ICANN rejected a proposal to create a domain for adult websites for the third time Friday, after the plan received criticism from world governments, religious groups, and members of the adult entertainment industry.

Porn sites felt that the creation of .xxx would eventually cause anti-porn advocates to press governments to make it mandatory to use the domain. Religious groups felt that a domain would legitimize pornography.

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In an acknowledgment this afternoon that the worst may yet come to pass, Dell Computer stated its audit committee looking into irregularities in its financial reporting in advance of an SEC investigation, "has identified a number of accounting errors, evidence of misconduct, and deficiencies in the financial control environment."

As a result, the company may be venturing into dangerous territory further than any other US publicly traded company has gone before, by stating now it doubts it will be able to file its annual 10-K report for the last fiscal year even by the typical extended deadline of April 18, were it to ask for an extension.

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In what could be the most embarrassing exploit to impact Windows Vista since its commercial launch in January, security engineers at McAfee's Avert Labs confirmed today - and posted the video to prove - that the operating system can be caused to enter an interminable crash-restart-crash loop, by means of a buffer overflow triggered by nothing more than a malformed animated cursor file.

It isn't even a new exploit, as researchers with eEye discovered in January 2005. At that time, Microsoft acknowledged it affected versions of the operating system from the first edition of Windows 98 through to early releases of Windows XP, though it stated at the time XP SP1 was unaffected.

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A paper produced by IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, which debuted at an optical technology conference and which IBM released to BetaNews this morning, reveals new and intriguing information: The 160 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) optical transceiver project that news sources mistook for some kind of Internet accelerator earlier this week, is actually intended as a test of optical bus manufacturing processes.

Specifically, it's part of the IBM's and Agilent Technologies' ambitious Terabus project - an investigation begun in 2005 to determine whether relatively unsophisticated manufacturing techniques may be used to endow chips with a very sophisticated part.

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Philips and Energizer have collaborated to produce a cellular phone that would run off a standard 'AAA' battery once the phone's traditional battery runs low. Called the Xenium NRG, the phone also takes advantage of special battery management technology produced by Israeli company Techtium. The battery can be of any brand or type, the company says.

If the battery inserted is rechargeable, when the phone is plugged in to charge both the standard battery and the AAA battery would both be charged. Approximately three extra hours of talk to would be available, the company says. The NRG includes technology that is also used in Energizer's Energi To Go product, a portable cell phone charger introduced last year.

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An interest group is fighting back against the XM-Sirius merger, sending a commissioned study to the FCC that claims the combined company would constitute a monopoly.

The Consumer Coalition for Competition in Satellite Radio (C3SR) was formed shortly after the merger was announced "to counter the potentially dim prospects facing subscribers of satellite radio under a monopoly provider," its Web site says.

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The latest firmware update for the Sony PlayStation Portable has added functionality that would allow users of the device to access wireless Internet at any T-Mobile HotSpot location.

Each PSP user would receive six months of free Wi-Fi at those locations following the first date of login. Following the promotional period, users would be offered a special rate for access via the device.

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Google's efforts to bring its advertising successes offline are not panning out as the company expected, even as it attempts to move into television advertising, the New York Times reports.

Although the search giant had lofty goals to expand its dominance to other mediums, it has run into several roadblocks. Its radio ad efforts have seen some resistance from radio stations that would rather control their own ad sales and pricing.

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It would appear the future of the mobile desktop is coming closer, quite literally. Just days after announcing it helped attain financing for one of its research projects into zooming mobile user interfaces to be spun off into a separate entity, Microsoft is trumpeting the release to the community of an early build of a zooming Web browser it's calling Deepfish.

The essential technology behind this early build (perhaps it should be called an "alpha") of what could become Microsoft's next browser for Windows Mobile 5 and WM6 is its zooming. Web pages in their native form are illegible on mobile browsers.

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Regulatory filings indicate that Sony is planning to release a model of the PlayStation 3 that would include and 80GB hard drive in the near future. Due to changes within the Bluetooth module, the company was required to file an application to request permission to release it within the US with the FCC, which controls products that transmit or receive radio frequencies.

Sony is not commenting on the existence of the updated PS3, or whether the new model would replace one of the currently available consoles that come in 20GB and 60GB versions. Speculation is rife that the decision may have something to do with the current market conditions for HDDs, where smaller drives are becoming more expensive and mid-sized capacity drives continue to get cheaper.

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Apple said Thursday that it would allow iTunes users to purchase a full album at a discount if they had already purchased one or more of the tracks.

Called Complete My Album, it is the first feature of its kind from any music service. Normally, when buying a single track of an album, to purchase the rest of the songs one must buy the entire album. iTunes would give a 99-cent credit for each song bought previously.

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This afternoon, Intel confirmed to BetaNews what its executive vice president, Pat Gelsinger, inadvertently revealed in comments to reporters several weeks ago, and what the Wall Street Journal learned this morning after having read The Register from several days ago: Intel's second generation of 45nm CPU architecture, code-named "Nehalem," will integrate memory controllers typically featured in the northbridge component of Intel chipsets, into the CPU itself.

Actually, knowledgeable sources came to the conclusion that Intel must be integrating its memory controller into the CPU based on information received as early as last July. TG Daily carefully glanced over the possibility at that time, before raising speculation the following September: Intel's comments to that time about something it calls scalable cache sizes led to no other conclusion. How could a chipset possibly scale the cache of something residing off the main memory bus?

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Apple on Wednesday pushed an update to its Boot Camp dual booting feature, providing support for the 32-bit version of Windows Vista, as well as updated drivers for various hardware included with Intel Macs.

While Windows Vista could be installed on Intel Macs even before the update, some of the drivers provided by Apple for Windows XP would not work with Microsoft's latest operating system.

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New language inserted into the third discussion draft of version 3 of the General Public License for free and open-source software would prohibit a license holder from paying another party to receive a patent license for works the GPL covers.

But a bracketed clause would make this language take effect for licenses issued from today (March 28) forward. As a result, the agreement reached last year between Microsoft and SUSE Enterprise Linux vendor Novell may be "grandfathered in," if this language is left standing.

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In reporting a story on Microsoft's Channel 9 blogging initiative, Wired Contributing Editor Fred Vogelstein got an unexpected surprise in his inbox: the company's public relations firm's research on him.

The thirteen-page document shows the lengths to which Waggener Edstrom likely goes when dealing with the media to ensure Microsoft's public relations goals are met. Among the information included are tips on how to handle Vogelstein and transcripts of interviews and e-mails.

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