Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th.

"Beginning October 9, we will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com. If you do not back up your files before this date, you will no longer be able to transfer your songs to other computers or access your songs after changing or reinstalling your operating system or in the event of a system crash."

Researchers say the Viagra alternative could be as effective as the famous blue pill, but have fewer side-effects.

In the meantime, "if people eat horny goat weed, I think it can be beneficial because it contains icariin," says Dell'Agli.

Facebook users with even slightly unusual names beware: your account can be suspended by the site's draconian administrators without warning and your personal information held to ransom until you show them a government-issued ID.

This and countless other questionable rules has led some to sound the alarm on the dangers of entrusting one's online identity to Facebook and relying on it so heavily for social interaction.

Despite a long, heated email exchange Facebook refused to tell Keep why she was banned - for "security reasons" - and asked her to verify her identity by sending "a scanned copy of a government-issued ID".

Facebook has also banned people for having too many friends, joining too many groups, posting too many messages on a wall or in a group, "poking" too many people and using duplicate text in multiple messages.

The police force responsible for busting a ring of illegal music downloaders which went by the name of OINK (now that's just begging for trouble) is in danger of being hauled before the beak for copyright theft itself.

The PRS says that only 11 of the 43 UK forces have paid for the right to play music in canteens and social areas at nicks up and down the country.

"We continue to assess the position and are seeking advice to determine if we are required by law to spend a significant amount of public money, which we consider is better committed to crime fighting, in this way."

Comcast has become the latest ISP to shut down access to Usenet newsgroups as part of a voluntary agreement to try and fight child porn online.

In response to a question over whether Comcast offers newsgroups service, the company advises interested subscribers to choose from one of several third-party newsgroup providers. Of course, you'll have to pay extra for that and Comcast's monthly fees won't be going down in order to compensate for the loss of a service that's not being replaced.

In eBay's latest FAQ, they explain that sellers (for the good of the buyers) will no longer be allowed to accept checks or money orders as payment.

Google's and Amazon's products and services compete with eBay on a number of levels, so we are not going to allow them on eBay.

Police called to investigate a strange smell in a block of flats found a horse jammed into a ventilation shaft 12 storeys up.

"How on earth someone managed to get a horse's body 12 storeys up and why someone would put it there though we have no idea."

Part of the giant physics experiment was turned off for the weekend while engineers probed a magnet failure.

Cern spokesman James Gillies said on Saturday that the sector that was damaged would have to be warmed up to above its operating temperature - of near absolute zero - so that repairs could be made, and then cooled down again.

According to a statement filed Friday with the FCC, the big-name ISP began using a traffic switch from Sandvine Inc. in May 2005 in an effort to determine which protocols were causing congestion on its cable-based network.

After an independent network researcher revealed the company's P2P throttling in May 2007, Comcast flatly denied it. And though it eventually acknowledged the basic practice, it has always said that it "temporarily delays" P2P uploads rather than blocking them. But this is misleading.

Using Sandvine's equipment, Comcast sends reset packets that prevent one machine from connecting to another. And if the number of uploads drops below Comcast's threshold, these connections are not reinstated. In other words, they're blocked, not delayed.

US president George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney head up the list of federal officials named in a lawsuit filed Thursday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) over the government's continuing warrantless wiretapping of citizens' phone and Internet traffic.

EFF senior staff lawyer Kevin Bankston said, "In addition to suing AT&T, we've now opened a second front in the battle to stop the NSA's illegal surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and hold personally responsible those who authorized or participated in the spying program."