Sign in Japanese bookstore to digital shoplifters (translated of course): “Please refrain from recording information with camera-mounted cell phones and other devices.”

Yep. This is to stop cheapos from taking snapshots of magazine articles with their cell phones, which is apparently such a huge problem in Japan that the Japan Magazine Publishers Association had to ask stores to issue the warnings.

The Japanese have always been early adopters of new technology and they have come up with new and innovative ways to use their digital phones, those able to take pictures or videos and that are connected to the Internet.

It must be a sight to behold. A man or woman stands before a magazine rack, and instead of leafing through an article, begins taking snapshots of articles he's interested in with his cell phone. He then e-mails it home and after work, or during work, catches up on his reading.

Technology sometimes brings out the worst in human beings. If you think that ‘s strange behaviour, consider the actions (potentially criminal) of men at a Brighton pub in the United Kingdom last month who recorded the rape of a woman in the toilet with their cell phones and then apparently e-mailed the photos to friends.

Even if the men did not know they were witnessing a rape (police are unclear as to that point), what were they thinking when they took the pictures and then e-mailed them? Look bro, here I am in a Brighton toilet looking at a sex act?

On a less serious note, you can amuse or annoy the people around you with the sounds of wild animals through new cell phone ringing tones being released by the British Library. The first batch of 40 sounds has been released to two cell phone companies (iTouch and MobileTones.com), allowing you to buy the sounds - including the roar of a lion, the screech of a parrot and the grunt of a pig - for about US $6 each online.

MobileTones note that the sounds can only be used by the new generation of polyphonic cell phones, which produce layers of crystal clear sound rather than the more usual strings of single beeps.

Go to MobileTones.com on the Internet and you can hear the sounds before buying if you own a Samsung T100 or V200. I particularly liked the desert cobra attack, the loon's yodelling and the colobus monkey call.

I was surprised to see that the sale of ring tones and background screens for mobile phones are big business in the UK. About $4 billion in revenue is expected to be generated this year from the sale of tones and screens.

The UK's Royal Opera House has already made a selection of music available for ring tones and the National Gallery has made its collection of paintings available to mobile phone users. Both services are free, but you have to live in the UK to get the sounds or pictures on your phone.

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Microsoft has released a new service pack for Windows 2000 that fixes multiple vulnerabilities in one download. Service pack 4 (SP4) patches four holes in Windows 2000 that hackers can exploit to gain access to servers using Windows 2000.

According to SANS (SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security) Institute be careful when installing the update.

Several sites are in the process of evaluating the service pack before deploying it. “One site reported they had some problems with systems after SP4 was deployed,” SANS reported.

“One site has already deployed SP4 to Internet-facing systems and will deploy to other systems during the next regularly scheduled system update.” The update can be downloaded at: www.microsoft.com/Windows2000.

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As I live in France I cannot leave this week's column without directing you the Internet sites that track the amazing Tour de France, which began last weekend and runs until July 27.

It's an amazing physical feat that I have watched for the past three years living here. This year marks the centenary of the tour's existence (started in 1903 but with breaks for wars). Details of each stage and live coverage are available at www.letour.fr.

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Tech Tattle deals with technology. Contact Ahmed at editoroffshoreon.com