An anonymous reader writes "The Pirate Bay, in response to Sweden's new wiretapping law, will start offering SSL encryption to its user base this week. Although copyright issues really have little to do with national security, The Pirate Bay knows its population is uneasy with the recent legal change. The encryption will mostly benefit Swedish users living under the current law. Since The Pirate Bay and its servers are not hosted in Sweden, the additional security offered to outside users could be comparatively minimal."

jasonmanley writes "I currently use DesktopBSD. The other day I gave some thought to donating money to the project, but then I got to thinking — to whom would I donate the money? DesktopBSD benefits from FreeBSD and KDE among other projects. What about software with a smaller focus, such as OpenSSH? In fact, there are heaps of other projects' software embedded in FOSS packages, and I would like to know who the community thinks should get the donations."

MojoKid writes "Though the Asus Eee PC Windows XP variant isn't due out until sometime in April, HotHardware was able to get their hands on a full retail bundle before they hit store shelves in the US. The standard assortment of accoutrements is included in the bundle, along with a couple of notable upgrades. Asus took the initiative to provide an additional 4GB SD card from Adata, a healthy storage expansion for the system. In addition, an Asus-branded optical mouse was thrown in for good measure. Microsoft's Windows Live messenger, photo gallery and email suite are pre-installed on the the machine for collaborative and social networking capability, in addition to Microsoft Works for word processing, spreadsheets, and calendar functionality."

Nerdposeur writes "After maneuvering the major carriers into agreeing to open access rules via the recent spectrum auction, Google appears to be looking into a new area of spectrum that could provide internet connectivity. 'In comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission, the Internet leader outlined plans for low-power devices that use local wireless airwaves to access the 'white space' between television channels. A Google executive called the plan 'Wi-Fi 2.0 or Wi-Fi on steroids.' Interestingly, Google has Microsoft, Intel, and others on their side in this one. Was this spectrum their target all along?"

arbitraryaardvark writes "The Seattle Times reports that spammer Robert Soloway has pled guilty to mail fraud and tax evasion, in exchange for the state dropping multiple counts of identify theft. 'The electronic-mail fraud charge is punishable by up to five years in prison. The tax charge is a misdemeanor and carries a maximum one-year sentence. The law also allows for fines against Soloway and his business of up to $625,000 on all charges. Both sides agreed to let U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman determine not just the amount of prison time Soloway, 28, might serve but also the number of his victims, the size of any fine and the amount of restitution he may be ordered to pay.' We've previously discussed his arrest and mention in the New Yorker. The wire fraud felony count is based on selling $500 packages to wannabe spammers."

holy_calamity writes "A US government program is in the works to design small nuclear reactors for use by developing countries. The work continues despite fears about security and nuclear proliferation. Plans include having reactors supplied with fuel by the US and other trusted nations, or to build reactors with their whole lifetime of fuel packaged securely inside — like a giant non-user replaceable radioactive battery.' '"

Vigile writes "As a matter of principle, when legendary game programmer John Carmack speaks, the entire industry listens. In a recent interview he comments on a multitude of topics starting with information about Intel, their ray tracing research and upcoming Larrabee GPU. Carmack seems to think that Intel's direction using traditional ray tracing methods is not going to work and instead theorizes that using ray casting to traverse a new data structure he is developing is the best course of action. The 'sparse voxel octree' that Carmack discusses would allow for 'unique geometry down to the equivalent of the texel across everything.' He goes on to discuss other topics like the hardware necessary to efficiently process his new data structure, translation to consoles, multi-GPU PC gaming and even the world of hardware physics."

jcatcw writes "By 2011, there will be 1.8 zettabytes of electronic data stored in 20 quadrillion files, packets or other containers because of, among other things, the massive growth rate of social networks, and digital equipment such as cameras, cell phones and televisions, according to a new study by IDC. Data is growing by a factor of 10 every five years. According to John Gantz, IDC's lead analyst, "at some point in the life of every file, or bit or packet, 85% of that information somewhere goes through a corporate computer, website, network or asset," meaning any given corporation becomes responsible for protecting large amounts of data that it and its customers may not have created. The study, which coincided with the launch of a " digital footprint" calculator, also found that as the world changes over to digital televisions, analog sets and obsolete set-top boxes and DVDs "will be heaped on the waste piles, which will double by 2011.""

