Caution: Sans-serif font

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 21:22:48 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Sell SHLD

This story went critical over the weekend:

Visiting Sears.com (and Kmart.com) a few weeks ago, I was offered a chance to join My SHC Community, for free, but what I received was, from a privacy perspective, very costly. Sears.com is distributing spyware that tracks all your Internet usage - including banking logins, email, and all other forms of Internet usage - all in the name of "community participation." Every website visitor that joins the Sears community installs software that acts as a proxy to every web transaction made on the compromised computer. In other words, if you have installed Sears software ("the proxy") on your system, all data transmitted to and from your system will be intercepted. This extreme level of user tracking is done with little and inconspicuous notice about the true nature of the software... An interesting note, the spyware Sears distributes is "genetically" related to software CA Anti-Spyware has detected for a few years by the name of MarketScore (and other aliases) and distributed by other websites. – Computer Associates Security Advisor Research Blog

And that's just the start:

• Sears Update: Privacy Policy, Scorecard, and Genetic Heritage

  In my blog post yesterday I reported that there was a significant change in how the privacy policy for My SHC Community reads - replacing straightforward language with vague legal language (see section: The Privacy Policy). What I have come to learn is that if you navigate to http://www.myshccommunity.com/Privacy.aspx.you could actually get one of two policies. One of these policies is what I referred to as the "old" policy and the other as the "new" - even though both pages share the same URL. Here is why you could get one of two policies from the same URL. If you access that URL with a machine compromised by the Sears proxy software, you will get the policy with direct language (like "monitors all Internet behavior"). If you access the policy using an uncompromised system, you will get the toned down version (like "provide superior service"). Both policies share the same URL and same look and feel - coloring, page layout, Kmart and Sears branding, etc. This makes it very difficult for users to get consistent, accurate information about the proxy software... ...They should receive the same information no matter what system they access it from.

• Sears Update: Response to Rob Harles, VP SHC Community
• 2nd Response to Rob Harles, VP of Sears' SHC Community

  Finally, while we can't draw any conclusions from this, an old comScore press release shows that before becoming VP in charge of Sears' tracking program, Rob was the senior vice president for comScore - the creator of the Sears spyware and the registrants of the domains to which the Sears spyware data is sent.

• Managemyhome.com: Another privacy issue for Sears

  This was obviously introduced to let me look at my own purchase history, but unfortunately the only information they asked for when I followed that button was a name, phone number, and address. To test this out, I put in my parents' information-I want to stress that this is the exact same info listed under their name in the phone book-and was rewarded with a list of their major Sears purchases running back almost two decades to when they first moved in to that house.

• Update: Records search disabled on managemyhome.com

Prediction: Sears Holdings is going to be crucified before this one is over.

Elsewhere:

Via: Steven Den Beste and Teresa

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 03:37:14 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Cats' friend

“Gillibrand” at Catholic Church Conservation found this story at Bild.de:

In the New Year, Pope Benedict XVI has to cope with a number of appointments, traveling also is ahead of him and he has to write a book and two Encyclicals.

He only very rarely has time for himself. But now he has told his neighbour in the papal apartments, what he would really do, if he just dreams for a couple of moments. Then he thinks of his secret wish:

To write a book about cats.^[1]

...

Joseph Ratzinger had cats around himself for decades, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The CDF is on the Via Aurelia, one of the most traffic-heavy streets in Rome. Daily, cats are killed or injured. Quite a few drag themselves into the garden of the CDF, where Ratzinger resided and movingly cared for them, feeding them, bandaging their wounds, watching them lie in the sun and slowly get better. And he gave names to all of them.

He wanted to write about these cats, but the election to the Papacy foiled these plans, now he has to take care of the global Church instead of the little cats at the Via Aureli.^[2]

Benedict isn’t the first Pope to love cats. This story about him reminded me of this one^[3] that “Mira d'Oubliette” posted back in 2005.


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^[1] “Gillibrand's” translation
^[2] This portion translated by “Gerald Augustinus” at The Cafeteria Is Closed.
^[3] Mira hasn’t posted since July, 2007. In the interest of preservation, I’ve reproduced her entire post below the break.

Via: Belmont Club, linked in this comment at AoSHQ
more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 01:01:56 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ministry of Appeasement

The MoD eventually confirmed it has a ban on troops wearing uniform in civilian airports, claiming it was because a small number of airlines ban all uniforms on flights for security reasons. – Daily Mail, "Afghan heroes home for Christmas forced to change out of uniforms on freezing runway before using airport terminal"

Disgraceful.


