FTC Shuts Down Calif. ISP For Botnets, Child Porn 224
An anonymous reader writes "The Federal Trade Commission has convinced a federal judge to pull the plug on a 3FN.net, a.k.a. 'Pricewert LLC,' a Northern California based hosting provider. The FTC alleges that 3FN/Pricewert was directly involved in setting up spam-spewing botnets, among other illegal activities, the Washington Post's Security Fix Blog writes. From the story: 'Pricewert hosts very little legitimate content and vast quantities of illegal, malicious, and harmful content, including child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest.' The story quotes a former Justice Dept. expert saying the FTC action may be a smoke screen for a larger criminal investigation by the federal government in 3FN's activities."
Paging all "first posters"... (Score:4, Funny)
Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Insightful)
Christopher Barton, lead research scientist at McAfee, said a number of 3FN domain name servers already have popped up at new locations online.
"The rats are running," Barton said.
Oh, that's a shame, maybe next time we should hand this matter over to the USAF or at least the FBI. You know, someone capable of exterminating or prosecuting the 'rats'?
Leibowitz said his agency would continue to pursue other ISPs that "provide a haven for Internet criminals."
"This is a signal that we're going to go after you, and you're not going to be able to hide behind the shroud of the Internet and be immune from enforcement action," Leibowitz said.
A signed copy of the FTC's complaint is available here (PDF).
Ahahah, is that a joke?
FTC Chairman Leibowitz: Let this very strongly worded complaint be a clear message to those that escaped yet again! We will not falter until we have lodged very strongly worded complaints against each and every one of you at least four times!
Botnet Leader: Jesus Christ, I think I just shit myself! My god, you just shut down one of like 50 ISPs we use! We might even have to go to another country to run our lucrative operations! Oh the horror of operating out of the Cayman Islands! Laying on the beach, raking in cash! Will you show us no mercy?!
So tell me, when will all the court cases be launched from the data you collected from the servers you confiscated in this coup de grace? They were operating out of Northern California, surely you contacted the appropriate law enforcement agencies, gathered a massive stack of warrants and cunningly orchestrated a perfect storming of all facilities to capture servers with juicy financial, IP, personal and foreign data? And then surely you froze the assets in these accounts and entered all this as evidence in a mounting trial against business and individuals foreign and domestic? Oh you didn't? Oh, you just warned their ISPs and strutted around waving a complaint and acting like you saved the day? Well done.
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, that's a shame, maybe next time we should hand this matter over to the USAF or at least the FBI. You know, someone capable of exterminating or prosecuting the 'rats'?
And this is what I was thinking. I'm very confused, but I'm also not an American. What does the Federal Trade Commission have to do with acting on illegal material such as the crazy stuff suggested by the article? Where are the criminal charges here?
Or is this a bit like the Environmental Protection Agency investigating a murder because... they feel like it....
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Funny)
Well, the body was found in a park ...
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Somebody was testing a new fertilizer but apparently they didn't know murdering is illegal.
It's about gathering evidence. (Score:3, Informative)
As a regulator, things are a little different. This guy has a license to operate and you are authorized to walk in and search his stuff just to see if he is complying with the terms of his license. If he isn't (virtually all l
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At least that's how it was before the new rules allowed Federal agencies to just say "terrorism" and skip past the middleman.
The old rules allowed Federal agencies to just say "dru dealer" and skip past the middleman. The PATRIOT act continaed almost no new ploice powers - it was effectively just s/drug dealer/terrorist/.
We gave up the 4th amendment a lng whil eback, for drunk driving checkpoints. It's sad how little people actually care about their rights.
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By far the most important part of this incident "Northern California district court judge approved an FTC request to have the company's upstream Internet providers stop routing traffic for the provider". So no matter to which country they shift their criminal operations that action can still be applied locally to block traffic from a illegal enterprise masquerading behind the façade of a legal ISP, where there is sufficient evidence of the direct involvement in criminal enterprise.
