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Quotw This was the week when a total raving lunatic, or "nutjob" as he/she/they has come to be known, did their absolute best to extort a free Raspberry Pi from Foundation founder Eben Upton with a series of increasingly irate and always grammatically erroneous threats via IM.

Things kicked off civilly enough, with "Steve" IM'ing Upton to enquire about the possibility of getting a free sample Pi that he could show around to lots of people, thereby winning new orders for the nonprofit.

In an effort to introduce a little competition into who got to give him free stuff, Steve claimed that someone else was gonna give him some Pi-like gear.

There is a similar board that is sold and you can make it a computer too. They told me that I will get a free sample for ad purposes.

I can give you the name but I am not interested, only because I should get the samples soon their project is similar to yours but offers much more options small board, computer but for large purposes. If you decide to send me the free sample that doesn’t cost you anything you will get much more.

That clever ploy failed, so Steve proceeded to claim that rather than being the BA Applied Maths student he'd first said he was, he was actually helping an IT admin friend to source gear or no, wait, he was actually a reporter in New York who was going to reveal Upton's ploy to not give stuff out for free.

Steve bitched:

I thought I am talking to a company who knows about worldwide standards and treats people who may transfer thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We are amused here, all of us.

You can get the full lunacy in Raspberry Pi blog here.

Stateside, a group of hackers claimed that they'd nabbed millions of Apple IDs from the Feds, stolen from Supervisor Special Agent Christopher Stangl's Dell notebook.

The AntiSec crew leaked a million of the over 12 million IDs they alleged they'd snatched from Stangl onto Pastebin, responding to an appearance by NSA's General Keith Alexander at DefCon. They claimed that Alexander had been trying to "seduce hackers" into working for the man at the event.

We decided we'd help out internet security by auditing FBI first... It's the old double standard that has been around since the '80s. Govt Agencies are obsessed with witchhunts against hackers worldwide, whilst they also recruit hackers to carry out their own political agendas.

The hacking collective was clearly out to embarrass the G-Men and get folks wondering about why they had all those fruity identifiers.

Could the Bureau be about to embark on a fanboi witch-hunt? Would secret files reveal the brain-washing iDevice-users endure to turn them into Jobs-loving sycophants happy to fork out large sums of money every time a new piece of Apple gear comes onto the market?

Not according to the FBI anyway, which was quick to rubbish AntiSec's allegations on Twitter:

Statement soon on reports that one of our laptops with personal info was hacked. We never had info in question. Bottom Line: TOTALLY FALSE

Meanwhile, in court, TripAdvisor got off the hook for listing Kenneth Seaton's Grand Resort Hotel and Convention Center in Tennessee as one of the top 10 "dirtiest" hotels and the dirtiest hotel in America.

The user quote for the Grand Resort read:

There was dirt at least ½ inch thick in the bathtub, which was filled with lots of dark hair.

Seaton sued for defamation, claiming that despite its location in the City of Pigeon Forge, perhaps evocative of less savoury accommodation, the Grand resort had the "confidence and goodwill" of the public generally. Besides:

The Grand Resort was viewed favorably by the local Department of Health.

But the judge disagreed, while also dissing TripAdvisor's review system:

A reasonable person would not confuse a ranking system, which uses consumer reviews as its litmus, for an objective assertion of fact.

Though TripAdvisor’s method of arriving at its conclusions, unverified online user reviews, is a poor evaluative metric, it is not a system sufficiently erroneous so as to be labelled 'defamatory' under the legal meaning of the term.

Meanwhile, in Penguinland, Linux kernel big daddy Linus Torvalds and fellow developer Alan Cox have slapped down folks working on the GNOME user interface for blaming other people for their own mistakes.

"The GNOME people claiming that I set the 'attitude' that causes them problems is laughable,” Torvalds stormed on Google+. “Some GNOME people seem to be in total denial about what their problem really is. They'll wildly blame everybody except themselves.

And in horrifying science news, pancakes everywhere – blueberry, buckwheat or otherwise – could be destined to a naked existence after 5,000 tons of maple syrup was heisted from the global strategic reserve.

The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers announced the panic with little in the way of comforting words to soothe sweet-loving panfried breakfast-eaters:

The Federation is currently evaluating the scope of the situation. In total, the burglarized warehouse held over 10 million pounds of maple syrup amounting to over 30 million dollars in value.

The marketing of the stolen maple syrup will affect the entire maple industry. It is crucial to identify those responsible for this crime.

In addition, several American states saw a very low, indeed catastrophic, harvest during the 2012 season. The Quebec harvest, however, remained normal. The Federation's maple syrup inventories supply markets during periods of weaker harvests and can, therefore, be considered a global strategic reserve.

Across the ocean, the French are laughing as the ubiquitous crepes and Nutella look to make a killing in batter-deprived North American markets. ®

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