music industry has drastically changed over the years.

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