The only tricky pa
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Informative)
"What does the Federal Trade Commission have to do with..."
From the article, they were dealing with (among other things):
"illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams"
and:
"the FTC's authority gives it the power to shut down companies that appear to be engaged in unfair and deceptive practices"
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Funny)
and:
"the FTC's authority gives it the power to shut down companies that appear to be engaged in unfair and deceptive practices"
Deceptive practices? Well, we've all heard about the crackwhore complaining to the cops about being sold bogus rocks. I can just imagine how this went.
perv: Dude, I paid mad money for this CP and it turns out the girl was 18. They ripped me off!
ftc: Gee, how awful. What was that url again? We'll look into this immediately.
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It makes sense if there is an economic criminality of considerable scale.
Pornography and money-laundering is not that far apart.
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Believe me when I tell you Pornography is a lot more fun than money-laundering.
I could tell you. But then I would have to kill you.
That said; Good for them taking a few of these scumbags down.
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Possibly, but with the profits from money laundering you can buy, ya know, REAL women! Or men if that's more your speed. Or donkeys, hey, I don't judge.
Now if you excuse me, the corpse in my bed is getting stiff as we talk.
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I think the FTC has less restrictive rules they operate under.
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Interesting)
Or is this a bit like the Environmental Protection Agency investigating a murder because... they feel like it....
Funnily enough, for crimes like negligent homicide committed by a corporation, they usually face insignificant penalties. So instead, the government might use the EPA and those various laws to go after the company. Frontline had a great episode on this with regards to a foundry that was polluting like crazy, and also killed a few employees by having extremely lax safety standards and negligent management. The death of the employee? Punishable by like a $7000 fine. Dumping crap in the nearby river? Millions.
Watch the program online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/workplace/ [pbs.org]
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the answer to that is found in the FTC's Memorandum of Points and Authorities in this case (available, here [ftc.gov], along with other related documents):
Plaintiff, FTC, is an independent agency of the United States government created by the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 41-58 (2006). The FTC is charged with, among other things, enforcement of Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 45(a), which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce. The FTC is authorized to initiate federal district court proceedings, by its own attorneys, to enjoin violations of the FTC Act, and to secure such equitable relief as may be appropriate in each case, including restitution and disgorgement. 15 U.S.C. 53(b) (2006).
If the conduct charged wasn't against the law (which is all that "illegal" means), neither the FTC nor any other government agency could bring a case to stop it. You may be mistakenly using "illegal" to mean "criminal" (which some of the conduct alleged would also be), in which case I will note that an act can be simultaneously a violation of civil and criminal provisions of the law, and move on to...
Again, from the FTC's Memorandum of Points and Authorities:
It is the Commission's understanding that a parallel criminal investigation of the Defendant is underway. Although the Commission is not privy to the details of that investigation, the Commission is informed that a search warrant will be executed at the Defendant's data center on or about Wednesday, June 3, 2009. The Commission respectfully requests that this Court rule on the Commission's Ex Parte Motion for Temporary Restraining Order prior to June 3, 2009, so that - if the Commission's Motion is granted - service of the TRO can be effected at the same time the search warrant is executed.
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Insightful)
and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest
illegal? I know they mentioned other things that are, but throwing things that many people are opposed to in with things that are actually illegal is a slippery slope towards censorship. Just think of the children..
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When you think of the children when you think of pornography, I'm fairly sure that IS illegal and not censorship.
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I agree. And I saw this happen in the UK [backlash-uk.org.uk]. According to my Government, "violent" acts between consenting adults, even if simulated, are just as bad as child pornography. Many police forces submitted evidence to the Government consultation [seenoevil.org.uk] saying that people who start out looking at such material will end up abusing children.
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:4, Informative)
but it comes as no surprise to me that a seemingly unrelated government agency is going after these guys.
The FTC has the authoring to go after people running "illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams". That's part of their mission.
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Funny)
but it comes as no surprise to me that a seemingly unrelated government agency is going after these guys.
