When enemies consider your firepower, you want them to know that your warship is the latest and greatest design in warfare, something that cannot be bested by anything else currently on earth. According to The Times online:

With a price tag of £605 million, the 150-metre long vessels will be the most powerful, advanced and deadly warships in the world when they come into service in 2009.

You want them to know how your ship can track a cricket-sized ball traveling three times the speed of sound and destroy it, and how it was custom-built to war specs. What your enemies also need to know is that your men on that beautiful ship never have to worry about not finishing "My Girl" because the juice in their iPod ran out.

Yes, that's true, when creating its warship, you can't forget to include specs that accommodate an iPod.

[Via, The Times Online]

Ace Burpee, a writer for the Winnipeg Sun, says he bought a Video iPod to keep up with the times, but he now refuses to use it. Rather than just opening the thing and getting to familiarize himself with it, he instead jots down a list of negatives he sees associated with the iPod.

There are some real doozies in there, to be sure. Among other things, he harps on the screen being too small to view anything comfortably on it -- though I can't remember the last time I was able to fit in my LCD television in my pocket and pull it out at the DMV to watch a quick show while waiting.

He asks whether the iPod can get wet. Wet? That's the biggest concern bugging him? In the article, he wants to know if he can watch Desperate Housewives underwater yet he just got finished saying he wouldn't like to use the tiny screen to watch television at all. Anyway, I'll let him do the talking.

Basically, I'm 32 and fighting it. The box is staring at me as I type this. I think I may go leave it unguarded in the back seat of my truck and wait for someone to steal it. Then I can say I used to have an iPod, making it seem as if I'm already beyond that.

I suppose it would be better for him not to open it. Could go back to that old Walkman Cassette Player he said he still has.

[Via, Winnipeg Sun]

Recently a senior manager in the UK Department of Trade and Industry came up with a unique idea of solving the country's problematic ID scheme: give everyone iPods with digital certificates built in to identify every person.

Hell, yeah! For all of our UK readers out there, though, the idea might not have been proposed completely in earnest, but the manager did go in detail as to how the proposal might be the cheaper alternative for the country.

Cooper said that two of the main issues facing the IT industry are network authentication and security - particularly when using government services online. He claimed the ubiquity of ADSL networks has come at a price - and that price is security. ISDN was an inherently more secure medium than ADSL but was too expensive to meet the needs of most consumers or small businesses. But a mobile phone or an iPod equipped with a digital signature or digital certificate which consumers or business users plugged into their home machines would be an efficient way to solve online authentication and identity management problems, Cooper argued.

He said: "If you had a mobile phone with a digital certificate you could dock it into your PC - an iPod with a digital certificate would also work. My boss would give everyone in the UK an iPod - that would also mean there would be no reason for anyone to steal one because everyone would have one."

We'll continue to report new advances in the news. Who knows? Maybe it will happen.

[Via, Silicon]

At Macworld this week in San Francisco, a company offered showgoers the opportunity to compete against some of the most ravaged iPods in existence -- and win a prize for it.

If an attendeeâ??s iPod has more scratches and damage than the ones on display at the Applesauce Polish booth, the company will award him or her a free Applesauce Scratch Removal Kit. Anyone who stops by is eligible for the grand prize drawing for the 4GB iPod nano to be held Friday, Jan. 13.

Sounds like fightin' words to me. I'll should have brought that one iPod Mini that I gave to my nephew last year to see if we've got a chance. No, to see if anyone else has a chance against it. The contest is run by Applesauce Polish, a company whose product promises to remove blemishes from most iPods, including the newer, scratch-prone black Video and Nano iPods.

[Via, Macworld]

The Joy of Tech has created the below comic for alternative uses for the iPod Nano.  Check it out:

Ok..So this doesnâ??t play music, has no input/output, and in fact does nothing userfull at all. However, Locomoceanâ??s i-Duck does have a water-activated LED that makes it glow when bobbing in your bathtub. Still not satisfied? It comes in a mock iPod package with colors to match and will sure to be a collectible in the future.

Derwin has integrated his iPod with an old walkman. Why you ask? Because it can be done!