In the prescient 1984 film The Last Starfighter, a teenage boy masters a video game and is immediately conscripted as a spaceship pilot—because the video game was actually an alien recruiting device. Darn those sneaky aliens! But it was just a movie. No one would ever use a video game to recruit soldiers, right? Well, besides the U.S. Army, which has been doing it for more than six years. Not to worry, Houstonians: a completely......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Dwight Watch Dwight Silverman, local tech guru, tackles installing the first service pack for Microsoft Vista. Dwight installs it on various platforms with various results. Dwight's also has been blogging about a workaround for Comcast's unethical treatment of bandwidth, he also unboxes the MacBook Air and touches on what could be the nail in the coffin of the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray saga. Local Calendar Feb 19:......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. StartUp Weekend Houston "Startup Weekend is an idea, an experiment, a chance to gather the tech community and create a company over one jam packed weekend." If that interests you, head over to houston.startupweekend.com and get your reservation. StartupWeekend Houston is limited to the first 100 participants and space is limited. Andrew Hyde, Startup Weekend founder will be on hand along with Gwen Bell of Blogger,......

On Sundays, Houstonist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in Houston. The opinions expressed below are entirely those of the author. Need to know just a little bit about something? Ask a dilettante. A lot of people have announced that they’re running for President. Do you have a favorite yet? I'm voting for Zappa. Again. I do have a favorite. After much deliberation, prayer and consultation with an assortment of lawyers, dog walkers and former......

Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Londonist wants you to know where to......

The U.S. Supreme Court said it won't intervene in the attempt to replace Tom DeLay with another candidate on the November ballot Leon Andrade, a 36-year-old migrant worker, was arrested today for the March 12 machete murder of William Huang, a Houston minister and seafood market owner An 8-year-old Liberty County boy is in critical condition after being shot in the head while playing video games at a friend's house; the shooting seems to have......

These days, we hear a lot of warnings about how we should be careful about what we put on our personals blogs and MySpace pages, because one day it might come back to haunt us when we're looking for a job or running for office or whatever it is that grown-ups do. But until today, we hadn't thought about the impression our online trail might give if we're ever accused of murder. We imagine Sean......