Wired Science visits the high-security National Ignition Facility, which Department of Energy scientists hope will help manage the American nuclear weapons stockpile and provide the key to harnessing fusion power.

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A top secret NSA wiretapping facility accused of wiretapping innocent Americans abroad was hastily staffed with inexperienced reservists in the months following September 11, where they worked under conflicting orders and with little supervision, according to three former workers at spy complex.

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As the U.S. government starts the process of closing a major net vulnerability, two longtime net infrastructure rivals -- the non-profit ICANN and for-profit VeriSign -- are battling over who will compile and verify the net's most important document. Internet experts give the nod to ICANN and bring up VeriSign's greedy past.

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Cascading Style Sheets are a key component to presenting content on web pages. But the standard, now more than ten years old, has its limits. If you had your say in the discussion to improve CSS, what would you ask for?

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An e-mail circulating online that looks like a revealing personal account of a vacation taken with John McCain could undermine his image of an upright character since a lot of people appear to believe unverified information forwarded to them by their friends.

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While earth scientists and investment bankers both employ data-heavy computer models, climate models are on much firmer ground than their shaky financial counterparts.

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With all the gear you pack up for your camping trip, sometimes you forget what camping is all about. These hardcore tips from Les Stroud of TV's Survivorman should strip us back down to just the essentials and get us back to nature.

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Every week on AMC TV's Mad Men, the men and women at Sterling Cooper create and design retro 1960s ad campaigns, all while obsessively chain-smoking, drinking and womanizing. Wired.com asks a real-world ad man about the show’s realism and relevance to the advertising industry today.

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Actress Elisabeth Sladen has played The Doctor's companion at various times since the '70s, becoming the lovable British equivalent of sci-fi legends like William Shatner or Leonard Nimoy. The star of hit Who spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures talks with Wired.com about developing the character over the years.

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Microsoft says it is scaling back the frequency of User Account Control, or UAC, prompts in the next version of Windows. The prompt system, which continually asks users to allow or deny certain actions, is widely seen as an annoyance and is regarded as one of Vista's worst features.

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After years of testing, the Active Denial System -- the pain ray which drives off rioters with a microwave-like beam -- could finally have its day. The Army is buying five of the truck-mounted systems for $25 million. But the energy weapon may face new hurdles, before it's shipped off to the battlefield; a new report details how the supposedly non-lethal blaster could be turned into a flesh-frying killer.

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The devastating selling continues on Wall Street, with investors again dumping stocks in early trading. The Dow Jones industrials, already down 2,271 points in seven sessions, are down more than 300 after dropping nearly 700.

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Scientists have confirmed the second case of a "virgin birth" in a shark. In a study reported Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center contained no genetic material from a male.

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Join Webmonkey as we offer a comprehensive introduction to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, the powerful photo editing application for professionals and serious amateurs. Lightroom helps you make the most of your DSLR camera, giving you a "digital darkroom" for organizing, tweaking and exporting your RAW image files, producing stunning results along the way.

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Click once in the wrong site and hackers will be able to both see and hear you through your own webcam and mic. The vulnerability is caused by clickjacking, a method of highjacking your mouse clicks. Creepy? We'll show you how to avoid it.

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The CG-animated flick doesn't bring anything special to the popular horror videogame franchise. If anything, the latest game trailer looks better than this boring puppet show.

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1861: Fridtjof Nansen is born. He will become a towering figure in Arctic exploration, the natural sciences and international diplomacy. Nansen, born outside of Oslo, Norway, grew up hard and fit … and intellectually curious. He developed an early interest in science and studied zoology at the university before shipping aboard the Norwegian sealer Viking in 1882. He made extensive observations of the Greenland fauna, especially bears and seals, and returned to serve for six years as zoological curator at the Bergen Museum — meanwhile earning his doctorate by defending the neuron theory as it pertains to the central nervous system. But Fridtjof Nansen also returned with a passion for the Far North and an unquenchable thirst for adventure. Nansen returned to Greenland in 1888, skiing from east to west across the interior's massive ice fields. The trek yielded new scientific information about the frozen island, but it also served as a dress rehearsal for Nansen's attempt, in 1893, to reach the North Pole. Sailing into the Arctic Ocean aboard his purpose-built ship, Fram, Nansen realized it would be impossible to reach the pole in any way but by foot. He left the Fram in the pack ice at 84 degrees 4 minutes north latitude and, accompanied by Hjalmar Johansen, struck out for the pole with skis, dogs, sledges and kayaks. On April 9, 1895, the two men reached 86 degrees 14 minutes north latitude before turning back. It was, at the time, the farthest north any explorer...

