- October 13: Skype is not safe. Government installs snoop software with the ability to install illegal additional spyware ""Our analysis revealed once again that law enforcement agencies will overstep their authority if not watched carefully. In this case functions clearly intended for breaking the law were implemented in this malware: they were meant for uploading and executing arbitrary code on the targeted system.""
- Steve Jobs, computer iVisionary and iCofounder of Apple Computers, iHas iPassed iAway.
- September 28:
FaceBook's cookies track your websurfing even when you think you've logged out, but Google Plus's cookies behave.FaceBook's mouthpiece says, "You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!"
- September 26: "[W]hen you log out of Facebook, rather than deleting its tracking cookies the site merely modifies them, maintaining account information and other unique tokens that can be used to identify you. Whenever you visit a web page that contains a Facebook button or widget, your browser is still sending details of your movements back to Facebook. Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit".
- September 25: More about what the future of Windows, Win8, holds for you. You may not like it.
- September 25: Windows Phone 7 systems "phone home" (send location data back to Microsoft) even when you don't approve. Big Brother's got you by the cellphone. 10,000 soon-to-be-ex-wives' divorce lawyers applaud wildly. Film at eleven.
- September 23: Fun Cartoon: FaceBook and You. Are you the customer or the product, Porky?
- September 22: Big Brother is following your car and monitoring your driving/accident habits
(and ratting you out to your insurance company) whether you sign up for their service or not, unless you tell him to GET LOST.
- September 12: Leons tells us about
a toy helicopter that can be used to hack wi-fi stations nearby then form a botnet that can't be traced back to the botmaster.
- August 24: Steve
Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple Computers!!
- August 19: Hewlett Packard, world's largest seller
of PCs, says they will no longer make PCs
- On August 6th, 10am to noon, Photoshop teacher Chris Swift will be offering a FREE ONE-DAY PHOTOSHOP LESSON to a maximum of 15 people, in the meeting room in the back of Woody's Sandwich Shoppe in Laguna. Sign up via email. Chris says "Target audience: PS beginners (but not absolute beginners). They should be able to open/save/close images, and be familiar with the Toolbar (but maybe only a few of its tools), and some other stuff. Knowledge of Layers (or the Layers Palette options [add layer mask, create new adjustment layer]) is not necessary. (As people contact me at my email address, I'll be getting back to them and asking what kinds of stuff they'd be interested in learning. I won't be able to accommodate everyone's needs, but at least it will give me a rough direction). On kind of a side note, I won't be doing anything on fashion/beauty retouching (although I will most definitely be doing the Patch tool, Healing Brush, and the Spot Healing Brush thingys). I've tried messing with beauty retouching in PS, found it really too involved, and then...discovered Portrait Professional! Since playing around with PP, I now do no beauty retouching in PS.
Participants must have: Their own laptop (either Mac or Windows) with any version of PS installed.
What they will get (beyond the workshop stuff we'll be doing): a CD with practice images for us to work on (they can open their own images and follow along if they want), a booklette that will summarize all the techniques and keyboard shortcuts we will go over so when they get back home, they can refresh their memories)."
- July 17: In an excellent video titled "How To Sell 1 Million Albums and Owe $500,000″ lawyer Martin Frascogna explains how the record labels screw over artists with sneaky contracts. Thanks to Club member Ross for passing this link along to us.
- July 15: To read PDF files, many of us use FoxIt, the slim 5mb alternative to Adobe Reader. (Adobe Reader weighs in at almost 100mb!) The most recent version of Foxit, though, has a big flaw: it thinks it has the right to mess with our desktop icons. Why?! In WinXP, FoxIt version FoxitReader502.0718_enu_Setup.exe rearranges the icons on your Windows desktop. Thank Club member Roger for this news. Roger tells us that he has switched to "PDF-XChange Viewer" as his preferred PDF reader.
- July 1:Funny, funny, funny! British comedians go on a nerdy pun romp. Geeky humor at its finest. Thanks to Club member Brian G. for this..
- June 28: Fun list of free software. Thanks for suggesting this, Club member Ross.
- June 28: FireFox 5 is available now, and it's goooood! Version 4.6 got outdated in only 3 months!
- june 22: U.S. Supreme Court: Data Mining Of Prescription Drug Records Is Free Speech In 2007, the state of Vermont passed a law forbidding the data mining of prescription drug records (i.e., which drugs are being prescribed and how frequently) for marketing purposes. But earlier today, the Supreme Court ruled that the Vermont law interferes with drug makers' right to free speech.
