netbuzz writes "Some 230,000 New Zealanders have been informed that their personal information has apparently fallen into the hands of hackers who compromised the network of a locally famous food chain, Hell Pizza. The company says it suspects 'a rogue employee,' but one security expert says Hell's ordering portal is 'about 50 steps of fail.' Several New Zealand celebrities are among the victims and at least one is taking the matter in stride, musing: 'My Twitter has been hacked, my Facebook has been hacked and I'm pretty sure half of New Zealand has my phone number already. I have nothing bad to say about Hell.'"

Among other charges, David H. Brooks is accused of offering employment with a few too many benefits, namely prostitutes. In addition to the girls-for-hire, Brooks is also accused of using company money to buy textbooks for his daughter, porn for his son, plastic surgery for his wife, a burial plot for his mother, and $100,000 American-flag belt buckle encrusted with rubies, sapphires and diamonds for himself. From the article: "The expense-account abuse, the prosecution has said, represented a pittance compared with the $190 million that Mr. Brooks and another top employee are accused of making through a stock fraud scheme in which he falsified information about his company’s performance — including significantly overstating the inventory of bulletproof vests — to inflate the price of the stock before selling his shares in 2004."

Students in one New Jersey school district will no longer be able to squeak by in class after the Morris County School Board approved dropping the D grade. Beginning in the fall students who don't get a C or higher will get an F on their report card. "I'm tired of kids coming to school and not learning and getting credit for it," said Superintendent Larrie Reynolds in a Daily Record report.

Normally you wouldn't think that having a nickname like "Bomb Magnet" was a good thing. But in the case of Warrant Officer Class 2 (WO2) Patrick Hyde, the bomb handle appears to be good luck. During his tour Hyde has been hit by IEDs 13 times, 11 in a vehicle and twice while on foot. He's also survived having his Mastiff armored troop carrier struck by rockets twice. From the article: "His unit – A Company 4 Rifles – repelled more than 500 attacks and was forced to contend with 200 improvised explosive device incidents."

I can't wait to see the pot version of Siskel & Ebert.

The Plastiki, a catamaran made with plastic bottles, has completed a 8,000 mile trip between San Francisco and Sydney. Captain David de Rothschild said, "The Plastiki is literally a metaphorical message in a bottle about beating waste and reducing our human fingerprints on our natural environment." The boat will go on display at the Australian National Maritime Museum for the next month.

When an officer tried to give 40-year-old Eilish De Avalon a ticket she politely told him that she was a being from another world and therefore, "Your laws and penalties don't apply to me. I'm not accepting them, I'm sorry, I must go, thank you." She then drove off with the policeman's arm caught in her door. In the interest of keeping up good relations with humans, De Avalon plead guilty to recklessly causing serious injury, dangerous driving and driving while suspended, using a mobile phone while driving and failing to stop on police request.

schliz writes "An Australian cave system visited by 200,000 tourists a year is expanding its range of audio guides to support Klingon. Cave operators reportedly engaged the services of two 'Klingon scholars' from the US, following Star Trek's naming of a 'Sydney Class' Starship, the USS Jenolan."

War, earthquakes, and broken washers are all unavoidable events for which a carrier should not be liable if travel is delayed according to Southwest Airlines. Southwest quietly updated their act of God list a few weeks ago to include mechanical problems with the other horrors of an angry travel god. From the article: "Robert Mann, an airline industry analyst based in Port Washington, NY, called it 'surprising' that Southwest, which has a reputation for stellar customer service, would make a change that puts passengers at a legal disadvantage if an aircraft breakdown delays their travel. Keeping a fleet mechanically sound 'is certainly within the control of any airline,' Mann said. 'Putting mechanical issues in the same category as an act of God — I don't think that's what God intended.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Discover Magazine reports that despite the average person shaking hands nearly 15,000 times in a lifetime, one in five (19 per cent) admit they hate the act of the handshake and are unsure how to do it properly, regularly making a handshake faux pas such as having sweaty palms, squeezing too hard or holding on too long while over half the population (56 per cent) say they have been on the receiving end of an unpleasant handshake experience in the past month alone. But help is at hand as scientists have developed a mathematical equation for the perfect handshake taking into account the twelve primary measures needed to convey respect and trust to the recipient. The research was performed at the behest of Chevrolet as part of a handshake training guide for its staff and is meant to offer peace of mind and reassurance to its customers. A full guide to the perfect handshake is available on Flickr."

