TECH STUFF 30/4/2013
- The Useful Info Blog
Bitcoin & The darkWeb
- On Five Live Investigates Some good stuff on Bitcoin & The darkWeb etc. Saying people use an anonymous website Silk Road to buy drugs and Paedophile stuff.

Bitcoin should have no rarity value.

- BBC doco missed this point. You can't create gold, but anyone can create another virtual currency tomorrow. If I create 10 new virtual currencies, then buyers would use them in preference to something that gets more expensive.
If I have been paying you in Picassos, I can turn around and say Picassos are too expensive now so I'll pay you in Van Goghs. Paper money is also virtual, but the thing is the biggest customer for paper money is the government and it's not going to switch away. e.g. the U.S. gov is always going to pay salaries and services and loan borrow money in US dollars.

- They try to say that there will only ever be 21m bitcoins, but that is not large enough for all the worlds transactions, so there's a big incentive for some one to create another virtual currency. Are they sure the supply can't be enlarged by people making fake bitcoins ?

TED : David Pogue: 10 top time-saving tech tips

- space bar : scrolls down one page. ALL BROWSERS
- Shift & space bar : to scroll back up again.
- webforms option : Type letter of your answer over and over and over. e.g. If you want Texas, go T, T Don't open the pop-up menu.

- Ctrl + enlarge text
- minus, minus, minus to get smaller again.Cmd on Mac
- highlight select : Double click the word. .. to replace don't delete what you've highlighted. You can just type over it. ...double click, drag to highlight in one-word increments as you drag. Much more precise.

- SMARTPHONE
- click space space to auto punctuate.
- redial last number just click call call (cos it puts the last phone number into the box for you)
- voicemail : to skip the intro to leave a msg press a button (each company unfortunately uses a different one)

- GOOGLE TRICKS
: define X .. for dictionary
: Flight info ..Type the name of the airline and the flight.
: currency conversion... e.g. $2 in euro

CAMERAS : avoid shutter lag by holding down the button (so it doesn't pause to autofocus)

PRESENTATIONS
- press B : to Black the screen .. works in Keynote, PowerPoint
.. B again : to unblack
... press W : for whiteout etc.

interesting Tech Support language

- from Penn radio in 2007-
"We have an ID-10-DT on the line
- I think your problem is between the desk and the keyboard"
- RTFM - Radio Tunia FM.. not not really = Read The Manual

Interesting Tech TV program called Triangulation
- They interview a tech star each week
I just listened to (not watched) the episode with the founder of the Internet Archive ..it was pretty good like an extended interview from CLICK

Wow Brian Dunning Pleads Guilty to big fraud
- one of my "internet friends" Brian Dunning admits $5.2m cookie-stuffing fraud.
- One of the internet stars who exposes fakeness & scams has now after a 7 year investigation pleaded guilty to "wire fraud". Dunning developed the Skeptoid podcast about skeptical issues, and has done a good job of promoting critical thinking in this world full of fakeness & scams.
- Cookie stuffing is a technical stuff maybe Bill would know about. Ebay pays money to websites who refer customers, and it tracks this by monitoring the cookies. And my interepretation of the reports is that in 2006 Brian alledgedly developed software inside widgets which were given away free for people to put on their Myspace pages etc. which then jiggled peoples cookies so when the customer clicked on Ebay, the cookie handed over showed Dunning's company as the previous website, not the real refers website.
- So when he quickly rose to the top of the refers list Ebay thought it strange & called in the police. After years of investigation with him saying that somehow Ebay knew all about the technique and it was legitimate, he has now pleaded guilty.
- People on the forums are sympathetic, but the question appeared as to why he was always appealing for donations to support his podcast after making $5.2 m from that scheme ? And since he has done so much work to expose fraud, how did he let himself get sucked into such a large fraud himself ?
- Of course the US justice system is so messed up that innocent people frequently plead guity in plea bargains. http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_23060173/man-pleads-guilty-bilking-ebay-out-millions

Cheap location tracking could be mega A GAME CHANGER

- Some one asked about a tracking device for her senile husband. It seems there are $300 devices and you can pay perhaps also a monthly charge. Then someone pointed out you can install an app on a GPS smartphone to keep feeding it's location into a secure internet page. So that friends can see where they are. Then I found actually any old phone even a GSM sends out location information everytime it makes a call. So that for £5 per month you can sign up to a service that will monitor a number of friends devices .. then I find out people have adapted some mobile phone technology to make cut down mobile phones that send out an SMS with their location when you call them. and that they are available on Ebay for $15.

- Cheap location tracking could be mega A GAME CHANGER for theft, & for privacy & for the workplace. Did you see what we did on that forum post journey ? we came from $300 devices to $15 !
- It's huge if you can put a a $15 mobile phone like device into every expensive object you will always know where it is.. Thieves could no longer steal stuff and just disappear. It's not just that you can be sure you know where your young child or grandad is ..You could hide a tracker in your bike, bag etc. Or in Gareth's trendy leather jacket.
- Snatch thieves wouldbe no longer able to grab and run. They'd have to have their own technology to detect the tracker and deactivate it before they are caught.
- However if you can sneak a tracker into someones bag, it becomes a STALKER'S CHARTER... so authorities must ensure every SIM must be surely linked to the owner.
- In the workplace all the expensive tools could be monitored and not easily sneaked home. And at the same time your boss would know when you have taken the company van off the route or spending too long in the toilets.
- I can imagine a time when every house might end up with a dozen tracker devices. Even Fido will have one ..so no more lost pets.

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a Stew Green opinion
Out of the box thinking
- from someone who was never in the box in the first place

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