An anonymous reader writes "The associated press reports that Google is slated to provide online storage at a price. From the article: 'Web search and Internet services company Google Inc. on Friday began selling expanded online storage, targeted for users with large picture, music or video file collections. The prices range from $20 per year for 6 gigabytes of online storage; $75 per year for 25 gigabytes of storage; $250 per year for 100 gigabytes of storage; and $500 per year for 250 gigabytes of storage.' Is this too expensive for what there offering, or are you going to make use of it?"

The week after next, the annual Game Developer's Conference is happening in San Francisco. I'll be there providing coverage on the keynotes, and some of the talks that I think will appeal to the Slashdot sensibility. I've also been digging to see if there's any folks willing to speak with the Slashdot community 'in person'. The fine folks at CCP, makers of the Massively Multiplayer game EVE Online, have kindly agreed to take some time out of their busy conference schedule to answer your questions. So, what do you want to know about the present and future of this fascinating MMOG? One question per comment, please. I'll present your questions to CCP, and pass their answer back once I'm home from the event. Update: 02/22 19:51 GMT by Z : I asked Sharon Howell, the PR rep for CCP, who I might be speaking with at GDC. Unfortunately, they're still nailing down schedules. We'll be talking with one of the following: Hilmar Veigar Petursson, Chief Executive Officer, Magnus Bergsson, Chief Marketing Officer, Nathan Richardsson, Senior Producer, Halldór Fannar Guðjónsson, Chief Technology Officer. One of these members of the top brass will be available to answer your questions.

An anonymous reader writes "In recent times, a lot of discussion has been generated about the state of KDE version 4.0 and as Linux users we are ever inquisitive about what the final user experience is going to be. This article throws light on some of the features that we can look forward to when KDE 4.0 is finally released some time this year. The article indicates that the most exciting fact about KDE 4.0 is going to be that it is developed using the Qt 4.0 library. This is significant because Qt 4.0 is released under a GPL license even for non-Unix platforms. So this clears the ideological path for KDE 4.0 to be ported to Windows and other non-Unix/X11 platforms."

gregleimbeck writes "Spam volume soared another 35% in November, an e-mail security vendor said Thursday, and the month saw spam tactics that reduced the efficiency of traditional anti-spam filters. 'There's been a huge increase in spam volume,' says David Mayer, a product manager at IronPort Systems, 'from 31 billion spams a day on average in October 2005 to 63 billion in October 2006. But in November, we saw two surges that averaged 85 billion messages a day, one from Nov. 13 to 22, the other from Nov. 26 to 28.'"

prawnonthebarbie writes "Microsoft is battling the trend for frazzled office workers to give up on Outlook and auto-forward all their mail to Gmail: the company is promising 2-GB mailboxes in Exchange 2007 rather than the piffling 50-MB mailboxes most workplaces have now. Speaking at the launch of Vista, Office, and Exchange in Singapore, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Martha DeAmicis said Microsoft had built clustered replication into Exchange so corporate IT admins wouldn't be worrying about backing up big mailboxes to tape. However, its killer feature appears to be its plans to make those gigs of email available on Joe Officeworker's mobile phone."

munchola wrote in with news that Palm has just announced a one-time payment for perpetual, royalty-free use of Palm OS. In 2005 Palm spun off PalmSource to an outside company, Access Systems Americas, and since that time has been paying out royalties for its use. At the same time Palm announced products based on Windows Mobile. Palm's latest announcement reduces the uncertainty among Palm OS developers. From the article: "In an unsurprising but symbolically important move, handheld and smartphone maker Palm this month signed a perpetual license with Access Systems Americas, which gives Palm the right to use Access' Palm OS operating system in whole or in part in any Palm device forever more. It sounds like a no-brainer, but the context is interesting, in particular what it means for the army of Palm OS developers out there. Believe it or not there are at least 160,000 Palm OS developers — and they're just the ones that Palm knows about."

avocade writes "Here is a nice history lesson by (the unfortunately infamous) Daniel Eran, arguing why the Longhorn/Vista road is very similar to the NT/Cairo road that Microsoft took in the 90's, effectively trying their best to discourage competition in the marketplace."

theodp writes "Just because Richard Stallman is paranoid doesn't mean Microsoft's not out to get you. For a hint about the possible end-game of Microsoft's Trusted Computing Initiative, check out the patent application published Thanksgiving Day for Trusted License Removal, in which Microsoft describes how to revoke rights to render based on 'who the user is, where the user is located, what type of computing device or other playback device the user is using, what rendering application is calling the copy protection system, the date, the time, etc.' So much for Microsoft's you-should-have-control assurances."

Dystopian Rebel writes "A New Jersey public-school history teacher was recorded telling his students that they 'belong in Hell' if they do not accept Jesus. The teacher, who is also a Baptist Pastor, lied later when he was asked by the school principle what he said to the students. Unfortunately for this dodge, a student recorded the teacher's 'lesson'." From the article: "The student and his parents have requested that the teacher's anti-scientific remarks be corrected in open class, and that the school develop quality control procedures to ensure that future classes are not proselytized and misinformed. They have also referred the matter for disciplinary action. No apology has been forthcoming from the teacher or from the school."

Warren Ellis is reporting that many Second Life vendors are closing up shop due to the recent explosion of a program called "Copybot," designed to clone other people's possessions. From the article: "The night before last, I was looking around a no-fire combat sandbox, where people design and test weapons and vehicles, when an argument broke out; a thing going by the name Nimrod Yaffle was cloning things out of other people's inventories, and claiming he could freely do it because he'd been playing with Copybot with employees of SL creator/operators Linden Lab. All hell broke loose, in the sort of drama you can only find on the internet. Linden Lab's first official response? If you feel your IP has been compromised by Copybot, we'll sort of help you lodge a DCMA complaint in the US. Businesses started shutting down moments later." Update 20:43 GMT by SM Several users have mentioned that the Second Life blog has a few thoughts on this issue and quite a few comments from users already.

BobB writes to tell us that Google is promising to make the data they store for end users more portable and is urging other companies to do the same. From the article: "Making it simple for users to walk away from a Google service with which they are unhappy keeps the company honest and on its toes, and Google competitors should embrace this data portability principle, Eric Schmidt said at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco."