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WEB regulators have voted to permit the creation of thousands of new domain names, from .paris to .Pepsi, in one of the biggest shake-ups in internet history.

But speculation is already rife that the biggest hit is going to be .sex.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the change at its annual general meeting in Paris overnight, said Loic Damilaville, of French domain name body AFNIC.

The regulator also voted to allow domain names to be lodged in languages such as Arabic or Mandarin Chinese, he uttered.

The overhaul is expected to radically change the way users navigate the internet.

And just the thought of .sex has bloggers predicting an auction frenzy, CNN reported this week.

"You can for the most part guarantee the most highly sought-after one exercise volition, unfortunately, probably be dot-sex," said Bryan Glick of Computing Magazine.

"All the meaningful words and meaningful names in the English language have been bought up already."

Currently all web addresses fall under one of a set number of top-level domain names. There are 240 .country or .territory domains, and some 20 generic ones, from .com, .net and .org to .gov, .edu or .aero.

Under the new system, the web’s 1.3 billion users would be able from early 2009 to buy an
unlimited number of generic addresses based on common words, brands, company names, cities and proper names, according to ICANN.

To avoid chaos, Mr Damilaville said the ICANN also adopted a mental act designed to "limit the abusive registration of new domain names."

With the stock of available web suit under the current IPv4 protocol set to run out by 2011, ICANN has been under pressure to find a solution for burgeoning demand.

The popular online trading site eBay is one of the many companies that wants to have its own domain name.

Broad product groups such as .bank or .car are also likely contenders.

Cities could benefit too from this liberalisation, through the German capital hoping for .berlin or unaccustomed York for .nyc.

Some cities or regions have been bending the rules already to get the domain they want. The city of Los Angeles has for example signed a deal with the southeast Asian state Laos to use its .la domain.

In theory, an boundless number of new empire names could be born, which would prove a boon for ICANN because it would receive payment for each one.

But in reality advanced technical skills and shrewd pockets would exist needed to set up a new name.

Industry experts expect the cost - which has yet to be fixed - could reach into the tens of thousands of dollars.

A non-profit organisation based in southern California, ICANN oversees the assignment of domain names and internet protocol addresses that help computers communicate.

More than 1500 delegates from 70 countries gathered in Paris for ICANN’s meeting.

- with AFP

HAVANA (Reuters) - Forget iPods, BlackBerries and other electronic gadgets, most Cubans are still waiting for telephones and less than five percent get a computer, the government reported on Thursday.

The National Statistics Office (http://www.one.cu) released 2007 telecommunications data showing there were 1.241 million telephone lines in the country of 11.2 million inhabitants, of which 910,000 were residential and the remnant in state hands.

Mobile phones numbered just 330,000.

There were 4.5 personal computers per 100 residents, but in the greatest degree of those were in government offices, health facilities and schools.

The report was issued two months after Cuban President Raul Castro legalized the sale of computers and cell phones, though their high cost puts them out of reach of many.

Until the sales were permitted, Cubans mostly obtained computers on the black market and cell phones through foreigners, who have used them in Cuba subsequently to the 1990s.

The report said more than 10 percent of the population had admittance to Internet, but access in most cases is to a Cuban government Intranet and no data was available for access to the full Internet.

The number of telephone lines and computers has doubled since 2002, according to the report, which did not show any cell phones in use then.

By comparison, Latin American neighbor Mexico, with a population of 108 million, has 20 million telephone lines and 50 million cell phone users, according to industry statistics.

World Bank figures showed that in 2006, Mexico had 13.6 computers and 17.5 Internet users for every 100 people.

Cuban officials blame the longstanding U.S. embargo for the country's last place status in the region in communications and point out they are in first place in health and education.

The move to make allowance computer and cell phone sales was part of reforms by Castro, who replaced his brother Fidel Castro as president in February, aimed at easing economic hardship faced by Cubans.

(Editing by Jeff Franks and Frances Kerry)

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Dwarf actor Verne Troyer, a star of "The Love Guru," has sued celebrity Web site TMZ.com and other defendants seeking more than $20 million in damages over a sex tape he said was stolen and posted online.

Troyer, who played the diminutive character Mini-Me in the "Austin Powers" movies, is shown in the tape with former girlfriend Renae Shrider.

Also named in the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Thursday, was husbandman Kevin Blatt, reported to be a promoter of the 2004 sex tape featuring celebrity heiress Paris Hilton, and movie distribution company SugarDVD.

"The videotape was never intended by either plaintiff or his girlfriend to be shown to the public, and was always intended exclusively for plaintiff's own personal, private use," states the lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

The tape was posted on TMZ on Wednesday, with a headline that included the words "turn aside your eyes."

