As reported by BBC News

Italian police to have supercar

Traffic police patrolling a motorway in southern Italy have a tough decision to take: who will get to drive the force's first Lamborghini Gallardo?

The gift from Lamborghini has been unveiled in all its blue and white glory, marked with the word "Polizia".

With a top speed of 309 kph (192 mph), it should have the edge in any chase on the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway.

However, the car is just as likely to be used for emergency deliveries such as human organs for transplant.

The sleek two-seater, topped with a flashing blue light, was put on display in Rome at a police event before entering service on the notorious motorway in the south.

It is a six-speed luxury vehicle with a 500-horsepower engine designed to go from zero to 100 kph (60 mph) in four seconds.

Donated by the Lamborghini factory in Bologna, its list price is US $165,000, probably making it unlikely that the Italian police force will actually buy any for its fleet.

Other traffic police forces which cannot boast a Lamborghini resort to devices of their own against speeders: in Russia, for example, officers have been known to shoot out the tyres of offenders with machine-guns.

Check out the picture of the car that accompanies the BBC story. I tell you, if all police cars were like this then we'd all be cops.

As reported by BBC News.

Disney 'blocks' Moore documentary

Controversial director Michael Moore has said film studio Disney is refusing to release his new documentary, which heavily criticises President Bush.

Fahrenheit 911 was to be distributed by Miramax, a division of Disney.

But Disney has "officially decided to prohibit" Miramax from distributing the film, the director said on his website.

Moore, who won an Oscar for Bowling for Columbine in 2003, questioned whether in a "free and open society" Disney should be making such a decision.

Fahrenheit 911 links Mr Bush with powerful families in Saudi Arabia, including that of Osama Bin Laden, and attacks his actions before and after 11 September.

Miramax, run by Hollywood moguls Harvey and Bob Weinstein, agreed to distribute the documentary but Disney signalled it was not happy with the deal.

Disney bought Miramax 10 years ago but retained the rights to block films it deemed against its interests, such as adult-rated films.

But the New York Times said Miramax did not agree this was a situation where that clause should be invoked.

"For nearly a year, this struggle has been a lesson in just how difficult it is in this country to create a piece of art that might upset those in charge," Moore said on his official site.

"Some people may be afraid of this movie because of what it will show.

"But there's nothing they can do about it now because it's done, it's awesome, and if I have anything to say about it, you'll see it this summer - because, after all, it is a free country."

Miramax spokesman Matthew Hilzik told the New York Times: "We are discussing the issues with Disney. We're looking at our options and look forward to resolving this amicably."

But Zenia Mucha, a Disney spokesman, said: "We advised both [Moore's] agent and Miramax in May of 2003 that the film would not be distributed. That decision stands."

Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, accused Disney and its chief executive Michael Eisner of fearing a loss of tax breaks if it backed the release in the US.

Moore will give Fahrenheit 911 its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, but no date has been set for a US release.

I don't know about you, but I'm fed up of this bullshit.

Whatever you think of Michael Moore, you have to agree that there's something fundamentally wrong with allowing a filmmaker (or writer, or artist) to create a piece of work and then apply corporate standards of what's right and what's wrong (ie, money, money and money) in deciding whether or not that work is suitable for public scrutiny.

Let an individual's work stand (or fall) on its own merits. Stop this corporate censorship now.

The baseball cap as we know it is 50 years old. Rejoice.

On a related note, I'd love to get hold of decent US sports clothing (a Steve McNair Titans jersey, perhaps a Craig Biggio or Jeff Bagwell Astros jersey, nice Titans and Astros caps) without breaking the bank. There are one or two UK importers of US sports merchandise but they all seem to charge an arm and a leg: prices more than twice those on the official MLB, NFL, etc websites are pretty typical, which to me is a rip-off.

All I want to be able to do is to buy a cap and have it shipped to me for a fair price: that's not too much to ask, is it?

Anyone who can help me support my favourite NFL/MLB/etc teams without having to sell a kidney will be on my friends list for life.

I posted this comment to a story that's on the frontpage at the moment in reply to what someone else had to say.

As I write, my post has had 17 replies (I was expecting about ten or so, based on past experience), yet less than half of the replies actually seemed to grasp the question that I was asking (which, by the way, was asking why it's OK to operate by one set of rules when tracking down spammers but it's not OK to operate by the same set of rules when tracking down copyright infringement).

One described my post as "a rant": I would ask him how pointing out irony and asking a question can possibly be considered ranting but I doubt I'd get an intelligent reply. Is it me, or to rant don't you actually have to do more than make a quip and raise a question?

