Once again, the government is moving to peek into all aspects of your life, including shopping. Apparently, this new system is going to ignore the obvious solution to the "terrorist trap" of watching credit cards and monitoring grocery store purchases of just using cash. However, in so doing, it means …

You probably think that I'm joking, but there's a real film named Uncle Saddam. The film is a rather sarcastic set of footage about the dictator that focuses on the man as he is now (paranoid, egotistical), not on the plight of his people or his past. BBC News has …

As the US, the UK, and their "coalition of the willing" are embroiled in the war against the Iraqi regime, the politicians are starting to think about the post-war Iraq money rush. This week, Representative Issa (CA) started to propose that US rebuilding funds for Iraq should not be used …

According to an article1 on Deutsche Welle, Galileo, the EU version of the GPS system got the go-ahead on Friday with a 450M Euro investment. This fall, before the war with Iraq, there was some feeling that Europe may forgo the expensive and redundant system, but the increase in …

Representatives from the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the American Association of Research Libraries collaborated on a letter to legislators in Arkansas and Colorado to inform them of the organizations' opinion that pending legislation is "deeply flawed". According to an article1 on CNet, the letter …

Just when you thought it was safe to go out on the internet, it appears that a number of states, including TX, MA, SC, FL, GA, AK, and CO are enacting bills that will make it illegal to have devices or software that "obscure the origin or destination of data …

An article on MobileMag details some upcoming robots from Seiko-Epson that will use Bluetooth as a control mechanism. The robots aren't going to be available to the public (unless there is a large demand for it), but will be showed at ROBODEX next month. The robot's stats are impressive: it …

According to an article on Space Today, a Russian Soyuz rocket will take a crew of two (likely to be one American and one Russian) to act as caretakers for the International Space Station while we await the reinstatement of Shuttle flights.

I'm not a huge fan of Stephen King novels being made into movies. I don't read a lot of King, but he generally writes too much stuff to stick into a 2-3 hour movie, so they more often than not get panned and end up being very empty and hard …

This week's new Science Fiction release, The Core, is a fun ride, but you need to check your scientific knowledge and calculators at the door. The basic premise (you can see all of this in the trailer) is that the core of the Earth has stopped spinning and our intrepid …

If you are wondering if you should get an unlisted number, type your phone number into Google in the format xxx-yyy-zzzz. In return you'll get your name, address, any web sites with your phone number on it and TWO maps to your house.

The MMOG Subscription Info page has been updated with new information for March of 2003. According to most recently available information, EverQuest is the largest MMOG in the US (big shock... not), and the three-month-old "The Sims Online" is still limping along below 100,000 users.

According to an article on The Register, Fujitsu, the Japanese electronics and equipment manufacturer, is preparing a consumer robot with an Open Source API. The robot, called HOAP-2 for Humanoid Open Architecture Platform, has a standard USB 1.1 interface and an optional 802.11b interface for programming and control …

A new combo DVD and DivX player has been announced at CeBIT last week. According to this article on Design Technica, Kiss Technology announced the DP-450 and DP-500, which provide progressive scan DVD, DivX, MP-4, etc. playback. For those unfamiliar with DivX, it is a high-quality, very high compression (7-10x …

The DVD Revolution OS, which contains interviews with the likes of Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman, was released earlier this week without any of the usual copy protection. In keeping with the Open Source theme of the work, this DVD contains no CSS encryption, but the author still hopes that …

According to an article on Space Today, and many other media outlets, Japan has launched two spy satellites (their first) to keep an eye on North Korea.

People are always coming up with interesting ways around seeming problems. According to an article on Yahoo! news, a small company called The Bioteam that does work with Biosciences companies. The company has been configuring clusters of Xserve computers to do Informatics Research. In order to get the machines bootstrapped …

According to a release on the MySQL web site, version 4.0 is now deemed production quality. This version has been in test for a long time, but there are still many who will wait for the .1.

The venerable PayPal, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ebay, has decided to start enforcing their own values on what can be bought with PayPal's virtual cash. According to an article in Wired magazine, a variety of items will no longer valid for purchase by PayPal. The list of things that …

OK, this was neat. I was sitting in a room with a television on mute and all of a sudden, the mute came off and an EAS (Emergency Alert System) message was displayed. Very cool.