On July 18th, 1997, Kevin Rubio brought a short film that he had shot earlier that year in El Mirage, California to San Diego Comic Con, before putting it onto the web. Since then, Troops has become one of the best-known Star Wars fan films, and has been recruiting for the Empire ever since.

This is not an April Fool's post. This is a serious post about DARPA, the military's experimental research arm, and how they want to explore human waste as a fuel source for portable nuclear reactors on overseas military bases. Seriously.

Troops whose GPS trackers fail could be in for a raft of trouble—which is why a British company has been inspired by the Wii and iPhone and is developing a location-tracker based on microchip motion sensor technology.

Yesterday the Department of Defense released a memo outlining the government's first official policy for social media access by military personnel. Somewhat surprisingly, it gives them unrestricted access to blog, Tweet, poke and ping just like everyone else.

In today's Remainders: possibilities. Bing hopes to expand its search empire by adding Yahoo's results; T-Mobile looks to add WebOS to its roster; the next iPhone might get a Super AMOLED screen (it won't); and porn possibilities abound for troops.

You're probably familiar with Blackwater Worldwide, the mercenary group that works in warzones and doesn't allow itself to be held back by silly things like ethics or respect for human life. Well, they're looking to hire some new mercenaries, and they know that they want people with wartime experience. That means…