Another opined that my "sense of morality has obviously not developed to an adult level": interesting when you consider my vocal opinions in my journal entries and posts on subjects such as the war on terrorism, big business, copyright extensions, gay rights, xenophobia, etc. Yep, if there's anything I've shown through my posts on Slashdot it's that I don't have a well-developed and mature moral compass. (Not.)

Yet another didn't grasp what I meant by "without resorting to the kind of language that you wouldn't use in front of your mother", and proceeded to let me know that I should "Fuck off you corporate fuck. Fuck you and all you stand for. The French Revolution MK II is coming to a neck near you soon." Or, perhaps he did grasp what I meant but his mother's ears are less sensitive than that of my own. Frighteningly, the AC (he didn't have the courage to post using his own account: quelle surprise) was modded up.

(By the way, if you live in the UK, don't forget it's Mother's Day in two days time: if you haven't bought that card and gift yet, you've still got time. Run to the shops now.)

Others just seemed to miss the point of my post entirely, which was not only to point out the irony of the situation but to highlight how the actions described in the story summary were no different to those taken by spammers/spammer-hunters.

My point (or is it yet another "rant", I'm not sure now) is this: why is it that when you ask an intelligent question, and you ask it politely, there's always a significant group of people who feel the need to either: i) take what you've said out of context; ii) twist it to mean something else; iii) not bother reading what you've written beyond picking up a few key words; iv) just use it as an excuse to insult you; or v) any combination of the above?

Is this the world that we're living in now? One where even intelligent debate is too much to ask for? No wonder the world's crumbling around us, morally, socially, politically and environmentally.

I just got back from Starsky and Hutch.

Surprisingly funny. I bet the DVD will be great.

Best part was how anyone in the theatre under 30 didn't get about 70% of the best jokes.

Now I'm hoping that they'll make a CHiPs movie. I wonder what other late 70s to early 80s TV shows would translate well into movies?

Oh, and if you're not watching TRIO every night, you're really missing out on some fantastic television.

This story courtesy of BBC News.

US woman shops with fake $1m bill

A US woman has been charged with forgery after trying to use a fake $1 million bill at a supermarket.

Alice Pike, 35, pulled out the note at a Georgia Wal-Mart store to pay for $1,672 worth of goods and asked for change, police said.

The cashier immediately noticed the bill - bearing the picture of the Statue of Liberty - was fake and called her manager who alerted the police.

The US Treasury does not make $1m bills, which only go as high as $100.

In 1969, the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve System discontinued banknotes in denominations of $500, $1,000 and $10,000 due to lack of use.

"This is the first time in my law enforcement career I've seen someone trying to use a $1 million bill," local police chief Almond Turner was quoted as saying by the Houston Chronicle newspaper.

"It was green, but you could tell it was not a real bill," Mr Turner added.

Ms Pike had three of the $1m bills when she was arrested at the store in Covington on Tuesday, police said.

Mr Turner said she claimed she got the bills from her husband

A fistful of these and you could buy a country! Perhaps we should be sending them to Nigerian 419 scammers and other spammers?

OK, so it's that time of the year.

I know some of you are into baseball, and I know some of you are into fantasy sports. So who's up for a little fantasy baseball?

I've been playing fantasy baseball for a couple of years now and it's only hightened my appreciation and enjoyment of the game. Yahoo has a nice system, which can be played for free, with either public or private leagues, default or custom scoring, rottiserie or head-to-head.

So who's up for a private head-to-head league? I'd favour Yahoo's default scoring system, but I'd probably replace AVG with OBP (on base percentage) so that walks counted for something, albeit in a small way.

So, that would be a league that scores Runs, Home Runs, RBIs, OBP (instead of AVG) for hitters and Wins, Saves, Ks, ERA and WHIP for pitchers.

(By the way, head-to-head is more fun, in my humble opinion, because you're matched up against a different opponent every week, thus presenting you with a fresh challenge every seven days, and because it avoids the "unwinnable race" type scenario that occurs way too often in rottiserie.)

So, who's up for it? Anyone? Anyone?

There's no "Ask Slashdot" topic available for user journals, but I am intrigued by this reader's question, and I thought it was worth a try to tap into the collective wisdom of Slashdot.

Hi Wil,

you mentioned some time ago in your blog that you did a presentation on writing your book(s) using open source tools. Have you posted these slides (or whatever the medium was) anywhere?

I'm asking as I am about to embark on a writing project that will be north of 80,000 words (assuming I get past the 5,000 word 'pain barrier' that killed me last time) and recent experience with M$ Word has, quite frankly, scared the bejaysus out of me.

