Net to get new domain name suffixes today

AP | Jun 13, 2012, 06.57AM IST

NEW YORK: If Google has its way, people won't need Google.com to do searches. They can simply go to .Google.

New York City wants Internet addresses ending in .nyc, while several companies and groups are looking to create .doctor, .music and .bank. Google Inc is also seeking .YouTube and .lol — the digital shorthand for 'laugh out loud' . Others are looking to attract non-English speakers with suffixes in a variety of languages.

Some 2,000 proposals have been submitted as part of the largest expansion of the Internet address system since its creation in the 1980s. These suffixes would rival .com and about 300 others now in use.

Companies would be able to create separate websites and separate addresses for each of their products even as they keep their existing .com name. One day, you might go to comedy.YouTube rather than YouTube.com/comedy.

The organization behind the expansion, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, will announce a full list and other details in London on Wednesday.

It'll take at least a year or two, however, for the first of these new suffixes to win approval and appear in use.

Some of them never will if they are found to violate trademarks or are deemed offensive. Others will be delayed as competing bidders quarrel for easy-to-remember words such as .web.

When multiple applications seek the same suffix, ICANN will encourage parties to work out an agreement and will hold an auction if the competing bidders fail to reach a compromise.

The expansion, already several years in the works, had been delayed by more than a month this spring because of technical glitches with the application system.

ICANN has received at least $350 million in applications fees, which will pay for the organization's costs setting up the system, reviewing applications and making sure parties do what they have promised once the suffix is operational.

Spy-tech: USB stick to carry untraceable PC in your pocket

Even James Bond would crave for this! In a new technology, a clever piece of software lets you carry your personal computer inside a pocket, use it on another PC and not leave a trace.

The technology lets you carry your PC on a simple USB memory stick and access it anywhere without leaving a trace of your browsing history or documents.

Within the USB is a full operating system (like Windows), and when you plug it into a PC, that computer will restart into your own personal set-up, called Tails, the Daily Mail reported.

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When you have finished, shut down the computer, put the USB stick back in your pocket and the PC will never know it has been used.

Not a single trace is left on the PC, as everything the user does is contained within Tails, which means no cookies of websites browsed, no chance of documents being left in a Recycle Bin, the report said.

Though critics say this may allow people to carry out illegal activities in secrecy, privacy advocates laud the idea of being able to work in complete secrecy.

With Tails you can feel secure that no-one will be able to check your documents or follow your movements when your PC is either turned on in front of you, or squirrelled away in your pocket.

You just need to worry for one thing though. Not to lose the USB device.

Children Of Older Fathers Could Live Longer

It appears that older men can impart a genetic advantage to their children that might mean their offspring live longer.

It has been known for some time that one of the causes of aging is what is known as the telomere, DNA found at the end of each chromosome, that slowly shortens as cells reproduce. As the telomeres shorten, the replication of the DNA becomes compromised.

The study publsijed in the June 11-15 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that it appears that older men have longer telomeres in their sperm. Thus, the longer telomeres are passed onto their children, who then genetically inherit the possibility for increased longevity.

Dan Eisenberg, lead author of the study said:

"If your father and grandfather were able to live and reproduce at a later age, this might predict that you yourself live in an environment that is somewhat similar -- an environment with less accidental deaths or in which men are only able to find a partner at later ages ... In such an environment, investing more in a body capable of reaching these late ages could be an adaptive strategy from an evolutionary perspective."

Researchers looked at the DNA from nearly 1,800 young adults and their mothers in the Philippines. Children born to older fathers seem to have the longer telomeres, and better still, the effect is passed down the generations to grandchildren and great grandchildren. There are obviously other risks involved with older men fathering children, including genetic mutations from poor quality sperm, downs syndrome being at a higher risk, and a risk to the mother of having miscarriages, which can often be associated with genetic failures in the growing fetus that causes its development to fail.

It seems that the lengthening of telomeres for each year that the father's or grandfather's reproduction was delayed is approximately equal to the yearly shortening of the teleomere seen in middle-age to elderly women in this study.

Co-author Christopher Kuzawa pointed out that the work was only preliminary and far more research will be needed. He iterated the necessity to go beyond only the telomere issue and discover the physical benefits of having this genetic trait from older fathers and grandfathers. Questions arise beyond the theory itself and demand confirmation that increased telomere length really reduces the health problems and ailments that come with age. There might also be other factors and genetics that offset the advantage in some other way.

He concludes: "Based upon our findings, we predict that this will be the case, but this is a question to be addressed in future studies."