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Slashback: Walmart and Wiki, Alan Ralsky

Posted by Zonk on Thu May 04, 2006 05:35 PM
from the feel-the-slashback-breeze dept.
Slashback Security Privacy The Internet Toys News
Slashback, as always, provides updates and clarifications to previous Slashdot stories. Tonight we bring you updates on Australian Smart ID Cards, the security danger that USB memory sticks pose, Wal-Mart's Wikipedia War, Lego Mindstorms, LiveJournal's stance on Ad-Blocking software, and news about 'Spam King' Alan Ralsky. Read on for more.
Update on Australian Smart ID Card. CaptainDefragged writes "According to an article at Australian IT News, the data from Smart Card that our government is introducing is going to be used for a lot more than just health care and welfare fraud prevention. From the article: 'Intelligence agencies and police will be given access to a vast database of biometric photographs of Australians to be created for the new health and welfare smart card to fight terrorism and more general crime. ASIO and the Federal Police will be allowed routine access to the smart card database on national security issues, while state police will have restricted access for general crime investigations.'"

USB sticks as a security threat. martijnd writes "The BBC follows up on the risks of USB sticks as a threat to business by looking at data theft and virus-spreading-as-from-a-floppy infiltration."

More On Wal-Mart's Wikipedia War. An anonymous reader writes "Past the media coverage of their article 'Wal-marts Wikipedia War', Whitedust has apparently received an interesting email from Mike Krempasky (representing Edelman Public Affairs in Washington, DC). While maintaining that Whitedust has no actual specific issue with Wal-Mart - the article was published on the simple premise that Wikepedia's important neutrality was apparently being compromised - and in the interests of a more balanced argument, Whitedust have published the email in full to their readership along with some other interesting notes."

Mindstorms NXT: Mindstorms Resurrected?. Since the announcement of Mindstorms NXT; many people believe that my earlier article was completely off target. My latest article, Mindstorms NXT: Mindstorms Resurrected?, attempts to complete the analysis. It concludes that Mindstorms NXT does not represent any change of direction for Lego; and unless forced by competition to act otherwise, Lego will continue to market Mindstorms as a niche product line."

Spam King Alan Ralsky NOT Jailed. narzy writes "DailyTech.com is reporting that contrary to reports last week, spam king Alan Ralsky was in fact not picked up by the Feds. Inquires put in to the DoJ and Detroit FBI field office resulted in puzzling dead ends as both agencies had no information as to having Mr. Ralsky in custody. Early Monday morning the original source recanted the story of Mr. Ralsky's arrest."

LiveJournal Explains Ban on Ad-Blocking Software. An anonymous user writes "LJ Founder, Brad Fitzpatrick, blames the change to the Terms of Service on boilerplate language put into the document by 'some lawyers'." From the article: "This is a pre-announcement that a more user-friendly TOS change is on its way. (After all, we can't even detect that you're even using ad blockers to begin with, so there's no point in us saying you can't. Plus you might not even have control over what's installed on your computer, etc.) So, yeah, sorry: we messed up."

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story

Related Stories

[+] Lego Mindstorms: What Went Wrong? 278 comments
latif writes "In recent years, Lego Mindstorms has generated more media buzz for Lego than all of its other product lines combined, but surprisingly, Mindstorms seem to be out of favor at Lego. The Mindstorms line has been cut down to a single set and Lego is not interested in marketing even that set. Lego has been in a lot of financial trouble in recent times and its neglect of a product line with solid sales potential might seem odd but this is not so. I have done an analysis of Lego's Mindstorms options and my analysis indicates that Lego has solid economic reasons for backing away from the Mindstorms line."
[+] Lego to Open Mindstorms NXT Firmware 138 comments
ajdlinux writes "LEGO has officially announced that the firmware for the Mindstorms NXT will be open source. They will be releasing several developer kits and the firmware source during August, the kits containing the NXT driver specs, the schematics for the hardware connection and the Bluetooth protocol used by the NXT. The NXT will be only US$250, which is only slightly more expensive than the Mindstorms RIS2 kit. I certainly can't wait. " We had covered the earlier announcement of this kit.
[+] Games: Lego Mindstorms NXT Robotics Announced 190 comments
Denver_80203 writes "Just when you thought Lego Mindstorms was grinding its last gear, comes the announcement of Lego Mindstorms NXT Robotics Toolset, with sleek servo motors, an ultrasonic sensor which allows robots to 'see' by responding to movement, a sound sensor which enables robots to react to sound commands (including sound pattern and tone recognition) improved touch and light sensors, and a and a programmable brick with at least 7 or 8 RJ11 type jacks. Robot fun! Out in August 2006, and in true Lego style will cost $249." Wired has a preview of the cover story about the new kit on their site.
[+] Spam King to Sing For Feds? 202 comments
Vainglorious Coward writes "Infoworld is repeating the rumours that Alan 'spam king' Ralsky has been arrested by the Feds. With the file sealed for 72 hours, the article claims the underworld is abuzz with concern that, faced with enough evidence to put him in jail, Ralsky will squeal on his associates. We should know in the next couple of days whether any of the roaches scurrying for cover are going to get stomped."
[+] Your Rights Online: Livejournal Bans Ad-Blocking Software 434 comments
Anonymous Emo writes "The community/blogging site LiveJournal recently introduced ads on some pages for free users. More interestingly, they also added a new restriction to their TOS (XVI 17 b.) banning users from using or providing ad-blocking software. The new TOS also permits them to immediately terminate the account of anyone they catch doing this."
[+] Your Rights Online: Wal-mart's Wikipedia War 778 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Whitedust is running an article which claims that lobbyists for Wal-mart have successfully waged a war against a fair viewpoint on Wikipedia's Wal-mart page. From the article: "Although Wikipedia maintains a 'Neutral Point of View' (NPOV) policy, the Wal-mart page is highly biased. Additionally, all criticism has, contrary to policy, practice, and the general opinion of those concerned, been moved to a Debates Over Wal-mart section. Even that page has noticeable resistance to negative points of view about Wal-mart."
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  • Full Disclosure (Score:5, Informative)

