In what may be some very good news for parents, a survey of more than 1200 people has revealed that teenagers and twenty-somethings below the age of twenty-five would rather give up caffeine, chocolate, and even sex, before giving up their cell phone.

The military government of Myanmar – formerly known as Burma – has literally cut off Internet access – blaming a “damaged underwater cable” – after an unprecedented sea of images of Myanmar’s brutal crackdown on protesters leaked out to the world through the Internet. Burmese bloggers are now afraid for their lives. “When things were hot on the streets, we were not the main worry. But as the situation cools down, they will follow us. They know who we are, they know we are bloggers, and I am afraid,” said Myanmar blogger Lo Katt.

Project Unity cable – a plan by Google to build a massive, undersea Internet cable across the Pacific ocean, was outed this week as sharp-eyed Google watchers pieced together clues which lead to the discovery of the Unity cable project.

Authorities in Guangzhou, China are reporting that a man has collapsed and died after playing online games at an Internet cafe for three days straight. According to news reports, the man collapsed after a “three-day Internet gaming binge.” Neither the man’s name, nor what he was playing, have been released.

Prince – who was formerly known as “the artist formerly known as Prince”, due to his adoption of a symbol in place of his name for a period of time – has engaged the aid of online rights audit and enforcement firm Web Sheriff. On behalf of Prince, WebSheriff has threatened both YouTube and eBay with lawsuits if they don’t remove what Prince claims is infringing material. Web Sherrif principle John Giacobbi says that eBay and YouTube need to “smell the coffee.”

The news that famed and beloved Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti had died this evening rocked the world. But what went almost unnoticed – in fact unknown for many – was that the news was broken not by a press conference or press release – not by telephone from his bedside – not by telegram – not even by email – but.. by SMS text message.

London’s The Times newspaper is reporting that a Pentagon report indicates that China has amassed an enormous, well-armed “cyber army” that is focussed on taking out the United States computer infrastructure, along with that of other “enemies”, such as the UK and South Korea.

There are a few feactures Of Federal government taxation in Nigeria, along with an overburdened and at times lax penal system, which collude to make Nigeria one of the ideal places to run an advanced-fee scam. In fact, the common name for these scams – 419 scams – comes directly from the Nigerian Penal Code – section 419.

A new wave of spam hitting everybody’s inboxes takes the form of a welcome to one or another website and service, complete with temporary login information and a link to ‘change your temporary password’. The subjects all say some variant of “Login Information”, “Member Details”, “Registration Details” or, even, occasionally, “Internet Techincal Support” (sic). What they also all have in common is that if you click on that link, your computer will have just become a botnet pimp’s newest bitch.

Our friends over at SpamShield have come up with a really nifty use for Google maps – they have created a spam map – they call it “Spam World” – which maps where all the spam is coming from – around the world – in real time (well, updated every fifteen minutes).

The News Agency of Nigeria is reporting that Nigerian school children who are among some of the first recipients of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) laptops have used them to further their education, as intended – but perhaps not in a way that was intended. They are using them to surf explicit adult websites.

A company called Capgemini has been contracted to build an enormous online database of every single child in England, including their address and the telephone numbers. The database, called ContactPoint, is surely the stuff of which the wet dreams of hackers and online paedophiles everywhere is made.

Three men were sentenced and jailed in England this past week for using the Internet to incite acts of terrorism. Specifically, Younes Tsouli, Waseem Mughal and Tariq Al-Daour were sentenced to jail after pleading guilty to running a chat site on which they incited people to commit acts which amounted to murder, all in the name of Holy War.

Allofmp3.com, one of the top mp3 download sites in the world for people looking for mp3 mp3 downloads, allowing people do to an mp3 search of the works of thousands of popular artists, and then download the mp3s for as little as ten cents, has been closed down by the Russian government in a bid to gain membership in the World Trade Organization. Allofmp3.com was considered a barrier to entry for Russia, with what has been estimated to be the world’s largest collection of pirated music, all available as low cost and even nearly free mp3 downloads to Allofmp3’s 5.5 million customers.

A man in China has died after his Motorola cell phone exploded in his shirt pocket with such force that it broke his ribs, sending a shard of broken bone directly into his heart.