I hope you enjoyed using P2P to download your Linux distros because it looks as though the legal users amongst us have just lost out. If you use Virgin Media as your ISP, you’ll be interested to know that they are about to start trials of the 3 strikes rule the government recently detailed in a white paper.

Trialled last year by Tiscali which resulted in a handful of users being disconnected, the 3 strikes rule focuses on re-offending P2P users. But how do they know who is using P2P for legitimate means? Only just recently a TV company in Canada released Hi-Def versions of one of their prime-time shows as a bittorrent in an incentive to trial new methods of distribution. Does this mean these methods of legal distribution, that benefits all, will become a thing of the past? Click here for more information.

At last! Wordpress 2.5 has been released to an expectant blogging community. For those that use the blogging software (and skymonkey.org is powered by wordpress) then you’ll be glad to know the following features come with the latest version: Multiple file upload, WYSIWYG that doesn’t “helpfully” change your html code, plugin upgrades are simpler & a search system that looks at pages as well as posts. There are lots of other changes too, so if you’re a wordpress fan or are thinking of using the software, go here.

As reported just yesterday, the Macbook Air was the first laptop to fall to the hands of the security experts. Well today, the Vista laptop has also been compromised, by hacking Adobe Flash. This time the competition focused on 3rd-party software that was available for the laptops with Security Objectives being the first to exploit a flaw today, grabbing the £5,000 prize money. Ubuntu has been crowned the most secure by the competition., but what was interesting for me, though, was that none of the OS’s were actually hacked - just the applications that were installed on them. [SHOW ME]

Much like Google Israel, Google UK has also gone dark for Earth Hour. In an effort to help promote the use of energy conservation in the home, Earth Hour aims to get people to turn off their lights for just 1 hour between the hours of 8-9pm. Do your bit and see if you can survive for a whole hour in the dark. [SHOW ME]

The Pwn 2 Own competition, which is focusing on hacking 3 laptops, has had it’s first victim. The three laptops are running Microsoft Vista, Ubuntu Linux & Mac OSX - and whoever hacks them gets them. The first day concentrated on hacking the OS and none of the systems were compromised. However on the second day, they moved onto the applications that came with the OS. A group called the Independent Security Evaluators managed to hack the inbuilt web browser, Safari in 2 minutes! Yes that’s right, 2 minutes. The vulnerability in Safari has been passed on to Apple for a fix. The team not only now “Own” the Macbook Air, but also scooped $10,000. [SHOW ME]

Mozilla have announced today that the latest version of Firefox will hopefully go live in June of this year. I’ve had a dabble with one of the Betas and I’m impressed with how it’s coming along. There are a lot of improvements - visually, memory wise plus lots of features we’re going to wonder how we did without after we’ve used them for more than a day. [SHOW ME]

I guess it seems as though the consumer is starting to vote with it’s feet. Available in the US only, at the moment, Amazon MP3 are starting to make a mark in Apple’s music store dominance. The DRM-free music available from Amazon MP3 is proving a hit with customers, as sales have driven the new on-line store to second place after just six months of operation. Hopefully over the next six months Amazon will continue to eat into Apple’s 80% share of the market. [SHOW ME]

Today, a public drive has won the backing of David Cameron, of the Tories, to provide the public with parliamentary bills in an XML format. They Work For You is the website who originally pushed for this, with the ability to sign up to “Gently Encourage Parliament” to adopt the standard. This would benefit all, as it would provide a way for the information to be easily digested and searchable with today’s technology and would also allow They Work For You to keep you up to date with email alerts.

The latest Microsoft service pack for Windows XP still isn’t ready yet - although they still think they can ship in the first half of this year. However, for all those that can’t wait you can get a hold of the latest release candidate - kind of a pre-cursor to the final version, but again, it’s your choice and not mine - don’t blame me for suggesting you be one of Microsoft’s guinea pigs! This update works by making a change to your registry, which allows Windows Update to see your PC as viable for the latest version of SP3. Another sign, I think, that Microsoft are close to a release. Maybe they’re being more cautious with XP after Vista SP1 caused some users so many problems? It’s also worth noting that you will need to uninstall any previous version of SP3 on your system, before it will work.[SHOW ME]

I was recently sent in the direction of this website. If you’re having problems remembering things, or you have so much to do it’s hard keeping track of your busy life, rememberthemilk.com is definitely for you. Remember the Milk is an online task-based system. You can make notes of the most important things to do, prioritise and even have your tasks tagged by work, personal or study. And one of the coolest features is that Remember the Milk can integrate straight into your Gmail account. To use this feature, just create an account with Remember the Milk and follow these simple instructions, which includes details of installing a firefox add-on, to get yourself up and running.

I’ve been using the service for about a week now and I haven’t looked back. It’s quicker and easier than Outlook tasks (2003 anyway) and of course, they follow me and my gmail account around too - so I can easily integrate my personal and work tasks together. Plus I’m also finding myself adding work tasks at home, when I think of them, making me a little bit more efficient during the day.