The FTC has the authoring to go after people running "illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams". That's part of their mission.
Looks like somebody at the FTC found out that those penis enlargement pills don't work at all.
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Informative)
They overstepped their bounds in regulating companies here in that they shut down an ISP.
They didn't shut down an ISP. They shut down a hosting company of these websites that is alleged to be directly involved in helping set up these illegal operations.
'Pricewert LLC,' a Northern California based hosting provider.
An ISP that was NOT behaving irresponsibly to its customers.
Sure, only if they aren't directly involved in helping to setup the illegal activity which is what is alleged in this case. Did you even read the summary?
The fact that their customer's customers were involved in criminal activities is NOT their problem beyond complying with legal orders.
Of course it's not. It becomes their problem because it's alleged that "3FN/Pricewert was directly involved in setting up spam-spewing botnets, among other illegal activities". Do you happen to see a difference?
They are NOT responsible.
If they were directly involved as it is alleged they are responsible.
Certainly you could go after the programmer here-but that would require evidence in a court of law with proper jurisdiction. Shutting down the entire ISP goes way beyond the authority of the FTC.
Again, they didn't shut down an ISP. They shut down a hosting company that was directly involved in helping to set up a whole host of illegal operations including illegal pharmacies and investment scams (which would fall under the FTC's regulating authority).
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It's got to be a joke, there are plenty of sections of the law that make ISP's not liable for such things. So unless some magic law passed that none of us knew about which would have been publicized worldwide, there's really not a whole lot of sense from the article.
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Informative)
It's got to be a joke, there are plenty of sections of the law that make ISP's not liable for such things.
Sure if they were unaware of the activity, but that is not the alleged case here. In this case the company gone after is alleged to be directly involved in the illegal activity.
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Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Informative)
There are safe harbor provisions that protect ISPs from liability for some of those things when the acts are committed by the ISPs users (not the ISP itself), and the ISP complies with certain other rules (including, as a general rule, taking effective action when they become aware of -- on their own or by notification -- the violation being perpetrated via their network.)
But this isn't about things Pricewert's users were doing without the knowledge of the ISP; from the complaint which resulted in the order here:
14. Pricewert is fully aware that it is hosting huge volumes of illegal, malicious, and harmful content. Moreover, Pricewert actively shields its criminal clientele by either ignoring take-down requests issued by the online security community or shifting its criminal clients to other Internet Protocol addresses controlled by Pricewert so that they may evade detection.
15. In addition to hosting illegal, malicious, and harmful content, Pricewert actively colludes with its criminal clientele in several areas, including the maintenance and deployment of bot nets.
.
.
.
22. Pricewert's involvement in botnet activity is detailed in several Internet ICQ chat logs obtained by the FTC. In these logs, Pricewert's senior staff, including its Head of Programming, are observed directly participating in the creation and configuration of a botnet.
23. In one of the chats obtained by the FTC, Pricewert's Head of Programming is engaged in a conversation with a customer regarding the number of compromised computers the customer controls. The customer informs Pricewert that he controls 200,000 bots and needs assistance configuring the botnet. The head of Pricewert's Programming Department agrees to assist, but complains upon learning of the size of the botnet that it will require a lot of work.
24. In a second chat, a Senior Project Manager for Pricewert is told by a customer
that the customer controls a massive and rapidly growing network ofbots. Pricewert's Sales Director reassures the customer that "[w]ell, we know how to manage it."
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Oh the horror of operating out of the Cayman Islands! Laying on the beach, raking in cash! Will you show us no mercy?!
Jokes on them, I just delete the spam, and they'll probably get a melanoma from all that sun.
The Federal Trade Commission and You (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, that's a shame, maybe next time we should hand this matter over to the USAF or at least the FBI. You know, someone capable of exterminating or prosecuting the 'rats'?
Federal Trade Commission [Home] [ftc.gov]
A Brief Overiview of the Federal Trade Commission's [ftc.gov]
Investigative and Law Enforcement Authority (1) [1995]
Statutes Enforced or Administered by the Commission [ftc.gov] [Home]
"AN ACT To enhance Federal Trade Commission enforcement against illegal spam, spyware, and cross-border fraud and deception, and for other purposes."