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: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com Cyclists are often overlooked in the gadget-lust category because their gear usually doesn't involve a screen, but no one craves the newest gizmo more than a biker with money to burn. The litany of bike models, the sophisticated engineering and the personal stat analysis also attract avid data addicts who appreciate product legacy and innovation. Here at Wired.com, we have more than a few resident pedal pundits who love to accessorize. Click through the gallery to see the latest bike gadgets and apparel that got even our empty wallets salivating. Left: Quarq Bicycle's new Power Meters allow you to measure pretty much any stat imaginable from your bike rides. The Quarq CinQo is compatible with your Garmin Edge 705, their own Quarq Qranium or the new iAreo, giving access to power, heart rate, speed, distance, torque and altitude. The Qranium computer runs on Linux and comes with 512 MB of memory. Quarq says they are lightweight, waterproof and come with a user-changeable battery. The system runs about $1,200, plus the price of your crank of choice. : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com The Pinhead prototype Bubble Lock is seen here with one wheel lock, a seat-post lock and a headset lock. Pinhead's disc-locking system allows you to carry around one key for all your bike parts and avoid elaborate lock jobs. Just turn the key on your wheels, seat and the bubble-shaped U-lock, and you're set. This convenience will set you back $75, with the...

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Say goodbye to the gore goodness of the good ol' days -- the upcoming iteration of the classic fighting game will be toned down considerably. Sure, the potential audience will be wider, but is nothing sacred?

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Got stacks of Stax soul? A trove of treasures from Treasure Isle? It's remarkably easy to convert those old vinyl sides to play on your iPod. All you need is a turntable, a good audio cable and some free software and you'll be reliving vinyl's glory days in crystal-clear (and wear-free) digital sound. Got extra tips? Log in and contribute.

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Watch the first-ever video of the first 24 hours of an embryo at the cellular level. A zebrafish embryo goes from a single cell to 20,000 cells that have begun to organize into specialized tissue.

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Scientists discovered the only known ecosystem that consists of just one organism. Found in a gold mine in South Africa, the ecosystem could be a model for early life on Earth or other planets.

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The Brit actor ditches the serious bad guys he's played in the past for an IQ-boosting role as a crime-busting scientist. He's hoping to get typecast as a brainiac.

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Apple sends out press invitations to a special event next week, where it is expected to launch sub-$1,000 Mac notebooks.

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After word dropped that Rickrolling phenomenon Rick Astley had been included in MTV Europe's laughable Best Act Ever category some resourceful individuals wasted little time in scripting stratagems designed to stuff the virtual ballot box. The most ambitious of these individuals goes by the handle Vote4Rick. The maneuver garnered a nod on the Los Angeles Times, and it wasn't long until Vote4Rick, requesting anonymity, reached out to Listening Post.

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Apparently Sarah Connor's devilish charm and ripped biceps aren't enough to prevent the Terminator show's own judgment day. They need ... some new things to blow things up real good -- yeah! We have some suggestions of decidedly non-analog weaponry we think the Connor clan should have, and we want to hear about (and see) some of yours.

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Video game rivals Sony and Microsoft are going head-to-head in virtual worlds for their home consoles later this year. Both companies announced their services, which use graphic images that represent players called "avatars" at the Tokyo Game Show.

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What's the "price of anarchy" on the road? Traffic jams and wasted time that result from giving drivers too many options.

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For the second time this year IBM offered an early peek at its quarterly results, showing in a surprise announcement that it was still plenty prosperous in the third quarter despite the worsening economic climate. The company's results, released more than a week ahead of schedule, will likely help stop a steep slide in IBM's stock price and could lift other big technology stocks in Thursday trading. IBM is a component of the Dow Jones industrial average.

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