We’ve heard rumors for a while that Apple’s forthcoming Leopard operating system will use the next-generation file system called ZFS.

Now it seems to be official. As MacRumors.com notes, Sun Microsystems’ Jonathan Schwartz said on Wednesday that ZFS would be “the file system” for Leopard, succeeding HFS .

ZFS, which (sort of) stands for Zettabyte File System and was originally developed by Sun, is a huge step forward from traditional file systems. It protects all files with 64-bit checksums to detect and fix data corruption and, as a 128-bit file system, can handle many orders of magnitude more space than current versions of Microsoft Windows, OS X, or Linux. (There is a movement afoot to port ZFS to Linux but it’s complicated by restrictions in the GNU General Public License.)

The House of Representatives passed on Wednesday legislation that would impose new requirements on software companies and advertisers to protect computer users from spyware.

House lawmakers approved an anti-spyware bill that would require software distributors to clearly notify and obtain consent from consumers before programs can be loaded onto a computer. The bill passed on a vote of 368 to 48.

The legislation is opposed by the software industry, which argues that new regulatory requirements could hurt innovation and technology investment.

The industry favors an alternative bill, passed by the House last month, that would impose specific penalties for the fraudulent use of spyware but would not adopt new regulations.

Lawmakers in the Senate have yet to take up the issue.

Netscape has released the first beta of Netscape 9, based on Firefox. This release includes URL correction, compatibility with Firefox 2 extensions, a “mini browser” sidebar, and integrates Netscape.com sitemail.

For those who remember the Netscape Navigator suite, it’s lost a little weight — Navigator no longer includes mail or HTML composer components, just a souped-up Firefox build with a number of features that integrate with the Netscape.com portal.

A number of highly critical security flaws have been found in the latest version of Yahoo Messenger, which could allow attackers to gain remote access to users systems, according to a security advisory issued by eEye Digital Security.

The vulnerabilities affect Yahoo Messenger versions 8.1 and 8.0, running on Windows, eEye stated in its “upcoming advisories.”

Although eEye does not disclose extensive details about vulnerabilities until the respective vendor develops a patch, the security researcher did note the Yahoo IM flaws requires little user interaction for an attacker to exploit the vulnerabilities.

A Google executive on Wednesday credited the company’s phenomenal success to the United States’ openness to immigrants and called on Congress to let in more foreign workers.

Laszlo Bock, the search giant’s vice president of people operations–Googlespeak for human resources–said the company may never have come into existence if co-founder Sergey Brin and his parents hadn’t been able to flee the Soviet Union for the U.S. when he was 6 years old. Wednesday’s testimony represents the first time that Google has testified before Congress on immigration issues.

“Within Google, there are countless examples of immigrants and nonimmigrant foreign workers playing a vital role in our company,” Bock told the politicians at a House Judiciary oversight subcommittee hearing focused on business community perspectives on immigration law changes. The hearing took place as the Senate continues to debate a massive immigration bill that has proven worrisome to Silicon Valley companies.

Holders of H-1B visas, which allow foreigners with certain credentials to hold U.S. jobs for up to six years, compose about 8 percent of Google’s U.S. workforce and represent 80 different countries, Bock said. He estimated that 75 percent of those hires have degrees from U.S. universities. Some led the development of Google News and Orkut, the company’s social-networking site, he added.

Four more Internet service providers will start charging banks, e-commerce sites and other large e-mail senders for guaranteed delivery.

In deals expected to be announced Thursday, Goodmail Systems Inc. is expanding its CertifiedEmail program to Comcast Corp., Cox Communications Inc., Time Warner Cable Inc.’s Road Runner and Verizon Communications Inc. Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL became inaugural participants last year.

Individuals, businesses and organizations will be able to continue sending messages for free, but they risk finding those missives caught in increasingly aggressive spam filters.

With Goodmail, a company can pay a quarter of a penny per message to bypass those filters and reach inboxes directly. Recipients see a blue seal verifying that the message is legitimate; senders get confirmations and can resend messages lost in transit.

Non-profit groups can participate, too, at about a tenth of the commercial rates.

At least half of the fees go to the service provider, Goodmail Chief Executive Richard Gingras said.

Web sites running Microsoft’s Web server software are twice as likely to be hosting malicious code as other Web sites, according to research from Google.

Last month, Google’s Anti-Malware team looked at 70,000 domains that were either distributing malware or hosting attack code and made the finding. “Compared to our sample of servers across the Internet, Microsoft IIS features twice as often as a malware-distributing server,” wrote Google’s Nagendra Modadugu.

Google Inc.’s stock price surged to a new high Tuesday after online software pioneer Salesforce.com Inc. joined the Internet search leader’s efforts to lure even more businesses into the Web’s largest advertising network.

Although the partnership wasn’t extensive as previous media leaks had indicated, the alliance nevertheless could create more opportunities for Google to connect with thousands of potential advertisers who haven’t previously tried run online marketing campaigns through the search engine’s automated system.

The arrangement calls for Salesforce.com to roll out a new version of its service so its 32,300 customers can distribute their online ads through Google.

The new recruitment tool, coupled with a recent string of potentially revenue-boosting deals, helped propel Google shares to a new high of $519 before backtracking to finish Tuesday’s regular trading at $518.84, a gain of $11.77, or 2.3 percent.