Thanks to Paramount Pictures we have an awesome pool of G.I. Joe: Retaliation prizes to give away to ten lucky readers.

A follow-up to the 2009 release of G.I. Joe: Rise Of The Cobra, in this sequel, the G.I. Joes are not only fighting their mortal enemy Cobra; they are forced to contend with threats from within the government that jeopardize their very existence.

One lucky reader will take home the major prize consisting of G.I. Joe: Retaliation on Blu-ray disc, along with a G.I. Joe: Retaliation themed 320GB portable HDD and a G.I. Joe: Retaliation laptop bag. The next nine successful entrants will each take home a copy of G.I. Joe: Retaliation on Blu-ray disc.

Today, Viking Technology announced that SolidFire has selected its SATADIMM SSD to be used as both the cache SSD and boot volume SSD in the company's storage nodes. SolidFire says that this offers enhanced products by increasing both the number and capacity of SSDs in their systems.

For those who might not know, SATADIMM is an enterprise-class SSD built on a Dual In-line Memory Module (DIMM) that fits in an empty DDR3 DIMM slot. These new drives enable both SSD caching as well as boot capabilities without having to utilize a hard drive. SolidFire says that the integration of Viking's SATADIMM SSDs will boost overall system performance and also allow the company to minimize potential human errors such as accidentally removing a boot or cache drive when replacing other failed drives.

"The Viking SATADIMM gives us an additional SSD within the chassis allowing us to dedicate more drives towards storage capacity, while storing boot and metadata information securely inside the system," says Adam Carter, Director of Product Management at SolidFire. "Viking's SATADIMM technology is unique in the market and an important part of our hardware design."

This morning, BlackBerry announced that the company's Board of Directors has formed a special committee that will explore strategic alternatives to enhance value and increase sales in an effort to accelerate BlackBerry 10 sales. The alternatives include options such as possible joint ventures, strategic partnerships, and a sale of the company.

"During the past year, management and the Board have been focused on launching the BlackBerry 10 platform and BES 10, establishing a strong financial position, and evaluating the best approach to delivering long-term value for customers and shareholders," said Timothy Dattels, Chairman of BlackBerry's Special Committee of the Board. "Given the importance and strength of our technology, and the evolving industry and competitive landscape, we believe that now is the right time to explore strategic alternatives."

Thorsten Heins, President and Chief Executive Officer of BlackBerry, added, "We continue to see compelling long-term opportunities for BlackBerry 10, we have exceptional technology that customers are embracing, we have a strong balance sheet and we are pleased with the progress that has been made in our transition. As the Special Committee focuses on exploring alternatives, we will be continuing with our strategy of reducing cost, driving efficiency and accelerating the deployment of BES 10, as well as driving adoption of BlackBerry 10 smartphones, launching the multi-platform BBM social messaging service, and pursuing mobile computing opportunities by leveraging the secure and reliable BlackBerry Global Data Network."

We are proud to announce that from today onwards, we are partnering up with SwiftTest Inc., who are the leaders in infrastructure performance validation for the networked storage industry.

Our collaboration with SwiftTest will see us working together on test suites and benchmarks that will help the consumer enjoy a real-world perspective on the performance of storage devices. SwiftTest offers its SwiftTest Enterprise platform, an easy-to-use GUI-based platform that speeds up test development and allows users to boost their testing and QA processes.

The SwiftTest Enterprise comes pre-configured with a test platform, protocol test suites, and test content that is based on industry standard workloads. But, if you like to tweak, like we do, it comes with fully customizable workloads that can be quickly adjusted to meet the needs of any storage industry organization, or professional storage users.

A document on the NSA.gov website has stated that the government spy agency "touches" 1.6% of the huge 1,826 petabytes of data that crosses the data cables that makes up the Internet each day.