U.S. SAFE WEB Act of 2006 [loc.gov] [Final - Full Text]
What the article leaves out (Score:5, Funny)
'Pricewert hosts very little legitimate content and vast quantities of illegal, malicious, and harmful content, including child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest.'
Yes but how much were they charging per month? It doesn't say. You probably get all this stuff with the "premium" package.
Quite a list (Score:2)
But what makes it different than any other ISP?
Re:Quite a list (Score:4, Funny)
But what makes it different than any other ISP?
Their bribe was late.
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But what makes their lobbyists any different than any other telcos?
"The bribe was late" doesn't answer that question?
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But what makes it different than any other ISP?
This one wasn't paying its dues to the local politicians?
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But what makes it different than any other ISP?
You mean other than this quote from the second sentence?
The FTC alleges that 3FN/Pricewert was directly involved in setting up spam-spewing botnets, among other illegal activities
I'm pretty sure Verizon, Time Warner, AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision, Cox, Suddenlink, just to name a few ISPs, aren't directly involved in any illegal activities on their network.
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I'm pretty sure Verizon, Time Warner, AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision, Cox, Suddenlink, just to name a few ISPs, aren't directly involved in any illegal activities on their network.
Except spying on their customers for the government... though I guess that's not illegal any more.
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I'm pretty sure Verizon, Time Warner, AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision, Cox, Suddenlink, just to name a few ISPs, aren't directly involved in any illegal activities on their network.
At least, not knowingly directly involved.
Since when does direct involvement require knowledge?
Only diff this will make is in some DA's resume. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Only diff this will make is in some DA's resume (Score:4, Informative)
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I don't think so. Public phones were privately owned, so as long as they turned a profit, their owners wouldn't care too much what they were being used for.
The thing that killed public phones was the ubiquity of cellphones. Now, unlike 15 years ago, cellphones are cheap and everyone has them. It's simply no longer profitable to buy a public phone and pay for its service, when so few people are going to pop a quarter in one to use it.
Even drug dealers are probably happy about this, as they were a little o
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Gas station at a well lit corner? No problem.
Dark corner inside a hole in the wall pizza joint? Out, sometimes along with the liquor license.
Re:Only diff this will make is in some DA's resume (Score:2)
But they are trying to imprison the criminals also. It's hard to setup a botnet out of a federal prison.
Props to NASA too, for this! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet another thing that NASA has done to help society, that people don't know. NASA's Inspector General (IG) played a large role in helping shut this den of crap down.
"including child pornography..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Anytime I see something referencing child pornography, I immediately think it's a smear campaign.
I don't know anything about 3FN.net, but generally...
ISPs don't host porn, they host websites. Some people put up websites that have porn or other content that someone might object to. Some websites have illegal content.
Sometimes people get frustrated because it's difficult to stop whatever activity it is they are trying to stop. Because an ISP provides its customers with anonymity, or because it doesn't log certain things, or because they are not cooperative with whatever branch of the government wants their cooperation does not make them bad. There are plenty of legitimate, good, positive-for-society reasons that anonymity or partial anonymity is necessary. There are ways of enforcing the law and bettering society that don't strip rights away from free people doing ordinary things.
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ISPs don't host porn, they host websites.
And by hosting those websites they also host the contents of those websites and in the case of it being a porn website they would be hosting porn. Your semantic game fails to work.
Re:"including child pornography..." (Score:4, Informative)
Now if we were talking about a hosting company. That might be a different thing.
And they are. Did you even read the summary at all?
'Pricewert LLC,' a Northern California based hosting provider.
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You think this might be one of those "sending a message" things?
Y'know, shut down one ISP under a justification that could, potentially, target any ISP in the Untied States? Start with a small one that nobody has ever heard of, and won't ruffle many feathers. Then, whenever an ISP is getting too uppity, politely bring up the topic of 3FN, and oh, wouldn't it be a tragedy if that happened to a larger ISP?
