Researchers said on Tuesday that they are seeing something unusual in the malware world–a virus that targets a development environment.

The virus, dubbed Win32.Induc, was written to infect applications built with Delphi, according to Nick Bilogorskiy, manager of antivirus researcher at Sonicwall. Delphi is used to write Windows programs, including database applications.

When an infected program is run on a machine running Delphi, the virus infects any software that gets compiled on that machine. The virus spreads the executable file of itself as well as the source code. It looks for a compiler on the infected system and re-compiles the source code, inserting its code into any programs compiled on the system.

“This malware just spreads; it doesn’t delete files or do anything malicious,” he said. “But if you create software and you have this code in it, the software will be blocked by antivirus (technology).”

Developers whose systems are infected will pass the infection on to the programs they are creating, Bilogorskiy said.

A 14-year-old boy was in critical condition in hospital with kidney failure after repeated beatings at an Internet rehabilitation camp in southwest China, state media said Wednesday.

The incident in Sichuan province took place just weeks after another teenage boy was beaten to death at a similar rehabilitation centre in the south of the country where his parents had sent him to cure his Internet addiction.

The death triggered outrage on the Internet in China and drew worldwide publicity, while medical experts called for specific laws and regulations on the diagnosis and treatment of Internet addiction.

Sony Corp.’s move to cut the price of its PlayStation 3 console by $100 comes well ahead of the holiday season and should boost sales not just for Sony but the video game industry as a whole during this important period.

The 80-gigabyte PS3 will now cost $299 and a slimmer, lighter one is planned for the same price. Consumers have long been waiting for the price cuts, and sales have lagged in recent months as a result.

Software developers will be able to start charging for applications downloads to Palm Inc’s high-profile Pre smartphone with the company’s launch of an e-commerce beta program set to start in mid-September.

Developers will still have the choice of giving apps away for free, but Palm said on Tuesday that software providers who want to charge for Pre apps will get 70 percent of revenue from the sale. The remaining 30 percent would go to Palm in an arrangement that mirrors Apple Inc’s app store.