Slashback: Real-ID, PriceRitePhoto, RIM

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including a possible iBill framejob, the first steps towards defying the Real ID act, Peter Quinn continues his support for Open Source, Judge flunks lawsuit against spammers, WinXP on a Mac, round 2, Juniper drops message board suit, Vint Cerf answers questions on TLDs, PriceRitePhoto gets relisted, and RIM goes on the offensive for patent reform -- Read on for details.

iBill stolen info a framejob? An anonymous reader writes "The database of stolen credit card information recently discussed on Slashdot appears not to have come from iBill after all. From the article: 'Secure Science's Lance James backed away from his conclusion that iBill, which processes most of its transactions on behalf of adult services, was the source of the leak. He says pornography transaction databases may be considered especially desirable to spammers, and that a criminal may have deliberately mislabeled a database taken from another source.'"

First steps towards defying the Real ID act. An anonymous reader writes "With House Bill 1582, The New Hampshire House of Representatives has taken the first steps towards defying the Federal Government on the infamous Real ID act, which last year passed 100-0. This bill does not express disagreement with the Real ID act, it prohibits the state DMV from amending licensing procedures altogether, and it passed 270-84. Several impassioned testimonies were given at the House, and even those against the bill expressed displeasure with the Real ID act. It now moves on to the 24-member state Senate. The afternoon's proceedings can be viewed or listened to via the NH General Court website under the afternoon of March 8th."

Peter Quinn continues his support of Open Source. Stony Stevenson writes "Computerworld Australia reports that former Massachusetts state government CIO, Peter Quinn is fronting the battle for OpenSource. He believes the cost of government is not sustainable in its present form and any technology leader who is not supporting and implementing open standards should resign and get out of the business. From the article: 'Even though the personal toll from state government experience was huge, Quinn said he would not be silenced. "I will remain very vocal and prominent regarding open standards, open source, especially Open Document Format and all aspects of accessibility for the disabled community," he said.'"

Judge flunks lawsuit against spammers. Hawkeye writes "A federal court in California has just created a huge legal loophole for companies who hire sleazy spammers. Kennedy-Western, an unaccredited university (aka diploma mill) has been absolved for outsourcing its email advertising to 'proxy-abusing, header-forging, hash-busting spammers,' according to the story at Spam Kings. The court ruled that Kennedy-Western didn't violate the CAN-SPAM Act because the plaintiff, a small California ISP named Hypertouch, 'failed to provide any evidence that KWU had actual knowledge or consciously avoided knowledge of a current or future violation of the CAN-SPAM Act by anyone who sent the e-mails at issue.' Perhaps not surprisingly, KWU enlisted as an expert witness Jason Rines, an email marketer who once worked with the notorious Sanford Wallace and who has been listed on the Spamhaus Block List."

WinXP on a Mac, round 2. fan777 writes "Slashdot recently posted a story regarding blurry Flickr photos on what may be the first WinXP installation on a Mac. To those who claimed heavy photochopping, narf2006 has finally released a blurry video (Complete with Mirror || Torrent)."

Juniper drops message board suit. It seems that Juniper Networks has finally come to their senses and dropped the suit against several unidentified LightReading message board users. From the article: "What is still unknown is whether or not Juniper ever uncovered the identities of "Does 1-10." The company's complaint cited several messages that got the company riled up, and most those messages allege that Juniper is bribing lawyers and spying on its employees."

Vint Cerf answers TLD questions. netzer writes "CircleID is running responses they have received from Vint Cerf on the questions submitted to him from the community with regards to top level domains."

PriceRitePhoto gets relisted. Thomas Hawk has an interesting blog entry in which he details how PriceRitePhoto, the online retailer who gained so much recent infamy, has been relisted on Yahoo! shopping after only a three month penance. From the article: "What was interesting to me at the time when the PriceRitePhoto story was going on was that PriceRitePhoto had supposedly been delisted a year earlier from comparison shopping site PriceGrabber. What I never could get is how after being delisted on PriceGrabber that PriceRitePhoto ended back on there a year later to try and rip me off. Of course that first delisting didn't get the visibility that mine did, but not to worry, not only is PriceRitePhoto back in business at Yahoo! Shopping, they are back in business on PriceGrabber as well. This after being delisted there at least twice that I know of."