    by narzy (166978) <narzy2001@@@gmail...com> on Thursday May 04 2006, @05:42PM (#15266614) Homepage
    I am Tim Thorpe, I am also narzy I wrote the article on dailytech.com and submitted it to /.
  • I just ad blocked images from a local web server and looked in the logs afterwards. No more requests for the images. Maybe I am missing something seems that it would be trivial to detect. Just look in the logs. You wouln't even have to look through all of them, you could just take samples.

    • Re:Can't detect ad blockers? (Score:4, Informative)

      by strider44 (650833) on Thursday May 04 2006, @06:44PM (#15266991)
      Plenty of adblockers allow downloading of the images but don't show them on the page. In fact mine does this.
    • The answer why you can't just check the logs is obvious IF you have a browser that somehow can tell you what it is getting from who as it loads the page.

      Thats right. The ads are served from a different server.

      What is therefore missing is the link between requests.

      IF you served your own ads you could indeed build in some system that checks wether the ad you inserted into the page is being downloaded. You would have to start a session for each user, you would have to write a script around your image server

      • Browser information is also in the logs. And before you reply saying you can spoof that, I know. Fact is, outside of tech circles like this, text only browser usage and spoofing the user-agent is rare. I'd say text based web browsing is probably fairly rare here too, though I'm sure someone will post ancedotal evidence in the form of "I use lynx all the time" or "$text_browser represents 75% of my $conspiracy_theory blog visitors". I use lynx too, but it only represents about 0.1% of my total browsing.
        • What about blind people using a screen reader? (and thus having images turned off.)
          • Yup, but a lot of "administrators" won't be smart enough to notice things like that. They won't get past the "how dare they not download our ads. They must be stopped..." part of the thought process

            Well, in my experience, it's the PHBs who do the "how dare they not download our ads. They must be stopped..." and issue the directive of "find me all/how many/etc of the users who block our ads" to the administrators. Having been given somewhat similar tasks, if you don't find that fun, maybe you shouldn't be a
  • It seems Australia could be used as a testbed for invasive smart card and biometric technologies, seeing as how the populace on the whole embraces the anti-terrorism-means-restricting-our-rights -mantra.

    I am sure that the Australian experience will be looked at in the US, once the final decision has been made to implement a universal biometric ID system.

    There are many things, such as the PASS-card as well as requireing biometrics on your passport, that can be seen as groundlaying work for such a system.

    Thin

    • I am sure that the Australian experience will be looked at in the US, once the final decision has been made to implement a universal biometric ID system.

      Ah, such a naive world view.

      The Australian experience is going to be the means behind the US implementing "a universal biometric ID system".

      If the Gov't ever decides to implement one, they'll "harmonize" US law with the Australian law. They'll probably do this through a treaty or some other maneuver, so that there will not have to be any debate on the matte

  • Don't they have space for him?
  • If a user for Livejournal is using a text-only browser they won't load any images. If you just look for images loaded in a log a text-only browser will show up as adware when it's really not.

  • prisoner locator (Score:3, Informative)

    by www.sorehands.com (142825) on Thursday May 04 2006, @06:15PM (#15266830) Homepage
    There is a web page to check for Federal prisoner: http://www.bop.gov/iloc2/LocateInmate.jsp [bop.gov]

    I checked before, and found out that a spammer that I sued Gary Hunziker was recently released. http://www.bop.gov/iloc2/InmateFinderServlet?Trans action=NameSearch&needingMoreList=false&LastName=H unziker&Middle=&FirstName=gary&Race=U&Sex=U&Age=&x =0&y=0 [bop.gov]
    It sometimes is a handy web site.

