That's all I needed to know. Nope, I want no part of either coin.

Did vTorrent have a premine/ico ?

You seem to be on the right track thus far. I personally use Armory for my offline wallet: https://bitcoinarmory.com/download/

If you do decide to write your own software, that is quite an undertaking! I wish you well.

LOL true. My shit coin has the latest tech because I just cloned it this morning! 

Well the state of crypto journalism is sad indeed. No surprise there. We have shitty news sources that are started only to promote certain coins (like coinbrief) and each individual coin subreddits are just echo chambers like the gentleman above mentioned. No surprise there.

If you aren't using vanilla reddit, after a while you learn the quality posters and the ones that just troll. I have a userscript that will filter this for me but I understand how some may not be so fortunate.

I get a lot of good news from r/bitcoin. No forum or subreddit is going to be 100% troll-free, just the nature of the internet.

hilariousandco & diamondcardz have the most sound advice. Do your research, and if it doesn't feel right to you simply don't participate. While I detest the blight of ICO's and premines, an outright ban sets a precedent that is just as bad.

Wow we have have a newbie here that actually knows whats up. I heartily welcome you.

Well, there was TradeFortress .... I can't recall any others right off hand. A lot of in-and-out scammers here though.

giftcarddrainer.com has some ridiculous requirements. Upload photos of card front and back? 19% fee? Wow.

I liked it better BEFORE you added the extra scammy coins. I sent you an email earlier about a trial, disregard that.

Interestingly enough, radical Muslims already accept bitcoin. Just last night I found a .onion page set up that supposedly belongs to a group that helps American Muslims. The associated address had received ~5 BTC. (Ref: https://blockchain.info/address/13Pcmh4dKJE8Aqrhq4ZZwmM1sbKFcMQEEV)

Welcome to the forum, hope you learn a lot here and maybe have some fun along the way.

I couldn't help but notice there are always folks who swoop in with ref links and investment schemes at the first whiff of a newbie. Before signing up or investing in anything, do your research carefully. There are lots of good people here that will give you advice on how to stay safe and secure, and not fall into disappointment.

The best thing to do is simply make backups of your wallet.dat and store it in a separate (SECURE) location. If your computer gives up the ghost, you can still recover your bitcoin from your backups anywhere.

I am not sure if I understand the latter part of your question, are you inquiring about online wallet services?

For the most part, it is advisable not to put more into an online wallet than you are willing to lose. The majority of these services have a bad track record.

+1 TinEye. This piece of advice will save you a lot of heartache. Get comfortable with the inner workings of bitcoin first, because 99% of the alts are copycats that the developers will use to liberate you of your bitcoin.

While I do think this was a very well written tutorial, Elwar has a point in regards to usb security. I saved a copy of your pdf for future reference however.

Further investigation shows you do indeed have a certificate, just not on your landing page (Very unpro).

SSL certificate does little to help this issue you have with your server however: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS10-070.asp

This is a valid point. If you can't bother to pay for an SSL certificate then why would anyone trust the rest of your security?

Never underestimate the power of idiots to get other idiots to throw money at them. Alt-coin section is full of ICO scams.