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Santa Cruz Grad Student Sentenced for Making Morphine-Laced Beer

A Santa Cruz graduate student has been sentenced to a drug diversion program for making a batch of morphine-laced beer.

Chad Renzelman pleaded no contest to heroin possession, saying he used “a handful” of dried poppy pods to flavor a batch of home-made beer. Police found the batch of beer in his garage during the summer.

The UC Santa Cruz organic chemistry student says he extracted opium from the poppies, which he then converted to morphine.

The 28-year-old Renzelman says the beer was for home consumption and he didn’t know his actions were illegal.

Renzelman must participate in a drug diversion program and, if he stays out of trouble, the offense will be cleared from his record.

Copyright Associated Press via NBC

Guitar Hero World Tour Peripherals Riddled with Problems

Gamers who dropped $200 on this highly-anticipated product are having some problems with the packaged instruments. via washingtonpost.com

‘Boondock Saints 2′ Officially Begins Filming

After the long, long decade of rumors, combined with many refusals to believe it was true, as well as my consistent coverage of this project all year, the massively desired sequel Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day has officially begun filming in Toronto. via geeksofdoom.com

20 Reasons You're Not Rich

Here’s a list of 20 reasons you’re not rich from Yahoo:
1. You care what your neighbors think.
2. You are not patient.
3. You have bad habits.
4. You don’t have goals.
5. You aren’t prepared.
6. You’re trying to make a quick buck.
7. You rely on others to handle your money.
8. You invest in things you don’t understand.
9. You are financially afraid.
10. You ignore your finances.
11. You care what your car looks like.
12. You feel entitlement.
13. You lack diversification.
14. You started too late.
15. You don’t do what you enjoy.
16. You don’t like to learn.
17. You buy things you don’t use.
18. You don’t understand value.
19. Your house is too big.
20. You fail to take advantage of opportunities.

Windows 7 pre-beta build: What’s inside

* Action Center — a self-diagnosis feature to help users troubleshoot problems with their Windows 7 systems

* StreamOn — a way to control audio/video content on PCs and devices (Part of the next version of Windows Media Player? Or something to do with Live Mesh? I don’t have more info at this time.)

* A new animation framework for customizing animations (Is this akin to Apple’s Core Animation tool? I have no idea.)

* New task bar and shell integration (Hints of this emerged in the September M3 leak)

* Multi-touch and gesture recognition — something Microsoft showed off earlier this year in an early Windows 7 preview

* Improved Bluetooth support (Not clear if this goes beyond the new level of Bluetooth support Microsoft is adding via Vista Service Pack 2)

* Ribbons, ribbons everywhere. As was evident in the leaked September M3 build, Microsoft is adding its Ribbon UI to the applets that are part of Windows 7.

via ZDNet