Prince has become fantastically anti-fan, and day-by-day seems to be destroying his reputation. It started with threatening fan sites, quickly followed up by lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and the Pirate Bay, and more recently has involved a bizarre and ill-advised strategy of taking down YouTube videos that he probably had no right to take down.

The latest case involves fifty Norwegian musicians, who teamed up with a Norwegian record label to create what they thought was a nice 50th birthday present for Prince: a "tribute" album with 81 covers of Prince songs.

What they didn't expect was for Prince, instead, to turn around and sue the label and all fifty musicians. He's also demanding that all copies of the album be destroyed.

Scientists working on the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which has already found ice on the planet, said preliminary analysis by the lander's instruments on a sample of soil scooped up by the spacecraft's robotic arm had shown it to be much more alkaline than expected.

"It is the type of soil you would probably have in your back yard, you know, alkaline. You might be able to grow asparagus in it really well. ... It is very exciting for us."

It would appear that the recording industry now likes to call any sort of business model it doesn't like "piracy." At least that's the only explanation I can come up with in its latest battle, where it has referred to traditional radio as "a form of piracy."

The idea that radio is a form of piracy is simply laughable. We've already pointed to the industry's own proof (payola) that radio helps promote artists. As for the definitional difference between fees and taxes, fees are agreed upon between two parties. A tax is a fee required by the government.

Gmail users in Germany were likely surprised late last week when instead of gaining access to their email, they were greeted with a mysterious message from the folks at Google.

"We can't provide service under the Gmail name in Germany; we're called Google Mail here instead. If you're traveling in Germany, you can access your mail at http://mail.google.com. Oh, and we'd like to link the URL above, but we're not allowed to do that either. Bummer."

Google's action stems from a German court decision in July 2007, which ruled that Google could no longer use "Gmail" for its email services based on Giersch's trademark.

With a smile on his face Rock says, "I'm rich," so sure it's OK to steal my music. Oh, and while you're at it, "Steal everything." Steal an iPod, Steve Jobs is a billionaire, he'll never miss it. Get yourself a Toyota, "They're foreign" and the gas too, "You know how much money the oil companies make?" Rock shrugs it all off, "They're not going to miss $30 or $40 worth of gas."

A rare Mac OS X Trojan has been spotted on the internet. The AppleScript-THT Trojan horse exploits a vulnerability within the Apple Remote Desktop Agent to load itself with root privileges onto compromised Mac machines.

Keystroke logging on compromised systems, taking pictures (using the built-in Apple iSight camera) or capturing screenshots are among the hacker exploits enabled by the malware, Mac security outfit SecureMac reports.

Scientists have developed a technique for retrieving fingerprints from bullet casings and bomb fragments after they have been fired or detonated.

The chemical basis of the change is not yet clear, but Bond believes it is corrosion by chloride ions from the salt in sweat. These produce lines of corrosion along the ridges of the fingerprint residue.

In his paper he demonstrates that it is possible to recover fingerprints from a bullet casing ejected when a pistol is fired. "As you are pushing the magazine in you are actually putting a thumb print on the bullet," said Bond. "That's the person you want. That's the guy who loaded the gun."

The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement.

"Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances," MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial.

If you were looking for a new way to make semiconducting diamond, you might not have thought of starting with tequila. But the potent spirit turns out to be excellent raw material.

They injected the heated vapour from 80-proof "tequila blanco" into a low-pressure chamber. Measurements confirmed that the carbon deposited on test surfaces had a diamond structure.

"The result is certainly funny, but the process seems reasonable," says physicist Rudolf Pfeiffer of the University of Vienna in Austria. "I don't know of any previous attempts to make diamonds from drinks."

Wikipedia is used to its content being copied and mirrored. However, a new website at e-wikipedia.net appears to have taken this a step further by mirroring the entire English Wikipedia - articles, logos, disclaimers, userpages, and all.

If there's credit here, I don't see it - sure looks like it's intentionally misleading readers.