Something Interesting.

[shadow pirate]

A student comes up with a little program called the Wikipedia Scanner, which, when you place an IP address into it, it gives you all the Wiki Edits made by that IP.

The results?

- Microsoft tried to cover up the XBOX 360 failure rate

- Apple edit Microsoft entries, adding more negative comments about its rival

- Bill Gates revenge? Microsoft edits Apple entries, adding more negative comments about its rival

- The Vatican edits Irish Catholic politician Gerry Adams page

- In the 9/11 Wikipedia article, the NRA added that “Iraq was involved in 9/11”

- Exxon Mobil edits spillages and eco-system destruction from oil spillages article

- FBI edits Guantanamo Bay, removing numerous pictures

- Oil company ChevronTexaco removes informative biodiesel article and deletes a paragraph regarding fines against the company

- Scientology removes criticism and negatives article from Scientology page

- Al Jazeera TV station adds that the foundation of Iraq was just as bad as the Holocaust

- Amnesty International removes negative comments

- Dell Computers deletes negative comments on customer services and removes a passage how the company outsources work to third world countries

- MySpace removes paragraph when their website was hacked

- EA Games deletes whole paragraphs of criticism about employment practices and business methods

- Dog breeding association deletes whole paragraphs about fatal attacks by dogs on humans
- US Republican Party changes the "Post-Saddam" section of the Baath Party article to a different account of the war, changing the language from "US-led occupation" to "US-led liberation"

- Fox News removes all controversial topics against the network from the Fox News page

- News of the World deletes a number of criticism against the paper

- Nestle removes negative comments on its business practices from its page

- UN address calls journalist Oriana Fallaci a racist ‘prostitute’

- Portuguese government removes entries about Prime Minister’s scandals

- DieBold, the company that controversially supplied computerised polling stations in the US elections, removes numerous paragraphs with negative comments

- Walmart removes criticism of outsourcing work. The retailer also changes negative paragraphs of underpaid workforce

- Sony removes harmful paragraphs against blu-ray systems

- Someone at Reuters calls Bush “a mass murderer”

- Coca Cola removes negative content about its effects

- British Conservative Party removes negative references of its MPs and deletes paragraph of the party’s old policies

- US University adds the “prestigious” adjective to its page

- Boeing edits from “Boeing is a leading American aircraft and aerospace manufacturer” to “Boeing is the leading American aircraft and aerospace manufacturer”

- MSN Search is “a major competitor to Google”. That’s what MSN added to their page

- BBC changes Blair's drink from coffee to vodka and his workout from the gym to the bedroom. Someone from the BBC also changes Bush’s page, changing the name from ”George Walker Bush” to “George Wan*** Bush”

- Someone from The Guardian edits the Wikipedia page of rival newspaper The Times. Originally in the article it is said that The Times sells more than The Guardian. After the edit, The Guardian sells more.

Whoops. Apparently people don't understand what a proxy is.

 

[Pirate Me]

Oh wow!

 

[IslanderFan0194]

You're like that dude from the movie Disturbia in a whole new level. Wow!!

 

[shadow pirate]

The thing that interests me most is this:

Do these people think we are stupid. "Oh, hey, everyone believes everything on Wikipedia, so if we edit our entry/the entry of our competition, they'll believe it!" Amazingly stupid. Not only that, it's not like if someone wanted to someone could track their IP. That's how this program works. So why couldn't they have been intelligent enough to mask their IPs with one of the many publicly available proxies so that this way it COULDN'T be tracked. It's really not all that difficult to take a minor precaution like this to avoid getting your little scheme found out later.

It's disgusting. Misinformation, propaganda, and they aren't even smart enough to cover their own tracks. These are the people who hold the money and power...

~~~

Oh, and you may notice that I'm using the word "proxy" quite a bit. A proxy is a site that will mask your IP with another one, commonly used for things you shouldn't be doing on the internet, like spreading propaganda. Most likely, I should not be informing you of this, as it may be used to get around IP bans, but it's not like most of you won't find out about it eventually.

~~~

Time until someone tells me "OHEMGEE ARE YOU TRAINING HACKERS HERE!?" 12-20 hours.

 

[shadow pirate]

I regret to double post, but I've decided this is a good place to post some newsy stuff. Stuff that's worth seeing, just to see how screwed up of a world we live in.

Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up and hear the sad tale of The Boy who Drew a Gun!

Ariz. school suspends boy for sketching gun

MESA, Ariz. (AP) — School officials suspended a 13-year-old boy for sketching what looked like a gun, saying the action posed a threat to his classmates.

The boy's parents said the drawing was a harmless doodle and school officials overreacted.

"The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good," said the boy's mother, Paula Mosteller.

The drawing did not show blood, bullets, injuries or target any human, the parents said. And the East Valley Tribune reported that the boy said he didn't intend for the picture to be a threat.

Administrators of Payne Junior High in nearby Chandler suspended the boy on Monday for five days but later reduced it to three days.

The boy's father, Ben Mosteller, said that when he went to the school to discuss his son's punishment, school officials mentioned the seriousness of the issue and talked about the massacre at Colorado's Columbine High School, where two teenagers shot and killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves in 1999. Mosteller said he was offended by the reference.

Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the crude sketch was "absolutely considered a threat," and that threatening words or pictures are punishable.

Where's the punishment for people who draw cars? Those run over people you know. And what of the people who draw animals, such as lions, foxes, wolves, etc? They eat people and other forms of life! The people who draw swords? By this logic, all things can be traced to violence. Water drowns, fire burns, trees can fall on people, carpet can crush people, you can choke on all manner of food. We, apparently, live in a very deadly place! And the drawings of such things, why, BLASPHEMY! YOU ARE DRAWING THE HARBINGERS OF DEATH!

~~~

I'll update this thread with interesting stories, for those who care to listen.

 

[shadow pirate]

A triple post, regretfully not my first, but I'm going to try and make the news a little less depressing this time.

The Chinese make a Clone of the iPhone. And it's better than the original.

An anonymous reader writes "Popular Science notes that manufacturers in China duplicate many well-know products. This includes the Apple iPhone, imitations of which are rolling off the assembly line already. That might actually be a good thing for some users, who might enjoy the user experience of China's own miniOne. 'It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers.' The cloned iPhone uses a Linux-based system. 'The cloners hire a team of between 20 and 40 engineers to begin decoding the circuit boards. At the same time, coders start to develop an operating system for the phone with a similar feature set. (The typical cloner either uses off-the-shelf code, writes something entirely new, or modifies a publicly available Linux-based system.)' Using the iPhone as an example, the PopSci site walks through the process of making imitation technology."

Oh wow.