The law had been intended to protect the privacy of doctors and patients, but six of the Supremes said Big Pharma's right to hone its marketing pitches is more important.
WTF...some marketing weasel's desire to sell outweighs my right to privacy concerning my health and the medicines I take?!?!? Let's find out which mind-altering drugs these judges are taking, that makes their perspective so god-awfully warped, and "advertise" it in full page ads! I don't have to tell these people to go to hell, because apparently we're there already.
- June 21: US court rules in favor of company that uses all the things you've shown in online photos/said/done on the Internet...ever. The company sells this info to potential employers. It also uses software to track your online pseudonyms, nicknames, and so on. Big Brother is ****ing you.
- June 20: Jack warns that some local PC shops are selling FAKE 256 gigabyte Kingston brand USB memory sticks. The cost is 2,300 baht,
The real capacity of these sticks is only 2 gigabytes, but the FAT (file allocation table) is jimmied to make it look larger until you actually
try to use more tyan 2gb of space, or reformat the drive. The real thing hasn't been seen in Phuket yet, and sells for almost 18,000 baht in America.
- June 8: Makers of the movie "The Hurt Locker" file a piracy and distribution lawsuit against a record number (24,000 +) of defendants, individuals who used BitTorrent to download and distribute pirate copies of the film.*snicker-snicker* I wonder how they'd do in Thailand. If they jailed all the pirates in Thailand, there wouldn't be more than one person left, per square kilometer.
- June 7: Another excellent article about a common scareware virus, and how to remove it. With screenshots and links. Originally suggested by Woody via Twitter.
- June 6: Facebook crosses waaaay over the line into your personal privacy. Again. This time, turning on facial recognition by default, without telling you. Thank Ross for this news.
- June 1: "The two biggest security threats of 2010 are YOU and ScareWare (Rogue Antiviruses)." Nice description of the threat and one method for removing it. Thanks Anthony Kipps for this link.
- May 27: American jailed in Thailand for a link to the book "The King Never Smiles" which he put on his blog in 2007.
- May 23: Why privacy matters, even if you "don't do bad things". Yes, you DO have something to worry about. Thanks to Ross for bringing this article to our attention.
- May 18: Afraid of Apple? Google wants to track you, too, on cellphones using Android. Major anti-trust lawsuit in the works, too.
- May 18: Have an iPhone? Considering buying one? Did you know it tracks your location, second by second, and stores the info in an easily read file? Do your soon-to-be-ex-wife, her private investigator, and her lawyer know? Worried? Want to know what the police can already easily know about you, from your cellphone?
- May 18: Unbeleafable. :O)
- May 18: Club member Ron Stern points us to a worrying WIRED report that the popular Internet file transfer software "DropBox" (Dropbox.com) is not as secure as it claims.
- May 18: Club member V.I.P. Ross directs us to a great review of keyboard technology.
- May 13: Club member V.I.P. Ross "oooh"s and "aaah"s about an entire pc no larger than a USB memory stick, and which will purportedly cost only $25 each when it gets onto store shelves.
- WHAT is Steve Ballmer doing to that poor PENGUIN? (Viral video about a tickled penguin)
- Apple is being sued because its iPhones and iPads track your movements. Divorce lawyers everywhere should be interested in this.
Read more about the Apple iPaidTooMuch's storing of your location second-by-second in an unencrypted file on your iPhone/iPad.
- 2011.04.26 Jack Says: news about the latest trends and prices in Phuket's PC market.
This week he talks about Advice™ PC store, the least expensive PC store in Phuket. He also provides some follow-up
on his warranty battles with Synnex™ and DCOM™.
- April 26: Club member Leons points us to an
interesting and thorough
review of SSDs (Solid State Drives -- full, large, superfast hard disks on chips.
- April 25: Indestructible iPhone survives 1,000 foot fall from aeroplane. Found again using a disturbing app that lets you (and who else?) locate an iPhone. Future ex-wives, their lawyers, and their private investigators, take note!
- April 15: Microsoft uses DIP, FUD, and possibly Embrace-Extend-Extinguish to try to win the browser wars and O/S wars. Hints at what will be in Internet Explorer 10, makes experts cry "Oxymorons from MS Marketing Morons!"
- The Daily Show's Jon Stewart and John Oliver poke fun at the iPhone.
-
Apple's iPad2 *yawn* is out. Stephen Colbert mocks it, noting "now I can 'not-run-Flash' 9 times faster."
- April: Facebook making political maneuvers that should worry us.
