The candy company that makes Hot Tamales promised its sales team a trip to Hawaii if it met its annual goals, and a trip to the tundra if it failed. The team didn't meet the goal so the company sent them to Fargo. From the article: "Outside, the temperature was 7 degrees. The ground had 2 feet of snow. Not exactly Hawaii: Honolulu was sunny, and a comfortable 82 degrees. 'Fargo is not what you would think is one of the greatest locales in the United States and technically we didn't make our year,' said Dave Bayha, a Just Born manager. 'It was somewhat of a punishment.'" Well, that don't sound like too good a deal for them, then.

itwbennett writes "Who loves robots? You may love them more or less after seeing what 2010 gave us, robot-wise. It's not the rise of the machines yet, but that teddy bear creeped us out."

Officials at a middle school in Georgia were searching a girl's purse after being tipped off she was carrying a knife, but they didn't find a weapon. They found something just as bad, ibuprofen. Not the usual 200mg pills, but the big 800mg variety. An investigation revealed that the girl had received the pills from her mother, who got the medication from Martin Army Community Hospital. Police then charged the mother with distributing a dangerous drug, while her daughter was only charged with possession. There's no telling what deviant acts a 12-year-old might commit under the influence of four Advil.

It appears the mustelids have joined the war on Christmas. A skunk has ruined $16k worth of toys collected by the city of Purcell, Oklahoma. The toys were part of the town's "Operation Christmas" program, which collects gifts for children from poor families. Somehow an angry skunk got into the shed where the toys were kept and ruined most of them with its spray.

Ponca City writes "The Telegraph reports that an online dating profile created by Julian Assange in 2006 has been unearthed from OKCupid disclosing that the WikiLeaks editor sought 'spirited, erotic' women 'from countries that have sustained political turmoil.' Writing under the pseudonym of British science fiction author Harry Harrison, Assange described himself as a 'passionate, and often pig headed activist intellectual.' Assange said he was seeking a 'siren for [a] love affair, children and occasional criminal conspiracy' adding that he was 'directing a consuming, dangerous human rights project which is, as you might expect, male dominated' and added enigmatically: 'I am DANGER, ACHTUNG.' Among Assange's listed interests were the 'structure of reality' and 'chopping up human brains' – although he added the caveat '(neuroscience background)' lest the latter put off potential admirers. 'I like women from countries that have sustained political turmoil,' Assange wrote. 'Western culture seems to forge women that are valueless and inane. OK. Not only women!'"

Convicted drug dealer Malcolm Alarmo King cited his belief in Festivus to get out of eating the usual meals served at the Orange County, Calif. jail. Instead of salami, King was served kosher meals even though keeping kosher is not one of the tenets of Festivus. From the article: "Sheriff's spokesman Ryan Burris says King got salami-free meals for two months before the county got the order thrown out in court."

Chinese archaeologists have discovered a sealed bronze pot containing what they believe is a batch of 2,400-year-old bone soup. The pot was dug up near the ancient capital of Xian. Liu Daiyun of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archeology says, "It's the first discovery of bone soup in Chinese archaeological history. The discovery will play an important role in studying the eating habits and culture of the Warring States Period (475-221BC)." No word on if the archaeologists also found the accompanying ancient crackers.

With all the recent hacktivism in the news, Anonymous has decided to take on a new and powerful enemy: snow. On Sunday the group announced that it will "do everything in its power to shut snow down by attacking the Weather Channel and North Face websites, boycotting outerwear, and voting for the sun as Time’s 2010 Person Of The Year." I'm sure there are a lot of people in Minneapolis right now that would wish them luck.

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Paul Venezia serves up six real-world tales of IT stunts and solutions that required a touch of inspired insanity to pull off, proving once again that knowing when to throw out the manual and do something borderline irresponsible is essential to day-to-day IT work. 'It could be server on the brink of shutting down all operations, a hard drive that won't power up vital data, or a disgruntled ex-employee who's hidden vital system passwords on the network. Just when all seems lost, it's time to get creative and don your IT daredevil cap, then fire up the oven, shove the end of a pencil into the motherboard, or route the whole city network through your laptop to get the job done,' Venezia writes."