Anyways, if you get this it would be great to see you share some of your experiences using OSS to write.

thanks
Conrad

[1]http://www.wilwheaton.net/mt/archives/001401.php

I replied:

Hi Conrad,

Sadly, I didn't use any slides . . . that's *way* over my level of preparation for anything I do.

My talk pretty much focused on how I used OpenOffice.org to compose and edit my two current books, and what some of the pitfalls were.

I can summarize briefly for you: OO.o is a fantastic word processing suite, and did everything that I needed it to do. I was particularly impressed by the "stylist" in OO.o, which exists, I think, because they use some sort of XML-ish language behind the scenes. The stylist allowed me to assign something similar to "classes" to diffferent areas of my text, and was extremely useful in the design of "Just A Geek."

The only time I ran into an annoying limitation was moving to and from the .doc format, because OO.o and MSWord don't play nicely in regards to formatting. I worked around this by using .rtf format, when I needed to send my work out to other people (for notes and stuff). There were a few limitations in formatting, but they were purely aesthetic and didn't affect the actual data in any way.

I briefly looked at Abiword and KOffice, and found them both to be well-written and stable, but they were far more limited than OO.o.

In terms of just putting together a manuscript without regard to formatting, you could work very easily with Kwrite, or Kate, the same way that many other writers use BBEdit on the Mac.

When I finally had a finished product that I liked, I used OpenOffice.org to print to a .ps file, then used the ps2pdf13 command line tool to convert it into a .pdf document, which I sent to my printer. I understand that the newest version of OO.o has a very robust built-in pdf converter which makes that extra step unnecessary. I should also point out that converting files to .pdf on *nix always results in smaller filesizes than if you'd done it on a Mac or Windows platform. Hooray for us.

I'll post this e-mail to my Slashdot journal (CleverNickName) and maybe some of the Slashdotters will have good advice of their own to share with us.

Best of luck with your novel. Just go one scene at a time, and you'll be past 5K words before you know it!

Wil

My presentaton was pretty much limited to "I like this, I don't like this, and this thing was cool." I didn't have the time to get into a 1:1 comparison among all the different Open Source word processing suites. Do Slashdotters have any comments or suggestions? I find myself using Kate more and more when I compose weblog entries or shorter columns for magazines and the like. I occasionally use Abiword to compose and format letters and fax covers when time is a factor (Abiword loads much faster than OpenOffice.org.)

I've just read this news article on BBC Online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3487958.stm.

For those of you too lazy to click a link, here it is in full.

US 'may hold cleared detainees'

By Nick Childs
BBC Pentagon correspondent

Pentagon officials have confirmed that Guantanamo detainees may still be kept in detention, even if they are found not guilty by a military tribunal.

They say detainees could be kept prisoner if they are considered a security risk.

If found guilty, they could also be held beyond any sentence laid down by the tribunal.

The Pentagon this week laid the first charges against two foreign detainees held in Guantanamo Bay.

'Not common sense'

The US military officials argue that there are two processes underway.

Detainees are being held because they are suspected of being enemy combatants in an ongoing war.

Separately, some may be put before tribunals accused of specific war crimes or other offences.

But the officials say it would not be common sense to release detainees after the tribunals if the so-called war on terrorism were still under way and it was thought they might launch new attacks on US interests.

The officials add that anyone convicted of war crimes would have to serve out their sentences, even if the other detainees were released because the war was deemed to be over.

All of this looks like further evidence of how difficult the issue of detainees is.

So, you've not been proven of any crime, even in the most hostile of courts, despite having no access to a lawyer or other representation for the two plus years that you've already been detained, yet you still aren't free to go? You're still going to be detained indefinitely? What was the point of the trial in the first place?

Is this justice in 21st century America? Please, say it ain't so.

That journal title, by the way, is an old proverb from the north of England. For those of you that require a translation, it means "There is nothing as strange as people". And, as people go, there are few in the public eye as strange as George Walker Bush.

Sir Winston Churchill, a leader who stood up the worst horrors that man can inflict upon his fellow man, yet who never lost track of the principles for which he fought, once described encryption as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." Had he lived in our times, he might well have used those words to describe the 43rd President of the United States.

Here is a man who knows that he was the beneficiary of the most unconvincing election decision in American history; an election so close that he had his brother Jeb, Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanon, butterfly ballots, chads, illegal disenfranchisement, and who knows what else to thank for his eventual "win" in Florida and elevation to the presidency.

A man who knows that he gained fewer votes nationwide than Al Gore in 2000 and who'll have to perform even better than he did then if he's to win this time around. A man who knows that his opponent this time around won't be afraid to come out swinging, and who'll have more to defend than to attack.

