According to an article from Wired, the list of people complaining about the State Department's plans to embed RFID tags into US Passports is on the rise. Most recently, the Business Travel Coalition and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives have announced their opposition to the plan. At issue is …

The Christian Science Monitor has an article detailing research being done in Australia on using discarded plastics as the source of carbon to refine steel. Although it is a ways off, it's another interesting idea coming out of the green movement. Kudos to the CSM for pointing out that electrolysis …

For those unfamiliar with Wikis, they are a tool for creating collaborative web-based documents that are constantly changing through contributions from a wide group of users. The most famous Wiki is the wikipedia, the online contributory encyclopedia, but they are used internally at organizations to exchange ideas, document changes, and …

Sony released the PSP in the US just short while ago and now the folks at PocketMac (who make third-party synchronization software for hardware that Apple doesn't directly support in iSync) has released PMPSP, a product with great function and a horrible name. However, despite the bad name, it'll sync …

Karl has another well thought piece on cavebear about copyright.This time he advocates skipping 3 bad movies that you would otherwise go see and instead going to live shows. A fine idea, I think!

For those hard-core gamers in our midst, here's an article from ExtremeTech which takes a slightly different view of graphics cards, going after not only performance but price at the same time.

The Scotsman has an article about an interview with Peter O'Toole about the movie Troy (in which he starred with Brad Pitt) where he tells it like it is about the film.

Blockbuster, attempting to get themselves in a better position in the video rental market against strong players like NetFlix, announced earlier this year that they would be charging "No late fees." I rushed right out to their site to figure out what they were doing instead and determined that it …

Here's an entry from the blog of Paul Graham (author, language designer, and self- described hacker) about the move to Macs by hackers. And in this case, we're talking the old-school hackers, those of us who like to get inside, figure out how things work, and make something new out …

Saying that the focusing problem wouldn't adversely affect the mission to visit comet Tempel 1 in July, NASA announced that Deep Impact (launched in January) has a focusing problem. This according to an article from SpaceToday.Net

Now, I'd be just about the first person in line to claim that people don't take security seriously enough on computers. However, Symantec may well have reached new heights in the use of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) to promote the sale of product. A number of articles, such as …

Well, it appears that the over-zealous FCC is once again on the verge of diminishing choice and competition in an area that has been dominated by monopolies for years. An article from CNet this morning discusses the likely overriding of state laws that currently require (in some jurisdictions) the incumbent …

Of course it will... silly question. However, this article from On HD purports to provide a list of who looks better and who looks worse on HDTV. I'm sure it'll raise some controversy (although it appears they were careful to make sure the "bad" women are outnumbered by the "good …

Looking for something nice in the morning? Here's a site that has a cool sequence of pictures of a hummingbird from the time the egg is laid until it takes flight.

There's a cool article in New Scientist about 13 observed phenomena that do not currently jive with their believed explanations. It's a good read and touches on things as varied as the placebo effect to dark matter to the conflicting results of tests for life on Mars. It offers no …

An article from the International Herald Tribune advocates using those frequent flier miles before they become even more difficult to use. Although I don't entirely agree, I will concur with his assessment that the best way to spend them is on premium-class international flights. They're where you'll get your best …

While Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has been busy selling 25 million copies in 44 countries, the Vatican has been pretty quiet about it... until now. According to an article from the International Herald Tribune, officials at the Vatican, including one possible successor to the Pope, are now speaking …

According to an article from ExtremeTech, SATA-IO, the organization that runs the Serial ATA specification, has announced extensions to allow for 2m and 8m cable lengths as well as locking connectors for use on external devices.

AOL, the world's largest ISP and foremost purveyor of instant messaging, has made a change to their Terms of Service to "clarify certain things and explain it a little better to our users" about their privacy rules for AOL, according to a report from eWeek. The whole issue comes about …

Well, somebody at Google like Apple's OS X. Check out Google X, a google home page with icons that magnify.