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18 Aug 2009 11:22

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Culture: “Family Guy” trashes on the Emmy competition

  • This is how to run an Emmy campaign. Family Guy is up for a “Best Comedy” Emmy – a rarity for an animated show – and they’ve chosen to come up with viral videos trashing the other nominees. This one trashes “The Office.” source

18 Aug 2009 11:15

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World: An awful act of relationship revenge in Kuwait kills dozens

  • 43 people died after an ex-wife set a wedding tent ablaze source

18 Aug 2009 11:10

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Politics: Slate columnist: Why the public option should stay on the table

  • Why is the public option so vitally important to health reform? At the broadest possible level, the public option is necessary simply because it’s impossible to identify a successful health system anywhere in the world based on a for-profit insurance model.
  • Slate columnist Timothy Noah • Discussing the weaknesses in health care reform that will show up if the public option is off the table. While Obama prefers having it, he’s shown wavering over the last week that makes it seem less-necessary than it once did. Noah puts it this way: “You can also think of the public option as a pressure valve. Without it, the government’s attempt to remake the health sector risks blowing itself to smithereens.” • source

18 Aug 2009 10:59

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Politics: Glenn Beck’s political ramblings: Not even Wal-Mart likes them

  • Wal-Mart, CVS, Best Buy and many more aren’t advertising with Beck. The Fox News host has a pretty serious issues with advertisers at the moment, weeks after calling Barack Obama a “racist” on his show, causing ColorOfChange.org to start a campaign against him. The list of advertisers is shrinking fast. No word on what the Sham-Wow guy plans to do yet. source

18 Aug 2009 10:50

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Tech: Here’s your long-character antidote to Twitter, Woofer

Woofer
  • We recommend that this arrogant jerk from TechCrunch use this service. Because Devin Coldewey’s reasons for not using Twitter totally sound like the ramblings of someone who wants you to get off his lawn. source

18 Aug 2009 10:38

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Biz: Sam Zell screwed up Tribune. Now creditors might kick him out.

  • No agreements have been reached to date. Sam, as well as the rest of the management team, remain actively engaged and committed to Tribune. The restructuring is still in progress and it is premature to speculate about the company’s final ownership structure.
  • A statement from a Tribune Company spokesman • In response to reports that Sam Zell, who orchestrated a leveraged buyout of the company only to see the investment go bankrupt, would be ousted from the company. He’s under a lot of pressure from creditors, who are owed $8.6 billion in debt. And beyond that, he screwed an entire chain of newspapers in less than two years, causing thousands of people not in Chicago to lose their jobs because he bought the company with money he didn’t have. • source

18 Aug 2009 10:21

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Sports: The Washington Nationals actually signed their big prospect!

  • $15.1 million to have Stephen Strasburg lob fastballs source
 

18 Aug 2009 10:17

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World: Kim Dae-jung: Yes, you can go from dissident to president

The former South Korean leader, who became an icon of the country’s democratic strength, died today. He was 83. source

18 Aug 2009 10:06

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Biz: Home building numbers dip in July, but not without silver lining

  • -1% the decline in housing starts in July, which was much lower than expected
  • +1.7% the increase in starts of single family homes, the hardest-hit part of the market source

18 Aug 2009 09:59

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Biz, Tech: How did the credit-card hackers do it? It was easy, actually.

  • A little malware here, a proxy server there … Albert Gonzalez and his Russian conspirators weren’t screwing around when they hacked the Gibson of a number of corporations, most notably 7-Eleven, and stole millions of credit card numbers. By targeting potential victims, learning the companies’ point of sale systems, and launching SQL-injection attacks to install malware, they were able to steal 130 million credit card numbers. They exploited bad security using crude methods for positive gain. source