My Very Inefficient Use of Google Maps and Yahoo Maps and Others

Well, I am not copping out about this (strange figure of speech, isn't it?).  I am not very good at this mapping.  No, I'm learning and Google's Maps is very good.  I was amazed that we kept getting a little more at a time out of this program in class the other day.  And I say "we" loosely, because I didn't really have a whole lot to input on the discoveries.  But, once again, the more a person uses something, the more proficient they will become.  Right?
  So, I checked out "mapping programs" in Firefox, you know, just to avoid the conflict of interest with Google.  And, I don't really think anything comes close to Google's stuff.  They, Google, have their infrastructure firmly embedded.  Yahoo probably is the closest, if it was to be called a contest.  No, they are the closest.  It's a clone program.  In fact, that's what I discovered about all of them.  Yahoo's creation is in beta phase, but it does look impressive, key word "looks".  I don't know, it just seems a little more aesthetically pleasing.
  That is a point I've noticed about Google.  The little things, the details, like their color palettes and icon designs and such.  It's almost like someone that's sense of beauty is stuck in the drab olive green and burnt autumn gold of the '70s.  Maybe it's just my perception of it that's skewed.  I'm not sure.  But I'll say I am.
  Thing is, I honestly didn't have enough time to fairly dig into mapping programs and do them justice.
  With Google, functionality is there.  Say what you will.  And that is exactly why there were umpteen gillion clones lined up in my browser.  They openly referenced Google Maps and Google Earth.  If I am going to use those programs Goole Maps and Google Earth), I want them from Google.  Not "anzhaloosmarvelousmapmaker.com" or "drivewithusyoucantrustus.gee/whiz".

Marble is intended to be a "light version" mapper

  There was one called Marble Portable, but it had obvious shortcomings, like not going to street level.  But hey, it's intended as an educational tool.  Another, Seterra, below, looked fun.  It has mapping exercises, which are a good idea.  Of course, most programs of any caliber these days have tutorials.
  I stuck to the free stuff by the way, as there were mapping apps for sell aplenty.  I wonder do they really sell any?  I mean, you know, when I get payed, that's the first thing I can think of that I want. A map-
ing program (that some enterprising 12 year-old whipped up in his bedroom on the Mac he got for his birthday.  I qwit.

Maybe it's all the
blue that made
this look
like a
lot of
fun

                                     Yahoo has
                                  incorporated
                                     Flickr into
                                         this
                                      project
                                  right, below




   

Gmail sounds so much like email it must be all you could ever need

                                                                                                                                                                   Electronic mail.  Who'dda thunk it, I mean thought it, not all that long ago.  And now it's almost "out of fassion", or so I read.  All joking aside, it is falling aside to text and IM.  In our researching for 104, I read that some major universities are no longer issuing student/staff email accounts, citing lack of use and outright resistance by said populations, though I can't recall what source it was.  Anyway, electronic mail.  G-lectronic mail.

  With a name like gmail?  In all truthfulness, yes, Gmail is email, and I don't mean that as a simple statement in grammer.  I am surely coming from a personal point of view on this, I make no excuse or counter-claim.  I have been using Gmail for approximately 3 years; a very, very short time in comparison to the vast majority of email users and web-denizens alike to say the least.  But as to web-related usage of anything, as you come to need tools, you learn how, yes?  

  I bought my laptop three years ago for the primary purposes of job hunting and education.  In today's world, electronic communication is almost always required for all job searching, and is always required for educational purposes.  After bundling my internet/telephone/television, and establishing a small footprint online, I opened three email accounts; Yahoo, Microsoft, Google.  I had not much of an idea what I was doing.  Looking back to just that short time ago is enlightening, how much I have learned.  Gmail gets some credit because of all the features and it's simplicity.

  I really didn't use my Yahoo account much at all.  Outlook I did use though, because I hadn't learned just how far Microsoft had fallen in the grand scheme, the negative connotation connected to most things Microsoft other than Windows.  Anyway, it works, and for simply emailing it will suffice.  But I noticed most accounts I communicated with were Google accounts. 

  It's hard to just talk about Gmail without mentioning how it links up with Drive and the office suite.
  As email goes,  the interface is simple, and options lets you set everything up how you want.  I like how the mail is filtered into categories.  I just use the four basic ones, Primary, Social, Promotions, and Updates, but you can add more.  That's real convenient.  Or, you can set it all up totally different ways, like I was saying.  I switched mine back to  the 4 categories pretty quick.
  The files column on the left is fine to work with.  The real bonus is in the Chat category. You have your standard chat capabilities in an email service, but not only that, it lets you dial phone numbers and then transcribes for you and dictates for your contact in real time.  Awesome!  The arrows in the picture indicate the chat area, with contacts.  The highlighted area is the dial keypad.

