Must Pop Words is a boggling word game that boggles the mind; it reminds me of a trademarked game who's name I can't quite put my finger on. The idea is that letter balls fall from the top of the screen, and you have to quickly type words to make them pop and disappear. The letters fall with alarming regularity, so if you're not on the ball, so to speak, your screen can quickly fill up your game is over.

As the game progresses, a penguin pops up offering you bonus points if you can complete certain tasks before he disappears. The tasks include things like creating words of specific lengths, and words that end with a specific letter.

The game quickly takes on a frantic feel as your window fills up with unused balls. Interestingly, there is no penalty for using the same word over and over again, so if you're in trouble and have lots of z's and o's on the screen, there's nothing stopping you from typing the word 'zoo' three or four times.

If you have a friend that is a word game fan, don't let them see this game unless you want to lose them for a few hours.

There's a certain style of time waster that I find incredibly addicting - those in the "see how far it can fly" genre. Two previous favorites include Shopping Cart Hero, and Air Voltare. If you like those games, you're going to love today's Time Waster, Learn to Fly.

In Learn to Fly, you play the part of a penguin who is not happy to be a flightless bird. Your job is to research the best way to achieve flight, which in this case involves sliding down a ramp and flying through the air with a glider strapped to your back and rockets strapped to your sides.

There are 4 increasingly harder levels to master in Learn to Fly, but as you go you can purchase power-ups for your equipment and your abilities. To beat each level, you must exceed set goals for height, distance traveled, length of flight, and top speed. To win the game you must travel at least 6000 feet, and you then receive a rating based on how many "days" (test flights) it takes you to get there. It took me 25 days to achieve flight.

I have to say, this sort of time waster often does not have an end goal, but rather continues on ad infinitum. It's nice to know that once you hit the 6000 foot mark, you've won the game. How many days will it take you to achieve flight?

If you're not familiar with it, the HeliOS project is an effort to get computers into the hands of kids who might not otherwise be able to afford them. To date this year, they've distributed over 300 machines. Apparently that's not enough to keep them from making an enemy.

A middle school teacher named Karen observed one of her students demonstrating the abilities of his Linux-powered laptop to his classmates. What a great thing, a student exposing his peers to technology they probably weren't familiar with before....Right?

Wrong. Karen sprang into action, confiscated the CDs the student had brought to share, and unleashed the Spanish Inquisition.

Who is the charlatan who convinced this poor, misguided student that "free software" is something that actually exists?

Who could be so evil as to distribute non-Microsoft software to children? How can that person expect our children to survive in an MS-powered world? Once she had her answer, she sent Ken an email.

In her own words:

At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline.

For Linux users, you have a leg up on your Windows and Mac counterparts - version 2.0 features multiplayer LAN/Internet matches. But until v2.0 has been ported, v1.0 is available for Mac OS X, Windows, Series 60 and there's even Java applet and Flash versions available.