Is four years and a $250,000 fine really the best punishment for the self-proclaimed "Godfather of Spam?" Put another way: Do we take the criminal aspects of spam seriously enough?

I don't think so. But, we're also not ready to hunt down spammers or create effective measures to stop spam at the source.

Major magazine publishers are uniting to solve that old media dilemma of how to survive new media, rumor has it, and they'll soon be opening a joint storefront to peddle their digital wares. Time, Condé Nast, and Hearst are among the publishers who will participate in this iTunes-style magazine store, according to the Observer, but concrete details are scarce. Here's how I'm hoping it pans out:

Bring it to iTunes

Magazines are sold in grocery stores and bodegas, and even newsstands sell lots of other stuff, so why pen digital magazines into their own marketplace? Make the store an annex of larger, existing digital storefronts. Publishers could still sell digital magazines directly, but their content will be easier to stumble upon in places where people are already shopping.

Are you in the market for a laptop or netbook this holiday season? Then check out the hot deals below. I've scoured the Web looking for the best Black Friday laptop and netbook deals priced less than $400. I've found offers from many major retailers, as well as some handy tips to help you map out this year's shopping strategy.

If you can't get enough laptop information, then you should also check out PC World's 2009 Holiday Laptop Gift Guide to see which computers promise to be on everyone's wish list this year.

Apple has established the concept of the app store and continues to define the business model for competitors to follow. Mobile operating system platforms, at least those intended for smartphones, are more or less required to have some form of app store now, but enough is enough with 'there's an app for that'. How many apps do we need, exactly?

App Store boasts over 100,000 apps. Contrast that with the roughly 10,000 apps in the Android Market, or the approximately 1,000 apps available from Microsoft's Windows Marketplace for Mobile, and you can easily see that Apple is by far the leader in the app store arena.

Dwma needs to return a dead hard drive to the manufacturer, and asked the Answer Line forum for a way to first remove sensitive data.

Hard drives almost always contain some potentially compromising information, such as credit card and social security numbers. You should always wipe a hard drive before turning it over to someone else. But that job is particularly difficult if the hard drive no longer works. (See Remove Sensitive Data Before You Sell an Old PC for wiping healthy drives.)

Have you already tried Chrome OS using a virtual machine, and were less than impressed? Well now you can get a feel for how Google's Web-centric operating system will run natively on your machine. The folks over at Engadget were able to boot Chromium OS -- the open source version of what will become Chrome OS -- off of a USB stick on a Dell Vostro A90 netbook. The USB bootable disc is based on the Chromium OS build of Twitter user Hexxeh, who set up a Web site where you can view all the instructions you need for getting your bootable USB up and running.

If you're ready to get your hands dirty and try out the new OS, here's what you need to know:

Stranded in the middle of a do-nothing town, armed only with a mobile phone? Google has streamlined its movie search function on your iPhone, Palm WebOS, or Android-powered device to make on-the-fly searching for movies easier.

Large swaths of the world are subject to censorship, or else track their citizens' use of the Internet. Free program Freenet lets you anonymously browse the Web, share files, chat on forums, and more--no matter where you are. Download and run the software, and you become part of a decentralized P2P network that uses encryption and other tools to keep you hidden and anonymous. As you browse, your data is encrypted and sent through a series of Freenet nodes, making it very difficult to track you.

To make TV commercials far more targeted than anyone has ever dreamed of, Google and TiVo are now teaming on a deal that gives companies buying ads through Google's TV Ads division access to "second-by-second" TV viewing data collected by TiVo's home digital video recorders (DVRs).

Amazon has led the way in driving acceptance of ebook reader devices with its Kindle, but now the market has gotten crowded. This is just the beginning though as ebook readers start to transition from purely consumer gadgets to accepted business tools.

Apparently Barnes and Noble and Sony failed to read the Forrester Research report when planning production of their ebook readers. Forrester predicted that as many as 1 million electronic book reading gadgets will be sold this holiday season, but the Barnes and Noble Nook and the Sony Reader couldn't keep up with demand and will miss out on the party.

In a desperate bid for survival, longtime office software maker Corel has agreed to a takeover by its majority investor, Vector Capital, a move that could help keep classic software packages such as WordPerfect and CorelDraw around as Microsoft Office alternatives, at least for a while.

Founded in 1985 with CorelDraw as its linchpin, Corel has struggled to compete with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office after acquiring the WordPerfect software title from Novell back in 1996. Corel has also produced literally dozens of other software titles over the years, often after acquiring them from other software vendors.

Google and TiVo are teaming up for a new deal that'll put your clicking habits into the hands of advertisers. Before you grab the nearest "privacy violation" placard, though, check out the specifics of this arrangement -- it's probably far less invasive than what you're expecting.

Google and TiVo's Ad Data Deal