The U.S. government on Tuesday launched an initiative aimed at urging citizens to pay their taxes to the IRS over the Internet. Last year, nearly 78 million electronic payments were received from taxpayers, but most were from large businesses. Called "Simplify", the effort aims to encourage the 42 million others to use the e-file system.

Not only will taxpayers receive their refunds faster, it also costs the federal government 53 cents less per return to process them. "The Simplify campaign exemplifies a wider effort by the Treasury to serve an increasingly wired public through a variety of electronic filing and payment processes, including IRS e-file, e-pay and e-services," IRS commissioner Kevin Brown said in a statement.

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Virgin Digital's music download service this week quietly left beta and launched a new subscription offering known as "Red Pass." For just $7.99 per month, users can download and stream as much music from Virgin's library as they want, with the option to permanently buy and burn tracks for 99 cents.

The $7.99 USD monthly fee makes Virgin's Red Pass the least expensive subscription music offering currently available, following Yahoo Music Unlimited's price increase from $4.99 to $9.99 USD. Red Pass is only offered in the United States at the present time.

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Just when you thought the Sony BMG copy-protection debacle couldn't get any worse, two Princeton researchers have discovered a security flaw in the software provided by the company to uninstall its controversial DRM.

The flaw was initially suggested over the weekend by a Finnish researcher, and verified Monday by a computer science team at Princeton University.

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64-bit computing may not be taking off on the desktop due to a lack of drivers and applications, but Microsoft is preparing to force an upgrade on the server side. The company announced at the IT Forum in Barcelona Tuesday that it would drop support for 32-bit systems in upcoming product releases.

Exchange Server 12 will be one of the first updates to become exclusively 64-bit, requiring an Intel or AMD processor with 64-bit extensions and an x64 version of Windows Server. The new release is currently slated to launch in early 2007, around the time Windows Server "Longhorn" is completed.

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Yahoo on Tuesday launched a beta of a social commerce site dubbed the Shoposphere. The site will allow users to browse listings of products, called "Pick Lists," that other users have created, as well as integrate the service with Yahoo's other social software offerings.

The search engine in recent months has branched out into social networking, with the purchase of Flickr in March and its Yahoo 360 Web log service.

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A working prototype of the much anticipated MIT $100 laptop will be shown off at a U.N. technology conference on Wednesday. While there is still much development to be done, production could begin in late 2006 or early 2007, according to the Wall Street Journal.

At least two dozen countries have expressed a desire to purchase the laptop, with Brazil and Thailand the most interested. Although the device is aimed at children in developing countries, the state of Massachusetts is considering spending $54 million to give a laptop to every middle and high school student in the state.

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Facing further pressure from unhappy consumers and now artists who are upset that their music has been tarnished by the invasive copy-protection added to certain CDs, Sony BMG now says it will pull the albums off store shelves entirely. The record label is also offering to exchange the CDs for non-DRM versions.

The news follows an announcement last week in which Sony said it would suspend the manufacture of CDs with the software rootkit, known as XCP. "Sony BMG deeply regrets any inconvenience to our customers and remains committed to providing an enjoyable and safe music experience," the company said in a follow-up statement.

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A peer-to-peer network that took advantage of the super-fast speeds of the Internet2 research network closed it doors late Monday. Founder of the i2Hub network Wayne Chang has declined comment citing legal reasons, and the blank front page of the network's Web site now carries the message "R.I.P. 11.14.2005."

The service was one of several networks to receive a cease and desist letter from the RIAA in September. Lawsuits have already been filed against several file swappers on the network. The shuttering of i2Hub follows a Supreme Court ruling that made P2P networks liable for the actions of their users, and the closing of Grokster last week.

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On the heels of the Sony BMG DRM rootkit fiasco, security software firm McAfee announced on Tuesday that it was beginning a new initiative to raise awareness of malware and its potential threat to consumers and businesses.

According to studies, as many as one-third of those infected by spyware do not know it, and 42 percent have no idea how they were infected.

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The international version of the RIAA, the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry, has launched a new crackdown on P2P file sharers pirating music online. The group has filed suit against 2,100 people across Europe, Asia and, for the first time, South America.

The new round of lawsuits mark the first time Web users in Sweden, Switzerland, Argentina, Hong Kong and Singapore have been targeted. The IFPI said Sweden was picked especially due to its reputation as a "haven for piracy." In total, over 3,800 individuals -- mostly young men -- have been sued in 16 countries with most settling for $3,000 or more.

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At the IT Forum in Barcelona Tuesday, Microsoft took the wraps off a version of Windows Desktop Search without the MSN Toolbar, which is designed specially for deployment in businesses. The application replaces Windows' paltry built-in search functionality and can be integrated with Office and SharePoint.

Windows Desktop Search indexes a variety of file types, e-mail, and even documents across the network in order to provide a single starting point for searches. Aside from dropping the toolbar, Microsoft has added improved installation and management functionality.

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Warner Bros. is preparing to make available for download thousands of old television shows, all free of charge and sponsored by advertising. The effort, dubbed In2TV, will roll out on AOL.com early next year and utilize a new video format called AOL Hi-Q that combines P2P distribution with Windows Media.

Full-length episodes of popular programs such as Welcome Back Kotter, Beetlejuice, Lois & Clark, La Femme Nikita and Growing Pains will be offered through six content "channels." 15- and 30-second ad spots will be mixed into the video, but limited to 1-2 minutes of advertising for every 30-minute show.

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Sun on Monday unveiled a new processor, its fastest yet while requiring about the same electricity it takes to power a standard household light bulb. At 70 watts of consumption, the chip uses less than half the power of most server CPUs. Competing chips from Intel or IBM require anywhere from 150 to 200 watts.

The UltraSparc T1 "Niagara" will be an eight-core processor, with each core capable of handling up to four processes. The chips are expected to make their debut in new Sun Fire servers that Sun will release before the end of the year.

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Dell said on Monday that its online store now accepts PayPal as a form of payment. The company said it was interested in giving customers more choice in how to complete their transactions, and tech-savvy users of the site are ideal prospective customers. PayPal has approximately 86.6 million accounts, and in the third quarter processed more than $6.7 billion in transactions between its users.

"PayPal users are savvy online shoppers who consistently look to companies like Dell for the latest in computer and electronics systems," said Todd Pearson, senior director of merchant services for PayPal. "Our customers prefer to use PayPal because of the safety and convenience it offers. Now these customers can use PayPal to shop on one of the leading e-commerce sites in the world."

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INTERVIEW Municipalities are increasingly looking for new ways to bridge the digital divide, bring their towns into the 21st century and offer residents a more cost-effective high-speed Internet alternative. Cole Reinwand, Director of Next Generation Broadband at EarthLink, recently sat down with BetaNews to discuss the technology behind making the wireless dreams of city planners a reality.

BetaNews: Thanks for joining us. Could you give us an update on what EarthLink is doing in the municipal wireless space? We know you have been selected in Philadelphia and Anaheim, and are a finalist in Minneapolis. We'd like to know where you guys are looking at, what you've been doing and how these networks are going to work.

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