You'll need the code, a PlayStation 3, and a USB microcontroller in order to open your system. Oddly enough, sales of such devices seem to be in the middle of a spike.

Once the PlayStation 3 was hacked it was only a matter of time before the software was made available free of charge; there are simply too many risks involved with selling this sort of thing via a standard storefront, and too many people more interested in the software's spread than profit.

The Indonesian mimic octopus has the extraordinary ability to pass itself off as many of the toxic fishes or sea snakes that share its habitat.

By flattening its head and arms, using a bold brown and white colour display and adopting an undulating swimming technique T. mimicus can fool predators that it is, in fact, a poisonous flatfish rather than a tasty meal.

The foundation recently bought about 500,000 shares of the giant biotech company, according to another financial website.

Civil society is worried that Gates' interest in Monsanto will worsen the conditions of small farmers in developing countries, and might represent a conflict of interest, according to the Community Alliance for Global Justice.

Claiming public safety benefits, the National Association of Broadcasters is proposing a new federal law that would force manufacturers to implant FM tuners in all mobile phones.

What Wharton didn't add, probably because it was obvious enough, is that giving radio stations a way to expand their audience--as more Americans turn to the Internet for news and iPods for music--also could yield a welcome increase in audience and revenue.

Environmental and animal-welfare groups are urging the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to persuade the World Health Organization (WHO) to act over fears about eating whale meat.

The groups say whale meat is highly contaminated with mercury and should not be eaten.

Security researchers are reporting an uptick in malware hidden in .zip files being sent out in spam to Web users.

Unlike many of the other FedEx-related malware attacks in the past, the e-mails' message about a failed delivery comes in the form of an image rather than text - possibly in an attempt to avoid anti-spam filters.

2007, 2008, and 2009 all set new historic highs for movie theater revenue in the US and Canada, and 2010 looks poised to do even bigger business.

"Theater owners have gotten away with the biggest year-to-year increases in ticket prices ever," says Hollywood-focused publication The Wrap, "with average admission costs spiraling upward more than 40 cents in 2010, or over 5 percent."

Botnets are now responsible for sending 95 percent of all spam, up from 84 percent in April, and almost half of that spam comes from a single botnet, Rustock.

Rustock sent 41 percent of the world's botnet spam in August, up from 32 percent in April. This is despite the network actually shrinking in size from 2.5 million to 1.3 million bots over the same period, security company Symantec said on Tuesday.

One method the patent describes for detecting a stolen iPhone is checking whether it's been hacked (aka "jailbroken") or its SIM card has been yanked out - things a clever thief would do to override the iPhone's security.

"Ignoring the possibility that a false positive in Apple's proposed theft protection might activate the spy cam while the user is in the bath, or in the middle of some other intimate moment, this technology seems Orwellian for another reason: It gives Steve Jobs and Co. the means to retaliate when iPhones aren't being used in ways Cupertino doesn't expressly permit," The Register wrote over the weekend.

The Recording Industry Association of America said on Monday that current U.S. copyright law is so broken that it "isn't working" for content creators any longer.

Sherman said, "if legislation is an appropriate way to facilitate that kind of cooperation, fine."

Last week, the RIAA and a dozen other music industry groups called on Google and Verizon to crack down on piracy, saying in a letter that "the current legal and regulatory regime is not working for America's creators."