Since the Big Four record label cartel started its sue 'em all marketing campaign, several victims have said they’d stand up to its RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). So far, none of them has due, primarily, to their lack of financial and, hence, legal resources. But this may change with New York's Patricia Santangelo.

The lawsuits are a PR blitz custom-designed to indelibly mark men, women and children who share music and other files with each other online as vicious, hardened criminals out to deliberately bilk the honest, but beleagured, entertainment industry and its hard-pressed workers.

It's clearly impossible for an ordinary person with ordinary resources to take on the multi-billion-dollar iindustry with its bottomless pockets and legions of highly paid lawyers. Not that this stops RIAA spinsters from implying thousands of people have been found 'guilty' of the crime of sharing music with each other, an assertion faithfully repeat by the mainstream media as though it comes from credible sources. And the time-honoured maxim Innocent until proven Guilty goes by the board.

The RIAA has unleashed yet another round of copyright infringement lawsuits against 754 people. Evidently they still had some customers that they had to make an example of. I guess the RIAA never saw the study that says that file sharers spent more money buying music online than those who don't share music at all.

The South Korean government is to take the US to task over Google Earth on the grounds that the globetrotting online service shows sensitive military installations laid bare in a way which might benefit North Korea.

Presidential spokesman Kim Man-soo said earlier this week the powers that be were planning on "raising concerns with US authorities" after South Korean newspapers highlighted the shocking fact that Google Earth (free software download, but Mac and Linux users move along, nothing to see here...) showed "images of the presidential Blue House and military bases".

Well, since South Korea is still (technically) at war with its jolly northern neighbour, we suppose it's conceivable that Google might inadvertantly aid the Godless Commie Pyongyang regime were it to decide to march on Seoul, red banners aflutter.

Hmmm. Regarding the Blue House, we did a quick swoop over Seoul looking for a big blue building with a stretch limo parked outside, but got distracted when we discovered another stucture which seems to house South Korea's entire vintage air reserve, including a very poorly-camouflaged B52.

An outfit which is experimenting with using huge high definition tellies to simulate a 3d virtual environment, thinks that it is getting closer to creating a Star Trek style holodeck.

Holodek’s test site has 42 gaming stations with PCs and high definition screens ranging in size from 17 inches (43cm) to 20 feet wide and 12 feet high.

However it has also built something called the sphere, which is 20 feet in diameter and eventually will offer a 360° view. It works a bit like a flight simulator.

Fewls, don't they realise that if something ever went wrong on a Starship, it was usually as a direct result of a sodded up holodeck. The Enterprise and Voyager would have had far less problems if they had pulled the plug on the thing.

NASA is preparing to send the New Horizons probe to Pluto. It will be the first earth device to get intimate with the icy planet. And you can be there too - or, at least, your name. NASA is asking everyone to send them their names, which will be attached in the space device. The New Horizons probe will be launched in January 2006 to explore Pluto and the Kuiper belt, in the outskirts of the Solar System. It is expected that the probe will return to earth in approximately 50 thousand years.

Dutch authorities are investigating plans for a contestant to give birth on the reality TV show Big Brother.

Newly-launched TV station Talpa will broadcast the series from Sunday. The pregnant contestant is due to give birth in six weeks.

The Christian Democratic party has condemned the idea of a birth on the live show, but the 27-year-old pregnant contestant, identified in newspaper De Telegraaf as Tanja, defended the idea.

The show, which has become increasingly controversial, first ran in the Netherlands in 1999 and has since been broadcast by countries around the globe.

A male goat that reportedly gives milk has become a popular attraction in Brazil.

The goat's owner Luciano Gomes, from Melancias, is touring the country to show it off.

He told Terra Noticias Populares: "When I bought it, it already had two small teats and when I fondled them lots of milk came out."

"It is the only billy goat in the world capable of giving milk, I wouldn't sell it for all the money in the world."

Vet Flaviano Moreira commented: "It is totally abnormal for a goat to give milk, I wouldn't go near it!"

Bright lights and easy to use software helped University of Cambridge researchers defeat tamper-proofing on letters telling people their new Pin.

Banks and many other organisations use secure stationery to give customers new pins or passwords that is designed to make it obvious if the envelope has been opened and the number or word has been read by someone else.

Many were defeated using bright lights shone at an angle on to the paper. Other Pins could be read by scanning the letter and then adjusting some of the image qualities in popular programs such as GIMP, Adobe Photoshop and Paintshop Pro.

Hollywood studios filed a new round of lawsuits against file swappers on Thursday, for the first time using peer-to-peer companies' own data to track down individuals accused of trading movies online.

The group previously said in February that a Texas court had ordered that the server logs of one big site, called LokiTorrent, be turned over to Hollywood investigators. An MPAA spokeswoman said that none of Thursday's suits were related to that action, however.

"Internet movie thieves be warned: You have no friends in the online community when you are engaging in copyright theft," MPAA Senior Vice President John Malcom said in a statement.

A Chinese pensioner can lift up to 14 bricks with a 'horn' that's grown on his forehead.

Wang Ying, 73, has been practicing Kung Fu, especially the study of Qi, since he was just eight-years-old.

But his studies took a new direction after a 5cm long tumour grew on his forehead.

Doctors told him they could not operate on the tumour because of its location.

So Wang has incorporated it into his Qi routine.

He lives in a farm in Pei County, Jiangsu Province, and walked for 18 days to Nanjing to show off his stunt.