Giuseppe Di Maria, an An Italian hospital director, is in a bit of hot water over a memo he sent suggesting that doctors and nurses should not snort cocaine while on duty. From the article: "Social services chiefs have opened an internal inquiry into the affair and also referred it to the local prosecutor's office. Director of social affairs Guido Scoditti said he had no choice but to pass the matter on to the authorities. 'The director of the hospital has certainly made an error, he should not have sent this memo, he should have informed me directly. The alleged consumption of cocaine in a hospital environment should certainly not be dealt with in this way,' he said."

Falling icicles have killed five and injured 150 people in St. Petersburg alone this winter. Governor Valentina Matviyenko has fired 11 officials over the record number of accidents and has offered some rather hi-tech solutions to the problem. She says, "Icicles should be removed with lasers or steam. If St. Petersburg experts throw up their hands and say that icicles should be removed using crowbars, then we will use crowbars."

In an attempt to deal with the massive amount of people leaving the city, and meet the budget, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has proposed cutting off all but seven neighborhoods from city services. People not in the select seven face living without garbage pickup, police patrols, road repair and street lights. From the article: "Karla Henderson, a city planning official leading the mayor's campaign, said in an interview Thursday that her staff had deemed just seven to nine sections of Detroit worthy of receiving the city's full resources. She declined to identify the areas, but said the final plan could include a greater number." Looks like RoboCop Detroit is getting closer to reality.

Barence writes "PC Pro's Stewart Mitchell has charted the world's ten most calamitous computer cock-ups. They include the Russians' stealing software that resulted in their gas pipeline exploding, the Mars Orbiter that went missing because the programmers got their imperial and metric measurements mixed up, the Soviet early-warning system that confused the sun for a missile and almost triggered World War III, plus the Windows anti-piracy measure that resulted in millions of legitimate customers being branded software thieves."

aesoteric writes "A 30-year-old IT worker at a Florida-based health centre was this week sentenced to 19 months in a US federal prison for hacking, and then locking, her former employer's IT systems. Four days after being fired from the Suncoast Community Health Centers' for insubordination, Patricia Marie Fowler exacter her revenge by hacking the centre's systems, deleting files, changing passwords, removing access to infrastructure systems, and tampering with pay and accrued leave rates of staff."

fangmcgee writes "Leave it to an Italian intimates company to trade one kind of stuffing for another: by recycling used bras into soundproof building insulation. To acquire a sizable stash of unmentionables, Intimissimi launched a six-week multimedia campaign to encourage women to drop off their used bras at its stores across Italy. Plus, every customer who brought in a bra received €3 ($4) towards the purchase of a new one — just in case Russian model Irina Shayk's entreaties to 'help save the planet' weren't convincing enough."

Select Pennsylvania Walmarts have found a way to work around the law prohibiting alcohol sales in grocery stores. It turns out the shortsighted legislature forgot to make it illegal to sell wine from a vending machine: "as long as the user is asked to take a breathalyzer test, swipe their state issued ID or Driver License, and then show their mug to a state official sitting somewhere in Harrisburg, who is keeping an eye on the proceedings via CCTV." I'm surprised nobody thought of this sooner.

itwbennett writes "You want to know what really happens to your data? Dan Tynan has penned the first completely honest privacy policy — surprisingly free of legalese. We dare you to use it on your website."

dotarray writes "From the article: 'Rockstar Games are no strangers to legal action, but it doesn't come stranger than this. An American model, Michael Washington (known as "Shagg") is suing the publisher — as well as parent company Take Two Interactive — because they based Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on his life.'" It's a good thing Washington never learned the infinite ammo cheat.

Caffe Boa in Tempe, Arizona is offering an all reindeer menu just in time for Christmas. From the article: "The menu begins with caribou tartare gilded with pickled quail egg. That's followed by caribou tongue bruschetta with pickled watermelon radish and horseradish cream. Then there's caribou sausage with red lentils and quince mustard. Up next are two pasta courses: pappardelle with caribou Bolognese and caribou-filled tortellini in a parmesan broth. The caribou parade ends with bollito misto, a meat and vegetable stew." Last Easter, chef Payton Curry offered a special all-rabbit dinner.

According to his director friend Mel Smith, George Lucas has a plan for upcoming movies more insidious than a whole Gungan cast. Smith says Lucas is buying the rights to old movies in order to put dead actors in his films. He says, "George has been buying up the film rights to dead actors in the hope of using computer trickery to put them all together, so you'd have Orson Welles and Barbara Stanwyck alongside today's stars." Even if Smith is lying, it makes you wonder who long it will be until Hollywood starts to recycle actors as well as scripts.