Slashback: Walmart and Wiki, Alan Ralsky

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."

Comments

Full Disclosure

[narzy]

I am Tim Thorpe, I am also narzy I wrote the article on dailytech.com and submitted it to /.

Re:Poor Mindstorms

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[drinkypoo]

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.)

Re:Livejournal Incompetent?

[Solra Bizna]

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

Re:So why isn't Ralsky in jail?

[Skadet]

Maybe they should get some Cell-alis and increase the size of their cells anywhere from 2-6 feet?

Re:Livejournal Incompetent?

[Neil Blender]

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 points can mean millions in revenue - lost or gained.

Re:Wal-Mart Wiki Manipulation unlikely

[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 hard to believe that some very dedicated IT guys/gals like Wikipedia but don't like what they read about Wal-Mart there. Being a CS grad, I've met my share of people who I can imagine taking a wiki entry very seriously, even to the point of it being personal. This seems like a much more likely scenario than a broad corporate scheme to better the W*M wiki-image.

Re:Can't detect ad blockers?

[strider44]

Plenty of adblockers allow downloading of the images but don't show them on the page. In fact mine does this.