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The ISP will cough up the identity of customers under subpoena, which should be easy enough to get if some illegal activity is occurring. And if they don't, then you drag them into court to explain why not. We already have a process in place for allowing anonymity until it is abused.
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Why?
Three stories from Google News, all dated June 4. There is nothing special about any of them, even the last:
Buffalo man gets 11 years for distributing child porn [buffalonews.com]
Local man convicted for having child porn [gulfbreezenews.com]
Sex Offender Caught with Porn During Registry, Police [nbcbayarea.com]
Brett Bartlett, 30, had gone to the Livermore police station for his annual sex offender registration.
He was convicted in 2005 in Santa Clara Cou
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As much as I'd like to agree with you, this one sentence is not exactly true. Some ISPs do specialize in hosting porn content. I know because I looked into this myself when I looked into starting a porn web site. I did whois searches on a couple of popular porn web sites, and that gave me the name of their ISPs. And from those results, many ISPs did look like standard cookie-cut run-of-the-mill ISPs, but a few were advertising the fact that they were porn-specific
Shutting down a last bastion ISP (Score:2)
... because "pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest" is very illegal, right?
ISPs that don't do the mandatory spying on citizens, storing of logs, keeping tabs on the copyright-protection evading, crippleware-breaking terrorists, they have to be eliminated! For the sake of our civilization and of our children.
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... because "pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest" is very illegal, right?
Nope, but botnets, illegal pharmacies, child porn, spyware, viruses, trojans, and phishing related sites (you know those other things listed beyond the snippet you posted) are.
ISPs that don't do the mandatory spying on citizens, storing of logs, keeping tabs on the copyright-protection evading, crippleware-breaking terrorists, they have to be eliminated!
Actually this was about the ISP being accused of being directly involved in the illegal activities on it's network. Not because of the nonsense you posted.
So we get child porn, where is terrorism? (Score:2)
Please, anything you say, "child porn" and "terrorism" == "censorship" in current times. Any article that has it as topic is either BS or Troll (or both).
Now I'm open for argumentation, but please use contemporary English and proper establishment / critic slang if you do so.
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(I just see my Karma dropping, but what the hell, it's irony, can't help it. You could also argue that criminals suck at grammar)
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Now I'm open for argumentation, but please use contemporary English and proper establishment / critic slang if you do so.
Ewe muss bee knew hear!
Reckless language? (Score:2)
From the summary:
Isn't that particular stuff still considered legal? And if so, does it have an rightful place in an appeal by the government to a judge?
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From the summary:
Isn't that particular stuff still considered legal?
Depends who you ask. Oh, did you say illegal? I thought you meant immoral. I forget sometimes what we're persecuting these days.
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From the summary:
Isn't that particular stuff still considered legal? And if so, does it have an rightful place in an appeal by the government to a judge?
In most places no, those acts are not legal. Simulating those acts is legal. Maybe some wiggle room on the "violence", depending on what exactly they mean. Incest laws, like sodomy laws, are rarely prosecuted, or at least I've never heard of such prosecution. Rape and bestiality are. IANAL
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From the summary:
Isn't that particular stuff still considered legal? And if so, does it have an rightful place in an appeal by the government to a judge?
In most places no, those acts are not legal. Simulating those acts is legal. Maybe some wiggle room on the "violence", depending on what exactly they mean. Incest laws, like sodomy laws, are rarely prosecuted, or at least I've never heard of such prosecution. Rape and bestiality are. IANAL
Yeah, but we're talking about whether or not it's illegal to show those acts, not commit them. For example, if they were committed outside of the relevant jurisdiction(s).
I realize that child porn is in its own class in this regard, since even possessing the material is illegal. So I'm just talking about the rape, incest, etc.
Alex Kozinski (Score:3, Informative)
Wack-a-mole? (Score:2)
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ISP? (Score:2)
Or web hosting service?