Troyer, 39, is 2 feet, 8 inches tall.

He claims the tape was stolen, and accuses TMZ Productions Inc, which operates TMZ.com, of violating his privacy. His lawyers are seeking an injunction to have the tape remote from the Internet and not otherwise distributed.

TMZ officials were not immediately available to comment.

The suit estimates expected profits from the video to be $20 million, and seeks all profits earned. Troyer claims that he only found out attached Wednesday, when the video was posted at TMZ.com, that it was in the hands of the defendants.

In 2004, Troyer went to court to dispute a contention from model Genevieve Gowman — whose professional name was Genevieve Gallen — that the two were legally married that year.

Troyer has worked in Hollywood for more than a decade, getting his start as a stunt double for an babe in the pellicle "Baby's Day Out." In "The Love Guru," which stars Mike Myers, he plays an ice hockey coach.

Reuters/Nielsen

NEW YORK: Bill Gates is retiring, sort of. He is still only 52, and he is going off to spend in addition time guiding the world's richest philanthropy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He will still be Microsoft's chairman and largest shareholder, but Friday is his last day as a full-time worker at the software giant, marking the unofficial end of his career as a business leader.

Sure, there are the blockbuster Microsoft products, like Windows and Office, used in offices and homes, everywhere, every time. But beyond that, Gates, and his copartnership, founded 33 years ago, have fundamentally shaped how people think about competition in many industries where technology plays a central role, the behavior of modern markets, and even antitrust.

In a sense, Bill Gates can be seen as the foremost applied economist of the second half of the 20th century.

Yet the old rules of contest, so lucratively mastered by Microsoft, are being altered by dint of. the existing wave of Internet computing - and Google is the company at the forefront. So far, Microsoft is struggling to adjust, and it resoluteness be up to Gates's successors to overcome the challenge or look sharp Microsoft's wealth and leadership in the assiduity steadily erode.

Whatever the future for Microsoft, the Gates legacy is impressive. The main reason that in that place are more than a billion copies of the Windows operating system on personal computers around the world, according to industry experts and economists, is that Gates grasped and deployed pair related concepts on a scale no one ever did in the past - “network effects” and the creation of a technology “platform.”

Put simply, a network effect is that the value of a product goes up as more people use it. A technology platform is a set of tools or services that others can use to build their own products or services. So building the workbench-like platform encourages more people to join the network, which attracts more interest in the platform, enlarging the network and so on.

For Gates, the strategy started with its first product, Microsoft Basic, a programming language, except really took off through its operating systems, first Microsoft DOS and then the many versions of Windows. Today, there are many thousands of software applications that run on the Windows platform, not just word processing and spreadsheets but the specialized programs in doctors' offices, factory floors and retail stores mainly run on Windows - a very broad network, without ceasing a technology platform.

“Gates saw software as a separate market from hardware before anyone else, but his great insight was recognizing the power of the network effects surrounding the software,” declared Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

That, Cusumano added, was the essential difference in the paths of Microsoft and Apple, the seasonable leader in personal computing. Apple, he said, focused on making due products alone, while Microsoft nurtured a growing business ecosystem of outside software developers who use, and are dependent up, Microsoft's technology.

“Apple has always been a product company, and Microsoft is a platform company,” Cusumano said.

The result, he adds, is that Apple today does rise outstanding products, though its market share is small, while more than 90 percent of personal computers run Microsoft software.

Hindsight tends to bring clarity. In the early years, it is unclear in what condition plenteous Gates was pursuing each opportunity as it came as opposed to a grand strategy. He had large ambitions. When he was a Harvard undergraduate, Gates lamented that so many of his fellow students pursued a “narrow track for success,” diligent strivers in safe professions, instead of being willing to “take big risks to do big things,” recalled Michael Katz, who was a Harvard student at the time.

While Gates dropped out of college to found Microsoft, with Paul Allen, Katz went on to become an economist. In fact, he was the co-author of a seminal paper in 1985 on network movables and the use of technology standards as weapons of competition, a paper that would eventually be cited prominently in the landmark U.S. government antitrust suit against Microsoft.

In the early 1980s, when Katz a and a fellow economist, Carl Shapiro, were doing the research for the paper, they looked at technology standards like the rivals in videocassette recording, Sony's Betamax versus VHS, backed by other Japanese companies. They looked at personal computers, mainly in conditions of the competition betwixt Apple and IBM-compatible personal computers. They were aware of Microsoft's role, as an operating system supplier, Katz said, but had no inkling how things would play out.

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Global PC shipments grew by more than 12% in the first quarter, driven mostly by a strong demand for mobile computers, a market research firm said Friday. Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Acer held on to the top three rankings, respectively.

