The discs are protected by an anti-piracy system called BD+.

When it launched in 2007, developers bragged that it would not be cracked for 10 years.

SlySoft says it hacked the BD+ technology in November of last year.

It decided to wait for the result of the “format war” between Blu-ray and HD DVD before releasing a full product.
BD+ is designed to react to attempts on its technology.

Its developers say they can re-lock copied discs, making them unusable in the future.
SlySoft reckons it is prepared for this.

Peer van Heuen from the company said: “The worst-case scenario is our boss locks us up with only bread and water in the company dungeon for three months until we are successful again.”

The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 32, from Minnesota, to pay for offering to share 24 specific songs online - a cost of $9,250 per song.

The fine could have actually been the millions, as record companies said she illegally shared a total of 1,702 songs.

Ms Thomas was the first person accused of illegal file-sharing who decided to fight the case in court.

About 26,000 lawsuits have been filed against alleged file-sharers, but most defendants settle privately by paying a fine amounting to a few thousand dollars.
However, contesting the charge and losing will cost Jammie Thomas a staggering 222,000 dollars.

Her lawyer, Brian Toder, told the Associated Press Ms Thomas was reduced to tears by the verdict.

“This is a girl that lives from paycheque to paycheque, and now all of a sudden she could get a quarter of her paycheque garnished for the rest of her life,” he said.
The US record industry said people would understand the verdict.

Richard Gabriel, a lawyer for the music companies, said the verdict was important.

“This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK,” he told AP.

He said no decision had yet been made about what the record companies would do, if anything, to pursue collecting the money from Ms Thomas.

The function will at first allow anyone who is not registered with the site to search for a specific person.

More controversially, in a month’s time, the feature will also allow people to track down Facebook members via search engines such as Google.

The firm said that the information being revealed is minimal.

The public search listing will show the thumbnail picture of a Facebook member from their profile page as well as links allowing people to interact with them.

But, in order to add someone as a friend or send them a message, the person will have to be registered with Facebook.

Users who want to restrict what information is available to the public or opt out of the feature altogether can change their privacy settings. They have a one month period to do so.

Despite assurances from Facebook, critics have expressed disappointment at the move.

“This move transforms Facebook from being a social network to being a quasi-White Pages of the web,” commented technology writer Om Malik in his blog GigaOm.

Mr Malik, and others, are concerned about the data trail that people are routinely leaving behind them on social networking and other sites.

There are concerns that personal content will become aggregated for marketing or other purposes.

Security experts have pointed out the dangers of publicising your date of birth - one of the options in a Facebook profile - because of the way it has been traditionally used as a way of identifying bank customers.

Facebook began life as a way of keeping US college students in touch with each other. Devised by Harvard drop-out Mark Zuckerberg, the site now accounts for 1% of all net traffic and is the sixth most visited site in the USA.

The social networking site is thought to have about 39 million members worldwide. Numbers have jumped since the firm removed the need to have an academic e-mail address in September 2006.

Founder of Facebook.com, Mark Zuckerberg, has been accused of illegally using both the concept and source code from competing site Connectu.com

Scottish research found that some workers are viewing their inbox up to 40 times each hour, leaving them tired and frustrated - as well as unproductive.

According to the survey, females felt particularly hard-hit by the deluge.

Internet psychologists said people should relax, and not take their work quite so seriously.

“If you think about the e-mails you receive, how many of them need a reply instantly?” said Graham Jones.

“How many of those e-mails that you send need to go exactly right now? Probably very, very few indeed.”

Only 38% of workers were apparently relaxed enough to wait a day or longer before replying to an e-mail, according to the study of 200 people carried out at Glasgow and Paisley universities.

“E-mail is the thing that now causes the most problems in our working lives,” said lead researcher Karen Renaud, a computer scientist.

“It’s an amazing tool but it’s got out of hand.”

Experts suggest to simply check your e-mail less often.

The advice is to set aside two or three dedicated e-mail reading times each day.

Linux is a free, open source operating system developed as an alternative to systems such as Microsoft’s Windows.

Novell will provide the Linux software on the laptops, which are due to go on sale at the end of the year.

Earlier in the year computer maker Dell also announced it would start shipping PCs with the Linux OS installed.

Lenovo announced its plans at the start of LinuxWorld, an annual conference held in San Francisco.

Dell introduced Linux-powered PCs after chief executive Michael Dell asked customers for suggestions for new products on the company’s website: Linux PCs were the most-requested item.

Linux was first released to the public almost 16 years ago and was developed by Linus Torvalds, who wanted to create a non-commercial alternative to an operating system used in many universities.

Linux can be freely distributed, modified and used by anyone who wants it. It is predominantly used to power web servers and while its growth on desktop computers has been limited to technology specialists, its adoption by Lenovo and Dell points to wider acceptance.

Analysts believe that approximately 6% of computers users run Linux, and a similar par with Apple Macs.

Reports suggest that the web colossal is developing a series of “GPhones”, centred on its mobile services, such as search, e-mail and maps.

In a statement, Google said it was working with carriers, phone makers and content providers to “bring its services to users everywhere”.
The firm would not say if its efforts included plans for a physical handset.