  • WalMart needs a mouthpeice? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by redelm (54142) on Thursday May 04 2006, @06:34PM (#15266946) Homepage
    I'm a bit surprised: Why would WalMart use an external consultant (especially a lobbyist) to deal with a press inaccuracy? Don't they have people who do that in-house?

    If they don't have'em, how likely is it they have people to manipulate a wiki in-house? They'd just contract it out, like the defense. Plausible deniability.

    • Most billion dollar companies make use of PR firms and advertising agencies. A few have in house agencies,
      but it is the exception rather than the rule. Edelman is one of the bigger PR firms.
      At least if the PR firm screws up you can blame someone else. They are pretty damn careful though,
      after all they have one function, make the company look good (and damage control too, I guess)....
    • Why would WalMart use an external consultant (especially a lobbyist) to deal with a press inaccuracy?

      If you read his email, he was just trying to establish a dialog with the author to prove or disprove his claims. Whitedust decided to act irresponsibly (again) and published it rather than forwarding it to the author.

      Honestly, if I have any security needs in the future, Whitedust will be the LAST company I look to for help or recommendations.

  • Erm..wow, that's some quality research. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Phanatic1a (413374) on Thursday May 04 2006, @06:53PM (#15267029)
    According to our latest poll, at time of writing 74% of Whitedust readers believe that Wal-Mart have manipulated Wiki.

    A purported *security* company thinks this is valid evidentiary support? "The lurkers support me in email" is even lamer in the real world than it is on Usenet.

  • National Healthcare == National ID (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jah-Wren Ryel (80510) on Thursday May 04 2006, @08:43PM (#15267598)
    After reading the recent article about people in the UK being healthier than people in the USA, it struck me that if we ever have nationalized health-care in the USA, it is guaranteed to come with a national-id card as part of the implementation.

    Sure, it is technically possible, even technically easier, to not implement a full-on big-brother national-id just to do socialized medicine. But the political climate in the USA is such that it just won't come to pass without such a draconian requirement. There are just too many corporate and political powers with an interest in tracking all citizens at some level or another and too few citizens that understand or care about the huge risks that such systems bring with them.

    So, while some arguments for a single-payer healthcare system are compelling, I find the threat of the one database to rule them all and in the darkness bind us to be sufficiently compelling on its own to oppose any nationalized health-care system in the USA.

    I guess it could be worse - we could still end up with the identity card and the subsequent corporate-police-state-utopia without any of the benefits like nationalized healthcare.

    • Re:Poor Mindstorms (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2006, @05:44PM (#15266631)
      An expensive toy that appeals to a small percentage of the population should have the full marketing resources of the company behind it.
      --
      I use a Mac, asshole.

      No need to be redundant.

    • Re:Poor Mindstorms (Score:4, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo (153816) <martin.espinoza@gmail.com> on Thursday May 04 2006, @05:45PM (#15266641) Homepage Journal
      Actually, I can't imagine why either. This new product is so clearly superior, and will probably also be easier to use (if for no other reason, than that it has servos) that I can't picture anyone buying any more mindstorms. Certainly I will not be purchasing any more mindstorms equipment, and I do currently have some (but I only have a couple of the blue RCXs, even, so it's not like I have a huge investment.)
      • The biggest problem with NXT for me is that they skimped on the memory. That thing really cries out for a decent amount of Flash memory.
        • Shortly after release, there will be a hack to add a secure digital card controller to the NXT. The card controllers can be wired into almost any standard flash memory circuit and cost about $5 each. Then you can throw a gig of flash on there for $30, or four gigs for $120 (don't know if it will be able to use all four gigs, though...)

          Regards,
          Ross

        • Uh, 256kB is a decent amount of Flash. I can't imagine that regular customers of these sets will ever reach that limit.

          For comparison, the HP49G+ [hpcalc.org] has a very similiar CPU and comes with only twice that amount (the HP48G only comes with 64kB and has nearly the same software), but includes a full-blown advanced symbolic manipulation and solving code library competing with Mathematica in some areas.

    • Re:Livejournal Incompetent? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Solra Bizna (716281) on Thursday May 04 2006, @05:48PM (#15266659) Homepage Journal

      user didn't download ads, user is using an ad blocker.

      AdBlock has a feature to download the ad but not display it.

