Oh, melancholy game publishers. Your industry is so wildly successful that it's practically printing money. And yet, like your brethren in the music and film industries, you're also pointing to piracy on file-sharing networks like BitTorrent as a source of lost sales -- and you're looking to clamp down.

Fair enough. Now, how to go about doing it?

Last week, a confab of five major game publishers decided to go after file sharers in the U.K. The publishers -- most notably Atari, but also local notables Codemasters, Reality Pump, Techland and Topware Interactive -- are hoping to curb piracy of their titles by going after specific violators.

Up to 25,000 U.K. residents may be targeted in the sweep, according to their legal reps. And that's really only a slim percentage of all the folks breaking the rules. The Times of London cited statistics from file-sharing tracker Peerland that found that one popular game, Battlefield 1942, was downloaded by almost 1.5 million people within seven days.

According to this piece and many others, as many as six million people in Britain -- approximately one out of ten residents! -- have illegally downloaded copyrighted content (a stat whose origin is unclear, although it's been tossed around since early this year.)

All scary numbers, to be sure. But let's not forget how the RIAA's similar efforts in the U.S. played out: they completely ended file sharing piracy as we know it. Oh, wait -- no, they didn't.

Not at least as far as I can tell, that is. Movies, albums and television shows are still appearing on the file-sharing networks the day they debut -- if not well in advance.

Not surprisingly, not everyone in the games industry is on board with the lawsuit strategy. Peter Moore -- a key figure in the histories of the Sega Dreamcast, the Microsoft Xbox and Xbox 360, and now at EA Sports -- took quite a different position, admitting that while piracy is a concern, the legal approach Atari and its cohorts are pursuing may not be the best way to go about combating it.

"I'm not a huge fan of trying to punish your consumer," Moore told Eurogamer. "Albeit these people have clearly stolen intellectual property, I think there are better ways of resolving this within our power as developers and publishers."

Have netbooks jumped the shark? For a while there, it looked like the nascent trend of diminutive, lightweight, inexpensive, low-end notebook PCs -- netbooks -- were about to be undone by the company that jumpstarted it all.

I'm referring here to Asus, maker of the Eee PC... and its many, many permutations: There's the Eee PC 2G Surf, the 4G, the 4G Surf, the 8G, the 900, the 901, the 904, the 1000, the 1000H, and the 1000HD. Whew.

The Eee PC models are not only multiplying like rabbits -- thereby increasing the potential for confusion in the minds of buyers -- but they're rocketing skyward in price, too. As a result, Asus's netbooks have eaten away at one of its key selling points: the savings compared to a low-end notebook.

That's leaving the door open for a slew of competitors. Acer's Aspire One, MSI's Wind, Everex's CloudBook and HP's 2133 Mini-Note PC are already out and competing with Asus. Meanwhile, Sharp, Gigabyte, LG, VIA and Lenovo are also widely expected to move into the market.

It's an increasingly fragmented market, clearly, and that potentially means good news for Dell.

According to Internet scuttlebutt, the company is poised to release an Intel Atom-based, Linux-powered netbook with SSD storage and an 8.9-inch screen... for $299, a price that would undercut all of its rivals while (one would hope) delivering the quality Dell's systems are known for.

Best of all, Dell is said to begin selling the netbook -- known variously as the Dell E, the Dell Mini Inspiron and Inspiron Mini -- Friday.

The problem is that Dell hasn't really said much at all about its foray into the netbook market.

Janet, I mean.

I'm talking about the online persona widely thought to be, perhaps be, have been, or have never been a representative or employee of Exxon Mobil.

Last week, those following events in the Twittersphere (is "-sphere" the only suffix we can think of for these little environments?) were following what appeared to be another story of the Web 2.0 coming out of a blue chip, Old Business dinosaur. In this case, Exxon Mobil, which was taking to Twitter in the form of "Janet at ExxonMobil," from Irving, Texas.

"This is something very new for us and we're trying to make for a pleasant experience," Janet wrote in response to a fellow Twitter user's welcome.

It sounded like a great story: Big, scary energy company lightens up, engages customers, critics and the world at the same time using a breakout Web 2.0 technology.

Er -- not so fast. Janet's not actually with Exxon. Or at least, isn't an official representative of the company. In fact, Exxon Mobil's own PR people weren't aware of her until the Houston Chronicle (or other bloggers -- it's unclear) contacted them to ask about her.