The Crocodile Man, Steve Irwin, is dead. He was killed in a freak accident in Cairns, police sources said. It appeared that he was killed by a sting-ray barb that went through his chest, Queensland Police Inspector Russell Rhodes said.

He was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas where he had been filming an underwater documentary when it occurred. Ambulance officers confirmed they attended a reef fatality this morning at Batt Reef off Port Douglas.

It is understood Mr Irwin was killed instantly.

A source said Mr Irwin was already dead when his body was brought onto the Isle.

The almighty vole has decided that guitarist Robert Fripp's work on the opening tune for Vista is so good, it will be compulsory and won't be able to be switched off.

Steve Ball, group program manager for the Windows Audio Video Excellence team told punters that Windows Vista should present a "common, and beautiful, face to the world." In other words, Microsoft has spent shedloads on its corporate image and you are darn well going to appreciate it.

Ball said that there will be a pre-wired sound that plays when the system is ready for you to logon which will be non-customisable, just like the X-Box. He said that there was no big deal about it. Sony and Toshiba both have compulsory sounds.

Ever since the RIAA started taking on file sharing, it's always acted as if it were entitled to all sorts of things it isn't: access to the names associated with IP addresses without filing lawsuits, private info on the people they're suing and even the aid of the FBI in what's clearly a civil, not criminal, dispute. What's amusing about this is that the entertainment industry likes to accuse those who push for a fairer balance in intellectual property laws as having a "sense of entitlement" to free stuff. The latest case involves someone accused of file sharing. The RIAA wants to examine her computer, and for very good reasons, she feels uncomfortable with just letting them scour her hard drive. As a compromise her lawyers suggested a neutral expert -- which seems much more reasonable. Instead, as Nick Burns submits to us, the RIAA has filed a response explaining why they will not accept a neutral independent forensics expert. It's difficult to see how they can legitimately complain about a neutral person examining the drive. However, this isn't the first time this has happened. The last time, the judge actually went in the other direction entirely, telling the accused that she could just hire her own expert to examine her drive, and the RIAA should pay for it.

Back in January we noted the MPAA's double standard, when it came to unauthorized copies of movies. The same MPAA that goes around telling schoolchildren if you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it and once said that fair use doesn't exist. Well, it turns out (of course) they meant for other people. That's why they made unauthorized copies of the movie "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" -- a documentary about (aha!) the MPAA itself.

The movie also discovered that the MPAA's "appeals board" is made up a combination of movie execs and two representatives from religious groups. For a group so powerful, you would think they'd have a bit more accountability. Unfortunately, as the review points out, there are some weaknesses and somewhat dishonest parts to the movie as well -- which take away from its overall credibility. However, it still sounds like it sheds a lot of light on how the MPAA goes about its movie ratings business.

Apple fanboys laughing at Microsoft's DRM being cracked by software called Fairuse will be strangely quiet today after it has been revealed that an Apple version has been made available.

QTFairUse6 strips the DRM from iTunes music and allows you to do anything you like with it. The crack will probably do more damage to music sales because iTunes music is more popular than Windows Media files.

The software adapts original code from previous attempts at cracking Apple's DRM and the result is somewhat complicated. It requires the use of Python 2.4 and several other tools and uses the information that is buffered after iTunes/QuickTime decodes the file.

It is also proof that hackers can bring down Apple's stuff if it is economically significant, it is just that Windows generally is a better target.

A security hole in the popular MySpace social networking site allowed users to view entries marked "private", a crucial protection for users aged under 16, according to weekend reports.

The profile of anyone under 16 was changed so that it was automatically set to "private", a status that users could previously choose, but which was not compulsory. Users over 18 attempting to contact users under 16 now have to type in the child's actual first and last name or email address in order to initiate contact, a move designed to protect children from unsolicited advances.

"Many myspacers use CSS [cascading style sheets] to hide their comments, friends list and blog links," wrote AtariBoy. "These elements are not deleted tho [sic] and are still available publicly to anyone. You can view them by one of two methods below."

It might have been a scene out of some movie about the Great Depression. Hundreds of frantic people tearing their hair out as they mob the doors to a bank, only to realize that the bank's owners, along with their money, had vanished into thin air.

This scene, however, took place not in some seemingly distant historical period, but much closer to home (for some of us). The location was EVE Online—a science-fiction-based MMORPG, and the bank was the Eve Intergalactic Bank—a privately run in-game institution that for several months convinced EVE Online players to deposit their spare "money" into accounts with the enticement of accruing several points of interest per month. That seemingly virtuous idea came to a crashing halt when the proprietor of the EIB, known to the game universe as "Cally," absconded with around 790 billion ISK-the currency of the EVE Online world.

EIB was supposed to function much as a real bank would, turning its assets into investment capital, then using the returns to pay interest to bank clients and provide a tidy profit to the bank itself. Instead, it functioned more like a 1980s-era savings and loan, with no FSLIC to protect the clients.

Legal merits aside, the public has become accustomed to the record labels going after peer-to-peer services and even individuals. But now it's shooting itself in the foot thanks to some overzealous attorneys.

A couple of weeks ago, the RIAA was both ridiculed and reviled over its continued action involving a deceased defendant. Now, the New York Times is reporting that the industry group is targeting sites used by musicians to teach each other how to play songs.

Even if the courts support the record labels' position, the industry may never fully recover from the ill will engendered by these types of action. At a time when the entertainment business needs to remake itself, it's not a great idea to alienate consumers any more than absolutely necessary.

PayPal has frozen Brit Mohammed Hassan's account and banned him from using the service if he refuses to fax the company a raft of personal information.

The online payments service told him his name is "similar to or a match to" a name on the US government's anti-terror assets freezing list.

"Access to your PayPal account has been denied because your name is similar to or a match to an entry on the Office of Foreign Assets Control Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. We are required to further verify your identity."

We contacted PayPal with a series of questions. They confirmed that in Mohammed Hassan's case, his account will be closed unless he faxes his passport to them - action he told us he is not willing to take on priniciple. Unlike banks, PayPal does not require identity verification to set up an account.

Mohammed works for the UK government, in a job which requires security clearance. He said: "I am not a terrorist or a criminal. How the hell can PayPal link me to that name on the SDN list, is it because my name is Arabic? Or is it because PayPal are just plain stupid?"

In early 2000, a computer hacker who used the now-defunct e-mail address unknownuser1069@hotmail.com seeded a Usenet newsgroup called alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen with a clever bit of malicious Windows software.

On July 16, 2000, "1069" sent e-mail to the Montgomery, Ala., Police Department saying, "I found a child molester on the Net."

At the urging of Montgomery Police Capt. Kevin Murphy, "1069" eventually turned over more and more information that led back to a computer owned by Bradley Joseph Steiger, who had worked as an emergency room physician in Alabama. The hacker's finds included information from Steiger's AT&T WorldNet account, records from his checking account, and a list of directories on his computer's hard drive where sexually explicit photographs were stored.

A year later, "1069" fingered another man, William Adderson Jarrett, who lived in the Richmond, Va., area. He again contacted Murphy, who started an investigation that led to Jarrett's arrest.

Instead of informing "1069" that he was committing federal felonies and should cease immediately, Murphy and the FBI encouraged the hacker to continue. The FBI wrote "1069" in January 2002: "The FACT still stands that you are not a citizen of the United States and are not bound by our laws. Our federal attorneys have expressed NO desire to charge you with any CRIMINAL offense. You have not hacked into any computer at the request of the FBI or other law (enforcement) agency. You have not acted as an agent for the FBI or other law enforcement agency. Therefore, the information you have collected can be used in our criminal trials."