Just as our courts on continually pointing out that anonymity is protected free speech, it appears that the federal government is trying to do away with anonymity entirely.

Now, the government's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity has come out with a fear mongering report trying to suggest that online anonymity in 3D worlds leads to terrorism. It highlights things like Second Life as a breeding ground for terrorism.

In fact, the report buries a quote from an anonymous (ha!) intelligence official admitting that there's no evidence whatsoever that any such activity is happening at all.

Chinese authorities are considering dismantling the legendary Great Firewall of China, at least while the Olympics are running.

Wang Hui, head of media relations for the organising committee said that plans to tear down the Great Firewall of China were being debated and a decision was expected soon.

It could be a bit embarrassing for China if BBC hacks cannot access their website to file stories because that news site is banned.

Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, researchers reported Monday.

"It was a small surprise," said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. "But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more."

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

"Lung cancer is a cheap disease to treat because people don't survive very long," van Baal said. "But if they are old enough to get Alzheimer's one day, they may survive longer and cost more."

A Danish court ruled in favor of the IFPI, and ordered the Danish ISP "Tele2" (DMT2-Tele2) to block all access to the popular BitTorrent tracker.

The Pirate Bay team has already asked other BitTorrent admins to stand up against the IFPI lobby, and arranged a meeting with Tele2 to discuss the current events. Pirate Bay co-founder Brokep told TorrentFreak in a response: "I hope the torrent community understands what this will do to Danish people. It will also act as a very bad precedent for the European Union, and I hope everybody will fight this."

IFPI has announced it will continue it's battle against BitTorrent sites in Europe. Last month they tried to convince European lawmakers that ISPs should block access to websites such as The Pirate Bay, and block filesharing protocols, no matter what they're being used for.

A 23-year-old student journalist in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death for downloading and distributing a report that is critical of the oppressive treatment of women in some Islamic societies.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, who is a journalism student at Balkh University and a writer for Jahan-e Naw, was sentenced last October after downloading a report from a Farsi website that criticized Islamic fundamentalists who misrepresent statements in the Koran to justify the oppression of women.

Other journalists have been warned that they would be arrested if they protested in support of Kambaksh.

I have been using Vista for well over a year now (since Beta 1). Of course Vista is slow, its bloated (over 10x the size of XP), aero kills system performance (even though this should be done on the video card), networking is pathetically slow, etc etc. We all know Vista sucks.

But recently my blood has been set to a rolling boil by the fact that most of my games just don't work in Vista. At all. Its so bad that out of spite I have decided to make a list of games that work better in Linux under Wine than in Vista.

This post is clearly a bit biased. What shocked me though was how easy it was to find games that didn't run under Vista but did in Linux by using Wine or DOSBox.

Every game but Blackthorne crashed my Vista box, this didn't happen a single time under Linux.

A computer literate high school kid was dragged out of his philosophy exam finals and told he may not graduate because he built a proxy server at home.

The administrator started by telling him that running a proxy server was illegal. After all what would happen if students were using it to secretly learn about making a bomb? Fafnani would go to jail.

Fafnani tried to argue his way out of it and pointed out that under the school Student Network Access Agreement there was no mention of setting up a proxy from home. Anyway it was not illegal to run your own website or a proxy server.

He is now forced to take all his proxies offline, otherwise he will face "repeat network abuse" and will get in a LOT of trouble.

He said he found it unfair that Fairfax County Public Schools felt it could impose "this kind of totalitarianism" on him and claims it has made him a criminal for making proxies.

The Pirate Bay's servers do not store copyrighted material but offer links to the download location of films, TV programmes, albums and software.

Prosecutor Hakan Roswall said the website was commercially exploiting copyright-protected work because it was financed through advertising revenues.

In an interview with the BBC's technology programme Click last year Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde said: "I think it's okay to copy. They get their money from so many places that the sales is just one small part."

John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of global music body, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries, said: "The operators of The Pirate Bay have always been interested in making money, not music."

It's been expected for a while, but reports are coming out that Swedish prosecutors will finally get around to filing charges against The Pirate Bay this week.

When the actual lawsuit is announced, expect quotes from the RIAA and MPAA about what a big deal this is -- but the only really big deal is how little this lawsuit will do to help the industry. It won't help them adjust to a changing market. It won't help them to adopt necessary new business models. It will only increase the attention given to the Pirate Bay and other sites. We've seen this before with Napster. We've seen this before with Grokster. We've seen this before with Kazaa. So why does the entertainment industry keep doing this?

The demo scene has been around for twenty years now, and it has grown by leaps and bounds. From the early days of programmers pushing the limits of Ataris and Amigas to modern landscapes with full lighting, mapping, and motion capture, demo groups have done it all and done it under 100k.