Week in review: Worm wallops Windows

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Gates and (Steve) Ballmer get any sleep every night is beyond me," wrote Carl Johnson in News.com's TalkBack forum. "These "critical" situations are affecting people's lives in dramatic ways..."

Meanwhile, Apple Computer released what seems to be one of its larger security updates for Mac OS X, doling out fixes for 44 flaws. Still, only a handful of the vulnerabilities are of major concern, according to security analysts. The package of fixes was released Monday.

By comparison, Apple last May released an update for 20 vulnerabilities and in March distributed an update for a dozen flaws. The flaws affect Apple's Mac OS 10.3.9 and 10.4.2 operating system software and related server software.

However, Apple's security fixes appear to break support for 64-bit applications in the operating system, according to Wolfram Research, maker of the Mathematica computation software. It's unclear whether applications other than Mathmatica's are affected.

Apple did not comment on the problem Wednesday, but early Thursday morning the company said it had released a new security update that fixes the issue. "We have issued a new version of the 2005-07 security update which resolves an issue affecting 64 bit applications," an Apple representative said in an e-mailed statement.

Porn to run?
The old adage is that "sex sells," but some on the Internet and gaming world are finding it a tough sell.

The creation of a .xxx domain was put on hold after the Bush administration said it has concerns about a virtual red-light district reserved exclusively for Internet pornography. The Commerce Department asked for a hold to be placed on the contract to run the new top-level domain until the .xxx suffix can receive further scrutiny. The domain was scheduled to receive final approval Tuesday.

Other governments also have been applying pressure to ICANN in a last-minute bid to head off .xxx. A letter from ICANN's government advisory group sent Friday asks for a halt to "allow time for additional governmental and public policy concerns to be expressed before reaching a final decision."

"It should be *mandatory* for porn sites to be in .xxx and not .com or others."
--Joe Klein

A final decision on the fate of the .xxx domain now will not happen until September. The board of directors of the nonprofit group that oversees domain names said that it would delay a vote until its next meeting, on Sept. 15.

The move by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was expected after ICM Registry, the Florida company that plans to operate .xxx, agreed to a month's delay.

Some News.com readers expressed shock that the domain's approval was put on hold. "It should be *mandatory* for porn sites to be in .xxx and not .com or others," wrote reader Joe Klein in News.com's TalkBack Forum. "It would make it so much easier to block these sites and much less likely to just stumble onto these sites like many people do."

Game developers are pretty sensitive to the subject of sex these days. The International Game Developers Association has formed a special interest group to look at issues related to sexually oriented video games.

Dubbed Sex SIG, the group has been in the works since last March. But with the recent Hot Coffee scandal regarding sexual content in