The head of Warner Home Entertainment Group thinks that an easy, safe way to convert movies you already own on DVD to other digital formats is to take your DVDs, find a store that will perform this service, drive to that store, find the clerk who knows how to perform the service, hope that the “DVD conversion machine” is not broken, stand there like a chump while the clerk “safely” converts your movie to a digital file that may only play on studio-approved devices, drive home, and hope everything worked out. Oh, and the good news is that you would only need to pay a reasonable (per-DVD?) price for this pleasure.

Try to picture the real alternative to this hokum – people making their own copies of their movies at home.

While many BitTorrent sites and cyberlockers continue to operate as usual, there is a growing group of users who are expanding their horizons to see what other means of sharing are available if the worst case scenario becomes reality.

There are more file-sharing tools that are specifically built to withstand outside attacks. Some even add anonymity into the mix. RetroShare is such a private and uncensored file-sharing client, and the developers have also noticed a significant boom in users recently.

In other words, it’s a true Darknet and virtually impossible to monitor by outsiders.

PHP 5.4 brings improvements in memory management and performance, which in turn will make it faster, a built-in webserver for testing purposes, and features that had been destined for PHP 6.0.

Another important change is that Magic Quotes, a features that was supposed to improve security by preventing SQL Injection but in fact was notoriously insecure and had already been deprecated is finally removed. Other deprecated features have also been removed to provide a cleaner code base.

Ten years ago on March 1, the European Space Agency launched an 8-ton satellite called Envisat that would deliver back to Earth some of the most beautiful images of our planet taken from space.

To celebrate the satellite's 10th anniversary, we've selected a few of its most beautiful images for this gallery. Good luck deciding which one to use as wallpaper for your computer desktop.

Proposed by Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994, the drive would propel a ship at superluminal speeds by creating a bubble of negative energy around it, expanding space (and time) behind the ship while compressing space in front of it. In much the same way that a surfer rides a wave, the bubble of space containing the ship and its passengers would be pushed at velocities not limited to the speed of light toward a destination.

When the Alcubierre-driven ship decelerates from superluminal speed, the particles its bubble has gathered are released in energetic outbursts. In the case of forward-facing particles the outburst can be very energetic — enough to destroy anyone at the destination directly in front of the ship.

Internet service providers are protected from liability for copyright violations committed by users if they obey the DMCA's requirements. DotCom said MegaUpload adhered closely to the DMCA's requirements.

He said that while individual copyright owners had been critical of the service, not one major film studio or record company had ever filed suit against MegaUpload or even sent him a cease and desist letter.

MegaUpload was founded in 2005. Wouldn't at least one of the big studios or record companies have taken him to court during that time? The government has said the criminal investigation lasted two years. That leaves the prior five years that the copyright owners, according to DotCom, did nothing to get in his way.

Upset at the decision to grant Dotcom freedom, the US Government, argued yesterday in an appeal hearing that he should be put back in jail. Today they failed in that attempt and Dotcom remains a free man – at least for now.

Crown prosecutor Anne Toohey told the court yesterday that since Dotcom’s release last week two further banks accounts had been discovered – one in the Philippines and another in the British Virgin Islands containing $2000.

She said that this, along with allegations that Dotcom might have access to forged travel documents, was enough to have the 38-year-old put back in prison.

The forces of Puritanism struck another blow yesterday. Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, sent out an email to all authors, publishers, and agents

Paypal, Smashwords’ payment processor, has issued an ultimatum. Someone at Paypal is grossed out by certain types of erotica sold via Smashwords, so those ebooks have to be pulled or Paypal will drop Smashwords as a customer. And the ebooks have to be pulled by Monday, or else.

Norway's FXI Technologies has begun taking orders for its ultra-tiny CStick Cotton Candy Linux computer, pricing the PC-in-a-stick at just £139 for Brits.

What your £139 plus P&P gets you is an 80mm long unit with a USB jack at one end and an HDMI connector at t'other. In between, you'll find a Micro SD card slot to equip the CStick with storage, and a micro USB port.

From July of this year, it will become law in France to have a working breathalyzer in every car on the road, with enforcement beginning November 1.

The breathalyzer laws in France will be strictly enforced, with lots of spot checks and failure to provide a working breathalyzer when requested by a traffic policeman will attract a fine of EUR11.00 (US$14).