  I do assignments in the Compose window all the time.  You basically get the features of a Word tablet as far as I can tell.  You know, Bold, Italic, etc.  So that covers that need, at least for my wishes.

I highlighted that feature above.

  Right now, Gmail is all I use to communicate.

Tor and the Dark Internet : Follow the Bloody Silk Road

  Tor, previously TOR, an acronym for The Onion Router, is free software for enabling online anonymity.  It directs Internet traffic through a worldwide network of thousands of relays to conceal a user's location or usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis.  Tor makes it more difficult to trace Internet usage, including browsing, posts, IMs, and others, back to the user, and is meant to protect their personal privacy.  It is intended to ensure their freedom and ability to conduct confidential business by preventing their internet activities from being monitored.  It is a low latency anonymity system.  This figures prominently in today's world, being that there are many different levels of freedom from nation to nation, and that in some places censorship is very heavy and strict.  What we might consider trivial or inconsequential here in the United States, could see you imprisoned or worse elsewhere.

A random path

  As stated before, TOR is an acronym for The Onion Router.  Onion Routing refers to the layers of the encryption used.  Data is encrypted and re-encrypted multiple times and sent through a virtual circuit made up of repetitive, randomly selected Tor relays.  Each relay decrypts a layer of encryption to reveal only the next relay in the circuit, and so forth and so on.  The final relay decrypts the last layer of encrytion and sends the original data to its destination, without revealing, or even knowing, the sender.  This method makes it almost impossible to eavesdrop on the data in transit, and hides its routing.

An "onion"

The "functional and deployed" alpha version of Tor was announced on September 20, 2002.  It has gone through many developmental stages since then, and the current project no longer considers the name to be an acronym for "The Onion Router" project that it began as.
  The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory originally sponsored development of Tor.  From 2004 to 2005 it was supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  As of 2012, the U.S. government contributes %80 of Tor's $2 million annual budget, with the Swedish government and other organizations contributing the rest.
  This short overview only begins to scratch the surface of the subject of Tor.  There is much more information, both technical and political, available on this and other alternative network systems and low latency anonymity systems.
  One aspect of alternative network systems is the so-called "Dark Internet", of which Tor, or rather a facet of Tor, could definitely be considered a part.  There has been a lot of publicity about the Silk Road in the news of late, and the Silk Road is a very good example of Dark Internet activity.  I included a goodly amount of information about the Silk Road in a prior posting on this same blog if you care to view it.  It's called "Social Media and the Illusion of Safety and Security in the Information Age."    

  The Dark Internet could be called the lair of drug dealers, gun runners, pornographers, and thieves, etc., ad infinitum, as in, go ahead and list any illicit or criminal activity that comes to mind.  Onion routing, or layered encrytion routing, most definitely has positive uses.  But as with anything involving human nature, it can be used for evil purposes.  And evil loves to hide.  So a "Dark Internet" is a perfect place to do it.  "Dark Web", "Black Web", "Deep Web"............ there are many names.  And it's right here, right under all our fingertips.  And unfortunately under the fingertips of those who would do harm.   And the powers that be are concerned.


  Aside from the crime involved, governments do not like the implications of unregulatable markets and currencies.  This "Dark" place has created both.  Governments derive their lifeblood from taxes. How can an invisible realm be taxed?  Bitcoin is the internet standard in currency, yet such currency is very difficult to regulate.
  We are in an interesting state of flux with these things and more, and these are definitely interesting times. And there will be more to come...................

Careful what you reach for.

RSS Feeds : Feedly and Engadget

  Feedly has some good features as an RSS feed source.  I like to read, but I tend to get bogged down in links, and lose track of time.  Using a feed lets me scan through the story highlights, and if I choose, I can read the entire article, stories being selected by my criteria.  The Feedly Home Page isn't much to ooh and ahh about, but that's secondary to the purpose of a feed, to me.

The big red rectangle contains the customized menu of my site.  1. The Verge, 2. Techacker, and 3. Lifehacker are some sites I added to Feedly, while my Primary Feed is Digital Trends, indicated by the arrow.  The smaller rectangle shows some other related sites that Feedly suggested.  

  Feedly is more than adequate for my needs, and I really like being able to choose the sites that send me articles in this one location.  There are multiple page lay-outs to pick from in options.  I can scan for Save To Read Later articles and at the end of each page is a Mark Page As Read button.  This moves me onto my next site's choices.  Very convenient.