A man who's record in office has had few highs (the overthrow of Saddam Hussein the only notable one), but many lows (September 11, the PATRIOT ACT, Camp X-Ray, the at large status of Osama bin Laden, an illegal invasion that's turned into a quagmire even after he proclaimed "Mission Accomplished", the non-existance of the Iraqi WMDs, the deterioration of US-World relations, rising unemployment, a tax cut that really only benefits the rich, failing schools).

In short, a man who needs every vote he can get.

Yet what does this man do? He attacks gays by calling for a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages, a mistake that's potentially fatal to his re-election campaign.

By most conservative estimates, three percent of Americans are gay. That's three out of every hundred people of voting age, Dubya, just in case you weren't sure. That three percent is, broadly speaking, more educated, more affluent and more politically-aware law-abiding citizens than the norm. In short, gay men and women are smart, rich, astute and likely to vote. So why would you do something that's guaranteed to get them turning out for the other side?

If every gay man or woman plus, say, just one of their non-gay friends or relatives felt strongly enough about this issue and voted accordingly, then that's six percent of the electorate you've just lost on one issue.

Six percent in what will probably be a close race? I'm sorry, Dubya, but that's probably the ballgame right there because you've just misfielded the ball on an issue where you couldn't gain votes (most people have bigger priorities when they vote, and even those that'd vote for you solely because of your same-sex marriage stance would probably have been voting Republican anyway) but sure can lose them.

Sure, if I'm a gay man I'd worry about the economy, terrorism, etc. But I'd worry a hell of a lot more about a President that wants to make me a second class citizen in my own country. Heck, even non-gays must be worried about where all this is leading: first Camp X-Ray, the abuse of the Constitution, privacy and due process for even American citizens, proposals to legally discriminate against gays, what's next?

Bush's advisors must know all this. So why let the idiot open his mouth on the issue? Why not just keep shut? If had to say something then why did he have to say something so explosive? Couldn't he just say he was against it?

Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps waivering voters will see this as an example of "moral leadership" from a former alcoholic and cocaine user who was busy dodging National Guard duty whilst others of his generation were busy dodging bullets.

I doubt it though. And I'm sure that there are some in the White House that share that view, which makes me wonder why, why, why did he turn something so small into something potentially so big. Just what's going on in that head? To me, it's a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. How this can help him more than it hinders him is hard to see. What a strange man.

It just goes to show, there's nowt as queer as folk.

BBC News story.

Seriously, the fact that people like this are actively propagating their genes is worrying. When will people realise that calling their kids "2.0" or naming them after a brand is nothing short of moronic?

This is your kid's name. It's not the name of your car, your PC or even your dog. It's your child; a living, breathing, human being who will have that name for (probably) a good 60-100 years.

Anyone who's so self-centred in the child naming process that they haven't thought through how society (especially high school society) will react to a kid named "2.0" or "Monster.com" or "Wal-mart" should be taken out back and given a baseball's perspective of a baseball bat.

BBC News story.

Yay! Now I won't have to feel guilty when I walk into a cinema and pay to see a Pixar film!

I know the split was about money rather than ideological issues but I'm glad Pixar is going down another route. I can't stand Disney. In fact, I detest them. Some of the shit they pull is unbelieveable.

You made the top ten list!

No PointsName Hp [max]
1 20342 Morc-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law died in Sokoban on level 6 [max 9].
Killed by an owlbear. - [79]
2 15917 Morc-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law died in The Dungeons of Doom on level 12.
Killed by a xan. - [68]
3 4171 Morc-Wiz-Orc-Mal-Cha died in The Dungeons of Doom on level 6.
Killed by a water elemental. - [59]

It's cold comfort to be three fucking rocks away from beating Sokoban, only to have a fucking OWLBEAR show up out of nowhere, and whack 70 fucking hit fucking points right off you in one fucking turn.

Gods, I love this fucking game. >:-)

Stuff like this is so surreal you couldn't make it up if you tried:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3437455.stm.

Seriously, when was the last time you got caught in a whale shower?

BBC News Online is reporting that Nintendo (and Namco) are bringing back Pac-Man , the arcade classic, but with a novel twist. Called Pac-Man Vs, the new game pits one player playing Pac-Man on a GameBoy Advance against up to three other players playing the Ghosts (Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde) on a GameCube. The best bit is the price: the game is being given away for free with Namco's upcoming GameCube releases, including R: Racing Evolution, and I-Ninja!

I've just submitted this to the Games section. Let's see how long it takes to get published.