Two researchers, from the Florida Institute of Technology and Boston-based Security Innovation Inc., 'surprised the audience at a computer-security convention last month with their finding that a version of Microsoft Windows was more secure than a competing Linux operating system' according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 'This week, the researchers released their finished report, and it included another surprise: Microsoft was funding the project all along.' When will they ever learn?

A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug out of a hunk of sandstone has yielded soft tissue, including blood vessels and perhaps even whole cells, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

Paleontologists forced to break the creature's massive thighbone to get it on a helicopter found not a solid piece of fossilized bone, but instead something looking a bit less like a rock.

"They are transparent, they are flexible," said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and Montana State University, who conducted the study.

She said the vessels were flexible and in some cases their contents could be squeezed out.

Of course, the big question is whether it will be possible to see dinosaur DNA. "We don't know yet. We are doing a lot in the lab now that looks promising," Schweitzer said.

Last year, Hollywood put on a push to get the government to allocate FBI and Department of Justice resources towards helping them prop up their obsolete business model. The idea was that the RIAA's own private police force didn't have enough of an ability to break down doors themselves, but those fancy FBI badges do wonders -- so why not let the FBI take on investigations in civil disputes that really shouldn't involve the government at all? Well, after declaring that the "war" (yes, they called it that) on intellectual property violations was just as serious as the (oh so successful) "wars" on drugs, terrorism and corruption, it appears the FBI is finally spending our hard earned tax dollars scanning the internet for people listening to music they didn't pay for. Is this really the best use of FBI resources at this particular time -- especially as more and more artists are looking to embrace file sharing as "the new radio?"

According to a survey conducted by security firm Mirapoint and market research company the Radicati Group, nearly a third of e-mail users have clicked on links in spam messages.

The fact that one in ten e-mail users are buying things advertised in spam continues to make it an attractive business, especially given that sending out huge amounts of spam costs very little, the report concludes.

"The list of words most commonly hidden by the spammers from anti-spam software reveals that most spam is about the old favourites: money, drugs and sex," said Mr Cluley.

"People must resist their basic instincts to buy from spam mails. Spammers are criminals, plain and simple. If no-one responded to junk e-mail and didn't buy products sold in this way, then spam would be as extinct as the dinosaurs," he said.

Concerning the bust at the Swedish ISP Bahnhof on March 10, IDG Sweden is reporting that Bahnhof has posted their findings of an internal inspection. It seems as if the Anti-Piracy Buereau of Sweden and their infiltrator "Rouge" had a good deal of involvement in supporting the busted FTP server not only with hardware but with so called "warez" as well. The blog of Lars Backlund has a translated version of the interview conducted in the report of Bahnhof. P2PNet.net has a breakdown of the relevant details as well. From the article: "As it turns out, APB (or, rather, their hired informer) supplied the servers and uploaded copyrighted materials. So that's why they were so sure to find stuff, they put it there!"

Utah's governor has defied criticism from technology firms and free speech activists to sign into law a bill designed to protect children from Internet pornography.

ISPs in Utah have the option of blocking sites or providing customers with third=party filtering products unless they want to risk felony charges under the new law. The law states that: "Upon request by a consumer, a service provider may not transmit material from a content provider site listed on the adult content registry." Internet content providers that create or host data in Utah must properly rate the data or risk possible criminal charges.

Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union go further and warn the bill violates the US Constitution's First Amendment on free speech and the Commerce Clause. Six other states have had similar legislation ruled unconstitutional, resulting in huge legal bills for residents, Media Coalition director David Horowitz told the Salt Lake City Tribune.

In several US states, Imax cinemas - including some at science museums - are refusing to show movies that mention the subject or suggest that Earth's origins do not conform with biblical descriptions.

In most southern states, theatre officials found recent test screenings of several of these films triggered accusations from viewers that the films were blasphemous.

This point was emphasised by Bayley Silleck, who wrote and directed Cosmic Voyage. Many institutions across America were coming under pressure about issues relating to natural selection. 'They have to be extremely careful as to how they present anything relating to evolution,' he said.

Apple Computer says it has closed the hole that let people buy iTunes songs without any copy-protection technology attached. According to the company, anybody who wants to buy music from the store now will have to upgrade at least to the 4.7 version of iTunes.

You may remember Orrin Hatch from such backwards thinking proposals as destroying computers of any copyright violator or telling the FBI they should work on civil copyright cases or (most recently) his plan to make the iPod illegal with his INDUCE Act (though, he eventually agreed to exceptions for the iPods, plenty of other technologies would become illegal overnight). He's also the guy who tried to defend the INDUCE Act by admitting it might not be a good idea, but he that's fine as long as he does something. Yes, he believes in legislating for the sake of legislating even when it might make things worse. Well, it now turns out that good old Senator Hatch has been put in charge of the Senate panel that writes copyright laws. In other words, we should have another couple years of silliness in copyright laws coming out of the Senate.

Plenty of us use Google's Gmail accounts on a daily basis. I, for instance, obtained my first account back in early June, 2004. It only took me 10 months to fill Google's until then considered "huge" storage space. See, one gigabyte is not so much after all when you start leaving all your email on the remote server.

Back in February, I started getting nervous when the space-metre at my Gmail account hit "95%". I asked my contact at Google in the UK what would happen when the account reached 100%. Would email start bouncing back to sender? Would I be alerted and given the option to "upgrade" for a fee to a bigger storage space?

Well, nothing like that ever happened, because Google's person never got back to me with her responses, and as you can see below, email keeps pouring in, and my Gmail account is already showing "102%" of space used.

Until Google figures what to do with those of us with full Gmail accounts, and if you don't want to risk losing your email due to bounces, you can use a trick. Open a secondary Gmail account, and then configure Google's forwarding option to forward every inbound message to your secondary one, selecting the option "trash it from the inbox" so you don't end up with duplicates.