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Post by trubble on Jul 5, 2011 11:44:51 GMT
By IB Times Staff Reporter | July 5, 2011 3:00 AM EDT A group of cyber criminals hacked the Fox News' Twitter account, which has over thirty thousand followers, on Monday, and tweeted a series of disturbing messages claiming that Barack Obama was dead. Fox News alerted the Secret Service about the hacking of the FoxNewsPolitics account early on Monday and requested a detailed investigation from Twitter into this situation. George Ogilvie, Secret Service spokesman, said on Monday that the law enforcement agency would look into the false postings and "conduct the appropriate follow-up," a local media reported. The first tweet, which appeared at around 2am PDT read, "@barackobama has just passed. The President is dead. A sad 4th of July, indeed. President Barack Obama is dead." Followed by, "@barackobamahas just passed. Nearly 45 minutes ago, he was shot twice in the lower pelvic area and in the neck; shooter unknown. Bled out" After a series of false tweets, hackers sent the last tweet saying that Joe Biden was selected as the new President of the United States. "We wish @joebiden the best of luck as our new President of the United States. In such a time of madness, there's light at the end of tunnel." The hackers who took responsibility for this was the Bill O'Reilly-decorated Twitter account @thescriptkiddie (since suspended), which claims to be associated with Anonymous. In an interview with Stony Brook University's Think Magazine (before the hacking happened), a member of the group said: "I would consider us to be close in relation [to Anonymous], 2 of the members of our group were members of Anonymous. I was a member of Anonymous. We hope to be working with them soon." Regarding Fox News, the member said: "We are looking to find information about corporations to assist with antisec. Fox News was selected because we figured their security would be just as much of a joke as their reporting."
Hoax Verdict: Kinda Cool  |
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Post by riotgrrl on Jul 5, 2011 11:45:55 GMT
I think it was meant to be an attack on Fox News' credibility . . why would you believe it if it was on Fox kind of thing. No?
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Post by trubble on Jul 5, 2011 11:55:16 GMT
I think so.
To be fair to Fox, even Fox has started worrying about credibility and has fired Glenn Beck.
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Post by Weyland on Jul 5, 2011 11:55:28 GMT
I think it was meant to be an attack on Fox News' credibility . . why would you believe it if it was on Fox kind of thing. No? Maybe it was Fox hacking Fox to see if anyone believed anything on Fox, and reporting a self-inflicted incident to kid the gullible that Fox is credible? |
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Post by trubble on Jul 5, 2011 11:57:11 GMT
Fox presenters would find that a) immoral, unamerican & unchristian and b) too hard to follow.
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Post by trubble on Jul 5, 2011 12:03:26 GMT
Mother-in-law's Email Denied As HoaxThe mother-in-law email that went viral is not a hoax insists Freddie Bourne.
Freddie Bourne denies that the email his mother sent to his fiancé describing her as uncouth was a hoax.
Carolyn Bourne sent her future daughter-in-law, Heidi Withers, a scathing email in late June, insulting her for a lack of ladylike behaviour.
Father of bride to-be hits back at mother-in-law over viral email
But after London's The Observer reported that Freddie Bourne was a shareholder in a catering and event planning company, there has been much speculation over whether the nasty exchange was real, or merely a publicity stunt.
Mr Bourne’s business website, which has been removed, invited clients to “have the wedding of their dreams” and that "your wedding will be one of the most important days of your life."
Amid the speculation, Freddie Bourne has "categorically" denied that he fabricated any parts of the email exchange.
"[The business] has been running for two years and I only became involved one month ago," he told the Daily Mail.
In the original email, Carolyn Bourne criticized Heidi, outlining several instances of her lack of manners.
“You do not remark that you do not have enough food. You do not start before everyone else. You do not take additional helpings without being invited to by your host,” she wrote.
In the email, she also attacked Heidi's parents for not saving enough money for her upcoming wedding and called her a prime candidate for TV program Ladette to Lady.
"One could be accused of thinking that Heidi Withers must be patting herself on the back for having caught a most eligible young man…I pity Freddie,’" she concluded.
Hoax Verdict: Kinda Cool either way 
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Post by trubble on Jul 5, 2011 12:08:09 GMT
Israel Accused Of 'Pink-Washing' After Gay Video Exposed As HoaxA man claiming to be an American activist this week posted a YouTube video in which he said homophobic organizers of Palestine's Gaza flotilla protest ousted him for being gay.
