posted
Paula Crone said she got a postcard recently that had a racist message on it bad enough that she won't let her 10-year-old son see it.
The message was on a postcard sent by Internet provider NetZero. The particular racist phrase was part of the activation code that someone would use to begin service with the company.
What makes the story even more strange is that this is the second time this has happened to the Crone family.
posted
Well... that has to be 100% intentional. Someone's getting axed.
-------------------- "To be or not to be! That is the question! Now, will you answer, dare, double dare, or take the Physical Challenge?" --Mark Summers as Hamlet Countdown: 177 days and counting... or less. My blog. 14 keyboards owed. Posts: 5584 | From: Ohio | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
I may be a dunce, and the video wouldn't load...but what was the racists statement? i mean was it a slur or a comment like "all so-and-so's are stupid?"
-------------------- The less you know, the more you believe. -Bono Posts: 457 | From: Philadelphia, PA | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
I'd like to know what the Crone family did to get the employee to get him so disgruntled? Once might be random twice sounds like they really ticked him off.
-------------------- All the world's a face, And all the men and women merely acne. Posts: 673 | From: Glasgow, Scotland | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by unklesamta: I may be dunce, and the video wouldn't load...but what was the racists statement? i mean was it a slur or a comment like "all so-and-so's are stupid?"
It was in the video- the activation code was stupidni****.
-------------------- "To be or not to be! That is the question! Now, will you answer, dare, double dare, or take the Physical Challenge?" --Mark Summers as Hamlet Countdown: 177 days and counting... or less. My blog. 14 keyboards owed. Posts: 5584 | From: Ohio | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
As per the video, the username on the card is "stupidni****666" the middle section of the letters was blurred in the video. It also sounds like the previous incident involved a batch of cards bearing similar messages, not just one to this particular family.
-------------------- Too broke to pay attention Posts: 452 | From: Omaha, NE | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I understood it as saying a year ago it was a disgruntled employee who had the cards sent to many people in the area. Now it seems as if many cards were sent again, but they don't know who did it this time. Seeing as how they claimed last time to having put preventative measure in place, I'm curious how it did happen a second time. My first thought was that they have a program that recycles access codes after a certain amount of time, and they neglected to purge this one. Or another employee took the example of the last one and got around the safeguards that are supposedly in place.
Also, I thought in the video that I saw the (censored) card and it said "stupidn*****f****er." The shorter version was bad, but this one is offensive on even more levels. No wonder the lady wouldn't want her son to see it, I wouldn't show that to my mom!
posted
Here's the image I capped from the video: I don't see any evidence of the "F" word there but what I imagine to be there is bad enough for sure.
-------------------- "Silly customer, you cannot hurt a Twinkie." -Apu (The Simpsons) Posts: 2026 | From: 10 miles South of Boston | Registered: Oct 2002
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posted
Little Duck, there are two places in the video where part of the message is blanked out. On one of the shots, you can definitely see "stupidn*****f***er," as noted by NeeCD. It's toward the end of the clip, I think.
-------------------- "This air we're breathing. Oxygen, isn't it?"~I’mNotDedalus, impersonating Vincent D’Onofrio.|"Sometimes trying to communicate can be like walking through a minefield."~wanderwoman "Give people a break. It's not easy doing a life."~Joshua Halberstam Posts: 4020 | From: Oklahoma | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Signora LOL - while I was trying to cap it (who the heck ever knew that what every other video program used for pause would be used as play) I probably missed the second one. Let me have at it again (damn videos with no fast forward features...)
ETA of course this time when I did the cap, the area of the video was blank...still trying.
ETA (Again) I cannot get it to cap the second postcard showing, for some reason. I was actually shocked the first time worked since I have never until that point been able to cap from a video. But, I do see the N****f*** as mentioned, though it is much more difficult to see, not nearly as clear as the first one.
-------------------- "Silly customer, you cannot hurt a Twinkie." -Apu (The Simpsons) Posts: 2026 | From: 10 miles South of Boston | Registered: Oct 2002
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posted
I wonder how long until some lawsuits are filed.
-------------------- Excuses satisfy only those who offer them. Your enemies won't believe them and your friends don't need them. Posts: 211 | From: Ponce, Puerto Rico | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by emperor_genghis_khan: I wonder how long until some lawsuits are filed.
I wonder how many more cards are out there. Whenever we get anything like that I usually just toss them out.
-------------------- "Silly customer, you cannot hurt a Twinkie." -Apu (The Simpsons) Posts: 2026 | From: 10 miles South of Boston | Registered: Oct 2002
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posted
After reading the article and watching the video clip, I've come up with a hypothesis for what happened.
Last year, someone at NetZero sabotaged the program that generates activation codes by modifying it so that when a certain trigger event occurred (such as the calendar reaching a particular date), the program started spitting out cards with activation codes of 'stupidnigger****er666.'
For whatever reason (perhaps because they couldn't find it), NetZero handled the problem not by removing the rogue code, but by adding a filter that scans activation codes for "bad" strings (such as '****er') and removes them. However, they neglected to put 'nigger' on their list of bad strings.
This year when the trigger event occurred, the program again started generating cards with activation codes of 'stupidnigger****er666'; the filter caught the string '****er' and removed it from the activation codes, thereby producing a bunch of cards with the only slightly less insulting string 'stupidnigger666' instead.
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