An anonymous reader writes "If you guessed San Bernardino County prisons as the ideal place to put drug vending machines, come claim your prize. From the article, 'Corrections departments are responsible for so many burdensome tasks that many of their everyday functions, like administering prescription drugs to inmates, are afterthoughts for the public. However, dispensing medication was so laborious and wasteful for the San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sheriff-Coroner Department that officials sought a way to streamline the process. The end product was essentially a vending machine that links to correctional facility databases and dispenses prescription medications.'"

Robadob writes "Police in south-west London have started to remove items from unlocked cars to protect motorists from thieves. From the article, 'Supt Jim Davis said no law was being breached but admitted: "Technically we are entering the vehicle." But a leading lawyer said police could face civil proceedings for trespass if any items taken by them were damaged.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Thanks to a computer glitch and bad diagnosis coding, the VA sent a letter to thousands of veterans telling them they have Lou Gehrig's Disease. Some were right, but many were mistakes. From the article, 'Recently, the VA determined ALS to be a service-connected disability and generated automatic letters to all veterans whose records included the code for the disease. However, since the coding contained both ALS and undiagnosed neurological disorders, some of those letters were erroneous.'"

wanted writes "If you look at Microsoft's Poland business solutions Web site, you will probably not notice anything odd about the main picture. However, when you compare it with the original English version, you can see that someone decided that showing black people in Poland is probably not going to be convincing to business. They just Photoshopped the head of a white guy in for the black one, in an amateurish way, leaving his hand unchanged. (Here's a mirror in case something should happen to the original.)" We noted a few months back that the city of Toronto had done something similar.

These are not the bobbies you are looking for.

Amiralul writes "A Romanian student, Andrei Gheorghe, put up a website that aggregates "real-time public twitter updates and selecting those that rhyme" making in this way the longest poem in the world, with approximately 4000 verses/day being added continuously." Saying that this is the world's longest poem is like saying the Oxford English Dictionary is the world's biggest choose your own adventure book.

56-year-old Scott Gibson, was unable to convince the police of Mount Carmel, Tenn. that he was in fact, special agent lead foot, deputy chief of the CIA. After receiving a speeding ticket, Gibson sent back a copy of the citation with a handwritten note, claiming he wasn't subject to local speed zones because he was the deputy chief of the CIA. The cops contacted the CIA, which confirmed that he wasn't and never had worked for the agency. The police thought the joke was so funny, they arrested him and charged him with criminal impersonation.

If there is an easier way to raise money for charity than walking on 18 miles of broken glass, 56-year-old Nigel Jardine hasn't heard of it. Nigel walked an octagonal course of broken glass for 27.5 hours, setting a new world record and raising money for the charity, Action for Children. The walk was held at the Bageecha restaurant in his home town. "I'm used to walking on broken glass but I suppose the customers at the restaurant weren't used to watching someone do it as they tucked into their meals," he said.

A Sydney nightclub owner knows there is nothing cuter than watching kids beg for Xanax after doing too much blow in the restroom, so he has opened up a disco for children. You have to be under 7 to get in to the Baby Loves Disco events. The young ones can get feather boas, organic apple juice and temporary tattoos under the watchful eye of babysitters, while their parents enjoy something a little more adult at the bar upstairs. Event co-host Tash Henry, a mother of two, said, "We really wanted to create the ultimate dance party for our kids."

A 58-year-old, North Queensland man didn't find the humor in the prank that left him stuck to a shopping center toilet seat. The man had to be taken to the hospital with the seat still attached after he found himself caught by a fast-acting adhesive that had been smeared on the toilet. Hospital staff were able to remove the seat with the help of some industrial strength solvents. Cairns City Council community safety committee chair Di Forsyth said, "I'm disgusted that a gentlemen has had to go through that because someone thinks it's funny — it's a sick joke. I think the community would be outraged and quite rightly so ... it's quite a dangerous prank." Police have a few leads in the case, but nothing that will stick.

I think it's obvious who wears the riding pants in this relationship.

An Australian TV station is in hot water after an on-air stunt caused a wave of complaints. The station ran a live hypnotherapy segment designed to help viewers lose weight. After clucking like a chicken for a full minute, authorities at The Australian Communications and Media Authority found the station guilty of a number of breaches of the commercial television code.

Barence writes "Following his blog last week about the homemade hard disk destroyer, Bustadrive, Mike Jennings was deluged with comments from readers, both on the blog and here on Slashdot. Most seemed to like the product, but also offered up far more innovative and madcap methods of hard disk destruction, with a wide range of implements used — household and otherwise. In this follow-up post, he rounds up the best of an imaginative bunch of hard disk destruction methods."

Knowing that a bad economy is immune to sneak attacks, a group of ex-rogues are creeping around London tourist sites and slipping money into peoples pockets. The "Putpockets" were hired by a broadband company and will be stalking tourist spots until the end of the month. Unsuspecting tourist can find anything from 5 pound to 20 pound notes slipped into pockets or unguarded handbags. "It feels good to give something back for a change -- and Britons certainly need it in the current economic climate. Every time I put money back in someone's pocket, I feel less guilty about the fact I spent many years taking it out," said Chris Fitch, a former pickpocket.

A Chinese man was arrested for stealing a motorcycle over the course of 5 years from the factory where he worked. The man, identified only as Zhang, was an assembly line worker in the motorcycle factory and took Johnny Cash's advice by stealing the bike one piece at a time so he wouldn't get caught. "I don't have that much money, so I came up with the idea of taking the parts home and assembling them on my own," said Zhang. Soon after finishing his bike, Zhang was pulled over by the police, who soon discovered he had no paperwork. He admitted to theft, was fined, put on probation for a year, and ordered to return the motorcycle to the factory.

Singularity Hub writes "A Ramen restaurant has just opened in Nagoya, Japan that uses robots instead of humans as its chefs. It may not seem that amazing at first, but once you see the video it is hard not to be blown away. The robotic chefs work their gastronomic magic in a kitchen placed front and center in the middle of the restaurant, giving customers a front row seat on the action."

Ant writes "John Scalzi's AMC blog shows a short guide to the most epic FAILs in Star Wars design — 'I'll come right out and say it: Star Wars has a badly-designed universe; so poorly-designed, in fact, that one can say that a significant goal of all those Star Wars novels is to rationalize and mitigate the bad design choices of the movies. Need examples? Here's ten ...'"

carp3_noct3m writes "A freelance Wired magazine journalist has decided to see what it is like to disappear from normal life, all while staying on the grid. The catch, is that he is challenging anyone and everyone to find him, take a picture, and speak a special codeword to him. If you can do that, you can make 5000 dollars, which happens to come out of his paycheck for the article he'll be writing. Oh, and to top it all off, whoever finds him gets pictures and interviews in Wired. He has been posting to his Twitter, using TOR for internet, and the Wired website will be posting his credit card transactions."

He'll probably ask where to find Mankrik's wife at dinner.

Need to vent some aggression? Do you have an overwhelming urge to smash someone with a cardboard tube? If you answered yes, the Cardboard Tube Fighting League is for you. "The CTFL was created out of a desperate need to better train and arm citizens with cardboard tubes," says the official website. While Fight Club has 8 rules, the CTFL needs 9, presumably because of the added danger a cardboard tube brings to the table. Unfortunately for east coasters, the only officially sponsored events take place in San Francisco.