A Christmas tree tax on fresh cut trees... Read more here:

According to Steve Anderson, a retired brigadier general who served as Gen. Petraeus' chief logistician in Iraq, the Department of Defense spends $20 billion air conditioning tents and temporary structures for the military. That's more than NASA's entire $19 billion annual budget.

State lawmakers in country music's capital have passed a groundbreaking measure that would make it a crime to use a friend's login - even with permission - to listen to songs or watch movies from services such as Netflix or Rhapsody. The bill, now awaiting the governor's signature, was pushed by recording industry officials to try to stop the loss of billions of dollars to illegal music sharing. They hope other states will follow.

On Tuesday, police said under a new city policy, the unclaimed money will go into Dallas' general fund — not back to the person who found it, as in years past.

A Google engineer has released an open source Java client for the Bitcoin peer-to-peer currency system, simply called BitcoinJ.

Bitcoin community member with the avatar “mike” made the announcement earlier this month, stating BitcoinJ is not an “official” Google project, but something developed in the 20 per cent of time Google allows its staff to spend on personal projects.