Topping the list for bizarre data loss stories have to be number six, two and one, which respectively recount a brawl between two colleagues in a server room which caused one of the racks to tip over, a drive that went overboard - spending six months 200ft below the waves before being recovered - and a hapless criminal who thought that ditching his laptop out a 12-story window during a police raid would mean that the incriminating evidence would surely be destroyed.

Scientists had to give up on a study of pornography - because they couldn't find any men who had not watched hardcore movies before.

"We started our research seeking men in their twenties who had never consumed pornography but we couldn't find any."

A journalism professor by the name of Tim Luckhurst is claiming that newspaper paywalls are needed to preserve democracy, and that free content online undermines democracy.

The basic argument is that free content online isn't bringing in enough revenue to pay reporters, thus newspapers are going under and firing reporters. Thus, with fewer reporters, there are fewer people to watch the government and therefore corruption runs rampant.

Reports are coming out that Virgin Media is starting to use controversial deep packet inspection technology to spy on users to see if they're sharing any copyrighted works. As the article notes: "It's the equivalent of the Royal Mail opening every parcel to see if there's a CD inside, and making a note if there isn't a receipt in there too."

No matter how you look at it, it does seem quite extreme for your ISP to carefully look at everything you do online.

Audio connoisseurs' favourite Linn Products last week confirmed that it will stop designing and selling CD players from next year to focus on streamers, although its legendary turntables will continue.

CDs are dying - and I'm not suggesting it's a reversible decline - but its death has been far slower than anyone expected.

The horror facing the unpopular Olympics logo is that this is a strict liability offence.

It was the logo's perceived suggestiveness - with many sniggering that it appeared to show Lisa Simpson performing an act of fellatio - that excited internet controversy.

Google variants on "Olympic logo" plus "Lisa Simpson", "fellatio", "blow job", etc and you will quickly turn up several thousand sites and articles which link those topics.

Film director Roman Polanski will not be released from prison until Monday at the earliest, the Swiss justice ministry has confirmed.

Polanski was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl after plying her with champagne and a sedative during a modelling shoot in 1977.

Polanski fled the US in February 1978 on the day he was to be sentenced, and has lived in France since then.

The Australian court case between the film industry and ISP iiNet drew to a close yesterday after the film studios issued an ultimatum: Take copyright responsibilities seriously or leave the industry.

'They provide a facility that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes. If they don't like having to deal with copyright notices then they should get out of the business.'

For most of the past week, when someone typed "Michelle Obama" in the popular search engine Google, one of the first images that came up was a picture of the American first lady altered to resemble a monkey.

Google faced a firestorm of criticism over the episode. First, it banned the Web site that posted the photo, saying it could spread a malware virus. Then, when the image appeared on another Web site, Google let the photo stand.

Mozilla Messaging on Wednesday conjured up the first release candidate for version 3.0 of their popular open source email and news client.

New toys in Thunder B3 include search with advanced filtering tools and auto-complete, tabbed email messages, a redesigned mail toolbar, smart folders, an improved address book, and a new add-ons manager.