secure empty trash is the only option
I've been running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 for months. For some reason today I lost the ability to "regular" empty the trash. When I right-click the trash from the dock and select "Empty Trash" I'm presented with the "are you sure you want to secure empty the trash?" dialog. When I open the trash in Finder the button in the upper right corner says "secure empty trash". How can I regain the ability to regular empty the trash?
A quick google found this article. You can enable secure empty trash as the default from the Finder preferences:
For nearly every version of Mac OS X, there is also an option to always securely empty the Trash, enabled within the Advanced Finder preferences. If you regularly work with private data this is a good feature to turn on.