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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The Morning News

posted by on September 24 at 7:46 AM

Surrender: Dems give up, allow 25-year ban on offshore drilling to expire.

Investmentigation: FBI probing collapsed investment firms for fraud.

The Jury’s Still Out
: No charges yet in Palin email-password-guessing-not-hacking case.

Grand Ol’ Party Crashers: State Dems sue to block Rossi’s deceptive “GOP Party” ballot branding.

Palouse News You Can Use: WSU offers guaranteed admission to state’s top high school grads. Meanwhile, the school’s provost is put on indefinite leave.

Mindless Sport: Former NFL players are literally giving their brains to science.

Bus vs. Circus Elephant: Bus Wins.

Hearts and Minds: What the hell is a Human Terrain Team? Find out here.

Dumping Ground: Tired of Your Punk-Ass 15-Year-Old? Abandon them at a Nebraska hospital or fire station. It’s perfectly legal.

Prolonging Armageddon: Large Hadron Collider shut down for a year.

Buy More Stamps If You Love America Postal service to announce $2.5 billion loss.

We’re Next:
As arctic ice melts, polar bears resorting to cannibalism.

RSS icon Comments

1

You cannot deny how awesome cannibalism is.

Posted by super serial | September 24, 2008 8:01 AM
2


It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it? There are people and animals who are truly suffering, and we have these investment/bank/insurance CEOs acting like the villains in an Austin Powers movie.


“Gentlemen. Unless you meet all of our demands, we will crash the world economy. The only way to avoid this ca-tas-trophe is to pay us $700 BILLION DOLLARS!!1! BOOOHOOOWAAAHHAAAHHA!” (laughs uncontrollably…falls out of chair)


The Dems will piss and bitch and moan about it for the cameras, then give those worthless assholes everything they ever wanted and more. FSM help us, they're so despicable.

Posted by Original Andrew | September 24, 2008 8:17 AM
3

That's a pretty old video, right?
I can't believe I'd never seen it. Wow.

Posted by Mr Fuzzy | September 24, 2008 8:46 AM
4

thanks fbi, you're a day late and a 700 billion dollars short.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | September 24, 2008 8:49 AM
5
Posted by Trevor | September 24, 2008 8:50 AM
6

They didn't guess her password, they used public information to fill in the "forgot password" verification questions.

You know, things like "where did you go to high school?"

Posted by K | September 24, 2008 9:04 AM
7

Also, I haven't yet seen anyone bitch that "GOP Party" is a redundancy. Where my grammanatzies at?

Posted by K | September 24, 2008 9:05 AM
8

If we give Wall Street the $700 Billion or anything close, say good bye to Social Security for anyone under, oh let's say 65 years of age. And with those 401K's worthless I suggest we start seeing what we can cook up with dog food and Meow Mix.

Posted by Andrew | September 24, 2008 9:12 AM
9

I say we just start killing old people and burning their bodies for fuel.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | September 24, 2008 9:15 AM
10

That elephant hit by a bus story is more depressing to me than it should be, given all the other shit in the morning news list.

Posted by Julie in Chicago | September 24, 2008 9:17 AM
11

@9 No, BA you have it wrong, we're supposed to turn them into FOOD.

Soylent Green....is....people

Posted by PopTart | September 24, 2008 9:23 AM
12

old people taste like the must of a root cellar.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | September 24, 2008 9:28 AM
13

@6

When you use the "forgot password" feature of a site, they usually send your password to a different, predefined e-mail address and in Yahoo’s case, they even have you reenter it when you ask for a password reminder. They would have to have had access to that e-mail address as well, which I highly doubt.

As I understood it, they straight-up guessed the password, which happened to be "wasillahigh."

You would think that if you’re going to circumvent the law and use a personal e-mail address to conduct official business, the least you could do is think of a better password.

Posted by bearseatbeats | September 24, 2008 9:29 AM
14

How is breaking into an email account not hacking? If it's a crime and it's on computer, then it's hacking, is it not? I mean, in plain English.

Oh, wait. It's those same fucks who want to call the Civil War the "War Between the States" right? People who think we're supposed to care about correct Klingon pronunciation. Who cares what they think?

Posted by elenchos | September 24, 2008 9:29 AM
15

Quick question for anybody:

What ever happened with that report of the woman who was "raped for hours" in an alley at Pike Place a few weeks ago? Was that ever verified/debunked? Did I miss any follow-up? Google turns up nothing but the original report.

Posted by debunked? | September 24, 2008 9:33 AM
16

am i hacking elenchos right now?

Posted by elenchos | September 24, 2008 9:44 AM
17

@16

That's called "sock puppetry." Is English not your best language? You seem to be tripped up by what word mean.

