Copies of the game on file-sharing networks and newsgroups are being downloaded by thousands of people.

At one point on Sunday, more than 50,000 copies of the game, which weighs in at more than 1.5 gigabytes, were being downloaded.

Translated in lost sales, this amounts to $2.7m (£1.5m), if all these people instead bought the game.

"Despite the relatively low price of PC games, many gamers are still choosing to resort to piracy rather than pay for legitimate boxed copies," said Matt Pierce, publisher of the computer games magazine, PC Gamer.

"Whereas in the case of Doom 3, it almost certainly won't prevent the game being a massive seller, it will still cost both the publishers and developers of the game millions of dollars in lost revenue, an outcome that can only serve to harm future game development on the PC," he told BBC News Online.

The Mozilla Foundation announced the Mozilla Security Bug Bounty Program, an initiative that rewards users who identify and report security vulnerabilities in the open source project's software. Sponsered by Linspire, Inc and Mark Shuttleworth, the program will give $500 to users who report a significant bug in Mozilla software. Users who identify security bugs in Mozilla software are encouraged to go to the Security Projects Page for more information.

The memory cards in most cameras are virtually indestructible, found Digital Camera Shopper magazine.

They were dipped into cola, put through a washing machine, dunked in coffee, trampled by a skateboard, run over by a child's toy car and given to a six-year-old boy to destroy.

Most of them did fail to get through two additional tests - being smashed by a sledgehammer and being nailed to a tree.

Even then, data experts Ontrack Data Recovery were able to retrieve photos from the xD and Smartmedia cards.

"We've tested the durability of the leading memory card forms and have found that even if your camera doesn't remain intact, your precious memories should," said Geoff Harris, editor of Digital Camera Shopper.

A federal court this week shut down a big-time Florida spammer and froze his assets, using the CAN-SPAM Act to put a stop to his mass mailings. Creaghan A. Harry is "responsible for what likely amounts to millions of illegal spam messages," said the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a statement.

The FTC filed a complaint in a Chicago federal court July 21, alleging that Harry used a slew of tactics that violate the CAN-SPAM Act, including spoofing forging return addresses and sending messages through hijacked computers, dubbed "open proxies."

On Tuesday, a U.S. District Court Judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting Harry from further spamming and blocked his assets, which had been transferred to a bank account in Latvia. If Harry is convicted, those monies would be used to refund consumers who bought the phony products.

When was the last time you saw John Kerry on his knees before world leaders, clad in S&M gear and with a ball gag in his mouth? Or eyed President Bush looking sheepish in a red dunce cap?

But while about 25 million viewers have been clogging JibJab to chuckle at the film's South Park-like Flash animation and juvenile insults (Bush labels Kerry a "liberal sissy," and Kerry responds by calling Bush a "right-wing nut job"), the Spiridellises aren't exactly laughing their way back to the drawing board.

About a week ago, the brothers were served with a cease-and-desist order on behalf of Ludlow Music, demanding they remove This Land from their website. LiCalsi said Ludlow has not filed a lawsuit yet against JibJab and hopes to resolve the case without taking that step.

LiCalsi wrote, "We further demand an accounting for all income received from the exploitation of the unauthorized movie. In the event that we do not receive written confirmation by July 30, 2004, that JibJab will comply with the foregoing, we may conclude that all steps short of litigation are exhausted."

It's unfortunate that companies still feel the need to equate patents to "innovation" when the opposite is often true. These days, unfortunately, many companies feel the need to get patents simply as a defensive measure. Whether for defense or offense, it appears that Bill Gates believes Microsoft needs more patents.

Some recently noted Microsoft patents include saving the name of a game you're playing, showing that someone is "typing a message" in IM software, thread based email, writing an application in HTML, grouping programs together in the taskbar, pronouns used in programming and the concept of giving "kudos" points for style and flair. Well, kudos to Microsoft then, on the style and flair with which they've been granted so many questionable patents.

DoubleClick Inc., the company that provides online advertising services for some of the nation's most popular Web sites, was the target of a sophisticated
attack today, the third time in two months that hackers have targeted a major player in the commercial Internet.

Among the sites hardest hit were those of Nortel Networks, Gateway Inc., MCI Inc., CNN.com and Schwab.com, according to Keynote. washingtonpost.com also was
loading slowly for several hours earlier today before the company blocked DoubleClick's ads from running on the site.

The attack on DoubleClick is another sign that attackers are beginning to target key Internet pressure points that -- when squeezed -- darken the Internet
for most users, said Johannes Ullrich, chief technology officer for the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center.

The Stargate SG-1 Information Archive is reporting that the Feds filed charges against Adam McGaughey, creator of SG1Archive.com. The website is a fan site for the television show Stargate SG-1. The charges allege that Adam used the website to engage in Criminal Copyright Infringement and Trafficking in Counterfeit Services. Two interesting things about the charges are that they were apparently set in motion by a complaint by our friends at the MPAA and the FBI invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP. Is copyright infringment now a terrorist act?

The Google web site was disabled for much of Monday after a new virus flooded its servers with search requests for email addresses.

Like previous versions of the virus, MyDoom.o rifles through the email address book of an infected computer to find its next victims. But it also extracts domain names, for example newscientist.com or aol.com, and feeds these into search engines, in the hope of harvesting new email addresses from message boards or personal home pages.

Unlike many viruses, MyDoom.o does not exploit a software bug, but is spread when a user clicks on an email attachment. The virus also installs a "back door", allowing a virus writer to control the computer remotely.

Cunningly, the file is hidden in a message which appears to come from a system administrator, for example "the team at newscientist.com". The email warns the user that his machine is being used as a spam bot.

The smallest, lightest animal with a backbone has been described for the first time, by scientists in the US.

The minuscule fish, called a stout infantfish, is only about 7mm (just over a quarter of an inch) long.

It lives around Australia's Great Barrier Reef and has snatched the "world's smallest vertebrate" title from the 1cm-long dwarf goby fish.

Its tiny frame is matched by its short lifespan, which is thought to be a mere two months. This quick turnover might actually work in the fish's favour, allowing it to keep up with a world that is changing fast.