Justices appeared divided, both worried that new lawsuits could stunt the next iPod, and also deeply troubled by what they see as Grokster's efforts to encourage rampant Internet piracy and profit from it. However they rule, it's unlikely to solve once and for all, internet copyright issues, say observers.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Learn all about Vogons, Deep Thought, and Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters in the guide to 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.'

Some blogs are endless diatribes from people with too much time on their hands, yet others are interesting and news breaking. I personally don't read too much unless they make headlines in revealing some new technology or the like. But if you like to blog or read other's blogs, here might be a site for you.

Today I have the unfortunate responsibility of informing you that there has been a decision made by bureaucrats of a Federal agency that takes away your right to privacy as guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

This decision was unilaterally made by the National Telecommunications and Information Association ("NTIA") -- http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ -- without hearings that would determine the impact on those affected, and delivered without notice -- in short, the NTIA decision was made without due process of any kind. This is exactly how our government is not supposed to work.

You've watched the movies. Now you can jack in and play it - no cranial implants required. After months of testing and two years since the sequels, the persistent virtual reality of "The Matrix Online" is available for U.S. gamers.

On March 29, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster Ltd., a landmark case that specifically addresses the legality of peer-to-peer Internet file-sharing services, but has broad implications for any technology that could potentially be used to infringe on copyrighted materials.

If people didn't fall for online scams, online scammers would take up another line of work. And really, it isn't terribly hard to protect yourself. If you do one thing today, print out the following list and tape it to your computer.

An internet entrepreneur is taking legal action against computer giant Apple over the iTunes domain name.

Leading global telecommunications companies, Internet service providers and network operators will begin sharing information on Internet attacks as members of a new group called the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance, according to a published statement from the new group.

In tax law, there is no clear, bright line that separates fun from profit, or a hobby from a business. But IRS instructions make it clear that all income - a category that includes bribes, gambling winnings, kickbacks and money made in illegal activities - can be taxed.

A decade ago, Netscape and Microsoft fought the browser wars. Now it's Web War II as three well-known technology names -- Google, Yahoo and, again, Microsoft -- fight out the battle of the search engines.

The body that oversees how the net works, grows and evolves says it has coped well with its growth in the last 10 years, but it is just the start.

Amazon.com Inc. has one potentially big advantage over its rival online retailers: It knows things about you that you may not know yourself.

Yahoo has created a search site for finding digital content that can be reused and shared for free.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company Thursday will announce Yahoo Search for Creative Commons, a service for searching millions of Web pages which include content that is available under the Creative Commons license.

INTERWEB OVERLORD ICANN gave the ok to the European Commission-appointed-organisation, Eurid, to go ahead and use the top level domain (TLD) name suffix .eu.

A draft .eu registration policy will be published in June and the ‘sunrise period’ will begin in "late 2005".

Those readers who feel that their lives are lacking a little excitement may well be interested in snapping up a possessed Stitch teddy bear which has terrorised a Canadian family to the point that they are now compelled to take the only course of action left to them - offload the voodoo devil cuddly toy on eBay before it decapitates the entire clan in an blood-splattered slashfest of mindless, knife-driven violence.

Five years ago this week, at the height of the dot-com stock frenzy, a young Bellevue company called InfoSpace was worth more than Boeing.

InfoSpace's success was an illusion, created by lies and deception. Built on internal company e-mails, confidential documents filed in court and scores of interviews, Naveen Jain and others created the illusion of revenues with accounting tricks and dubious deals.

A new UK website has launched, offering cash in exchange for second-hand phones.

Mopay says that if you send off your used phone - Freepost - to them they’ll send you a cheque in exchange. You can get a quote for your old phone online, before you send it in, and a cheque will arrive within an fortnight.

The New York Public Library is making more than 275,000 images available for personal use. Print and frame these vintage maps, rare prints and photos and create your own personal art gallery.

Link.

PLENTY OF US use Google's Gmail accounts on a daily basis. I, for instance, obtained my first account back in early June, 2004. It only took me 10 months to fill Google's until then considered "huge" storage space. See, one gigabyte is not so much after all when you start leaving all your email on the remote server.

Back in February, I started getting nervous when the space-metre at my Gmail account hit "95%". I asked my contact at Google in the UK what would happen when the account reached 100%. Would email start bouncing back to sender? Would I be alerted and given the option to "upgrade" for a fee to a bigger storage space?