Minneapolis, Minnesota (AP) -- Researchers say they have produced hydrogen from ethanol in a prototype reactor small enough and efficient enough to heat small homes and power cars.

The reactor is a relatively tiny 2-foot-high apparatus of tubes and wires that creates hydrogen from corn-based ethanol. A fuel cell, which acts like a battery, then generates power.

They also believe their technology could be used to convert ethanol to hydrogen at fuel stations when cars that run solely on hydrogen enter the mass market.

Hydrogen does not emit any pollution or greenhouse gases. But unlike oil or coal, hydrogen must be produced -- there are no natural stores of it waiting to be pumped or dug out of the ground.

Neowin has learned of shocking and potentially devastating news. It would appear that two packages are circulating on the internet, one being the source code to Windows 2000, and the other being the source code to Windows NT. At this time, it is hard to establish whether or not full code has leaked, and this will undoubtedly remain the situation until an attempt is made to compile them. Microsoft are currently unavailable for comment surrounding this leak so we have no official response from them at the time of writing.

This leak is a shock not only to Neowin, but to the wider IT industry. The ramifications of this leak are far reaching and devastating. This reporter does not wish to be sensationalist, but the number of industries and critical systems that are based around these technologies that could be damaged by new exploits found in this source code is something that doesn't bare thinking about.

Illegal logging is destroying the equatorial rain forests of Indonesian Borneo, bringing the island, once known as the lungs of Asia, to the brink of an ecological disaster.

The illegal timber is turned into plywood and is exported to other parts of Asia. It is also used to build furniture for Japanese, European and U.S. markets. The island of Kalimantan's valuable old growth, called meranti (Philippine mahogany), is used for hardwood flooring and provides wood trim for luxury automobiles.

But Curran said she believes that the real causes of the destruction of the forest are international demand for the timber, a massive industry suffering from a lack of legal timber, and corruption that started during, but is not limited to, the former Suharto dictatorship.

Over the past two decades, the volume of timber harvested on Borneo exceeded that of all tropical wood exports from Latin America and Africa combined. At its height in the mid-1990s it was a $9 billion-a-year industry. Now it's nearly gone -- more than 90 percent of the Indonesia's timber production is illegal.

Microsoft Corp. last night confirmed that portions of the source code for two versions of its Windows operating system have leaked onto the Internet, a security breach that could give hackers important intelligence about how to exploit flaws in software run by many of the world's computers.

A leak of any portion "could dramatically increase the probability that new zero-day vulnerabilities will be found," said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a security training group based in Bethesda.

Thor Larholm, senior security researcher at Newport Beach, Calif.-based PivX Solutions, said the Windows source code file being traded on the Internet appears to be roughly 660 megabytes in size, about one CD-ROM's worth of data. That is far short of the estimated 40 gigabytes of data that make up the entire Windows code.

DJ Danger Mouse's recent Grey Album, which remixes Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles White Album, has been hailed as a innovative hip-hop triumph. Despite that and the fact that only 3,000 copies of the album are in circulation, EMI sent cease and desist letters yesterday to Danger Mouse and the handful of stores that were selling the album, demanding that the album be destroyed.

"It’s clear that this work devalues neither of the originals. There is no legitimate artistic or economic reason to ban this record—this is just arbitrary exertion of control," said Nicholas Reville, Downhill Battle co-founder. "The framers of the constitution created copyright to promote innovation and creativity. A handful of corporations have radically perverted that purpose for their own narrow self interest."

The Grey Album has been widely shared on filesharing networks such as Kazaa and Soulseek, and has garnered critical acclaim in Rolling Stone (which called it "the ultimate remix record" and "an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time"), the New Yorker, the Boston Globe (which called it the "most creatively captivating" album of the year), and other major news outlets.

In 1790 when Congress passed the first Copyright Act, the copyright term was 14 years, renewable for another 14 if the copyright holder was still living. In 2002, under the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, the copyright term was increased 20 years, raising copyright protection for corporations from to 95 years.

The problem starts when users receive an instant message that appears to come from someone on their Buddy List (a list of friends and co-workers who also use the AOL Instant Messenger service). The message reads "check this out" and includes a link that contains a reference to "osama capture.php."

If users click on the link, a program that is supposedly a game asks permission to be downloaded and installed onto their computers. Installing the game gives the company that produces it -- purportedly, an outfit called PSD Tools -- permission to display ads on the users' computers. In addition, the software spreads the "fun links" to everyone on the users' Buddy Lists.

"While many who have installed it are describing the game as a virus, the truth is that by neglecting to read the terms of service included with the game, they have given the program's distributors permission to take over their computers," said Matty Janko, a systems administrator whose 23-computer network was invaded by the game Wednesday.

The technique, called "compositional analysis of bullet lead" (CABL), profiles the contents of seven metals which contaminate bullets when they are produced from melted battery lead. CABL implies guilt by revealing, for example, that bullets found in boxes belonging to a suspect are "analytically indistinguishable" from bullets found at the crime scene.

Since developing the technique in the 1960s, the FBI has presented incriminating CABL evidence in numerous murder cases. This has to be tempered in the future, says the report, published on Tuesday by the US National Research Council.

The panel found that bullets from different sources get mixed together in individual boxes as ammunition is distributed. The FBI itself found bullets from 14 different sources in one individual box, say the researchers.

Also, millions of identical bullets can come from a single smelting operation, and so an individual box of them cannot be incontrovertibly linked to a specific crime scene.

The U.S. District Court in Seattle ruled Wednesday that the jury in the case should "consider whether the Windows mark was generic" before Windows 1.0 entered the marketplace in 1985. It also said that even if the "primary significance" of the term is not generic today--that is, has been displaced by the proprietary use--the trademark is not necessarily valid.

Daniel Harris, Lindows' lead trial counsel, said in a statement that the win was a major blow to Microsoft. "The court's ruling confirms that a company, no matter how much money it spends, cannot buy a word out of the English language. These repeated filings by Microsoft are just another attempt to deplete our resources by dragging these legal proceedings on for as long as possible."

Microsoft, which hopes to ban the company from using its Windows-spoofing name, has had some court rulings go in its favor. For example, the Benelux injunction forced Lindows to stop selling or advertising its products, cancel all outstanding orders and stop users in the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium from accessing its site.

Fictional aliens come in all shapes and sizes - but what would a creature from another planet really look like? Would we even recognise one if we met it? In a new book published this month, science fiction writers Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart set out to find the answers.

The first thing to get straight when thinking about life on other planets, according to Jack Cohen, is that it will almost certainly not be humanoid.

"We've got to get away from all those comfortable ideas that aliens will be just like us, except for a few minor differences that don't challenge our imagination."

"They might look exactly like people. Or cats. Or houseflies. Or they could be invisible, or lurking just outside our space time continuum."

Mr Bush said he was a "war president" and the top issue for voters should be the use of American power in the world.

He said he had not called Saddam Hussein an "imminent threat" but said it would have been too late if the US had waited until the danger was that close.

"I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind," he said.

Challenged by interviewer, Tim Russert, that no weapon had been found, Mr Bush replied: "What wasn't wrong was the fact that he had the ability to make a weapon."

On his own military service, Mr Bush criticised the senior Democrats who have suggested that he did not show up for duty in the Alabama National Guard in 1972 where he served during the Vietnam era.