Of this data, the NSA flicks through 29PB of it, or 29 million gigabytes, which is quite the insane number. The NSA says that just 0.025% of that data is selected for review. The document states: "The net effect is that NSA analysts look at 0.00004 percent of the world's traffic in conducing their mission - that's less than one part in a million. Put another way, if a standard basketball court represented the global communications environment, NSA's collection would be represented by an area smaller than a dime on that basketball court."

Throughout the document, the NSA defends its legal basis, dismissing claims that it was conducting dragnet-style operations, except for the instances that fall under the umbrella of counter-terrorism and involve telephone metadata. You can read more on the document here, which is just filled with "it's okay, American citizens, we're not spying on you..."

Thomas "Thompen" Andersson, Battlefield 4's Lead Multiplayer Designer, has explained how the developer is designing Battlefield 4 to "highly encourage" but "never force" team play in the first-person shooter.

DICE's first incentive for players, involves gameplay mechanics, where he continues on the official Battlefield 4 blog: "We want to promote team play by creating great gameplay mechanics such as Field Upgrades, Commander Mode, and a new range of gadgets specifically designed to expand co-operation in the field. We have drastically expanded on the tools and benefits of efficient team play, and as a result we feel Battlefield 4's multiplayer experience is the deepest, most rewarding, and fun experience in the series."

Andersson said he believes EA DICE can "do a better job ... of letting players make more educated choices in their kit loadouts and combat roles" by showing what gadgets do and allowing gamers to compare weapons.

XLGames and 2K are currently working on Civilization Online, an MMO title which is being powered by Crytek's very capable CryEngine 3. The new Civilization Online will shift away from the usual turn-based strategy game, into a single character within one of four societies.

Civilization Online is still centered around the ideas and characteristics that made Civilization the franchise that it is today, but Civilization Online just takes it from a new perspective. From the start of the game, player's will slot into one of four societies, where their task will be to conquer the world as it progresses through the ages.

Civilization Online is a massively, real-time, open world title that will see huge environments for gamer's to explore. There'll also be crafting PvP, resource gathering and other elements built-in. Traditional combat will be a part of Civilization Online, as will the ability to conduct research, build structures and even access an auction house to get rid of the items you have crafted.

NVIDIA have let slip (or have they) by confirming they're working with Microsoft on a next-gen Surface slate. After a three-month stint of beating analysts' estimates, but failing to do anything special on the mobile front, NVIDIA's chief executive, Jen-Hsun Huang spoke with CNET, confirming that they still have a great future ahead of them.

He told CNET: "Now we're going to bring it with the second-generation Surface. We're working really hard on it, and we hope that it's going to be a big success." Microsoft have of course denied the rumors, but so did NVIDIA spokesman Ken Brown, too. Huang didn't confirm whether he was referring to the Surface RT tablet, or the higher-end Surface Pro tablet, I think he meant the latter.

Brown did state that NVIDIA's hardware didn't make it into the current Surface Pro, adding "so make what you will of that." With Microsoft pushed to record a $900 million write-down on the Surface RT, they'll want to not repeat that mistake again and it looks like NVIDIA is now a part of this course correction.

Until just recently, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden used the e-mail services of Lavabit. But now Lavabit has shut its doors, with the owner of Lavabit, Ladar Levison, leaving a very cryptic and scary message stating he walked away from his business as he has "become complicit in crimes against the American public."

It gets a little scarier, with the Lavabit owner saying that until real reform happens, he "would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States." This includes most e-mail services, like GMail, Hotmail, and more.

The full message reads:

Bloomberg must really like Canonical\'s Ubuntu Edge as yesterday they pledged 80,000 to the company\'s crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo. At this point, Canonical has only managed to raise about one quarter of its $32 million goal and with just over 12 days left, things are not looking very good for the Ubuntu Edge smartphone.

So what does Bloomberg get for their $80,000 donation? 115 Ubuntu Edge smartphones are included in the deal alongside several best practice workshops, 30 days of online support that allow the company\'s chief information officers and IT managers to integrate the devices into their system, and--of course--free shipping. If the funding campaign is successful, Canonical hopes to have the phones shipped around March of next year.