The peak of passion
There’s something about Mount Rainier that inspires a deep dedication. Take Elizabeth Putnam. The 74-year-old is one of an army of 2,000 healing the mountain’s wounds from last year’s storms. She’s been a presence at Mount Rainier National Park for 52 years. Read more on the clean-up effort from staff reporter Colin McDonald. For more on the park’s progress, check out the Washington Trails Association. And don’t forget to browse through our WTA reader blog, Trail Talk. The newest post: s’mores at the Trail Fest.
Facebook founder sued
If a group of Harvard students are telling it right, red-hot social networking site Facebook could be in a lot of trouble. Three founders of rival site ConnectU (which boasts 70,000 members — a small huddle next to Facebook’s 31 million) allege that Facebook creator and classmate Mark Zuckerberg agreed to help them with the site, then jumped ship and created Facebook. Facebook is asking a judge to dismiss the suit. The AP has the story. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday. Should Facebook users be worried? I don’t know, but I couldn’t get to my profile this morning. Site’s “upgrading.” Gulp.
Candidates, you’re killing me
I know, I know, enough with the 2008 presidential campaign talk, but USA Today has got a great story on how the ever-more-mediated campaign trail and the shift toward more MySpace and YouTube friendly stumping has gotten the candidates doing stand-up. But as the article explains, humor is a hard thing to pull off — and a lot harder than kissing babies. Want to see what’s so funny? See if you get the punchlines in this video from ABC News.
You think politicians are bad …
Check out those sports stars. The P-I’s Ted Miller rants about the recent upswing in scandals from the NBA to the NFL and everywhere in between. Seriously — can we have one year when someone from the Tour de France isn’t busted for cheating? Just one?
Paul Allen picks Seattle author for next film project
A Seattle author is getting her shot at the big screen, thanks to Seattle gagillionaire Paul Allen — whose renaissance-man interests go beyond technology, philanthropy and music to that most eye-popping art, film. P-I film critic William Arnold tells how author Deb Caletti’s book series, “Honey, Baby, Sweetheart” could find itself before the cameras next spring. The six-book coming-of-age series takes place in a Washington town that’s a lot like Issaquah, Caletti’s hometown.
And, for some utterly pointless fun, an old video of “Frasier’s” own Kelsey Grammer falling off a stage:
Kelsey Grammer Falls Off StagePosted May 02, 2005
The actor fell off a stage while giving a speech at Disneyland. Don’t worry, he’s okay.
Facebook is a social networking website
Popular social networking website Facebook went down for unknown upgrades, possibly to circumvent multiple holes that were published in a white paper earlier. From roughly 1:00 to 4:15 pm ET, users reported the site was down.

Blogs have speculated it may be simply a server upgrade, or it may be new features. One web development blogger has even raised the theory that the site was hacked, with the login box showing multiple random email addresses, through "" coding. Another user replied to this posting, saying that they were even able to read the other, random user's inbox. Both a blogger who works at a computing company's office in Johannesburg, South Africa and a Norwegian news outlet reported similar troubles. Many blogs received comments from people with similar circumstances, worldwide.

A white paper by Adrienne Felt, posted on July 27, 2007, explained step-by-step how to use an exploit to hijack a user's account. The white paper was then partially censored by the author, until the vulnerability has been fixed by Facebook. Regardless of whether the change was prompted by this paper, both the XSS hole and problem with forms described by the author were fixed during the upgrade.

The site read "We're upgrading. We'll be back soon." with no further explanation.

This is the first known global outage for the site.

This comes as a rival site, ConnectU, has filed a lawsuit against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing the idea and the code. The hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.

Also on Wednesday, the Black Hat Briefings computer security conference begins. The conference unites people from "government agencies and global corporations with the underground's most respected hackers."