Posted by elenchos | September 24, 2008 9:46 AM
18

first, Dem's gave up on fighting offshore drilling because Bush promised to veto it? Jesus Christ, Pelosi. You're in charge over there. Act like it. Stand up, adjust your balls, and make Bush reject the entire fucking bill publicly so the record will continue to show how beholden he is to his oil buddies.

as for email "hacking", you're wrong elenchos. Often, as appears to be the case here, If you answer the security questions correctly, you get to reset your password via the web, then and there. And in fact, other than mouth-breathing know-nothings, "hacking" is not the accepted term for violating computer or network security. That would be "cracking." I mean, that's like calling Basement Jaxx "techno" when they're clearly "progressive house."

The more you know...

sincerely,
diggum

Posted by diggum | September 24, 2008 9:54 AM
19


Leave it to brie munching Eurocrats to built a leaky non-functioning collider the same way they build leaky non-function jet airplanes...

Posted by John Bailo | September 24, 2008 9:54 AM
20

@14

Technically "hacking" isn't even the proper term. A hacker in the older sense is someone who "hacks" away at code, which means that basically any coder is a hacker. The term has been misappropriated by the media as someone who breaks into computer systems, but what they really mean is a "cracker."

In any case, I'm not sure the law makes a distinction, but guessing someone's password isn't exactly a brute force attack.

Posted by bearseatbeats | September 24, 2008 10:01 AM
21

@12 BA, I don't want to know how you know that...

@14 Elenchos, that's the War of Northern Aggression thank you very much. (sarcasm of course)

Posted by PopTart | September 24, 2008 10:01 AM
22

Erp... @18 beat me to it.

Posted by bearseatbeats | September 24, 2008 10:04 AM
23

Websters Dictionary:
Main Entry: hack
Pronunciation: \ˈhak\
Function: verb
4 a: to write computer programs for enjoyment b: to gain access to a computer illegally

WordNet Search - 3.0
# S: (n) hacker, cyber-terrorist, cyberpunk (a programmer who breaks into computer systems in order to steal or change or destroy information as a form of cyber-terrorism)

But you know, if click your heels together and wish long enough, maybe the definition of the word will change. You only have to believe and it will become true!

Posted by elenchos | September 24, 2008 10:08 AM
24

Motherfucking goddamn useless House democrats. Why the FUCK do we keep voting for them if they can't get a single fucking thing done? Oh, Bush threatened to veto the spending bill. Boo fucking hoo. Mr 29% approval rating doesn't like you? Tell him to go fuck himself 'cause nobody else will. I want to see Republican bills up on pikes outside the Capitol Building.

Posted by Greg | September 24, 2008 10:14 AM
25

@23

"Doh!" and "crunk" are in the dictionnary too, that still doesn't make them any less retarded as words.

Posted by bearseatbeats | September 24, 2008 10:30 AM
26

Elenchos, I think you've hit on a sore spot here. At what point does incorrect usage become official usage? When that point comes, what should the people do who remember that what has been made clean was once unclean? Should they throw up their hands and accept it, or should they stick with what they know is right, understanding that the trend is against them?

Posted by Greg | September 24, 2008 10:34 AM
27

This is what I find so fucking frustrating about the D's. They give up on the ban on offshore drilling but not a word about what these fucking oil companies are or should be ponying up. I mean, are they going to snake out of clean up costs, as always, too?

Posted by Vince | September 24, 2008 10:37 AM
28

Unfortunately, cracker came to mean something else entirely. It's also not true that all crackers are crackers.

Posted by Mike of Renton | September 24, 2008 10:41 AM
29

@28

Sure, but the pejorative "cracker" is clearly slang, so it's not on the same level as the other meanings of hacker and cracker.

Anyway... enough from me about the semantics of language usage for today.

Posted by bearseatbeats | September 24, 2008 10:49 AM
30

I'm only saying it's kind of solipsistic to say that the common usage of a word is "wrong." It's one thing to say, "I would like everyone to please change the way they use this word. I wonder how I can go about convincing them?" It's something else entirely to pretend you can declare by fiat that "hacker" no longer means "computer criminal" and everyone must fall into line.

If you're going to make those kind of pronouncements, why not wish yourself a billion dollars? Why not demand that everyone acknowledge that you are the Emperor of France? You will have about as much success, I'll wager.

Posted by elenchos | September 24, 2008 11:00 AM
31

@8,

Medicare will be dead long before Social Security. So we'll have a self-resolving problem. Elderly people won't be able to get health care, they'll die quicker, Social Security won't have to dole out as much.

Posted by keshmeshi | September 24, 2008 11:14 AM
32

If you get a 3.5 GPA you can get into WSU? Really? Did they really need to guarantee that?

Posted by Marcel Duchump | September 24, 2008 11:31 AM
33

SHE HAS NO CLUE ABOUT ANYTHING.

SHE AND MCCAIN WILL START WWWIII.

Fuckin' psychos.

Posted by gk | September 24, 2008 12:36 PM

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