Now that man has been identified as Tel Aviv-based actor Omer Gershon, and Israeli activists are pointing the finger at their government's alleged "pink-washing" against the Palestinians.
"It's highly embarrassing on so many levels," Israeli activist Hagai El-Ad told Salon's Justin Elliot. "I find it outrageous that anyone would try to use the relatively good reality of LGBT rights in Israel to try to somehow hide human rights violations against anyone else."
Gershon's video began made the rounds after an intern from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, who posted a tweet reading, "New video showing the hypocrisy of the freedom flotilla's human rights venture."
The Israeli government's press office also shared the video, telling their Twitter followers, "Be careful who you get in bed with."
And the Foreign Ministry also got in on the action. Both offices, however, later recanted their messages, with the press office apologizing for supporting "an apparent hoax."
El-Ad tells Elliot the Gershon video is only one example of the Israeli government's "pink-washing:" "The flotilla video is perhaps the jewel in the crown of this pink-washing campaign, but it's certainly not the beginning of it. I hope the embarrassment this should have caused will spell the end of it, but I doubt that it will."
He also says that the flotilla activists do indeed include LGBT people, although does admit that Israel is more progressive than both Gaza and the West Bank.
Hoax Verdict: Not Cool. 
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Post by trubble on Jul 5, 2011 12:13:57 GMT
Southern Baptist Convention
approves gay marriageno not really. by GoPride.com News Staff Tue. June 28, 2011 News that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the nation's largest Protestant denomination, supported gay marriage was just too good to be true. In reality, the church was hit with an online hoax that included a phony news release.
A group calling itself the Southern Baptist Conference of America issued a news release Tuesday that announced the Southern Baptists had meet in "extraordinary emergency session" and asked that SBC adopt a statement defining marriage as "two partners" because "loving and committed homosexual relationships must have the right to acknowledgement in the eyes of God."
The statement went on to say the church would repent "of any past homophobia that not only hurt gay people but kept them ostracized from the church."
The phony release was sent to reporters and directed readers to a website that was designed to look like the official Southern Baptist Convention website. The press release included working phone numbers for more information.
A group calling itself the Center for Responsible Christian Living pulled off the stunt, which fooled a number of media outlets including the National Catholic Reporter, which posted the statement as legitimate. Its since been pulled.
Hoax Verdict: <<snigger>>
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Post by Alpha Hooligan on Jul 5, 2011 18:01:50 GMT
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Post by trubble on Jul 5, 2011 22:17:40 GMT
Oh yes, I forgot the excellent dog one.  It's P.T. Barnum's birthday today. So one from him: The Feejee Mermaid
The first to exhibit a ‘real’ mermaid was likely American sailor Captain Samuel Barret Eades, who sold his ship in exchange for the body of a mermaid supposedly captured off the shores of Japan by a merchant from the Dutch West Indies. Captain Eades exhibited the object between 1823-1825 but would go broke when his specimen was proven a fake.
This didn’t dissuade Barnum.
In 1842, he got his hands on a mermaid via Moses Kimball of the Boston Museum and, before exhibiting it, offered every newspaper in New York an ‘exclusive’ story about the specimen, even providing a woodblock illustration. The papers were duped and each one of them ran the story, resulting in a tidal wave of free publicity.
Barnum opened the exhibit and crowds flocked to see the mermaid and listen to the accompanying lectures by Dr. J Griffin, a naturalist with the British Lyceum of Natural History. Only three problems – 1) Dr. Griffin was actually a Barnum hire named Levi Lyman, 2) The British Lyceum of Natural History did not exist and 3) the mermaid body was actually the head and torso of a baby monkey sewn to a fish tail and covered with paper-mache.Hoax Verdict: Genius. |
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Post by jean on Jul 6, 2011 7:47:35 GMT
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Post by trubble on Jul 8, 2011 18:45:28 GMT
That's rather a tragic hoax. Seventeen!  |
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Post by trubble on Jul 8, 2011 18:54:32 GMT
Meat Made From Human Feces: Hoax or Japan’s Best New Invention?Recently, a stomach-churning story about meat synthesized from sewage was picked up by several major news sites, and admittedly, some less credible ones. In its bona fide Science section, FoxNews.com posted a piece that led with this astonishing headline: “Japanese Scientists Create Meat From Poop.” I did a double take, rubbed my eyes to make sure my contact lenses weren’t having a giggle at my expense, and then looked at the date. No, it wasn’t April 1. I probed further.
