Unmanned "snipers in the sky" could change the nature of warfare by giving the US government the capability to assassinate individual bad guys from a mile up in the air. (These would clearly fit on the high end of the "Top Murder Weapons by Income".)

"Spintronics": An excellent review article from Scientific American.

Top 10 Things we want to hear Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) say in the new Star Wars movie. (Via Fark.)

Napster is on the verge of death. The CEO has quit, and the "remaining employees were offered two unappealing options: Quit now and receive severance pay, or take one week of unpaid leave, hoping somebody will revive the once powerful file-trading company". Almost all of the employees are choosing the first option.

Spacewar, the first computer videogame turns 40. An online version is available here.

MSNBC has a very favorable review of Abiword, the free open-source cross-platform word processor.

Google AdWord Poetry.

The first starship powered by solar sails is scheduled to be launched in the autumn of 2002.

US space war capabilities are pretty damned impressive but we should watch out for these counterstrategies.

For the ultimate in pithiness it's hard to beat the Four Word Film Reviews. (Via GMSV.)

I always thought this was a myth, but apparently reading too much as a child can damage your eyes.

Identity thieves can get all sorts of juicy information from jail websites.

Smart cards are vulnerable to "an inexpensive attack that employs a $30 camera flashgun and a microscope."

Don't use any of these misleading emoticons!

Is the Earth being bombarded by strangelets? Some physicists believe that the Earth is being bombarded by "strangelets", which are "tiny cosmic missiles weighing tons and travelling at 900,000 mph. They are only the size of a pollen grain but so dense they can rip through the planet and exit on the other side in seconds." Two explosions in 1993 are felt to be caused by these strangelet impacts. (Via Slashdot.)

NASA needs to buy some of its spare computer parts from eBay because they are becoming increasingly scarce and obsolete.

Antigravitational "lifters" might actually work.

Can you handle the Tobasco Challenge? (Via GMSV.)

Today's game is a thinking game: Laser.

The Bowlingual will translate dog barks into human speech. (Via Techdirt.)