- 2011.03.25 Jack Says: news about the latest trends and prices in Phuket's PC market. Special emphasis on using an SSD (solid state drive-- a super-fast hard disk on a chip) as an add-on hard drive on a laptop or desktop, for vastly improved speeds and boot times.
- March 16th: Data Mining and techniques to prevent it and find out how much they know. Fascinating article with valuable links and questionable conclusions. For example, the author seriously suggests that opt-out is sufficient...not opt-in. Also, he thinks the data collected and offered for sale is "boring" but of interest in finding out if a babysitter has a criminal record... but he fails to see the danger that the same info would be available to a loan officer, a divorce lawyer, a condo association, a neighbor, a journalist, a fiance, a possible employer, and a mother-in-law. The author notes that by paying reputation.com $8 a month, he was able to learn that some companies know he spent $180 on women's lingerie. Guys, imagine how interesting that'd be to the wife who didn't receive the lingerie... or her divorce attorney... or the neighbor who notes that you live alone, have narrow plucked eyebrows, and don't seem to have a girlfriend. Valuable links drawn from the article: Ghostery.com, Reputation.com, PrivacyChoice.org.
- 2011.03.15 Jack Says: news about the latest trends and prices in Phuket's PC market.
- Debt collectors find and harrass you (and your family and employer) through FaceBook. Thanks to Club Member Ross J. for contributing this link.
- How to make a simple Yagi booster antenna for your wi-fi
- 2011.03.08 Jack Says: news about the latest trends and prices in Phuket's PC market.
- March 11th: The ten worst tracker-infected websites. Prevent many trackers from getting onto your PC with free Firefox Add-On Ghostery. Read about trackers at Newsweek. Read about tracker companies like ComScore and... SEARS?!?!?
- January 29th: Phuket Gazette reports Phuket police recovered over 60 stolen laptops, PCs, screens, and DVD players: If you've had one stolen recently, or just feel needy and lucky, come on down to the cop shop and claim one, while supplies last. ;-)
- January 20th: Long-time Club member Commander Phil Hollywood (yes, that's his real name) reports that 2 terrabyte Buffalo brand external USB hard drives are now only 3,690 baht at PowerBuy in Central Festival. Phil reports that the drives run very cool; heat dissipation in these external hard disks has long been a problem, so the coolness and price of these drives at PowerBuy are both very attractive. No word on when the sale ends.
- January 21st: Patong's new one-way road system is now in effect.
This may affect how you drive to Woody's Computer Club meetings in Patong, the first Sunday of each month.
- January 18th: According to Khun Amnart, the Thai Internet provider "True" will buy Thai internet provider "Hutch" soon and abandon CDMA/EVDO-type wireless Internet provider services in Bangkok. (Currently, "Hutch" provides it inside Bangkok. and "CAT" provides CDMA/EVDO-type wireless Internet outside Bangkok.
- January 18th:
TorrentFreak reportsthat in Canada, judges are forcing record companies to pay $45 million for having pirated other companies' music on their commercially-produced compilation CDs.
- January 18th:Yahoo! News reports that
the The Supreme Court of the USA declined to review a ruling that reinstated an antitrust lawsuit alleging major record labels conspired to fix prices and terms under which music would be sold over the Internet. So...if you're a rich corporation in America, you can avoid real justice while colluding, monopolizing, and inventing twisted laws like the Millenium Digital "Rights" Act. GGrrrr!
- January 17th:
The Phuket Gazette reports that a local "fake brandname" seller of not-quite-really-Nokia and -Apple phones and other devices,
was caught with over 600 of 'em worth in total over 1 million baht in Patong's shops, is accused of selling'em to several local retail outlets,
and is now out on bail after only one day in jail.
- January 9th: According to Panda Software,
Thailand has more virus-infected PCs than any other country (Here's a graph of the "top" 20 countries)
and 85% of all email worldwide is spam.
- January 6th: InfoWorld.com:
Hotmail Epic Fail. Microsoft lost all of the email for 17,000 Hotmail customers, then botched the response.
- January 6th: Newsweek:
Making sure Internet advertisers do not track you
- January 4th:
An AMAZING photo of the International Space Station passing in front of sun during solar eclipse
- January: AskWoody.com:
Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 now available for download... BUT, during installation in some cases
it unexpectedly changes your "Windows Automatic Update" setting from your preferred setting ("off, dammit!") to "download automatically".
- January: Internet News:
TRUE will buy HUTCH? (1,
2, 3)
- January: Internet News: Head of TOT fired for moving too slowly to acquire 3G rights
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