Wednesday, July 31, 2013

2 drop down boxes and they can read your emails

The government lied and the "traitor" was telling the truth? Noooo wayyy really... who would have thought it.

I wonder if enough voters are outraged to be lied to yet again that we can vote Snowden for President and as such he can grant himself immunity from Russia before returning to DC to throw the bums out.



Edward Snowden: “I, sitting at my desk, [could] wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email [address].”
Rep. Mike Rogers: “He was lying. [...] It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.”
Who is right, and who is lying? According to new revelations by the Guardian newspaper and Glenn Greenwald, the government was again avoiding the truth and Snowden was, in fact, correct. An NSA program by the name of XKeyscore provides precisely the capability that Snowden detailed and Rep. Rogers denied.


- http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/31/the-government-lied-about-being-able-to-read-your-email-without-a-warrant/


Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Mr Wilson probably wasnt always a grouch - (my take on the Bitcoin Insider conference today)

When I was a kid growing up we lived across the street from Mr Wilson and Mr Wilson was our neighborhood grouch.

Every neighborhood has one I’m sure, the kind of cranky old man or woman that when the ball went into their yard you and your friends had to do Paper, Rock, Scissors in order to determine who had to creep up their side path in order to get the ball.

Well our neighborhood had Mr Willson. And as a kid I always wondered why Mr Wilson was so grouchy. Was it because of something that happened to him, or because no one ever came to visit him? Or was he just always grouchy.

My mother used to say….”he’s just old, be nice to Mr Wilson”.

Well today I realized…..I’m turning into Mr Wilson. He didn’t start out grouchy…..he just turned into an old grouch.

On Tuesday the 30th of August I attended the Bitcoin Insider conference at the New Yorker hotel - http://www.mediabistro.com/insidebitcoins

There was the usual….we’re the fastest most efficient mining hardware platform company and or we’re the fastest most scalable white label trading platform and we’re here to sell to exchanges…..(hmmm if you are so good….shouldn’t you both be off making truckloads of cash with your wares instead of selling picks and shovels to the next gold rush….?)

In addition there was also a lot of “I work for a hedge fund and we’re curious and want to find out more about –the space-“, or…..I’m an investor in bitcoin …..followed by evasive answers when I asked how much Bitcoin they had actually bought eg….6 figures…..5 figures? Hmmm you mean you spent $390 to attend a conference on an investment with less than 4 figures?

But what really caught me from left field and made me realize I’m turning into grouchy “Mr Wilson” was the insistence that Bitcoins are going to solve all of the internets problems in that people will pay for content and no longer will content providers fall under the tyranny of Google and worthless ad banners but that we could all start shopping for Porsches and 45ft fishing cruisers today because content was going to become incredibly valuable as soon as Bitcoin became the next big thing for “paying to view content”.

No longer would you have to pay 99c for a WSJ subscription…..you could pay with 0.001btc, (putting aside for the moment that WSJ would probably want to charge 0.99btc and not less) I asked the obvious question…..if it is hard enough to get people to pay for content in USA dollars…..then why would it be easier to get people to jump through two hoops (transferring cash into btc then into the content purchase).

It was when I heard the 3rd person mention content licensing was the answer to bitcoin that I snapped…..have none of you heard of Beenz, do none of your realize stored value ewallets have gone through 5 generations of implementation already (at least) eg Telstra stored value (Adelaide circa 1996?), Beenz (and others eg no longer would you have to pay....someone else would pay for you to do stuff (view ads/answer surveys .....lol I did have to chuckle when I heard about Guvera a music startup doing similar) and at least another 2-3 post 2000 either stored value ewallets or microtransaction platforms (Amazon FPS or Gumroad).

People don’t want to pay cause your content sucks OR is ubiquitous, if virtual TipJars worked no one would be complaining about how Spotify sucks as an income model this week (and yes that program guide is correct, one of the heads of Spotify is behind the launch of "CoinDesk”).

I hate being Mr Wilson.

I hate being the cranky old grouch.

As a content provider I’d love for this to take off. Even more as a libertarian/anarchist I’d love to be able to send anyone in the world a 0.001 btc for an acquisition. I just don’t think it will happen.

However, we are now a hyper connected society (thanks Mr Berners-Lee) running around with mobile/tablet (thanks Mr Jobs/Mr Rubin) and love to tell everyone what we are doing and where we are doing it (thanks Mr Zuckerberg/Mr Crowley) so who knows Bitcoin might just solve all of the previous problems that other ewallets/virtual currency couldn’t.

If you think I’m wrong and just a cranky old grouch then two things I learnt at todays conference

@ManuSporny talked about how there was no published W3 standard for browser clients to “send money” and gave an interesting presentation on how the “WebPaymentAPI Specification” could be as ubiquitous as Http and coming to a browser near you real soon now – Draft at https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI/WebPayment or check out an implementation at https://payswarm.com/#payswarm-video

The second piece was even more interesting in that I think it has wider implications. During one of the breaks I asked another attendee what he learnt that was most of interest to him and he mentioned talking to someone who was working on a “Documented Standard” for “the emailing of a transaction receipt”.

Basically as it was explained to me, currently there is no defined standard for defining how a transaction receipt in an email was meant to look/work.

I’ve had a few hours to think about this since the end of the conference and I think this is brilliant.

