Officials say that a pair of New York state employees used taxpayer money to creating a "man cave" at the Capitol Building. The pair transformed a maintenance area in a Capitol garage facility into the mother of all break rooms equipped with a TV, board games, DVDs, couches, rolling papers and marijuana scales. The two are suspended without pay and one is charged with marijuana possession and criminal use of drug paraphernalia.

angry tapir writes "If you're the kind of person who walks down the street worrying about the depletion of IPv4 addresses, the iPhone can now tell you how long you have until that happens. IPv6 network backbone and collocation provider Hurricane Electric has introduced an iPhone application that counts down the number of days until that moment of reckoning."

The CTO at Dudley H.'s company sat everyone down and said that "there should never, ever be a need for technical support." All customer issues are a result of a poorly implemented or designed product. The helpdesk staff countered that many users are lazy and/or stupid, but the CTO set a new policy that all client issues were to have a "problem/improvement" report written about them, and that all reports were to be reviewed at the highest level. Hilarity ensues.

Find out what it's like to be matched based on 29 dimensions of arbitrary compatibility.

BotScout writes "An Ohio man, fed up with deceptive junk mail, made the mistake of losing his temper while on the phone with a St. Louis company pitching an extended auto-service contract. Now he finds himself behind bars, where he is charged with making a terrorist threat and is being held on $45,000 bond. According to court documents, Charles W. Papenfus, 43, allegedly told a sales representative during a May 18 telephone call that he would burn down the building and kill the employees and their families. He was indicted for making a terrorist threat, a Class D felony; and he could be sentenced to up to four years in prison if convicted. I get a lot of this kind of junk mail too, but I usually just call their 800 number and waste as much of their time as possible."

JimLynch writes "Back in 2006, when I was writing for ExtremeTech, I reviewed a version of Ubuntu with a religious theme: Ubuntu Christian Edition. At one point it seemed as though Ubuntu CE had been discontinued but I was pleased to note today that it has apparently been brought to life again and so I decided to do a full review Ubuntu CE 5.0 for DLR."

An anonymous Coward writes "West Australian Police tasered a man while arresting him for sniffing petrol, and managed to set fire to him in the process. Details seem to be scanty so far, but I trust the audience here to do the maths as to whether the ignition source was the taser itself."

An anonymous reader writes "In a bid to better understand the art of an effective ski turn researchers have recently built a robot to simulate the exact movements of a skier. The team of researchers from Kanazawa University in Japan built the ski robot to investigate the existing movements of skier's turns and see if there is any room for improvement on current techniques."

duanes1967 writes "Things that make you go HMMMM..... A lawsuit contends that Apple conspired with the Mafia to sell iPods with receivers for subversive ads. From the article, 'A new lawsuit from a Beverly Hills, Calif., man alleges that Apple conspired with the Italian mafia to secretly track him, transmit threatening messages to his iPod, and insert the word "herpes" into the song "Still Tippin'" by Mike Jones.'"

H. Beatty Chadwick has been in a staring match with the judicial system for the past 14 years, and the system just blinked. Chadwick was ordered to pay his ex-wife $2.5 million after their divorce. He refused to pay saying that he couldn't because he lost the money in a series of "bad investments." The judge in the case didn't believe him and sent him to jail for contempt. That was 14 years ago. Last week another judge let Chadwick go saying that "continued imprisonment would be legal only if there was some likelihood that ultimately he would comply with the order; otherwise, the confinement would be merely punitive instead of coercive." Chadwick, now 73, is believed to have served the longest contempt sentence in US history.

Officials from a noise pollution team are investigating claims that the children at Osmund and Andrew's Primary School laugh "unbearably" loudly. In addition to the excessive laughter, neighbors complain that the children kick footballs against the school's chain link fence, the sports teacher shouts during lessons, and the kitchen routinely runs out of cinnamon rolls on chili day. Headmaster John Thorpe said, "Children have to be educated somewhere and there are obvious good reasons why it should take place in residential areas. Bearing that in mind, it is inevitable that there will be a range of different responses to that from residents. We have always adopted a good neighbor policy and done whatever we can to mitigate disturbances. Some people will say that the sound of children laughing and playing together can be quite uplifting. As a teacher, I think it's good to hear children running around and thoroughly enjoying their lives."

The Greatest Generation had the greatest clothespins.

As long as you travel on a select few of Harbin Public Transport Company's buses, you won't have to worry about breaking a window to escape a potentially deadly crash anymore. The company has equipped each bus with two yellow emergency bricks for passengers to use to break windows. A safety hammer used to be provided but they were stolen frequently because everyone can use a good hammer. "We don't think anybody will be interested in stealing bricks," a spokesman said. The company plans on putting bricks on all 700 of its buses if the customer feedback is smashing.

Noting that distractions cause 80% of vehicle crashes, the good people at Insurance.com have released a list of the 10 worst foods to eat while you are driving. It's unclear how they came up with this list as it includes such things as soda and coffee, but overlooks much more dangerous culinary/driving endeavors such as cheese fondue, and bananas foster.

Are you wealthy and going to prison? Want to know the best way to pick up dropped soap? Do you even know what a shank is? Maybe it's time you hired prison coach Steven Oberfest. For $200 an hour, Steven will teach you the ins and outs of prison etiquette and how to defend yourself from attack. He says, "These guys have never been in a fight in their lives — they don't know what violence is, and now they're entering a world where anything can happen."

I'm not sure this meets National Highway Traffic Safety Administration standards.

Worried about suffocating after being hit by an avalanche? Thanks to the AvaJacket safety system you won't have to worry anymore. The Avajacket features airbags that restrain the head from being twisted into potentially dangerous positions, and an air-cleaning breathing system. I look forward to the release of the Moltencoat early next year. Finally, I'll be able to explore a volcano with peace of mind.

Frizbie writes "Max Motors in Butler, Missouri is giving away free AK-47 assault rifles with the purchase of a new truck. The promotion starts in the beginning of August. The video of CNN's coverage of the promotion shows Mark Muller being interviewed by a woman who was taking a very strong stand against what Muller had to say; however, it seems to have backfired pretty heavily."

The chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, Byron Dorgan, has put an end to the Treasury Department's search for a cartoonist who had the "ability to create cartoons on the spot about [Bureau of the Public Debt] jobs." The senator became aware of the opening after a link to the job ad was posted on the Drudge Report. The posting indicated that the cartoonist would need to create presentations for the bureau's management meetings and added, "The contractor shall conduct two, 3-hour Humor in the Workplace programs that will discuss the power of humor in the workplace [and] the close relationship between humor and stress."

East Linda, CA must have a babies with a candy shortage, because postal worker Dean Hudson had to resort to stealing money out of children's birthday cards. Postal officials started an investigation after receiving complaints about opened mail. The investigation led to Hudson pleading guilty to opening mail and taking money out of the birthday cards. US District Judge Edward Garcia sentenced him to five months in federal prison followed by five months of home detention, and Hudson must pay nearly $3,000 in restitution.