Thwomp writes "It appears that a popular Gmail backup utility, G-Archiver, has been harvesting users' Gmail passwords. This was discovered when a developer named Dustin Brooks took a look at the code using a decompiler. He discovered a Gmail account name and password embedded in the source code. Brooks logged in and found over 1,700 emails all with user account information — with his own at the top. According to a story in Informationweek, he deleted the emails, changed the account password, and notified Google. The creator of G-Archiver has pulled the software, stating that it was debug code and was unintentionally left in the product."

tops writes "MadPenguin.org wonders why more Linux users aren't gamers and attempts to answer that question. The article suggests, 'As far as I'm concerned, it all comes down to a choice. Expect the gaming industry to follow the Linux doctrine or instead, build up a viable, cross platform gaming market that includes us, the Linux users.' The article urges publishers to consider Linux users as a viable market, and requests that game developers target Linux as a platform during the pre-production phase." What do you think are the most important obstacles barring the big game publishers from reaching out to the Linux market more than they already do?

Steven Noonan sends us to a page where he is collecting and updating results for various browsers on the newly released Acid 3 test. No browser yet scores 100 on this test. (We discussed Acid 3 when it came out.) He writes, "It's not surprising that Internet Explorer is losing to every other modern browser, but how did IE 5.5 beat IE 6.0 and 7.0?" All of the IE versions score below 20 on Acid 3.

PRB_Ohio takes us to Space.com for a story about NASA's plutonium shortage, and how it may affect future missions to the far reaches of the solar system. The U.S. hasn't produced plutonium since 1988, instead preferring to purchase it from Russia. We discussed the U.S. government's plans to resume production in 2005, but those plans ended up being shelved. If NASA is unable to find an additional source, it could limit missions that take spacecraft too far from the Sun. Quoting: "Alan Stern, NASA associate administrator for science, ... said he believed the United States had sufficient plutonium-238 on hand or on order to fuel next year's Mars Science Lab, an outer planets flagship mission targeted for 2017 and a Discovery-class mission slated to fly a couple years earlier to test a more efficient radioisotope power system NASA and the Energy Department have in development. To help ensure there is enough plutonium-238 for those missions, NASA notified scientists in January that its next New Frontiers solicitation, due out in June, will seek only missions that do not require a nuclear power source."

Urban Strata writes "Popular mobile phone community HowardForums.com is being hit with take-down notices from MobiTV. At issue is the fact that a HowardForums community member uncovered a publicly accessible URL for MobiTV's television stream. This URL is not encrypted or authenticated in any way, and yet MobiTV sent site owner Howard Chui a cease-and-desist letter for hosting a forum with the public URL, claiming that doing so is equivalent to hacking their service."

kwietman writes "The FBI admitted that in 2006, for the fourth straight year, they improperly accessed phone and internet records of U.S. citizens. Director Robert Mueller testified that the abuses occurred prior to sweeping reforms enacted in 2007, and actually blamed the breaches in part on the telecommunications companies, who submitted more information than was requested. In another unsurprising development, the FBI also underreported the number of security letters - used to authorize wiretaps and to subpoena internet and telecom records - by over 4,600. The use of these letters to identify potential terrorists has, according to the government audit, increased dramatically since the implementation of the Patriot Act. Over 1,000 of these security letters were found to be improper in 2005, and similar numbers were expected for 2006 and 2007."

Lev13than writes "Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs said the iPhone won't be using Adobe Systems' Inc.'s popular Flash media player any time soon, saying the technology doesn't meet his company's performance standards for video. Jobs said the version of Flash formatted to personal computers is too slow on the iPhone while the mobile version of the media player is "is not capable of being used with the web." The comments come a day before Apple is set to introduce the company's plan for iPhone SDK, the software developers kit which will allow third-party developers to create applications that can work in conjunction with the popular handheld device."