The Google statement said: “What our users and partners are telling us is that they want Google search and Google applications on mobile, and we are working hard every day to deliver that.”

Google has recently partnered with Apple to produce services, such as e-mail and maps, for its iPhone handset.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said recently that more Google services for the iPhone would be rolled out.

Reports have circulated since last year that Google was working with mobile phone manufacturers to produce a handset.

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday said Google had invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” in the project and was involved in discussions with T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless.

The newspaper said the company was seeking to grab a bigger slice of the increasingly important mobiile phone advertising market.

Market research firm eMarketer told the paper that the mobile ad industry would be worth $14bn (£7bn) by 2011.

Last month, Google said it was attracted to bid for wireless spectrum licenses in the US, which could be the first step towards running its own mobile network.

Google said its interest was in ensuring that customers would be able to buy any mobile device to connect to the full capability of the internet.

At present, wireless carriers routinely try to restrict which models of cell phones that can be used on their networks.

They also often limit the software that can be downloaded onto them, such as ringtones, music or web browser software.

Panorama found that films showing vicious fights between children are regularly uploaded to sharing websites.

Police say the companies should monitor what is posted on their sites and remove any violent or criminal content.

But YouTube, one of the sites found with footage, says it relies on users to “flag up” inappropriate films. Given the sheer volume of video posted self policing would be difficult and consume large resources.

The investigation found films showing children as young as 11 and 12 punching and kicking other youngsters.

One showed a youth brandishing a handgun and smashing it against a police car.

Another shows a laughing teenager jumping on a police car and shattering the windscreen.

Deputy Chief Constable Brian Moore, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said it was the responsibility of internet companies to search their sites for videos of violence and crime.

They should then pass appropriate details to police.

He said: “They are responsible for what is on their products - they are making a profit from this.

“We would question who is in a financially better position to police the likes of YouTube - those in the private sector, who are earning huge amounts of money, or police forces which are currently having to stretch budgets.”

But YouTube, said it did not employ anyone to police what is posted. The site, which is owned by Google, claims pre-screening content is a form of censorship which is not the role of a private company.

A spokesman said the website takes down videos but only if they are flagged by users and subsequently found to breach their guidelines.

“On YouTube these rules prohibit content like pornography or gratuitous violence. We don’t want that sort of material on our site, and nor does our community.”

The YouTube spokesman added the website would help police if they were approached for information.

Another website which features in the programme, Liveleak, said it checks all videos before hosting them.

Hayden Hewitt, co-founder of the website, defended the inclusion of such fights including one in which a girl had to go to hospital with a detached retina.
He said: “Of course it’s horrible. It’s not about me morally defending anything here.

“We have to take a stance of saying ‘look all this is happening, this is real life, this is going on, we’re going to show it.”‘

Nintendo’s net profits hit 80.25bn yen (approximately £323.9m) in the three months to June, up from 15.55bn yen in the same period a year earlier.

The Wii has been successful in reaching non-traditional gamers such as women and older players. Nintendo has also enjoyed strong sales of its DS lite console.

The company has now raised its annual profit forecasts by 40%.

Nintendo now predicts net profits will rise to 245bn yen for the year to March 2008, above the current forecast of 175bn yen.

The company said it sold 3.43 million Wii machines worldwide in the April-to-June quarter, meaning that it had now sold 9.27 million consoles since its launch.

Nintendo is now expecting to sell 16.5 million Wii machines in the year to March 2008, up from a previous forecast of 14 million.

Hardware suppliers have been given the go ahead to ramp-up production of all of the components needed to build millions of the low-cost machines.

Previously, the organisation behind the scheme said that it required orders for 3m laptops to make production viable.

The first machines should be ready to put into the hands of children in developing countries in October 2007.

“There’s still some software to write, but this is a big step for us,” Walter Bender, head of software development at One Laptop per Child (OLPC), said.

For 2007-8 as a whole, the software colossus reported a $14bn profit on total sales of more than $51.1bn.

Profits in the past three months were dented by costs stemming from repairs to the Xbox 360 computer games console.

Microsoft said its core businesses were “healthy” and it would continue to invest in growth opportunities.

Microsoft acknowledged this month that it is facing a bill of more than 1 billion US dollars to cover the cost of offering extended warranties to Xbox 360 owners after admitting problems with the console.

Excluding these charges, the firm would have made a fourth quarter profit of $3.78bn.

Sales from the division which includes Vista, launched in January, rose 14% to $38.1bn in the past three months.

Total sales rose 13% to $13.3bn over the same period. Microsoft said that it had had an extremely strong year.

“Surpassing $50bn in annual sales is a testament to the innovation and value that our product groups delivered into the marketplace,” said chief operating officer Kevin Turner.

In the upcoming year, Microsoft said it expected sales to rise to between $56bn and $57bn.

Microsoft shares rose nearly 2% before it announced its results but fell in after-hours trading amid concerns it had only met market expectations not exceeded them.

Hopefully they will invest some of that $3bn in improving Microsoft adcenter, what a load of crap that is!