Usually there is nothing funny about a missing pet, but the tale of Missy the lost cat is hilarious. It serves as an example of just how clueless your fellow employees can be, and why you should never ask the designers to drop what they're doing, and help with a personal matter.

pinkushun writes "SarcMark is a copyrighted punctuation mark, that claims 'It's time that sarcasm is treated equally!' Pretty damn cheeky while they're charging for their software, which only inserts their punctuation through a hotkey. Open Sarcasm is destroying SarcMark by advocating a new punctuation mark (not displaying here properly — alt+U0161) as the new open and free sarcasm symbol. Either way, this will be one interesting turnout. With bad unicode support across the web, displaying the characters properly might be an issue. PS Left out sarcastic end sentence as Slashdot doesn't display the U0161 character."

sv_libertarian writes "They've faced down humans time and time again, but Fred Phelps and his minions from the Westboro Baptist Church were not ready for the cosplay action that awaited them at Comic-Con. After all, who can win against a counter-protest that includes robots, magical anime girls, Trekkies, Jedi, and... kittens?"

Even though nobody but lifeguards use Clearwater Beach's lifeguard headquarters, Florida officials have decided that it must be handicapped-accessible. "It's odd. Obviously no one here is handicapped. No one in a wheelchair has ever asked to come up here," head lifeguard Donovan Burns said. From the article: "Clearwater officials are a bit baffled by the order to make the upper floors handicapped-accessible. They expected to get a waiver so they could skip that requirement, but the state turned them down."

An anonymous reader writes "In the pictures you will see the beautiful city of San Francisco made of nothing but jelly. This is the brain child of Liz Haycock and you cannot but be impressed by the myriad of colors and the pain that must have gone into this huge project."

iPhone 4, deal with it.

Apparently the destruction of the second Death Star has stretched the Galactic Empire's coffers so thin that Lord Vader himself is robbing banks. From the article: "Impotent Rebel Alliance security forces tell Newsday (paywall) that Vader marched into a Chase bank in Setauket around 11:30 a.m. today. Brandishing a completely unnecessary handgun — as he had the power to choke the oxygen out every teller's throat — the fallen Jedi demanded cash."

If you have $765 burning a hole in your pocket, and a penchant for drinking alcohol out of a taxidermied animal, the good folks at BrewDog have just the drink for you. Their latest creation, called The End of History, is a 110 proof beer that comes packaged in a variety of small stuffed animals.

29-year-old Travis Kevie managed to successfully re-open the historic Valencia Club in Penryn, Ca. and run it for 4 days before he was arrested for not actually owning the bar. An Auburn Journal newspaper article about the club's relaunch was Kevie's downfall. From the article: "Detective Jim Hudson became suspicious after reading about the Valencia Club's re-opening in an Auburn Journal newspaper article that featured a picture of Kevie and identified him as the club's new 'owner/operator.' Not only had Detective Hudson had previous run-ins with Kevie, he knew the Valencia Club's liquor license had been surrendered."

beaver1024 writes "I doubt if Apple lawyers even contemplated the irony as they slapped a small Australian company producing camping equipment with a lawsuit for trademark violations. Sea to Summit makes a product that assists in the disposal of human excrement, calling it iPood. Apple thinks that 'For obvious reasons, Apple's reputation for clean design and high-tech electronics will suffer should it be associated with latrines and the like through Sea to Summit's use of iPood.' If only Sea to Summit had the resources to fight this in court. Alas, we are witnessing yet another sign of the corrupted nature of IP laws in Australia and internationally."