Sony's DRM technology was a waste of time because it could be defeated by a bit of sticky tape.

According to the bean counters at Gartner, the stealth technology which has got Sony in such deep trouble was easily defeated by low tech means.

The big G says that all you have to do is stick a fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disc, rendering session 2 - which contains the self-loading DRM software, unreadable. The PC then treats the CD as a single-session music CD, and CD "rip" programs continue to work.

Of course the big G does not recommend that users try this, although we are curious to know if the suits there have tested it.

Of course if rules that the RIAA want accepted by congress get through, it will be possible for Sony to sue the makers of sticky tape for knowingly creating a tool for music piracy.

Under a new proposed Analog Hole bill, it will be illegal to make anything capable of digitizing video unless it either has all its outputs approved by the Hollywood studios, or is closed-source, proprietary and tamper-resistant. The idea is to make it impossible to create an MPEG from a video signal unless Hollywood approves it.

If this had been around in 1976, the VCR would have been illegal. Today, it would ban Mythtv, every tuner-card in the market, and boxes like ElGato's eyeTV the Slingbox and the Orb and the vPod.

The studios will "enable the business-model" of charging you money for the stuff that you get for free today. Here's a quote: "Doing this stuff has value, and if it has value, we should be able to charge money for it."

There are literally tens, if not hundreds of millions of products in the market today that don't obey the rules the studios want to embed in their video. If just one of those devices gets access to the video, then poof, it's on the Internet.

So what problem does this solve? In the parlance of the studios, this will "keep honest users honest." Which is to say that if you're someone who only wants to go on doing all the perfectly legal things that you can do with video today -- watch, store, time-shift, space-shift, format-shift -- then you will be prevented from doing so without permission.

However, if you're someone who actually wants to infringe copyright by downloading video from the Internet, this will have zero effect on you.

LG.Philips LCD and E Ink have built a 10.1" flexible electronic paper display. Less than 300 microns thick, the paper-white display is as thin and flexible as construction paper. With a 10.1" diagonal, the prototype achieves SVGA (600x800) resolution at 100 pixels per inch and has a 10:1 contrast ratio with 4 levels of grayscale.

E Ink Imaging Film is a novel display material that looks like printed ink on paper and has been designed for use in paper-like electronic displays. Like paper, the material can be flexed and rolled. As an additional benefit, the E Ink Imaging Film uses 100 times less energy than a liquid crystal display because it can hold an image without power and without a backlight.

"We all need flexible displays," said Russ Wilcox, CEO of E Ink, "They are 80% thinner and lighter than glass displays, and they do not break like glass displays. You can roll them up and put them in your pocket. You can curve them around the outside of a cellphone. Or you can throw them in your briefcase like a newspaper. As Galileo famously told us, the world is not flat."

A research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly hide in every document.

The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters. However, the nature of the private information encoded in each document was not previously known.

"We've found that the dots from at least one line of printers encode the date and time your document was printed, as well as the serial number of the printer," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth David Schoen.

"Underground democracy movements that produce political or religious pamphlets and flyers, like the Russian samizdat of the 1980s, will always need the anonymity of simple paper documents, but this technology makes it easier for governments to find dissenters," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "Even worse, it shows how the government and private industry make backroom deals to weaken our privacy by compromising everyday equipment like printers. The logical next question is: what other deals have been or are being made to ensure that our technology rats on us?"

Polk Audio LCi-IP Ultra High Performance In-Wall/ In-Ceiling Loudspeakers are the world's first active Internet Protocol-ready Loudspeakers. They were created for IP networked systems such as the ground-breaking NetStreams DigiLinx system but also provide vast convenience and performance benefits when used in analog systems. Integrated digital amplifiers eliminate remote amplifiers connected via hundreds of feet of lossy, performance-robbing speaker wires.

Christian Koch, 55, has angered animal rights people with his alternative fuel which is made from a secret recipe of garbage, mashed-up moggies, and other ingredients.

He said that his normal diesel-powered car has clocked 170,000 kilometres (106,000 miles) on pussy power without any major catastrophe.

His company "Alphakat GmbH", says his patented "KDV 500" machine can produce "bio-diesel" fuel at about 23 euro cents (30 cents) a litre.

It takes 20 dead cats added to the mix to produce enough fuel to fill up a 50-litre (11 gallon) tank. The engine really purrs apparently.

The HR-2 humanoid robot was constructed during a period of three months at Chalmers University in Sweden.

It has 22 degrees of freedom which enables it to easily move around imitating human motions. The robot is also equipped with stereovision giving it possibilities to perform hand-eye coordination. For that task an artificial neural network is evolved. Furthermore, the artificial brain is capable of tracking faces as well as recognising them. The HR-2 is also able to speak.

The website also contains a movie (35.5 Mb) of the HR-2 in action.

Japan has taken a step into the science-fiction world with the release of a 'robot suit' that can help workers lift heavy loads or assist people with disabilities climb stairs.

"Humans may be able to mutate into supermen in the near future," said Yoshiyuki Sankai, professor and engineer at Tsukuba University who led the project.

The 15-kilogram battery-powered suit, code-named Hal-5, detects muscle movements through electrical-signal flows on the skin surface and then amplifies them.

The prototype suit will be displayed at the world exposition that is currently taking place in Aichi Prefecture, Central Japan.

Japan has seen a growing market for technology geared toward the elderly, who are making up an increasing chunk of the population as fewer younger Japanese choose to start families.

A goldfish bowl in which 3D video images appear suspended in mid-air could help surgeons target tumours more precisely, air-traffic controllers prevent air accidents, and drug designers better understand the structures of promising molecules.

As Favalora walks around his display, a 3D computer model of a protein molecule hovers inside its smoky white soccer-ball-sized sphere. At the click of a mouse, the molecule disappears and is replaced by images of two airliners on a collision course in simulated 3D airspace.

A prototype version appeared in 2001 that could only show a low-resolution, static 3D image. Now, with the addition of dedicated graphics-processing hardware, the system is able to twist and turn images in real time at video rates.

Several applications have already emerged. Two oil companies, three medical centres and the US air force have bought or loaned Perspectas and are using them respectively to visualise slices of the Earth's crust from seismic data, human organs from MRI and CT scans, and squadrons of aircraft from radar data.

Since March the company has released at least 10 commercial titles - more than 1 million discs in total, featuring technology from UK anti-piracy specialist First4Internet that allows consumers to make limited copies of protected discs, but blocks users from making copies of the copies.

Early copy-protected discs as well as all Digital Rights Management (DRM)-protected files sold through online retailers like iTunes, Napster and others offer burning of tracks into unprotected WAV files.

Under the new solution, tracks ripped and burned from a copy-protected disc are copied to a blank CD in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format.