A district court in Boston has used the DMCA to grant a preliminary injunction against a third party service vendor who tried to fix StorageTek tape library backup systems for legitimate purchasers of the system.

The court found that third party service techs who used the key without StorageTek's permission "circumvented" to gain access to the copyrighted code in violation of the DMCA, even though they had the explicit permission of the purchasers to fix their machines.

If it stands up on appeal, it means StorageTek has a monopoly on service for all of its machines. No independent vendor will be able to compete with them for service contracts because no independent vendor will be authorized to "access" the maintenance code necessary to debug the machine.

The Court also found, in a bizarre twist of logic, that while it is legal to load a program into RAM for repairs, it's illegal to allow it to persist in RAM while you fix it.

The UK's mobile phone retailing industry kept up its appalling record of misleading the punters when Phones 4U got caught sending out a misleading text message. A customer received this text: - "Collect your free phone from phones 4 u next to wool worths [sic] you are due an upgrade its free!"

Naturally he bowled straight into the Liverpool store and naturally when the staff took a long, hard look at his individual circumstances, it was going to cost him £50.

He took his complaint straight to the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) who upheld the complaint. They told Phones 4U to seek guidance in future from the CAP Copy Advice team.

A typical CAP training sessions? Q: "What am I holding in my right hand, then?" A: "A multipurpose agricultural implement?" "No, it's a spade."

Antivirus companies on Monday raced to decipher the workings of the first worm to target smart phones, while saying that the current incarnation of the program poses little threat.

The worm program, dubbed Cabir by Russian antivirus company Kaspersky, apparently uses the Bluetooth short-range wireless feature of smart phones that run the Symbian operating system to detect other Symbian phones, and then transfers itself to the new host as a package file. While able to replicate the spread of the virus in research settings, antivirus companies have not found any evidence that the program is infecting smart phones outside of those limited test cases.

After infecting a phone, the program creates an application package file containing the worm and passes it to another phone over an automatically established Bluetooth connection, according to antivirus companies. The phone that received the program installs the application, thus infecting itself.

Just last month we were talking about how new evidence showed that brain controlled implants worked in the human brain, and now a company is moving forward with human brain control tests by implanting chips into the brains of people who are paralyzed people to see if they can control a computer with their thoughts. Some see this as a step forward, while others are afraid that it's going too fast - noting that any kind of problem could set back the entire space for years.

NEC Corp has developed a battery that can be recharged only in 30 seconds, company sources said. Called an organic radical battery, it can be recharged to the same level of power as that stored in nickel-hydrogen cells, which are widely used in digital cameras, portable MD players and other electronic devices.

The company plans to convert existing production facilities into ones able to manufacture the new product. The company expects the price of the new battery to be about the same as nickel-hydrogen cells when mass production starts, since it does not contain any expensive materials.

The company will initially try to commercialize the technology for using the battery as an emergency power source for computers, according to sources at NEC.

A US BIO battery company has managed to find $400,000 seed finance for its idea of powering a high tech battery on beer and vodka.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch a university student looked no further than the bottom of his glass to develop a cell phone or laptop computer fuel cell using vodka, beer or any other ethanol-based substance.

St. Louis University student Nick Aker and an assistant chemistry professor Shelley Minteer developed the biofuel cell in class. Akers said that once the biofuel cell is charged, it could run a cell phone for a week or a laptop all day before needing another drink.

BioGenerator President and Chief Executive Pat Snider who has stumped up $400,000 seed finance said he expects a swift half return on the investment. "This is not going to be something that is going to take 10 years," he said.

Giant PC firm Dell has finally admitted that its PowerEdge 1650 servers made between January 1 and May 6 have a Hunter Thompson tendency to overheat, smoke and shut-down.

The problem first turned up in Australia, where a Dell spokesperson told smh.com.au the company had advised all affected customers to have these motherboards replaced and has contacted all affected customers.

Until the motherboard is replaced, customers can continue to use the systems as normal. That is if they are prepared to put up with a hot, smoking server which shuts down.

However a poster to the Full-Disclosure mailing list claimed the problem was more widespread than Dell admitted. He thought that Dell 1600 servers also showed such anti social tendencies too.

However Dell was insistent that only the 1650 suffers from this anti-social habit.

The decision by Wal-Mart (WMT) and other retailers to require that their largest suppliers attach inventory-tracking RFID (radio frequency identification) chips to their products is creating a brand-new chip market -- one with a bright future. RFID chips, whose data can be grabbed by electronic readers, could one day hold all of an individual's personal information. In theory, that means they could displace credit cards, medical-insurance cards -- perhaps even wallets, predicts Scott McGregor, CEO of Philips Semiconductors, a division of Koninklijke Philips Electronics (PHG) and the world's No. 1 maker of RFID chips, which are also known as "tags."

And for a lot of makers of sports shoes, RFID provides added benefit to customers. The average life of a sports-shoe model is about three months. Say that when your shoes wear out, you want a similar pair. It's incredibly difficult today for the retailer to tell a customer which new model corresponds to the old one. But we could fix that with RFID. That's a great sales tool.

Also, privacy concerns around RFID tags are a little like concerns about supermarket scanners years ago. When the laser scanners were coming out, everybody was saying, retailers are going to collect information about what you buy. And none of that happened. I think the situation with RFID is similar.

Thailand's agriculture minister has stepped in to block a plan to embed monitoring microchips in fighting cocks.

According to www.Kstat.com, Sora-at Klinpratoom was worried that the silicon chips could hamper the ability of the cocks to impress other birds.

Thai authorities decided to start getting bird owners to register their cocks as part of an effort to prevent diseases after the recent bird flu outbreak.

The Cabinet has already given approval in principle to the plan. But the agriculture minister says according to his information the chips "tickle" the cocks. Apparently, a tickled cock slows down when it approaches its opponent and loses its spunk.

A robot for "printing" houses is to be trialled by the construction industry. It takes instructions directly from an architect's computerised drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs.

The key to the technology is a computer-guided nozzle that deposits a line of wet concrete, like toothpaste being squeezed onto a table. Two trowels attached to the nozzle then move to shape the deposit. The robot repeats its journey many times to raise the height and builds hollow walls before returning to fill them.

Engineer Behrokh Khoshnevis, at the University of Southern California, has been perfecting his "contour crafter" for more than a year. "The goal is to be able to completely construct a one-story, 2000-square foot home on site, in one day and without using human hands," he says.