Microsoft products have been banned in some of the biggest markets, including India because of eight wrongly colored pixels, a bad choice of music and a bad English-to-Spanish dictionary.

When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India.

If this was not enough, Microsoft used chanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for a computer game, which led to great offence to the Saudi Arabia government.

The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn.

Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation.

Edwards said that staff members are now sent on geography courses to try to avoid such mishaps. "Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said.

The International Olympic Committee is barring competitors, as well as coaches, support personnel and other officials, from writing firsthand accounts for news and other Web sites.

Participants in the games may respond to written questions from reporters or participate in online chat sessions -- akin to a face-to-face or telephone interview -- but they may not post journals or online diaries, blogs in Internet parlance, until the Games end August 29.

To protect lucrative broadcast contracts, athletes and other participants are also prohibited from posting any video, audio or still photos they take themselves, even after the games, unless they get permission ahead of time. (Photos taken by accredited journalists are allowed on the personal sites.)

The Olympic guidelines threaten to yank credentials from athletes who are in violation as well as to impose other sanctions or take legal action for any monetary damages.

Associated Press claims that media industry has been quietly avoiding Microsoft and trying to keep the movie and music industries to their own. However, these days there's little chance of doing business without Microsoft and the movie studios are afraid of digital piracy more than they're afraid of Microsoft. The biggest fear? Microsoft will use its desktop PC monopoly to charge Hollywood outrageous fees and basically own the movie industry. Microsoft refutes the accusations, saying that it's only interested in selling more copies of Windows and applications for its platform, and providing movie content would promote the platform. Also noteworthy that among the four video-on-demand services that New York Times reviewed recently two that got the journalistic acclaim (StarzTicket and CinemaNow) are run by technology companies - Real Networks and Microsoft.

When was the last time you saw John Kerry on his knees before world leaders, clad in S&M gear and with a ball gag in his mouth? Or eyed President Bush looking sheepish in a red dunce cap?

But while about 25 million viewers have been clogging JibJab to chuckle at the film's South Park-like Flash animation and juvenile insults (Bush labels Kerry a "liberal sissy," and Kerry responds by calling Bush a "right-wing nut job"), the Spiridellises aren't exactly laughing their way back to the drawing board.

About a week ago, the brothers were served with a cease-and-desist order on behalf of Ludlow Music, demanding they remove This Land from their website. LiCalsi said Ludlow has not filed a lawsuit yet against JibJab and hopes to resolve the case without taking that step.

LiCalsi wrote, "We further demand an accounting for all income received from the exploitation of the unauthorized movie. In the event that we do not receive written confirmation by July 30, 2004, that JibJab will comply with the foregoing, we may conclude that all steps short of litigation are exhausted."

Wisconsin libraries have received more than 105,000 CDs as part of a national settlement with the recording industry to settle a price-fixing lawsuit, but few are choices most listeners would opt for.

The selections are raising a few eyebrows and unlikely to get a lot of use. Among the several hundred CDs given to the Charles M. White Public Library were many duplicates, including 29 copies of Handel's Italian Cantatas and 21 copies of Mozart's Le Nozze Di Figaro.

Among the 592 CDs shipped to the Marshfield Public Library, there are 22 copies of Ricky Martin's "Sound Loaded," 20 copies of Samantha Mumba's "Gotta Tell You," 16 copies of "The Three Tenors in Concert," 12 copies of Georg Philipp Telemann's "String Concertos/Musica Antiqua Ksln-Goebel," and 12 copies of Mandy Moore's self-titled album.

Milwaukee Public Library received 1,235 copies of Whitney Houston's 1991 recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner," 188 copies of Michael Bolton's "Timeless," 375 of "Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits 1971," and 104 copies of Will Smith's "Willennium," and nearly everything in between.

Blaming the media and the end of all that is good, George Michael decided this week to shut down the chat section of his web site. Nasty comments about Michael looking tubby, old and tired also played a role in the decision, but Michael stressed that it was the media and the end of all that is good that were mostly to blame for the decision.

"I'm afraid that, having visited the forums on a regular basis over the past few months, simply to see how you guys thought the album/ interviews/promotion were going, I have decided to close them down," Michael or a bot purporting to be he of Wham! fame writes. "As many of you will know, much of my reasoning for the future is to stay away from the negativity of the media."

So while Michael is called "fat, tired and old" in some places, there is not a lot of negativity. Sadly, we checked. There really isn't much negativity at all. The chat forums are mostly loaded with poems and sex proposals for Michael.

Funny. For the past few recession-impacted years, every time an article came out talking about how CD sales were down, they included an ominous quote from a recording industry official claiming that online downloads were destroying the industry and the American way was about to be wiped out by hoards of pirates. So, where are those people when (as the economy rebounds) sales actually begin picking up? As Ernest Miller notes, they don't seem to be "blaming" file sharing for their new found success. They don't seem to be saying much of anything, actually, even though file sharing continues at about the same pace it did a few years ago. Maybe, just maybe, there were other factors involved in the decline in album sales. However, with such an easy scapegoat, don't expect the industry to buy it.

Controversial film-maker Michael Moore has welcomed the appearance on the internet of pirated copies of his anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 and claimed he is happy for anybody to download it free of charge.

"I don't agree with the copyright laws and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they're not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that," he said.

"I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the world, to change. The more people who see it the better, so I'm happy this is happening."

Moore said: "Is it wrong for someone who's bought a film on DVD to let a friend watch it for free? Of course it's not. It never has been and never will be. I think information, art and ideas should be shared."

While others may Sing the Body Electric, Microsoft has patented it. On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Microsoft a patent for its Method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body, which covers the use of the human body as a conductive medium (bus) over which power, data and control signals may be distributed.

San Francisco, CA and New York, NY - If the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) gets its way, consumers will not be permitted to listen to digital radio broadcasts unless they use an industry-approved device.

This is only the latest chapter in a decades-long campaign by the RIAA to stop home recording of radio broadcasts. But as EFF and the Brennan Center point out in their comments, it is perfectly legal for people to make home recordings of radio broadcasts under current copyright laws.In essence, the RIAA is urging the FCC to override home recording rights guaranteed to the public by copyright law.

"The RIAA is trying to halt the development of next-generation digital technologies, like a Tivo for radio -- technologies that are perfectly legal under copyright law," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "This is about restricting personal home taping off the radio, something that Congress has said is legal and that millions of Americans have been doing for decades."