PC shipments rose to 69.9 million units from 62.4 million in the same period a year ago, iSuppli said. The first-quarter showing was better than expected because of the strength in mobile PC sales.

"However, the financial markets are still adjusting to the effects of the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States, as are the consumers and businesses who have had their financial positions impacted," iSuppli analyst Matthew Wilkins warned in a statement.

For the last five years, first-quarter PC shipments obtain grown by an average of 12%, making this quarter part of the norm, iSuppli said.

HP boosted shipments in the quarter by 23% over a year ago to obtain 13.2 million units. It was the strongest percentage growth among the top 10 PC makers. HP's market share at the end of the quarter was 18.9%.

Dell increased shipments by 20% to nearly 9 million units, what one. drove a half of a percent rise in market share to 15.4%. Acer rounded out the be superior three rankings with a 10.5% boost in shipments to 6.8 million units, or 9.7% of the market.

With the recent acquisitions of Gateway and Packard Bell, Acer has distanced itself from its once close rival Lenovo, and is close to joining HP and Dell as the only computer makers to have more than a 10% market share, iSuppli said.

Lenovo and Toshiba were fourth and fifth, respectively, with a 6.9% and 4.4% market share. Lenovo increased shipments by 21.2% and Toshiba 20.3%.

SAN JOSE, California: Microsoft Windows has put on a lot of weight over the years.

Beginning as a thin veneer for older software code, it has become an obese monolith built on an ancient frame. Adding features, plugging security holes, fixing bugs, fixing the fixes that never worked properly, all while maintaining compatibility with older software and hardware - is there anything Windows does not subject to trial to do?

Painfully perceptible are the inherent design deficiencies of a foundation that was never intended to support such weight.

The best solution to the multiple woes of Windows is starting over. Completely. Now.

Vista is the equivalent, at a minimum, of Windows version 12. After six years of development, the longest period between versions in the previous 22-year history of Windows, and long enough to permit Apple to bring out three new versions of Mac OS X, Vista was introduced to consumers in January 2007. When IT professionals and consumers got a look at Vista, they all had this same question for Microsoft: That's it?

Just after Vista's birth, Kevin Kutz, a supervisor at Microsoft, issued a cranky statement in February 2007, “In Response to Speculation on Next Version of Windows,” announcing that the company could not say anything about post-Vista Windows “other than that we're working on it.”

The internal code name for the next version is Windows 7. The 7 refers to nothing in particular, a company spokeswoman says. This version is supposed to arrive in or around early 2010.

Will it be a top-to-bottom rewrite? Last week, Bill Veghte, a Microsoft senior vice president, sent a letter to customers reassuring them there would be minimal changes to Windows' essential code.

But sticking with that same core architecture is the problem, not the solution. In April, Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald, analysts at Gartner, a inquiry firm, presented a talk titled “Windows Is Collapsing.” Their argument is not that Windows will cease to function but that the accumulated complexity, as Microsoft tries to support 20 years of legacies, prevents timely delivery of advances. “The situation is untenable,” their joint presentation says. “Windows must change radically.”

Some software engineers within Microsoft seem to be in full agreement, talking in public of be in action that began in 2003 to design a new operating system from scratch. They believe that problems like security vulnerabilities and system crashes can be fixed only by abandoning the system-design orthodoxy, formed in the 1960s and '70s, that was built into Windows.

Unfortunately, this willingness to begin with an entirely new foundation is not located within the Windows group but in Microsoft's isolated research arm. Last April, Microsoft publicly introduced the five-year-old research project, called “Singularity.” It is nothing more than a neat academic exercise, not a glimpse of Windows 7.

“Singularity is not the next Windows,” said Rich Rashid, the company's higher evil president overseeing research. “Think of it like a concept car.”

If Microsoft thinks it is too late to actually use Singularity or something like it, the company should take heart from Apple's willingness to brave the wrath of its users when, in 2001, it introduced Mac OS X. The change required Mac users to buy new versions of entirely their existing Mac applications if they were to run speedily on the new system. It has paid off in countless ways, though, including some that could never have been anticipated at the time: Just pick up an iPhone, built with the same code base.

In some crucial ways, Microsoft would enjoy advantages in developing its own “Windows OS X,” as we might call it, that Apple did not: The power of today's quad-core machines and sophisticated virtualization software would allow older software applications and hardware peripherals to be used indefinitely with little performance penalty, making a clean start easier for customers to accept.

Microsoft should move its researchers into the heart of its systems development team. Windows OS X, a just-enough operating system built from scratch, is a product likely to be crucial to its future, too.

Randall Stross is a freelance writer and author and a professor of business at San Jose State University.