The Mail Online, the website of the British newspaper, the Daily Mail, delighted in this sensational headline: “Japanese scientist makes a “delicious” burger out of…human EXCREMENT”. The article reveled in extrapolating on the disgusting details of this new meat source, but never once stopped to question their veracity. Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, came up with the process of producing an artificial steak after Tokyo Sewage asked if he could devise a way of using up the city’s excessive “sewage mud”. His methods? He extracts proteins from the waste, turns it red using food coloring and injects a boost of flavor with soy. His equipment? An exploder. Oh, and he adds “reaction enhancer.” The synthesized fecal meat’s vitals stats are: 63% protein, 25% carbs, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. Totally plausible, eh?
Astonishingly, Digital Trends, the International Business Times, The Guardian newspaper in the UK, and LA Weekly also all took the story at face value and reported it faithfully. No one questioned the science – is it even possible to convert raw sewage that contains all kinds of, well, garbage into a safe, edible protein? No one reached out to interview Mitsuyuki Ikeda, or even fact checked whether the Okayama Laboratory exists.
Read more:
blogs.forbes.com/nadiaarumugam/2011/07/08/meat-made-from-human-feces-hoax-or-japans-best-new-invention/
The final word is that the story is almost certainly a hoax.
Why almost certainly, you ask? Well, despite what seems like a wealth of evidence pointing to hoax in neon red flashing lights, no one has yet managed to contact UNESCO’S Ikeda for confirmation that he really isn’t the brain behind the poop meat. I’m still waiting for him to reply to my email.
And here’s the clincher. The photo of Ikeda in the ESD-J document bears a truly uncanny resemblance to the guy in the YouTube video. He looks just like him, his hair is the same style, and both men have identical blemishes on the right cheek. For all intents and purposes, he is him.
Summary: Stoopid youtube video fools lazy journalists. Hoax Verdict: Poor. Stoopid lazy journalists.
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Post by Weyland on Jul 8, 2011 19:04:52 GMT
Hoax Verdict: Poor. Stoopid lazy journalists. Imagine my surprise. |
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Post by trubble on Aug 3, 2011 12:28:30 GMT
INTERNET EXPLORER USERS ARE STUPIDER than firefox users or safari users or anyone else on the planet having -- apparently -- an AVERAGE IQ of 80. Or. It's a hoax. Doh. But I bet a whole load of firefox users believed it.  Verdict: wait, I use Internet Explorer so are they saying I have a low IQ? What!? Wait. Is IQ an app? |
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Post by Weyland on Aug 3, 2011 16:58:35 GMT
INTERNET EXPLORER USERS ARE STUPIDER than firefox users or safari users or anyone else on the planet having -- apparently -- an AVERAGE IQ of 80. Or. It's a hoax. Doh. But I bet a whole load of firefox users believed it. Verdict: wait, I use Internet Explorer so are they saying I have a low IQ? What!? Wait. Is IQ an app? It's patently obvious shite. But then so is IE. And Windoze. And Micro$oft. Like their "software", it's far from rocket science. Micro$oft never innovated anything. Not a thing. Not making this up. They even nicked Binkie the Talking Paperclip from a Barry Manilow fan. (I may have made some of that up.) I'm busy installing Linux on a netbook. Renounce the Dark Side. You know it makes sense. |
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Post by everso on Aug 3, 2011 17:58:45 GMT
I have IE and Firefox on my computer and use both, as the whim takes me. Not at the same time, obviously.
I'm such a flibbertigibbet.
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Post by everso on Aug 3, 2011 17:59:40 GMT
INTERNET EXPLORER USERS ARE STUPIDER than firefox users or safari users or anyone else on the planet having -- apparently -- an AVERAGE IQ of 80. Or. It's a hoax. Doh. But I bet a whole load of firefox users believed it. Verdict: wait, I use Internet Explorer so are they saying I have a low IQ? What!? Wait. Is IQ an app?  |
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Post by trubble on Aug 4, 2011 21:11:11 GMT
Etta James is not dead - repeat: NOT DEAD - despite false rumours. Hoax Verdict: Bad taste.  Good taste.  |
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Post by trubble on Aug 4, 2011 21:23:35 GMT
Virginia Tech Lockdown - False Alarm, Media Frenzy or Hoax? Tweets from students include:@kevin_eike: I saw a guy carrying what looked like a sandwich. He's gone now. Everybody watch out for the sandwichman. Hoax Verdict: At least we got to see what great security exists at the Tech and what fun the students are.  |
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A.P.P.S
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