Find out the reaction online to Obama's speech.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

BLACK ROCK CITY, Nevada -- Wild rides, fireworks and letting it all hang out. That's the updated American dream at Burning Man 2008.

The annual desert gathering always celebrates that most-American ideal: freedom. Freedom to ride a giant red, white and blue tricycle across the playa; freedom to blow your mind however you want; freedom to traipse around wearing nothing but body paint.

That kind of ingrained whimsy, rather than politics, seems to be the point of this year's American Dream art theme at Burning Man. "What has America achieved that you admire?" is the event's official statement. "What has it done or failed to do that fills you with dismay? What is laudable? What is ludicrous?"

Groovy, man. Let's get it on.

Left: Red, white and blue abounds at the festival this year.

Red, white and blue abounds at the festival this year.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

A stagecoach rolls up the esplanade on Tuesday evening.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Duane Flatmo from Eureka, California, steers his fire-breathing dragon around the esplanade Tuesday.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

After hunkering down during Monday's sandstorm, burners break out their colorful costumes Tuesday -- including some that are just painted on. Robin Bowles, right, and her friend Cowboy Curtis chill on the playa on a "fuzzy bunny." The Man can be seen far off in the distance on the left.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

A group of burners break out a desert "boat" to parade across the playa.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Black Rock City is humming Thursday.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Lamp Lighters walk down the esplanade Tuesday.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com>

A panel van decked out with a lit-up Golden Gate Bridge makes its way across the sand Tuesday.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Tutu-wearing burner Diana Zanelli of Texas delights in the swirl of lights from inside artist Crispell Wagner's "modern version of the dream machine," an interactive piece of light art.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Home is where the art is at Burning Man.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

The Man glows with neon as Helen Corley from San Ramon, California, twirls her flow lights below the festival's namesake icon in Black Rock City.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

A giant duck lights up the night Tuesday as it rolls across the dusty desert floor.

Your favorite music sites let you listen to songs all day for free, but only as a stream -- if you want to load one of those songs onto your iPod and take it with you, you'll have to go buy it. But your browser stores streamed MP3s temporarily on your hard drive. Learn where to look and save them for later with our guide.

Posting videos on your website? Go beyond the basic embed code with the first installment of Webmonkey's YouTube tutorial. We'll show you the ins and outs of YouTube's Player API, including how to embed and resize the player, skin it to your liking, and control the video playback with your own code.

Suddenly, General Motors has a competitor in its race to wrest the green mantle from Toyota.

A Los Angeles-area man arrested Wednesday on charges he uploaded nine pre-released recordings of Gun N' Roses tunes has allegedly confessed to the crime, which carries up to three years in prison. Kevin Cogill, aka Skwerl, released the songs to his music-review blog, antiquiet.com, according to court records, the FBI said in court records.

Arty indie directors and Hollywood execs sometimes don't mix so well. These big-budget clunkers didn't pan out, onscreen or in the studio boardroom.

A five-story art piece will give a single lucky burner a commanding view of the playa.

Gay porn producer Titan Media's copyright infringement lawsuit against Veoh illustrates old-media's constant urge to fight the web. Our advice? Take what you can and get over it.

: Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger

Bell Labs' decision to abandon basic physics research marks the end of a brilliant chapter for the iconic institution. Many of the Labs' most famous discoveries, such as the transistor and the laser, originated in fundamental physics and have gone on to transform computing and technology.

They also brought Bell Labs international glory, including six Nobel Prizes in Physics, starting in 1937 when researcher Clinton Davisson shared the Nobel for demonstrating the wave nature of matter.

The lab will now focus on areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software -- fields that are likely to offer a more immediate payback for parent company Alcatel-Lucent.

As we say goodbye to one of the last bastions of basic research within the corporate world, we celebrate Bell Labs' greatest achievements in physics.

Left: Bell Labs' Holmdel, New Jersey-based facility was home to basic physics research. Designed by architect Eero Saarinen and built in 1962, the landmark building once housed 6,000 employees. It now stands empty and neglected. Alcatel-Lucent has sold the building to a developer who plans to transform the complex into a mixed-use residential, office and retail space.

: Photo: Bell Labs/Alcatel-Lucent

Bell Labs' U.S. headquarters in Murray Hill, New Jersey, has been the site of many innovations and scientific breakthroughs, and that location continues to remain strong, says Alcatel-Lucent. But the company's Holmdel, New Jersey, campus, the site of basic physics research, has been sold. Holmdel's technological contributions include pioneering work on Telstar, the first communications satellite, and Steven Chu's Nobel Prize-winning research into methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

: Photo: Bettmann/Corbis

In 1927 Clinton Davisson (shown) and Lester Germer, two researchers at Bell Labs, demonstrated the wave nature of matter by firing slow-moving electrons at a crystalline nickel target. The experiment completed the proof of the hypothesis that all matter and energy has both wave-like and particle-like properties. The findings from Davisson's experiment became part of the foundation for much of solid-state electronics. Ten years later, Davisson shared the Nobel Prize for his research in electronic interference.

