Intel's new Sandy Bridge processors have a new feature that the chip giant is calling Anti-Theft 3.0. The processor can be disabled even if the computer has no Internet connection or isn't even turned on, over a 3G network.

While a given stolen netbook, laptop, or desktop can no longer be turned on if Intel's new kill switch is flipped, there's nothing stopping the thief from taking out the HDD and putting it in another computer.

Ken Ford, the lawyer behind the Adult Copyright Company, has just had his business model chopped off at the knees; not only did Judge John Preston Bailey dismiss every defendant but one in Ford's mass lawsuits, he also demanded that each case be filed separately and that Ford only submit IP addresses likely to map to West Virginia Internet users.

In a series of orders today that cover all seven of Ford's initial September cases, the judge "severed" every defendant but one. If Ford wants to proceed against all these people, he can do so individually and pay the $350 per case filing fee. (For the cases severed yesterday, this would amount to $1.8 million in filing fees alone.)

This bit of data comes courtesy of a new report released by UK recording industry group BPI, which says that the music industry is growing slower than it should thanks to the lack of action against downloaders.

The group says that the industry's growth is being hurt because of the lack of consequences for those illegally downloading music files.

McDonald's servers were recently compromised and hackers were able to get access to customers' e-mail addresses, names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, genders, as well as certain information about their promotional preferences and Web information interests.

McDonald's did not disclose how many people were impacted by the hack.

Julian Assange came in third, behind the Tea Party, the chaotic but influential agglomeration of US right wingers.

Time said the Facebook founder deserved its award "for connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives".

A database leak in Mesa County, Colorado has left the personal information of 200,000 people in jeopardy. And not just any 200,000 people - these are suspects, victims, and informants working with the sheriff's department to out other criminals.

According to the Associated Press, the employee had copied over the database in the form of a giant text file with everyone's information available in plaintext, assuming that the target server was secure.

Police, along with the FBI and Google (apparently thanks to Google's Web crawler, which indexed the data), are now working to figure out who could be in jeopardy thanks to the leak.

So far, most of the reaction from various politicians and diplomats concerning the actual content of the documents was that some of it might be slightly embarrassing, but there's been nothing all that surprising.

We're still hearing claims that Julian Assange needs to be put on trial or (worse) executed, and other forms of "attacks" should be made on Wikileaks itself.

This will make it much, much harder any time the US tries to stop any form of censorship in other countries, as they'll immediately point back at how many of our politicians flipped out over Wikileaks.

In a reversal of course, PayPal has released funds remaining in an account associated with WikiLeaks according to a post on PayPal's blog.

Last week, a statement from PayPal indicated, the company had suspended the account following claims by the U.S. that the activities of WikiLeaks violated the law.

Now it appears attacks from the supporters of WikiLeaks have caused PayPal to re-think their position.

Protests have taken place across Spain calling for the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is facing extradition from the UK to Sweden for alleged sexual offences.

The demonstrators believe Mr Assange's detention is politically motivated.

Our correspondent says the issue of freedom of speech is sensitive for Spaniards, who only emerged from four decades of authoritarian rule in the 1970s.

"The WikiLeaks data dump has jeopardized U.S. national interests and the lives of intelligence sources around the world," Lieberman said, though there is no proof or even detailed allegations that the release has endangered any intelligence source.

Lieberman has also called for the Justice Department to look into whether the New York Times should be charged with a crime for its reporting and re-publishing of some of the cables.