Engadget

• 
  

The other RSS feed I chose is Engadget.  This was a random choice, because I really don't know much about these feeds other than that they are around.  I had a couple of them loaded on my computer when I first got it, but I don't know where they are now and don't really want to look for them.  I like the  overhead toolbar, shown above, minus the categories.  The page lay-out isn't like Feedly's though.  It seems to be locked in full article mode.  I don't see any options anyway.  I was going to check out their subscribe sub-category, but it kept loading a code page through several tries.  Feedly is a clear winner over Engadget at this short glance.  

I may come back to this topic.  These feeds could be something I might use.

We'll see.  

Social Media and the Illusion of Safety and Security in the Information Age

  Does this look like a man who would run guns, traffic drugs, and solicit murder?  The name of the head there is Ross William Ulbricht, a/k/a Dread Pirate Roberts, founder and CEO of the Silk Road.  For anyone living in a bubble or vaccuum, the Silk Road is, or was, the notorious criminal website that was shut down by the FBI last month.  The site purveyed just about any illegal item you could think of, and both dealers and buyers were protected from legal consequences by what even the law-enforcement involved in Ulbricht's arrest grudgingly admit was some impressively high-tech shielding.  He actually looks like someone we might be attending classes with, or working with, or be involved in any number of social situations with.  He looks like family, and is someone's.

  Ulbricht's empire is a good example of the negative extreme of social media.  This guy holds a physics degree and is a charitable donor.  He is obviously very talented at computer technology.  He is obviously very good at business.  The FBI uncovered direct statements where he admitted to hiring two murders.
  The website itself was a drug  users dream.  As you can see in the picture at left, a person could browse and choose their medicine, or whatever product they were buying, and then they would pay with Bitcoins, through an intricately devised system of "wallets" and "tumblers".
  Here are some court document excerpts compiling the notes of Special Agent Christopher Tarbell of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Ulbricht used a multi-layer system that protected users identities, but it seems vendors were the weak link.  This is an explanation of the Silk Road's transaction process.



Silk Road uses a so–called “tumbler” to process Bitcoin transactions in a manner designed to frustrate the tracking of individual transactions through the Blockchain. According to the Silk Road wiki, Silk Road’s tumbler “sends all payments through a complex, semi–random series of dummy transactions, . . . making it nearly impossible to link your payment with any coins leaving the site.” In other words, if a
buyer makes a payment on Silk Road, the tumbler obscures any link between the buyer’s Bitcoin address and the vendor’s Bitcoin address where the Bitcoins end up — making it fruitless to use the Blockchain to follow the money trail involved in the transaction, even if the buyer’s and vendor’s Bitcoin addresses are both known. Based on my training and experience, the only function served by such “tumblers” is to assist with the laundering of criminal proceeds.

Special Agent Tarbell acknowledges that Bitcoins are an anonymous form of electronic currency, existing only on the internet, and not in any physical form.

Every communication sent through Tor is bounced through numerous relays within the network, and wrapped in numerous layers of encryption, such that it is practically impossible to trace the communication back to its true originating IP address.

Special Agent Tarbell alleges that the Silk Road system held Bitcoin payments in escrow until the transaction was complete. There was a Silk Road bank and every user had an account.

After thus funding his account, the user can then make purchases from Silk Road vendors. When the user purchases an item on Silk Road, the Bitcoins needed for the purchase are held in escrow (in a wallet maintained by Silk Road) pending completion of the transaction.

Once the transaction is complete, the user’s Bitcoins are transferred to the Silk Road Bitcoin address of the vendor involved in the transaction. The vendor can then withdraw Bitcoins from the vendor’s Silk Road Bitcoin address, by sending them to a different Bitcoin address, outside Silk Road, such as the address of a Bitcoin exchanger who can cash out the Bitcoins for real currency.

Spc. Agent Tarbell added that the Silk Road system makes it "nearly impossible to link your payment with any coins leaving the site."  And more on Ulbricht's efforts to protect identities.

On February 27, 2012, DPR posted a message announcing “a new feature called Stealth Mode,” targeted at the
site’s “superstar vendor[s]” who consider themselves at particular “risk of becoming a target for law enforcement.” The posting explained that the listings of a vendor operating in “stealth mode” would not be visible to users searching or browsing the site. Instead, only users who already knew the specific address of the vendor’s page on Silk Road would be able to access the vendor’s listings, by traveling to the vendor’s page directly. This posting again evidences not only that DPR has been aware that the vendors on Silk Road are engaged in illicit trade, but also that he has specifically designed the site to facilitate such trade.

Then there was the murder-for-hire and the weak link at the vendor level.

For example, DPR’s private–message communications from March and April 2013 reveal at least one occasion when solicited a murder-for-hire of a certain Silk Road user, who was attempting to extort money from DPR at the time, based on a threat to release the identities of thousands of Silk Road users. Specifically, the messages reveal the following:

Beginning on March 13, 2013, a Silk Road vendor known as began sending threats to DPR through
Silk Road’s private message system. In these messages, stated that he had a long list of real names and
addresses of Silk Road vendors and customers that he had obtained from hacking into the computer of another, larger Silk Road vendor. Threatened to publish the information on the Internet unless DPR gave him $500,000, which indicated he needed to pay off his narcotics suppliers.

On March 15, 2013, provided DPR a sample of the usernames, addresses, and order information he
intended to leak. Also, as proof that he had obtained the data from the vendor whose computer he claimed to have hacked, supplied the vendor’s username and password on Silk Road so that DPR could verify it.

Dread Pirate Roberts did not care for being threatened or extorted.  One internal communication stated the general area the extortionist lived in, and added, "Let me know if it would be helpful to have his full address."

Several hours later on March 31, 2013, redandwhite wrote back: received the payment. . . . We know where he is. He’ll be grabbed tonight. I’ll update you.”

Approximately 24 hours later, redandwhite updated DPR, stating: “Your problem has been taken care of. . . . Rest easy though, because he won’t be blackmailing anyone again. Ever.”

  So, let's post our schedules and routines on Facebook and twitter endlessly about where we're at, where we're going, and what we're doing.  Yes, I am being quite pessimistic about social media.  I do not like the idea of my life being scrutinized by those I know well, let alone the general masses.

Brogan Rafferty murders 3 in Aakron, Ohio, Craigslist scam

  Google Craigslist murders.  Google Facebook scams.  Those lists are very enlightening, or maybe I should say horrifying.  Murdered attempting to buy a car.  Murdered looking at a four-wheeler.  Robbed and brutally beaten whole seeking to purchase a wedding dress, ladies.  We can't gender discriminate.   So far, I don't think my blog qualifies as a rant (Chris Whitt), does it?  I'm taking care to use verifiable points.

Murdered: Rene Balbuena was shot repeatedly in the torso by men two men in an apparent robbery attempt Saturday as his 15-year-old son watched in horror

  I'll scale it back a bit, dial it back a notch, in the shadow of the image above.  The man's son is probably back to some semblance of normality by now, after all.  He and his dad went to buy a phone.
  On this lower key, I'll mention something I've seen numerous times that just baffles me.  I'll be at a restaurant, and it seems there is always a family or a group of other people at a table, and two or more, usually all, will be engrossed in their phones to the exclusion of the outside world.  What is in the phone that is so much more important than the reality of the people and surroundings that they are in?  I know the answer.  Absolutely nothing!  It is an electronic illusion.  The second the power dies, it's all gone.  OK, now I am going to take care before I do start to rant.
  And I will gear down again, to a much different perspective.
  I must admit, social media can be fun.  I said it.  I have a Facebook account.  I don't use it much, but it's there and it's mine.  Because of the research I've done for class study, I've gotten much better at learning how to use such things, and hopefully a lot wiser about what not to do.  And really, perhaps, that's what it really all comes down to, isn't it?  What each of us chooses to do with our knowledge, and how we choose to use it.
  Like that one video clip from the web where the guy has the poster cards that say different things.  One says, "You don't have 437 friends.  You have 5."  You have 5.  Or 6, or 4, you know.  Not 531.  Not 367.   Not 992.
  We have to maintain our hold to reality.  We must exercise good ethics.  The way this blog opened, about Ulbricht, he lost his hold on reality most likely.  He absolutely lost his sense of good ethical morality. At   many points along the way he most likely could have walked away from the corrupt existence he had created and maintained some semblance of a rational reality and life.
  Human nature and the lure of easy profit lead so many to choose poorly that it should be a self-ending cycle.  What I mean by that statement is that with so many people caught for the same crimes it would seem
that people wouldn't try them over again, as widely publicized as they are.  The definition of insanity is to try the same thing repeatedly and expect different results.
  Communication is the bedrock of this culture we live in.  With that being so, we will not see the end of social media without the end of this culture.  I have witnessed first hand the paradigm shift of our time in the processing and storage of information.  From my first awareness of MS DOS, to today's operating systems and huge storage capacities, we have leaped into the cyberverse head first without looking.    OK, I'll stop philosophizing now and get back on point.
  Something very worth mentioning, the Library of Congress is in the process of cataloging and archiving every  Tweet ever twitted, I mean tweeted, since the inception of Twitter.  That's 170 billion tweets.  Called the "tower of babble" by the Chicago Tribune and "useless" by many, The Library has defended the effort with the argument that as a dominant form of communication in the paperless age, it should be preserved.  And they obviously got their way.  Check out the cultural significance of this here.  And if you do, you'll see the resources required.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-01-08/news/ct-met-huppke-twitter-0108-20130108_1_twitter-archive-tweets-library