      -:sigma.SB

      • Gotcha, I've never noticed that particular feature. Half of the joy of blocking ads is not wasting bandwidth on them. 49% is not seeing 'em, and 1% is not putting hits into the ad-tracking assholes' databases...
        • I'd say 99% of the joy of blocking ads is not seeing them. Unless you are still on dialup, I HIGHLY doubt you notice the bandwith difference.
          • I don't notice the bandwidth difference, but I see a huge difference (on some pages) in the time it takes to display pages on my 3Mbps DSL line. The way some pages are written, browsers can't render the page until they've fetched the ads. IIRC it has something to do with sizes not being included in an img tag...

            Some of the ad servers are quite slow to respond, and I can see my browser waiting for ads.mediaplex.com or some such. If I configure a proxy to remove all references to these servers, pages load muc

        • Half of the joy of blocking ads is not wasting bandwidth on them.

          It's the other way round : with "download, don't display" enabled, half the joy is knowing that the asshole is paying for the bandwidth, even though the ad never got displayed.

      • Which would still give credit for the ad counters, no?
      • That and most ads these days are served by an external image reference to 3rd-party server named e.g. ad.sendmecrap.com; the LJ servers would not easily be able to detect if these weren't being downloaded.
    • And how much would it cost to monitor, analyze and store the data from the tracking of even a small percentage of their 10,169,726 users and communities? Is it such that it would add any value to their ad-service business? Would it be less per month than the combined ad revenue per month? Would it be worth going out of their way to shut down any of the users they found in violation, particularly in the eyes of the advertisers?

      So let's say they honestly can't (because I know it's possible not to), why wou
      • And how much would it cost to monitor, analyze and store the data from the tracking of even a small percentage of their 10,169,726 users and communities?

        They are already doing that. Any site with any traffic that generates revenue monitors this very closely. It's the blood of the net.

        Would it be worth going out of their way to shut down any of the users they found in violation, particularly in the eyes of the advertisers?

        For sites of that magnitude, changing click-through ratios by just a few percentage p
    • IIRC, the issue was to prevent LiveJournal authors from using sneaky html/css tricks to obscure or somehow defeat the adverts & to prevent them from offering up ad-blocking software to their readership.

      If you want to refresh your memory, you can read this section of the original thread [slashdot.org]

      It didn't really have anything to do with [Random Person] browsing by and using an ad-blocker.
    • In response to this, I recommend a proxy that holds the ad block list/logic that still downloads all the images, but requests the non-ad images from the http server first, and discards at the proxy the rest (the ad images). Now you still get the pages faster with no ads, but you still use the bandwidth (to the proxy) of the whole page, including ad images. And technically, they COULD see what order you are downloading the images in, but at some point it's more trouble than it's worth for them to force someo
    • Right, because ALL Wal*Mart employees are cashiers or stockboys. You don't think they have a vast group of IT professionals and industrial engineers who may have the time/drive/financial interest in battling over the Wiki entry?

      • Re:Wal-Mart Wiki Manipulation unlikely (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        While I don't work directly for W*M, I do work with their IT dept very closely. One thing I've learned is they are very serious about ROI's (return on investment). I find it very hard to believe anyone (Public Relations or IT) would be able to convince management that fighting over a Wiki entry had a solid ROI. The average W*M customer just isn't very concerned with Wikipedia. Dollars spent in local community donations and advertising speak much stronger to the typical W*M shopper.

        I don't find it so har
        • While I don't work directly for W*M, I do work with their IT dept very closely. One thing I've learned is they are very serious about ROI's (return on investment). I find it very hard to believe anyone (Public Relations or IT) would be able to convince management that fighting over a Wiki entry had a solid ROI.

          Try editing the Walmart article on Wikipedia and you will soon learn that you are wrong. They always have someone on the Wikipedia article. Every piece of criticism is pushed as far down the article

            • This type of activity just doesn't make business sense. The overhead would be enormous, and the payback would be undefined. That's not to say someone isn't doing it...I just don't think it's Wal-Mart Store, Inc.

              It would not be the first time that that Walmart spent a pile of cash on a pointless operation. They spend a fortune trying to avoid paying their staff a living wage or give them real health benefits.

              Exxon spent tens of millions last year on phony think tanks dedicated to peddling the myth that t

    • One reason that Wal-Mart is so efficient is the have a killer IT department. They have a very good inventory and order system, that is a real competitive advantage. One of the reasons K-Mart failed in their bid to re-invent themselves is that they couldn't compete with Wal-Mart efficiency. They have some of the best tech, if not the best tech, in the industry. Just because they're in Arkansas don't think they're goobers.
    • BTW, the "flamebait" mod is ridiculous.

      While you did get right the idea that a rank-and-file minimum wage part-time Walmart employee is unlikely to defend the company on his own time for reasons having to do with low income, I saw nothing inflammatory about it.

      Any more my posting the fact that PR people, whether in-house or working for an agency gets paid a hell of a lot more than minimum wage is.

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