Police in Finland have detained a 16-year-old boy who posted a video called “Maaninka massacre” on the YouTube Web site, days after eight people were killed by a student who had posted a similar video on the Internet.

Police said on Sunday the boy said his video was a joke.

The boy, who lives in Maaninka, eastern Finland, was detained on Friday and his computer has been confiscated, it said in a statement.

The video threat against Maaninka school, came after 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot six fellow students, two members of staff and himself with a hand gun at Jokela school.

Leading game maker Electronic Arts has decided to give their pioneering game SimCity to the One Laptop per Child project for installation on every machine distributed to children in developing nations).

You probably played SimCity as a kid. Remember laying out your own city, making decisions about geography, building roads, residences, and commercial areas? You got to watch how your choices play out over months, years, and decades.

The game also reveals the importance of city planning and civic policy-making to ordinary citizens, making it likely that at least some children in developing countries could be inspired to begin a career in that field. Placement of homes, schools, hospitals, water supply, and shipping docks, for example, is a central part of the game and may shed light on children’s own civic situation, as it has for students and users in “developed” countries.

As expected, Apple released the OS X 1.1.2 update for the iPhone overnight to coincide with its debut in the U.K. and Germany. As not expected, it’s been sprung from jail already.

Erica Sadun at The Unofficial Apple Weblog obtained jailbreaking code for the 1.1.2 update almost simultaneous with its release last night, and tests this morning confirm that it works for both the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The 1.1.2 update patched a flaw in the way OS X handles TIFF image processing, which was the way hackers gained access to the iPhone after the 1.1.1 update, and it also wiped out third-party applications just like before.

But new code for the 1.1.2 update was released last night by the same people responsible for the JailBreakMe program. It’s still pretty raw, which means it’s not really meant for those of us who aren’t familiar with the command line. The latest hack works by applying the code to an iPhone that’s still running the 1.1.1 firmware, then installing the 1.1.2 update.

Continuing an aggressive campaign to defend his copyrights, pop star Prince is preparing to file lawsuits within the next few days in three countries–including the United States–against The Pirate Bay, CNET News.com has learned.

One of the world’s best-known BitTorrent indexing sites, The Pirate Bay has defiantly linked to pirated copies of films, TV shows, music videos, and other content while often boasting that it ignores Hollywood’s requests to remove them. The Pirate Bay does not host any unauthorized content, but the service is internationally famous for being a highly effective file-sharing tool.

Prince will file similar suits against The Pirate Bay in the U.S., France, a country with laws favorable to copyright owners, and Sweden, where The Pirate Bay is based. In addition, Prince is preparing to take civil action against companies that advertise on The Pirate Bay, many of which are headquartered in Israel, according to John Giacobbi, Web Sheriff’s president.

Prince has hired Giacobbi and Web Sheriff, a service that protects copyright materials from Internet piracy, to coordinate the legal challenges against The Pirate Bay and others who the singer believes has violated his copyright.

Giacobbi said Web Sheriff is also helping to launch an investigation into The Pirate Bay’s off-shore connections to determine whether the company is compliant with Swedish and international income and corporation tax laws.

The Pirate Bay has already weathered several attempts by the governments of Sweden and the United States to shut down the site. Yet, this is likely the largest civil challenge the Web site has ever faced.

At the core of Prince’s lawsuits are his claims that the three founders of The Pirate Bay are profiting from the work of artists without compensating them. The Pirate Bay earns $70,000 a month in advertising revenue, Giacobbi alleged. The site’s founders have previously denied that the operation makes money.

By suing The Pirate Bay in three different countries, Prince is hoping to put financial pressure on the service, Giacobbi said. Copyright laws in the United States and France would also make it nearly impossible for a site like The Pirate Bay to triumph, he claimed.

“There is no way that they will have any defense because it’s blatant piracy,” Giacobbi said. “They’ll either have to come out and fight or just try and ignore it. In that case, we’re going to win a default judgment against them. This could be a ticking time bomb for them. They can’t outrun this. We are very confident.”

Microsoft on Friday expanded its refurbishing rules to benefit companies who want to refurbish and re-sell their old PCs to new customers.

The Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher (MAR) program is an offshoot of its current Community MAR, which is designed for charities, educational institutions and nonprofits.

“Companies don’t know what to do with their old PCs, so they collect dust in the company cafeteria or stack up in the hallways,” Hani Shakeel, senior product manager of the Genuine Windows Product Marketing team said in a statement. “This is a very common fate for PCs these days, especially with the increased environmental regulations around the disposal of computers.”

Microsoft said it is offering a new license for refurbishers that is only available through the MAR program. Windows XP Home for Refurbished PCs and Windows XP Professional for Refurbished PCs are the two operating systems available and the PCs that are being refurbished need to have a Certificate of Authenticity.

In 2004, Microsoft conducted a joint study with Gartner that focused on the secondary market, Shakeel noted. What the company found was 150 million PCs of which about 20 million were refurbished and then resold. Currently, Microsoft is projecting that 28 million PCs make up the refurbished market — an estimated 10% slice of the worldwide PC market pie.

But even with the increase in renovated desktop and laptop computers, Microsoft’s partners complained that they did not have the recovery media or recovery image for a PC. The only way to restore the original image was to go back to the OEM and order replacement media.

So, instead of transferring the software license from the original owner, Microsoft said it would tweak its volume licensing and allow for genuine versions of Windows on the refurbished PCs.

“Essentially, they’re restoring the PC to its original state when it was first shipped from the manufacturer,” Shakeel said.