The EU passed the Data Retention Directive years ago, a law that demands ISPs and search engines hold onto data long enough to help the cops (but not long enough to cause privacy problems). But Sweden never passed it into national law, and the European Commission has now sued the country to make sure a bill appears.

ISPs like Sweden's Bahnhof responded to IPRED by simply deleting all their data on a regular basis-a perfectly legal move. But when the Data Retention Directive goes into effect, that option will be taken off the table.

This year, scientists found caffeine-less coffee plants, tiny seahorses and a 23-inch long bug that looks like a branch, not to mention a strange white slug no one had ever described that was found in a Welsh garden.

Bacteria really can live just about anywhere on else from hot volcanic vents to Antarctic ice. But they are also adapting to the new environments that humans create. Case in point, Japanese scientists found that this bacterial species lives inside hairspray.

In a controversial achievement, Japanese scientists announced on Wednesday they had created the world's first transgenic primates, breeding monkeys with a gene that made the animals' skin glow a fluorescent green.

The gene codes for green fluorescent protein (GFP), a substance that was originally isolated from a jellyfish and is now commonly used as a biotech marker.

"There's also a very important ethical debate, firstly about the animals themselves and secondly about what this might lead to in the future, whether it might be ethically justified to genetically engineer humans."

Sparked anew by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's call for the state to study the legalization of marijuana, both sides in the smoldering pot debate point to research to bolster their positions.

Yet when the arguments for legalization of marijuana, both for medicinal and recreational use, are put forth, solid medical science often gets clouded in an ideological haze.

Far too many people who use computers every day, and have them in their homes, aren't even capable of applying the system updates that Microsoft and Apple automatically send out, leaving them with buggy and insecure systems vulnerable to all sorts of attack.

Those whose understanding of IT stopped at learning how to use bold font in a word processor will be at a significant disadvantage, one that we should work hard to overcome before it is too late.

After discovering attack code on a brand new Windows XP netbook, antivirus vendor Kaspersky Labs warned users yesterday that they should scan virgin systems for malware before connecting them to the Internet.

"This was done at the factory," said Schouwenberg. "It was completely brand new, still in its packaging."

Among the three pieces of malware was a variant of the AutoRun worm, which spreads via infected USB flash drives.

The convoluted web of potential scandal further complicates the April 17 copyright infrigment convictions of the four founders of The Pirate Bay, the world’s most notorious BitTorrent tracker.

The defendants claim Norstrom was hostile to the defense because of his affiliations with the Swedish Copyright Association and the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.

Attorneys for the Motion Picture Association of America attacked fair use during a hearing in the RealDVD case here on Thursday, claiming it is not a defense for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Patel raised a crucial question during the MPAA's closing arguments regarding a consumer's right to copy a DVD he or she purchased for personal use.

"Not for the purposes under the DMCA," said Bart Williams, arguing for the MPAA. "One copy is a violation of the DMCA."

A new optical recording method could pave the way for data discs with 300 times the storage capacity of standard DVDs, Nature journal reports.

The scientists used the nanoparticles to record information in a range of different colour wavelengths on the same physical disc location. This is a major improvement over traditional DVDs, which are recorded in a single colour wavelength with a laser.

Their approach used 10-layer stacks composed of thin glass plates as the recording medium.

Wolfram|Alpha's terms of use are completely different in that it is not a search engine, it's a computational service. The legalese says that they claim copyright on the each results page and require attribution.

Groklaw notes this is interesting considering some of its results quote 2001: A Space Odyssey or Douglas Adams. Claiming copyright on that material may be a bold move.