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The Obama administration is quietly seeking the power for it and other governments to veto future top-level domain names, a move that raises questions about free expression, national sovereignty, and the role of states in shaping the future of the Internet.

At stake is who will have authority over the next wave of suffixes to supplement the venerable .com, .org, and .net. At least 115 proposals are expected this year, including .car, .health, .nyc, .movie, and .web, and the application process could be finalized at a meeting in San Francisco next month.

Some are likely to prove contentious among more … Read more

RIM yesterday reiterated that it's unable to provide the Indian government with the means to access secure e-mails on its enterprise network, despite a looming deadline.

Robert Crow, Research In Motion's vice president for Industry, Government and University, repeated the company's familiar position. Speaking to reporters yesterday in New Delhi, Crow said that RIM does not have the ability to turn over the keys to the encrypted data flowing over its BlackBerry Enterprise Server because those keys are held by its corporate customers.

Despite promises to India that it would offer a permanent solution by January 31, … Read more

The U.S. is the spam leader across the world, responsible for one out of every five junk messages sent, according to a report out today from Sophos.

The security vendor's fourth-quarter "Dirty Dozen" report of spam-relaying countries found that the United States upped its percentage of global spam from the third quarter and now accounts for 18.83 percent of all junk e-mails.

That percentage is almost three times higher than second-place India, which is responsible for deploying 6.88 percent of all spam across the globe, according to Sophos. Other countries named on the Dirty … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Ask any hardened PC gamer and they'll tell you there's no better way to control a first-person shooter than a mouse-and-keyboard combination. We completely agree, and with the Eagle Eye 360 from Penguin United, Xbox 360 gamers can do just that.

While the company has already had a PlayStation 3 offering that provides the same functionality, the Xbox 360 version is new for CES. The device can bind all of the Xbox 360 controller commands to mouse and keyboard buttons and store up to two key-mapping schemes.

You'll need a wired Xbox 360 controller for the … Read more

Editor's note: This story originally ran in 2009. In the spirit of the holidays, we thought we'd run this touching piece again.

On a recent Christmas Eve, Jeff Martin found himself forced to explain to a Canadian general why, when Santa Claus passed through Toronto that night, Google Maps had placed the city in the United States.

Martin, then a senior marketing manager in Google's Geo group, was part of a huge team of people involved in the joint U.S.-Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command's annual NORAD Santa tracker program, a long-running effort to … Read more

For an unlucky few, a severe accident will indeed be a learning experience. And the Audi Accident Research Unit puts these lessons to good use.

Audi's team of researchers recreates and deconstructs accident events, taking more than 400 photographs of the vehicle and logging approximately 1,300 technical details in its database to improve safety systems. The carmaker has formed a partnership with the AO Foundation, and Audi's accident database will now be available to the organization's global association of orthopedic surgeons.

The partnership will be a new link in the accident research chain. A case isn'… Read more

China will soon overtake Japan as the world's second heaviest spender on research and development, according to a report from the Battelle Memorial Institute.

A nonprofit group that conducts scientific research, Battelle published its findings today as part of an article in its R&D Magazine. The article and its full supplementary report (PDF) looked at global R&D spending in general and across six specific segments--Information Technology, Electronics, Life Sciences, Aerospace/Defense/Security, Energy, and Advanced Materials.

Next year, China is expected to spend $153.7 billion on R&D, a big jump from $141.… Read more

With GPS devices popping up in everything from cars to cell phones these days, getting lost is getting harder. But what are the GPS-dependent to do when a blocked satellite signal confuses their wanderings (besides panic and curl up in the fetal position)?

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Carnegie Mellon University think they've come up with a solution: a shoe radar system that likely will never make it onto the average Joe's sneaker but could have implications for the military and those who work in mines, tunnels, and other remote or high-risk environments.

The prototype system involves a portable radar sensor that attaches to a shoe's heel and also hooks up to a small navigation computer that tracks the distance between your heel and the ground. If that distance doesn't change over a set period of time, the computer figures your foot is stationary.

The low-power system works in conjunction with an inertial measurement unit, or IMU, an electronic device that measures acceleration and deceleration to determine speed and distance traveled. IMUs are frequently used to supplement GPS devices once a satellite signal drops (if you entered a remote canyon, you could use the IMU to retrace your steps to the last known GPS location and find your way back out).

But IMUs can be faulty, as minor errors can accumulate, leading to an increasing difference between where the system thinks it's located, and where it's actually positioned. … Read more

CANCUN, Mexico--Mexico is pushing parties at the United Nations climate change meeting to strive for the best possible deal, although even the most ambitious agreement will fall short of what is needed to deal with climate change.

Acknowledging that thorny issues such as agreeing to a second round of greenhouse gas emissions cuts under the Kyoto Protocol are unlikely to be resolved at the talks at the beach resort of Cancun, Mexico's top climate change diplomat told reporters that he feels a major step forward could be made.

"The big challenge is not to just capture in a … Read more