Last week, the USPTO granted IBM a patent for its System and method for comprehensive automatic color customization in an email message based on cultural perspective.

IBM explains: 'For example, an email created in the U.S. in red font to indicate urgency or emphasis might be mapped to a more appropriate color (e.g., blue or black) for sending to Korea.'

Electronics giant Sony has reported its first annual loss in 14 years, after being hit by a big drop in sales.

The company blamed the global downturn and the strong yen for the loss. Worldwide sales were down 12.9%.

However, the loss was not as bad as Sony had expected. It had forecast a loss of 150bn yen back in January.

Google said today it has enlisted a small army of hungry, hungry goats to help manicure the expansive fields at its Mountain View headquarters.

"A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers."

Classic era trek was all about Kirk kicking the Klingons tails. But the new Star Trek XI movie, the reboot, will not have any spoken Klingon in it.

'We actually had a sequence that ended up getting cut from the movie that took place on Rura Penthe, in a Klingon prison,' Star Trek co-writer Alex Kurtzman said, explaining the deletion.

Capt Ciro Pinto said six pirates in a speedboat approached his Melody ship and opened fire, but then fled after security men fired in the air.

He said his crew also sprayed water on the gunmen when they tried to climb aboard using a ladder.

His [sic] said "our security started shooting in the air... and also we started spraying some water" to beat off the attackers.

As the world's media continues to follow the scourge of piracy off the coast of Somalia, perhaps its time to take another look at the label of "pirate" for copyright thieves.

Nobody, though, is literally comparing downloading illegitimate Hanna Montana tracks with real-life violent maritime crimes.

No? That's exactly what the Business Software Alliance has apparently resorted to.

Three pirates were killed in the operation to free Captain Richard Phillips after being held in a lifeboat for several days.

On Sunday he jumped overboard for a second time, and the pirates were shot and killed before they could take action to get him back.

The order for US snipers to kill the pirates came when "the on-scene [US navy] commander determined that the captain was in imminent danger," Vice Admiral William Gortney, head of the US Naval Central Command, said in a Pentagon briefing from Bahrain.

Currently, there are 9.000 artists at Jamendo, offering about 200.000 tracks. Anything available is either under Creative Commons license, or it is under Free Art License. Prerequisite for any artist offering his output at Jamendo PRO is that no one involved in the production is contracted to German's collecting institution GEMA or any other similar institution.

According to Jamendo, this certificate is acknowledged by GEMA and the likes. See Jamendo FAQs. Yet, GEMA denies any knowledge of this. They claim not to know Jamendo's certificate.

In fact, this means every commercial or public use of music (you see, borderline is quite blurry) has to be documented for GEMA. The duty of proof is upon the defendant.

As of the end of 2007, SoundExchange had accumulated over $101 million in 'investments'.

On its website, SoundExchange describes itself as 'an independent, nonprofit performance rights organization that is designated by the U.S. Copyright Office to collect and distribute digital performance royalties for featured recording artists and sound recording copyright owners.'

By now, the answer should be obvious; SoundExchange can't find the people it's supposed to pay.

A Scientology spokesman has confirmed that Scientologists believe that mankind's problems stem from brainwashed alien soul remnants created millions of years ago by genocidal alien overlord Xenu.

The Church of Scientology has long used copyright and trade secrecy laws in legal actions designed to suppress the tale.

Scientologist doctrine suggests that exposure to the fantastical Xenu story before the completion of numerous preparatory stages might result in pneumonia or even death. Scientologists pay an estimated $350,000 to reach OT III.