Microsoft will no longer "support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased on MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers," the company said in an e-mail to former MSN Music customers.

What the announcement means is that former MSN Music customers will risk losing their music libraries if they try to transfer songs to unauthorized computers or swap operating systems after Aug. 31.

Another alternative is to burn songs to CDs and rerip. This means the loss of sound quality but offers more peace of mind.

Stephen Hawking, has called on the world to dedicate a meagre 0.25 per cent of all its financial resources in a push towards setting up settlements on the Moon, Mars, infinity and beyond.

He suggested first shooting for the Moon again in 2020, and maybe a human mission to Mars five to ten years later.

As a music industry trade group, the group has several other responsibilities. One of those is lobbying Congress for tougher copyright laws, an endeavor that the group spent nearly $2.1 million on in 2007.

The far-reaching PRO-IP Act was introduced to the House in December 2007. The bill would create a new executive office, the Office of the US Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, which would be charged with coordinating IP enforcement at the national and international levels.

The Intellectual Property Enforcement Act is the latest incarnation of the PIRATE Act. The RIAA loves this bill because it would outsource the thousands of copyright infringement lawsuits filed each year to the Department of Justice, saving the group millions of dollars in legal fees.

The group's $2.08 million expenditure is a mere fraction of the $2.8 billion spent lobbying Congress and the executive branch last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The new 2.5" 7,200RPM SATA hard disk drive (HDD) incorporates the AES-256 encryption standard at the hardware level without the need for additional software.

The new Fujitsu drive performs its encryption entirely within the BIOS during power on. Encryption performed within the BIOS prevents the keys from being stored in the clear anywhere on the drive.

According to Fujitsu, "the key used to encrypt and decrypt data is cryptographically regenerated at power-on, and is not known even to the HDD when the system is powered off."

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has hit yet another website over copyright infringement with a new lawsuit. The organization says that Pullmylink.com facilitates copyright infringement by indexing and posting links to what the MPAA believes is pirated content.

The MPAA sued BitTorrent, eDonkey, USENET, and TorrentSpy (among others) for making it easy to find and download copyrighted content, too.

Of course, the MPAA's lawsuit against Pullmylink.com has another effect that the MPAA is fully aware of. People who had no idea Pullmylink.com existed (including me) are now aware of it and what it offers.

The owl has leather straps on its legs, suggesting it may be an escapee from a falconry, The Daily Telegraph reported. It also appears to be attracted to children, suggesting that it belonged to a family.

"I banged on the window and this huge owl flew off our house and onto another one nearby," he said. "It must have had a six-foot wingspan, I couldn't believe it."

The owl, with its size and sharp talons, could kill pets and harm children. The local school sent parents a warning letter.

Senate Democrat on Wednesday said federal and local police should use custom software to monitor peer-to-peer networks for illegal activity, and he wants to spend $1 billion in tax dollars to help make that happen.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names.

But in about half its cases, for purposes of longer-term tracking, the software captures "unique serial numbers" from the person's computer and keeps a tally of how many allegedly illicit files that particular user is trading.

MySQL will start offering some features (specifically ones related to online backups) only in MySQL Enterprise.

The user base for MySQL Enterprise is much smaller than for MySQL Community. That means these critical features will be tested by only a few of their customers. So, in effect, they will be giving their paying customers real, true, untested code.

They will indeed develop new features in MySQL Enterprise (in 6.0), without making them available in MySQL Community.

DreamWorks has acquired the rights to Ghost in the Shell and has plans to produce a "3D Live Action" version of the popular anime. This happened apparently because Spielberg is a fan. He says "'Ghost in the Shell' is one of my favorite stories ... It's a genre that has arrived, and we enthusiastically welcome it to DreamWorks."

Seagate has fired off its first lawsuit at a maker of solid-state drives since CEO Bill Watkins hinted last month that the company might be forced into taking such action.

STEC told the New York Times that Seagate hadn't approached it to discuss resolving the matter out of court, but it's not as if the company didn't have any warning. Watkins told the world last month that lawsuits might be the outcome if Flash drives become too popular.