: Photo: Bell Labs

The transistor was developed in 1947 as a replacement for bulky vacuum tubes and mechanical relays. The invention revolutionized the world of electronics and became the basic building block upon which all modern computer technology rests. In 1956, Bell Labs scientists William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for the transistor.

Shockley also founded Shockley Semiconductor in Mountain View, California -- one of the first high-tech companies in what would later become known as Silicon Valley.

: Photo: Bettmann/Corbis

Bell Labs scientist Philip Anderson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977 for developing an improved understanding of the electronic structure of glass and magnetic materials. His work opened the doors for the development of electronic switching and memory devices in computers. In 2006, based on a study carried out by José Soler, a statistical physicist at the University of Madrid, Anderson was called the most creative physicist in the world. Anderson retired from Bell Labs in 1984 is now a professor at Princeton University.

: Photo: NASA

According to the Big Bang theory, the early universe was very hot; as it expanded, the gas within it cooled. The theory predicts that the universe should be filled with radiation -- the remnants of that primordial heat. But it took Bell Labs researchers to prove it. In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, working at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, discovered this "cosmic microwave background radiation." The radiation was acting as a source of excess noise in a radio receiver they were building. Penzias and Wilson shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery.

This photo shows the Horn antenna on which Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation.

: Photo: H. M. Helfer/National Institute of Standards and Technology

The idea of using lasers to trap and cool molecules began as a lunch conversation at the Holmdel, New Jersey, campus of Bell Labs. Steven Chu, one of the researchers who later won the Nobel in Physics, had joined Bell Labs in 1978. "I was one of roughly two dozen brash, young scientists that were hired within a two-year period. We felt like the 'Chosen Ones,' with no obligation to do anything except the research we loved best. The joy and excitement of doing science permeated the halls," Chu says in his biography on the Nobel Prize site. Chu is now the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at University of California in Berkeley.

Left: A sample of cooled trapped sodium atoms.

: Image: Marcel Franz

In 1998, Bell Labs researchers Horst Stormer, Robert Laughlin (now at Stanford University) and Daniel Tsui (now at Princeton University) bagged the Nobel in Physics for their discovery and explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect. The trio found that electrons acting together in strong magnetic fields can form new types of particles, called quasiparticles, that have charges that are mere fractions of the charge carried by a single electron.

This image shows electrons that have been scattered and scanned, showing interference patterns created by quasiparticles.

Linux guru Hans Reiser is expected to be sentenced Friday for killing his wife, Nina Reiser, two years ago. The developer of the ReiserFS file system claimed his wife abandoned the divorcing couple's two young children after he accused her of bilking his Oakland, California, software company. But months after his conviction, he led authorities to her unmarked grave site in the Oakland hills in exchange for a 15-to-life term instead of a 25-to-life term.

Neither candidate considers transportation a big issue, which is a mistake because it effects so many issues at the top of their agendas.

Long at the forefront of cutting-edge user interfaces, Yahoo has offered a peek at the next version of its popular YUI JavaScript library for building interactive webpages. One big drawback: Many web apps will need to be rewritten to take advantage of Yahoo's changes.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Google are happy about a federal judge's decision to dismiss a lawsuit accusing upstart video-sharing site Veoh of copyright infringement. The court, in tossing the lawsuit, says Veoh complied with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and promptly removed infringing material upon request.

The hacker who vowed to "disrupt" the U.S. military loses his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, and is expected to be extradited to the United States for trial. But his lawyer's hope his recent diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome will keep in him London.

The race-ready Dodge Viper ACR sinks its fangs into the Nurburgring and laps the track in 7:22.1, leaving the Corvette ZR1 and Nissan GT-R in its dust.

Desktop speakers are not usually known for being particularly high quality. That's because you're not powering them properly. NuForce's Icon Desktop Amp will juice up your desktop audio, be it a 2.1 sound system or a set of high-end headphones.

The feds may have their hooks into him, but Guns 'N Roses leaker Kevin Cogill's real headache is still the band. Chances of him getting any jail time are slim, but Guns 'N Roses could bankrupt him -- if they want to.

Amazon is widely rumored to be updating its popular but flawed e-book reader, the Kindle. Here's a list of ways the company can make the Kindle 2.0 suck less.

We're not in the habit of piling on the gaffes of other media, but we feel duty bound to share this gawker story about Bloomberg somehow publishing its work-in-progress obituary of the Apple CEO -- who, by the way, is very much alive.