Basically when you make a purchase on Amazon.com and they send you an email for a receipt…..whats in your inbox is just a natural language block of text (in English or otherwise). I don’t know what was being proposed exactly (and if you were at the event today and know who this is/was please reach out as I’d like to quote him) but basically I’m imagining it to be some form of XBRL standard that assigns in html markup the various components of the receipt (seller/amount/date/item/tax/delivery charge etc) and that these can be identified as said components “as well as text”.

Imagine if when you viewed the text it looked like any other email but hidden in the http was a markup accessible to your Outlook/Gmail/Thunderbird client that was able to view the component details and then build a real time database of your transactions. For example think of something like Mint but was a documented standard available to everyone and accessed transactions at your inbox rather than your “participating bank accounts”.

Would make the Walmart purchase of Grabble look like receipts 1.0


Cheers,
Dean Collins
www.Cognation.net

Thursday, July 25, 2013

St Louis cold war weapons tests in poor areas

This just turned up on the street pole outside our apartment on Henry St



Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy that the NYC police just announced a "air test" a few weeks ago....... when you watch videos like this - http://bcove.me/ach02g8l


Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Stick a fork in it this Weiner it's done

I don't care that the guy was sexting while Govener, I don't care the guy was texting AFTER being caught, resigning, and becoming a public citizen.

- http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/nyregion/allegations-surface-of-explicit-exchanges-by-weiner-after-his-resignation.html

What I do have an issue with is the fact that he promised someone a trip to Chicago to hookup and a position on a political panel.

I mean seriously wtf??? what you do in your bedroom is up to you, but involve corruption....and you're outta here.

My only concern is you might compromise Spitzers run.

Stick a fork in it this Weiner it's done

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Dish Pulls the Plug — For Now — On NimbleTV’s Web TV Service



 
Disappointing news I guess….. apart from the fact that Anand Subramanian the CEO of www.Nimble.TV broke the law and started selling their services to overseas clients (eg Australia) and has been doing so knowingly for months.

Can someone explain to me how Tribune, Greycroft Partners and Tribeca Venture Partners ponied up $6m to this startup without asking questions?

 

Regards,
Dean Collins

The real reason pc sales are declining

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-07-10/pc-global-shipments-shrank-10-dot-9-percent-in-second-quarter-gartner-says
Personal-computer shipments dropped for a fifth straight quarter, the longest losing streak on record, as consumers continued to favor touch-screen tablets and smartphones for getting online.


Wrong Wrong Wrong, I wish people would quit talking about how tablets are ruling the world......PC's have topped out in technology requirements to run excel/word/outlook.......

Dell could increase the demand for faster pc's simply by developing new advance software that requires faster ram/cpu etc.

People only ever upgraded their pc's every 18-24 months due to speed requirements NOT death of motherboards/powersupplies etc.

This "time" has moved on......lets see a tablet run Second Life etc (the reason for why I upgraded one of my pc's years ago).

the real reason tablets are strong at the moment is "first purchases" and the people who are upgrading to their second/third series tablet when realizing the earlier ones were underpowered paperweights.


Cheers,
Dean

Monday, July 22, 2013

Government intervention

I know people claim they want LESS government intervention heck even after Texas blew up an unregulated fertilizer plant built right on the edge of town the Texas government was quick to assure people that this wouldn't cause an increase in oversight/regulation

But lets look at what happened in New Zealand and China this weekend. A 6.5 earthquake in Wellington and 2 people hurt (one person hurt when a TV fell on his head) and the next day a 5.8 in China where 20% of the buildings in a town collapsed.........obviously due to shoddy building regulations.

So next time you are complaining about government regulation........hope that they didn't skip the concrete strength testing for the building you are reading this post from.


Cheers,
Dean
P.S.........Think Coronal Holes have nothing to do with earthquakes......yes we were in a watch zone period this weekend - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUVWdvDwRpc

Sunday, July 21, 2013

We made it home


….didnt sink the boat so made it home just fine.   Had a great time, I think Jodie has a new hobby and we’ll be doing this again sometime, btw check out this video :) - http://youtu.be/pcLKRZhANxs

Will post a link to the photo album once we sort out the photos etc but here is one to start with.

 


 
Cheers,
Dean

Would you pay for an ad-free version of Facebook

Would you pay a small monthly fee for an ad-free version of Facebook?
- Story: http://on.mash.to/19bxtxR


nope BUT I would pay for a version where I could see all of my friends posts and not have to put up with Facebooks futile attempts at trying to work out which of the 1 in 10 posts Facebook "thinks" I should see.

Friday, July 12, 2013

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Atlas helicopter

Awesome :)



more at - http://www.aerovelo.com/ 

Leonardo Da Vinci would be so proud :) - finally someone won the cash.

Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Gas Land II

Watching Gas Land II - scary stuff, sorry but when you screw up and contaminate water that should be game over and you lose your company/assets etc.

I don't know whats wrong with me lately, I just feel so depressed about where the USA is going.....

I laughed at the quote "oh you're only hearing about this now because American companies are screwing over white people with college degrees, we've been doing it to indigent people for centuries".

Sunday, July 07, 2013

Man Of Steel

Just saw Man Of Steel last night, IT WAS TERRIBLE!!!

Cant believe in this day and age with a big dollar movie that they couldn't put together a script that didn't sucks dogs balls.

As hard as Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner tried the movie just plain sucked. Would have been more interesting to see the lead up to Kryptons destruction than rehashing the same story over and over again (eg the council scenes were the only interesting parts in the whole movie).