Lately there has been a lot of discussion on the net about how to make money off RSS, which, depending on whom you ask, stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, but which many publishers and bloggers hope will turn into a Really Sweet (revenue) Stream.

Like e-mail alerts, RSS is highly targeted, because it serves headlines only to people who have signed up for them. (In this sense, it's more "pull" than "push.") The difference is that RSS can deliver up-to-the-second content. Not only that, but from the perspective of publishers, it could end up a pretty elegant solution to spam, since antispam filters often make it difficult for publishers to reach readers via e-mail.

The US has told a UN conference on global warming that it has no intention of re-joining international efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The chief American negotiator at the conference in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires ruled out any move to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol for years.

Dr Watson, who is leading the American delegation here, told a news conference that this was not the moment for the US to reassess its policies.

But Dr Watson admitted that even if the US achieved its target, it would still be producing 15-16% more greenhouse gases while the rest of the industrialised world was committed to an absolute reduction.

He was scathing about the way the rest of the world was approaching climate change, arguing that the Kyoto Protocol was a political document and not based on sound science.

"Typically the assumption has been that spyware sneaks onto computers, or users are unaware of what they have agreed to install," said Gregg Mastoras, a senior security analyst at antivirus vendor Sophos. "But some people actually do knowingly install adware because they want to use a particular application that comes bundled with it. Some just aren't particularly concerned by adware's presence on their computers."

IMesh, maker of a popular file-sharing application, recently began bundling an application called Marketscore. Some would view Marketscore as a privacy nightmare: The program routes all of a user's web traffic through Marketscore's own servers, where it is then analyzed to "create research reports on internet trends and e-commerce activities," according to Marketscore.

But some users of iMesh didn't seem to be troubled by the actions of Marketscore. Users at iMesh forums chided those who complained, posting messages stating that "without spyware there's no such thing as free software."

According to its privacy policy, Marketscore also monitors users' online behavior by "routing your internet activities through our service and logging information about the web pages that you visit and the actions that you take, such as the purchases and transactions you make, the pace and style with which you enter information online and request web pages, including whether you click on links, type in web-page names or use shortcut keys."

Most musicians and artists say the Internet has helped them make more money from their work despite online file-trading services that allow users to copy songs and other material for free, according to a study released on Sunday.

Artists were split on the merits of peer-to-peer networks, with 47 percent saying that they prevent artists from earning royalties for their work and another 43 percent saying they helped promote and distribute their material.

But two-thirds of those surveyed said file sharing posed little threat to them, and less than one-third of those surveyed said file sharing was a major threat to creative industries.

Only 3 percent said the Internet hurt their ability to protect their creative works.

"What we hear from a wide spectrum of artists is that, despite the real challenges of protecting work online, the Internet has opened new ways for them to exercise their imaginations and sell their creations," said report author Mary Madden, a research specialist at the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

A campaign by Lycos Europe to target spam-related websites appears to have been put on hold.

Earlier this week the company released a screensaver that bombarded the sites with data to try to bump up the running costs of the websites.

People were encouraged to download the screensaver which, when their PC was idle, would then send lots of data to sites that peddle the goods and services mentioned in spam messages.

Monitoring firm Netcraft analysed response times for some of the sites targeted by the screensaver and found that a number were completely knocked offline.

Unknown attackers have downed file-sharing networks based on a common peer-to-peer technology, according to the administrator of LokiTorrent, one of the networks affected.

The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the BitTorrent infrastructure prevented some users from downloading files for up to 10 hours on Wednesday, said the administrator, who asked to be identified only by his online handle, "Lowkee." The target was the central BitTorrent directories, or trackers, which are used by people to find movies, music and other content on the file-swapping network, he said.

"Avoiding future attacks will require an overhaul of the BitTorrent protocol itself, as right now there lies too much reliance on the trackers," Lowkee said. "We're hoping future changes will reduce the requirement of the tracker to an initial connection, therefore moving the actual peer-sharing burden to the peers themselves."

Exeem is a new file-sharing application being developed by the folks at SuprNova.org. Exeem is a decentralized BitTorrent network that basically makes everyone a Tracker. Individuals will share Torrents, and seed shared files to the network. At this time, details and the full potential of this project are being kept very quiet. However it appears this P2P application will completely replace SuprNova.org; no more web mirrors, no more bottle necks and no more slow downs. Exeem will marry the best features of a decentralized network, the easy searchability of an indexing server and the swarming powers of the BitTorrent network into one program. Currently, the network is in beta testing and already has 5,000 users (the beta testing is closed.) Once this program goes public, its potential is enormous.

Try a sustained transfer of 101 gigabits per second between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles on Internet2. That's the speed hit by an international team lead by Caltech last week, the second year in a row the "High Energy Physics" team has won the Supercomputer Bandwidth Challenge.

The heart of the new effort is the new FAST congestion control algorithm for high performance TCP, developed by the Caltech Netlab team. The effort also involved an powerful collection of hardware, including seven 10 Gbps links to Cisco 7600 and 6500 series routers, and four dedicated wavelengths of National LambdaRail. (The Caltech press release details all the hardware used in breaking the Internet2 Speed Record.

The anti pirating body called the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has declared a month's truce for companies using Pirated software in Pakisthana.

Otherwise the BSA will take "legal action" against the businesses and organisations using unauthorised software after the truce ends on December 30. We don't know how successful it will be in the North West Frontier. The rule of law doesn't appear to run there.

It is a moot point how affective such a carrot and stick approach would be. Not only is Pakisthana a great user of pirated software, according to the BSA, it is a key exporter. Pakistan now exports tens of millions of pirate CDs across the world. It is one of the largest sources of pirate disks in the world, reckons the BSA.

The Bush administration opposed security measures for new microchip-equipped passports that privacy advocates contended were needed to prevent identity theft, government snooping or a terror attack, according to State Department documents released Friday.

The ability to read remotely, or "skim," personal data raises the possibility that passport holders would be vulnerable to identity theft, the ACLU said. It also would allow government agents to find out covertly who was attending a political meeting or make it easier for terrorists to target Americans traveling abroad, the ACLU said.

Frank Moss, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services, said the United States wants to ensure the safety and security of Americans traveling abroad.

The documents obtained by the ACLU show that information technology experts and countries including Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain share the suspicion that the international standard set for the electronic passports inadequately protects privacy and security. The standards don't require that data be encrypted.