RIM goes on the offensive for patent reform. flanman writes to tell us it seems that RIM has decided to continue the patent reform fight even after giving up their recent court battle. RIM is running full page ads in a number of US newspapers urging lawmakers to change the way patents are issues and managed. RIM also has more details on the Blackberry site.

Link to YouTube video of Mac Booting Windows XP..

[OlivierB]

For those who don't want to sell their souls to Quicktime heres the Video [youtube.com]

Re:PriceRitePhoto being relisted?

[Anonymous Coward]

In all likelihood, it was not bribes -- money directed at an individual -- but "marketing payments" -- money directed at a company, which resulted in PriceRitePhoto being relisted.

In the meantime, let's all make sure that both Yahoo! and PriceGrabber know how we feel about the re-listing.

Link to Thomas Hawk's Blog Entry

[dellsworth]

Since the story didn't link to the blog, here it is: http://thomashawk.com/2006/03/yahoo-shoppers-bewar e-priceritephoto.html [thomashawk.com]

Re:PriceRitePhoto being relisted?

[slashkitty]

You pay for placement in those places... so yeah, they would. What isn't said is that PriceRitePhoto changed their name to Barclayphoto. You can see their ebay username change here [ebay.com]

Re:PriceRitePhoto being relisted?

[vivek7006]

I think they will be booted soom.

Here is teh update from his blog

Update #2: Just received an email from Joe Lazarus from Yahoo! Shopping: "Hi Thomas, We appreciate our users alerting us to potential issues. In this particular case, the merchant was investigated by our Customer Care team and was found to be in violation of Yahoo!'s Terms of Service. All listings from this merchant will cease to appear on Yahoo! Shopping within the next 24 hours."

Agreed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I found a really good summary [hishamrana.com] of what could be the technique behind making this happen.. The chances are he is using the BOCHS hack for implementing a video bios. In the process of booting, windows does NOT take control until its kernal is fully loaded which is where the first screen flicker comes in. The *ONLY* way he could have done this way to connect the LCD of the Mac directly to a PC behind the scenes. However, even then, if you look at the model # of the hard drive, its the same one you find in the first intel imacs shipped. My conclusion is that it would take far too much work to make this a hoax so it must be real. I'm pretty sure this guy is using the Bochs technique.

Ebay userid history

[Exstatica]

I think this probably proves it most of all http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ReturnUse rIdHistory&requested=barclaysphoto [ebay.com] yay for id changes!

Re:Real ID

[sadomikeyism]

The original article needs to be corrected. In fact, the NH House did express disagreement with the REAL ID Act, they stated in the bill they voted for that they found the Act "is contrary and repugnant to Articles 1 through 10 of the New Hampshire constitution as well as Amendments 4 though 10 of the Constitution for the United States of America."

Imagine that: legislators who can still read a constitution... and agree with parts of it that don't just expand their own authority.

Signed: A Free State Project http://www.freestateproject.org/ [freestateproject.org] member, living happily in NH, the #1 Most Livable State (Morgan Quinto Press).

"Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave." - William Pitt English statesman

Re:the infamous Real ID act,

[takeya]

It was hidden in a military spending bill.

Debate begins at 4:08:40 or thereabouts

[syukton]

"With House Bill 1582, The New Hampshire House of Representatives has taken the first steps towards defying the Federal Government on the infamous Real ID act, which last year passed 100-0. This bill does not express disagreement with the Real ID act, it prohibits the state DMV from amending licensing procedures altogether, and it passed 270-84. Several impassioned testimonies were given at the House, and even those against the bill expressed displeasure with the Real ID act. It now moves on to the 24-member state Senate. The afternoon's proceedings can be viewed or listened to via the NH General Court website under the afternoon of March 8th."

Could you have mentioned that the empassioned debate takes place during the last thirty fucking minutes FOUR AND A HALF HOUR session? I sat through the first three hours of the session of the house before deciding to try skipping ahead. For anyone else that wants to hear the debate, it begins near 4:08:40 with the statement, "My intention is that this will be the last bill of the day."