Seems like a hosting service to me.
no surprise here (Score:2)
They've been trying to hammer on the mail server for some time. I firewalled all of their ip blocks as a result.
Huh? Did they forget to pay the bribes? (Score:2)
I was kinda amused when I read this. How did they fuck up? Did they refuse to hand over customer data without a warrant, did they forget to pay the kickback or why are they being singled out?
They're anything but the only ISP or hosting provider that hosts botnet control servers or other shady deals. No, I'm not even talking about the RBN or other "services" where our authorities claim they're "out of reach" because they are in countries that have better problems than to go on a wild goose chase and roll sto
No decrease volume of spam. (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike the take down of McColo, I see no decrease of volume of spam at all. In fact, since April 2009, my spam level has gone back to and within the last week, above the level of spam since the before McColo and my mail server statistics follow Spamcop.net statistics.
http://www.spamcop.net/spamgraph.shtml?spamyear [spamcop.net]
IMHO, the botnets masters have dispersed themselves to multiple locations around the world so now taking down on an ISP will not affect them like McColo. On my mail server, most my spam comes from the Central and South America IP addresses and I think those systems are controlled by some bot master somewhere else.
However, IMHO, creating and hosting child porn is punishable by torture like waterboarding or worst. Dying is too good for those people.
Do you trust the FTC? (Score:3, Insightful)
"from the child-porn-world-needs-more-suicides dept."
Several people who I know have been victims of child porn laws, despite not having paid for or traded anything and having therefore not encouraged or facilitated production. Rather than making assumptions about child pornography, you may consider researching [newgon.com] the issue. You should also remember that visiting websites which are alleged to contain illegal images - without loading the images (by disabling images in the browser) - is not illegal and can provide significant insight into the issue.
I'd also suggest a critical consideration of the FTC's statements. The war on child pornography is often used as a cover for wars on slightly more popular content which happens to offend the state. I find it rather bizarre that so many people who are critical of the state tend to believe whatever the state and its subsidiaries says about child porn.
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I can tell you for sure, it sure as hell isn't Firefox. I'm about to give up, and my karma rating has been 'Excellent' ages.
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It looks fine with Adblock.
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Slashdot looks and works fine with IE. Seriously. No, I don't understand either.
Re:OT: Which browser is slashdot supposed to work (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like the Slashdot clowns are "targeting" all browsers. Everything sucks.
Their Web 2.0 hard-on must be draining the blood from their brains. Slashdot is now slow, bloated, and fucked up.
Just try getting that asinine slide-bar to show ALL posts. No can do, because the script kiddies coding it up are too stupid to handle boundary conditions properly.
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Just try getting that asinine slide-bar to show ALL posts. No can do, because the script kiddies coding it up are too stupid to handle boundary conditions properly.
You used to be able to scroll the bar all the way over when the button to move it to the top middle also worked properly. Now when you hit that button in the top right it just gives it a border and nothing else.
Actually, it's because part of the content was ... (Score:3, Funny)
Looks like the Slashdot clowns are "targeting" all browsers. Everything sucks.
Naw. Part of the content was hosted on 3FN and the FTC just took it down.
(It's a joke. Mod it "funny".)
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Slashdot doesn't work in any browser.
Also, they have a policy of launching new, untested, broken features mid week during peak usage.
In addition, they have a policy of "belittle and close" when you submit a bug to sourceforge.
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So they're pretty much like everywhere else, then.
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What's Javascript?
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What doesn't work? I've been using the firefox 3.5 betas and I haven't noticed anything overly broken.
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Turn off the new crap. Then it works.
I forget how I did that, though. Classic Index in Preferences?
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Turn off the new crap. Then it works.
Yes, but then you get all the problems with the bad pagination that comes with the old style discussion.
I forget how I did that, though. Classic Index in Preferences?
Classic index, which I am using, doesn't fix the problems I mentioned which happen within the article comments themselves.