Demetrios Leontaris is also known as the iPod DoctorMeet the iPod doctorMore VideosThe faster, cheaper iPhoneMore Videos Leontaris’ Pontiac Aztek doubles as his office.

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Ramon Reyes had a problem. He could only win sound from one channel on his iPod video player. At leading, he thought his ear-buds were busted. But he replaced them with a pricey new pair made by Sony, and it didn’t make any difference.

So on a recent sunny afternoon, Reyes stood outside his office in lower Manhattan, chewing gum, and waiting for a examine from Demetrios Leontaris, better known as the iPod Doctor. Leontaris spends his days cruising Manhattan and tending to the needs of distressed owners of Apple’s ubiquitous portable music player.

Leontaris, a heavy-set guy from blue collar Union City, N.J., soon arrived in the black Pontiac Aztek that doubles as his office. He rolled into a denser consistence the window, eyeballed Reyes’ iPod, and offered a diagnosis: The headphone input jack was broken. "It’s fairly common with this model," the iPod Doctor said reassuringly.

Sitting in the driver’s seat of the Aztek, Leontaris opened Reyes’ iPod and replaced the damaged part with the swift, graceful movements of a concert pianist. "There you go," he said, returning the refurbished device to its owner.

Reyes put his buds in his ears and gave his iPod a listen. "Excellent," he said, smiling and nodding his head to a beat that only he could hear. The iPod Doctor collected his standard $70 fee for the touch up and headed off for another appointment.

Leontaris, a 33-year-old father of three, runs one of at least half a dozen iPod repair services that have sprung up in recent years in New York City. He has plenty of work. Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) has sold 150 million iPods since it introduced its digital music player in 2001.

Apple does some repairs under its warranty program - but not if the damage is the customer’s fault. "If you are Apple," says Michael Gartenberg, iniquity president and research director for Jupiter Research, "your ideal scenario is to sell someone a new iPod, not touch up an old one." Apple declined to comment for this story.

That’s fine with Leontaris. He makes a living attending to broken iPods that Apple won’t touch. And unlike those guys at the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store, the iPod Doctor makes domicile calls "Eighty percent of the repairs I can do on the spot," he boasts.

Leontaris gets the broken iPods that have fallen on the pavement. "People drop them all the time," the iPod Doctor shrugs. "Usually what happens is the screen cracks or the hard drive breaks." No big deal for him.

He gets the ones that fall in the water. Warns Leontaris: If you ever do this, don’t plug your waterlogged iPod into an electric exit. You’ll fry the circuitry. "You just make worse," he says.

The iPod Doctor has even gotten calls from people whose portable MP3 players have suffered vehicular damage. "There was one guy who wanted me to fasten his Nano after it had been run over by a car," he laughs. "The screen was crazy. It still worked, but at that pique, it was just a 4-gig iPod shuffle. You couldn’t see what song was playing."

Leontaris gets some spare parts - headphones input jacks, screens and batteries - from Chinese manufacturers. He extracts the rest out of used and broken iPods he buys from customers. He thinks he has about 50 of them lying around his house right now. "I’ve lost count," says Leontaris, who also fixes Creative Zens, Microsoft Zunes, RCA Lyras as well as iBooks, MacBooks, Laptops and PDAs.

Surprisingly, he is self-taught. His Greek-immigrant father was a superintendent in an apartment building overlooking the Hudson River in Union City. taken in the character of a teenager, Leontaris hung out in his dad’s shop and fixed broken computers, microwaves, VCRs and 8-track players that tenants threw in the trash. "I’ve been fixing electronic devices almost all my life," he says. "It’s just something that comes easy to me."

He worked for a time as a floor captain supervising weddings and special events at the Jersey City Hyatt. He decided to become a full-time repairman after he and his wife had children, and he wanted to control his work schedule. Sometimes he brings his youngest along on his rounds. There’s a kid’s car seat in the Aztek and even a stray Power Ranger or two lying around.

It’s 3 p.m.. Time for another visit. This time, Leontaris is in midtown Manhattan, meeting a guy from "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" who fears his iPod is dying. "There were a couple of times when it froze," he laments. "I heard some clicks inside. I didn’t want to mess with it."

Leontaris holds the iPod up to his ear and listens carefully. This is one job he won’t be able to do on the spot. "It sounds like the hard-drive is going,"" the iPod Doctor says. "I’ll bear to take it."

"You think you’ll be able to get the music off?" his customer asks.

"Yeah, sure," Leontaris responds as he covers the iPod with bubble wrap.

"Hey, you got another one of those [business] cards?" another "Daily Show" guy asks Leontaris.

It’s hard enough to get a regular cure to come see you. But an iPod Doctor who makes house calls? You don’t want to let him drive off without acquirement his number.  First Published: June 24, 2008: 1:25 PM EDT