  If you did, maybe we've lightened up enough to look at some social media facts and sort of wrap this up for now.  All the major and well known social sites state somewhere in there Terms or Policies listings that they will or may turn information they collect over to law enforcement for various reasons, i.e. subpoenas, their own discretion, etc.  So, the way I take that, don't give information you don't want known.
  What I went into earlier, about the FBI and Ulbricht, shows that if the man wants you, you're had.
  And Tor was mentioned in the court transcripts.  That is a whole subject unto its own.
  Bitcoin is another.  Governments tend not to like unregulatable currency.  A LOT.
  So this subject is BIG!
  All for now.  More later!

Evernote, Evernote, Evernote!

 Yes, Evernote!  Honestly, I was wondering who did the laundry the other day and you know, Evernote did it!?  Really though, I added Evernote to Firefox also, and with Chrome, the two browsers sync about everything.  Yes, they actually cooperate.  Anyone else have this almost creepy experience?  Well, maybe I shouldn't say creepy, but, well, creepy.  Firefox isn't supposed to cooperate with Chrome.
  Evernote is one of those programs that will "accidentally" evolve into A.I. when no one is paying heed.  Being the software novice I am (I don't mind admitting it), I had to look into the help categories quite a bit to truly understand what all the program is capable of.  And being one of the last of the dying breed of those who don't own a Smartphone, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is no small thing to me.  I remember what seems like just a few short years ago when OCR was being developed and it was a very big deal.  As a free offering, Evernote really does put out.  I'm not yet qualified to get too technical,  but the OCR is the heart of it all.
  You can capture anything, from anywhere, with any device (of those viable ones in use in today's setting, of course), and Evernote will receive it, catalog it, file it, label it, etc., etc.  That's like having an office staff. What's that worth?
  I should have known that Evernote follows the standard format of so many web offerings these days, though it is a stand-out offering.  Evernote offers a premium account.  For $45.00 a year, you upgrade from 40MB per month for upload and supposedly spotty OCR, to 500MB per month upload and priority OCR, plus support and better security features.  I had to read some reviews because I've had no problems with the free version, and pretty much it seems keep your money if you can make it on 40MB.  Right now, I can.  In the future, I dunno.

  So a quick rundown.  The Interface.  I like it.  It's not cluttered.  It's well organized, to me.  I like the way it's partitioned:  1.Side Bar,  2.Note List,  3.Note Editor,  4.Search,  5.New Note Button,  6.Activity Stream Button,  7.Sync Button,  8.Account Info Button.  That's enough.

  You create and edit notes, or stuff.  I deleted some other capture add-ons I had because they were duplicates of Evernote's capture feature (oh yeah, that's Web Clipper, but we know they go together so I'm letting it ride).  I've edited and compiled.  I sync all the time and that is a kind of extra back-up.  Then you have sharing.  It's a complete package.
  I know there are other programs like Evernote out there, but until one lands in my lap and happens to be free, I'm happy.

There's a lot more to it!  http://evernote.com/

Camtasia : Rubber Scorchin' Action

Hey Guys, I don't know what you thought, but if I had enough time I could produce a decent movie with this program.  Anyway, as to my video, this is the kind of car I'm driving right now.  Mine's an '04 Gran Prix GPX Superscharged.  These  in the video are various year models and engine set-ups, but very similar.  My old daily driver actually does run as good as some of these cars and better than others.  Since the video quality is reduced here, I put it on YouTube also. The link is below.  Watch either video and enjoy.

http://youtu.be/Hr9_A0OzJ7A

OK, so now I've published and watched it myself. Can't watch it in full screen. YouTube clued me in.  I need to reformat.  Too late!  I'm actually not downcast.  You know, the Camtasia trial is up.  I still have all the files.  And I remember some of those details.  Maybe Matt or Chris can help me salvage it.