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Are you referring to the thing where pages 1-6 of a discussion will be the same, then finally on page 7 you get page 2? At least that seems to be what is happening.
Yep. It's a well-known bug that has plagued Slashdot for years that they now refuse to fix since they went to the new Web 2.0 dynamic discussion.
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My toggle button now either pins it to top of your screen, or just leaves it at the top of the comments and lets you scroll past it. It used to go over to the left, but I guess they tossed that out. No problem with white title bars or rendering speed.
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more OT but at this this is more informative than the most of the other comments...
Now i know i am not the only one that can't always see the post title and rating on the 1st 6 pages of page 1....sigh
and for all the fools trying to whine....these guys were putting up RUSSIAN ads on very dubious sites. Now what clientele do you suppose they were seeking? The one white hat guy hanging out there or the 10000 black hats?
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Turn off Beta! (Score:3, Informative)
Turn off the damn stupid "beta" index.
I wish they'd just frozen the interface about three years ago, but at least you CAN disable most of the gratuitous Javascript crap.
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That only works on the front page and in the stories, try going to one of your journals (depending on browser i guess). I tried to see one of my journals today and almost deleted the damned thing by mistake!
I tried getting to slashdot on my phone (Motorola i776) and couldn't get to a single subject - slashdot is too bloated for a phone (at least for mine). CNN works, though. Google's no problem. I can even get to Yahoo mail, but not slashdot.
The trouble with slashdot is the trouble with a lot of new tech -
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Try checking "low bandwidth", "simple design", and/or "no icons"?
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Though I must admit... (Score:2)
I've been blindsided by things too [slashdot.org]
This seems to have been a bug that ONLY bit you if you selected "classic view" AND "low bandwidth".
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Looks justfine in IE 6! Just have to enable Active X and set your security settings to "low".
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Re:OT: Which browser is slashdot supposed to work (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot doesn't render properly on ANY browser.
The reason for this is because slashdot doesn't have a proper webdev writing their site. The may have a webdev, but obviously the person they have is not capable of meeting their needs.
Since the corporate overlords are cutting back on expenses, there is no room in the budget to hire a proper webdev. So the slashdot team has decided to purposely bork the site, keeping it just-good-enough-for-content-to-be-available, in the hope that some skilled webdev will offer their services for free to fix the site.
Or, possibly, the slashdot editors are playing passive-aggressive with the corporate overlord's demands that slashdot become more like a social networking site, and less like a news aggregator with comments. I think this has been hinted at by Rob & Jamie in the past.
Finally, the third possibility -- it's summer, which is kind of like the Septembers of yore on usenet. Maybe they're hoping to preserve the community by driving off the shambling hordes of idiots who belong on Fark or 4chan instead of here, while the slashdot core sticks around, knowing that things will simmer down in October. But that's probably wishful thinking.
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I'm using browsers that get 100/100 on Acid3 and those don't have trouble.
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Kind of admirable, if true, but in my opinion, maybe not in their best interests... that's a lot of eyeballs they are choosing to alienate.
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Being that slashdot looks and acts differently in Chrome, Firefox and IE, could someone please tell which damn browser slashdot has decided to target so that I know which one is most likely to actually work when I click something.
Classic Index + Classic Discussion = works great.
Sure you miss out on the few worthwhile features they've added, but I'd much rather be able to read the summaries and comments (never actually tried reading the articles -- do they work?) than have shiny new (broken) widgets all over
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The other "vile forms of pornography" belong at the end. Pretty much everything else listed that was being hosted by this company was illegal. Just being a pervert into violent/bestial/incestuous porn is (usually) OK (probably especially in CA, although I haven't researched CA weird-porn law). Hosting it is typically OK too, depending on where/how/to-whom you allow access.
So yeah, I'd say that stuff is properly segregated as an after-thought. Still, I'll bet that "child porn" would be the only thing nec
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Unless it involves homosexual identical twins, how can you even know it is incestuous anyway?
Sure, someone can say it is incest, but that's just wish fullfillment on the part of law enforcement.