Via LGF, thanks to Steffan for the title.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 16:13:16 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Hotel Journalism" and clearing the information battlefield

Complex Environments: Battle of Fallujah I, April 2004:

The absence of Western media in Fallujah allowed the insurgents greater control of information coming out of Fallujah. Because Western reporters were at risk of capture and beheading, they stayed out and were forced to pool video shot by Arab cameramen and played on Al Jazeera. This led to further reinforcement of anti-Coalition propaganda. For example, false allegations of up to 600 dead and 1000 wounded civilians could not be countered by Western reporters because they did not have access to the battlefield.

...In the absence of countervailing visual evidence... Al Jazeera shaped the world’s understanding of Fallujah…

UPI's Shaun Waterman:

...the assessment stated that later in 2004, when U.S.-led forces successfully retook Fallujah, they brought with them 91 embedded reporters representing 60 press outlets, including Arabic ones. "False allegations of non-combatant casualties were made by Arab media in both campaigns, but in the second case embedded Western reporters offered a rebuttal," the authors said.

Belmont Club:

The key to counteracting disinformation campaigns like that mounted during the First Fallujah, was to break the stranglehold of "access journalism". As the Army report concluded, once there were a multiplicity of reportorial sources on-scene it became difficult to manipulate the message...

Karl at Protein Wisdom:

...Information Operations were not the only factor in the outcome of the first Battle of Fallujah, but they were a factor. “Hotel Journalism^[1]” ceded the battlefield to “journalists” picked by the enemy, to the detriment of the US mission and, ultimately the Iraqi people.

“timmiejoebob,” commenting at Belmont Club:

It is breathtaking how completely successful AQI was in clearing the information battlefield. It is also breathtaking how silent key media outlets have been about being manipulated in this way...

Just like CNN during the Saddam Hussein era.


-------
^[1] Coined by Robert Fisk, quoted in this story by Michael Fumento, in reference to reporters who do their “reporting” while staying within Baghdad's International Zone. Fumento:

Maggie O’Kane of the British newspaper The Guardian said: “We no longer know what is going on, but we are pretending we do.” Ultimately, they can’t even cover Baghdad yet they pretend they can cover Ramadi.

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 19:04:13 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Let's put the cat amongst the pigeons

I wonder just how this story

Patients could be required to stop smoking, take exercise or lose weight before they can be treated on the National Health Service, Gordon Brown has suggested.

In a New Year message to NHS staff, the Prime Minister indicates people may have to fulfil new "responsibilities" in order to establish their entitlement to care. - The Telegraph

plays with this one

Overeating And Obesity Triggered By Lack Of One Gene...a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is critical in mediating satiety in adult mice.

Mice in which the BDNF gene was deleted in two of the primary appetite-regulating regions of the brain ate more and became significantly heavier than their counterparts. - Science Daily

...?

Scientists have long suspected that there's a genetic predilection to addiction. If now we find out that obesity has a genetic link, is it "less immoral" to deny treatment to someone who is fat than because they have, say, sickle cell anemia?


Both from Instapundit (1, 2) the second one via the Right Coast (where there's discussion).

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 00:33:58 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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When perfection is your standard...

I thought of using that line over at Laurence's, as a comment to one of the posts lamenting his poor stewardship (he says!) of COTC over the last year.

Then C.G. Hill came out with a new year's list of his "bad post titles."

Now I've always assumed that the excellence of a pun is directly proportional to its groan-a-tude.  So I hope he's being at least slightly tongue-in-cheek.  'Cause if those are his bad ones...  well, I'd take 'em.

And he put up 2021 posts last year, too.

(Glances at sidebar.)  Aaarggh!

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 23:45:56 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Little Old Lady from Detroit

I'd love to meet Bikerken's mom:

My mom is a little old lady with an old Lincoln Towncar and the engine died in it. She saw an ad in a Pep-boys flyer for a new motor for six hundred bucks. So she called them up and asked about it. They told her that a motor for her car would be about 3200 bucks. She asked, “What about these six hundred dollar motors?” The guy at Pep-boys said, “Lady, I’ll be honest with you, you wouldn’t want one of those motors, there are made on assembly lines and about two hundred different people put their hands on those.” Mom said, “you happen to be talking to a little old lady from Detroit who knows that ALL motors are made on assembly lines, what the hell did you think, they we’re going to chisel one out just for me?” The man was speechless.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 23:07:36 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Sites Linked - December 2007

68 posts in December, a new record  (beating October's 60, although admittedly some of December’s were a bit lame).

Low remains 25 in May '07.

December's linklist below the jump...

more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Meta at 23:05:50 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Happy 2008

......

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 00:08:27 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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