Computers

2004-03-18T01:05:00.000-08:00

Lower-priced cable TV alternative unveiled

SALT LAKE CITY -- A Utah company launched what it called a digital cable-style subscription television service "for the rest of us" on Tuesday, an alternative that eliminates the coaxial cable and strips basic service to a few essential networks with a price to match.

For $19.95, USDTV gives subscribers in Salt Lake City 32 channels, including local broadcast outlets. ESPN, ESPN2, Disney and Discovery Channel are five of the 10 cable networks currently included in the package, but more may be added.

The service is also available in Albuquerque and is expected to launch in Las Vegas in the next month, and the company hopes to offer service to 30 markets by year's end. About 1,000 customers have signed up in Salt Lake.

USDTV works by collecting feeds from the broadcast stations and cable networks at a single digital transmission tower, which then uses once-idle bandwidth -- bought from the stations -- to spray the signals to standard UHF/VHF antennas.

Customers must buy a $99.95 set-top device to decode the channels. USDTV says a strength of its system is its support for high-definition programming. In the Salt Lake market, six of the local stations broadcast high-definition signals.

Congress has set a goal for all U.S. television broadcasts to be digital by the end of 2006. Two-thirds of the nation's 1,721 television stations are already broadcasting in digital, according to the National Association of Broadcasters.

Because so few consumers have equipment capable of benefiting from the crisper video of high-definition television, those stations currently have plenty of unused spectrum.

"We are definitely taking the low-cost space," USDTV chairman and chief executive Steve Lindsley said after unveiling the service at a New York City news conference.

USDTV, based in suburban Salt Lake City with 26 employees, says its monthly price won't increase until 2006.

The lower cost and cable's reputation for raising prices above the rate of inflation, Lindsley said, "is going to leave open a tremendous opportunity for us to take a group that they leave behind."

Though cheaper, the $19.95 package doesn't approach the channel quantity of standard-tier cable service, which averages about $40 through Comcast in Salt Lake City. But, Lindsley said, the channels picked for USDTV's basic service represent "arguably 80 percent of what the average Utah home watches anyway."

The company, along with another recent startup, the New York state-based Voom network, also touts its high-definition and digital capabilities, services not widely enjoyed by standard-service customers of cable companies.

Both USDTV and Voom will have a "real struggle to be successful," said Phillip Swann, president and publisher of television technology Web site TVPredictions.com.

They are trying to capitalize on the fact that Comcast, Cox Communications or Time-Warner Cable, part of CNN's parent company Time Warner Inc., don't yet have a large lineup of high-definition channels, Swann said, but only because the market has not yet demanded it.

"That's the key. They will have that lineup," Swann said. "By the time people get to know what USDTV or Voom is, it isn't going to matter."

Cablevision Systems launched Voom, a satellite TV service exclusively for high-definition televisions, last fall in a beta test.

Nationwide subscribers pay about $40 a month for 21 high-definition channels and 40 others. For double that amount, you can add 36 premium and other channels, including digital music.

Broadcasters share in USDTV's monthly subscription fees and may share additional revenue generated by on-demand content stored on a hard drive to be incorporated into the USDTV receiver by the end of 2004.

Individual stations get a percentage of revenues based on the amount of bandwidth provided by the station, multiplied by the number of subscribers.

2004-03-12T02:52:00.000-08:00

Resume fraud gets slicker and easier

NEW YORK -- Simple misrepresentation of facts on a resume is passe. Lying convincingly is in.

As companies, via background searches, try to call the bluff of less-than-honest job seekers, candidates are resorting to more complex, sometimes hi-tech means to hoodwink potential employers.

Some applicants are providing employers with toll-free phone numbers, which are answered by operators of Web sites that not only offer phony academic degrees, but also "verify" a job seeker's education.

And, in an effort to put more credibility into embellishing their resume, some candidates are paying hackers to plug their names into a class list database of a university they claim to have attended.

"Candidates are allegedly breaking the law to get a particular job or promotion, and that is pretty much going to the full extent of the limit," said Scott Pustizzi, vice president at The Human Equation, Florida-based human resources consultants.

People could be charged with a felony for hacking into a university's database, according to criminal lawyers. And if a false degree leads to higher pay for a job candidate, he or she could be accused of criminal fraud by the employer.

While the uncertain employment market is pushing job hunters to such convoluted extremes, inadequate security for database systems and a long list of Web sites offering fake degrees only serve to facilitate resume fraud.

The background search firm ADP Screening and Selection Services, in a 2003 study, found that more than 50 percent of the people on whom it conducted employment and education checks had submitted false information, compared with about 40 percent in 2002.

This has prompted an increasing number of companies to do more thorough background checks of candidates.

A 2003 survey of more than 200 companies by Virginia-based Society for Human Resource Management revealed that 80 percent of them made reference and criminal checks on their employees.

Still, some applicants continue to get smarter and slicker at defrauding employers and are crossing legal limits to snatch jobs away from otherwise equally qualified honest candidates.

Companies seeking to get a clearer picture of a candidate's qualifications via background checks are uncovering other new forms of deception.

"In the past, people just lied," said Charles Wardell, managing director at executive search firm Korn/Ferry International. "Now, what they are doing is they are hacking into a class of a university and putting their name on the class list."

Wardell said he has come across cases where some candidates are paying hackers to break into the databases of universities. If recruiting firms called the university to check the candidate's degree, the school would confirm it because the applicant's name would indeed appear on the list.

Breaking into a database is relatively easy because most database servers are not password protected, said Alfred Huger, director of engineering at anti-virus company Symantec.

So, Korn/Ferry has started requesting degrees and, in some cases, even grades from potential candidates as proof of their academic claims.

But as corporate investigations company Kroll Inc. points out, documents such as scholastic degrees and grades can also be concocted with the help of numerous Web sites that provide such services.

Web sites such as fakedegrees.com help job hunters cook the facts and even lists out-service enhancements. "Transcripts -- Coming Soon" says one promotion on that site.

Other sites go a step further and offer verification service.

"You can select the parchment paper, the insignia and the type of degree," said Bob Schlossnagle, president of Kroll's background screening division. "And one of the things they [Web sites] are now doing to enhance their service is they will give you a 1-800 number to give your potential employer. And when employers call they will actually confirm the degree."

Background search firms admit their job is getting harder with the increasing level of sophistication in resume fraud.

"A good liar understands that you have to have some basis and facts to pull off a scam," said Lester Rosen, president of California-based Employment Screening Resources. "But it's even more dangerous when employers unknowingly hire a fraud, thief or a crook."

2004-03-03T02:56:00.000-08:00

Yahoo to add more content to search results

SEATTLE, Washington (Reuters) -- Internet media company Yahoo Inc. said on Tuesday that it would enhance its search services by tapping into richer content such as audio, video and reference information.

Yahoo, which is beefing up its search services to compete against Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Internet division, said in February that it was starting to make a switch to its own Web search technology.

Search users at Yahoo's Web site will be able to access rich content, such as the audio files of National Public Radio, the U.S. Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and Supreme Court audio recordings available through a Northwestern University project.

"We think this will help change how people think about search," said Tim Cadogan, vice president of Search at Yahoo.

The new initiative to include richer media in search results, which Yahoo calls its Content Acquisition Program, is aimed at creating closer links between Yahoo's search engine and digital audio and visual media, Cadogan said.

Both commercial and non-commercial content providers can submit Web pages that are added to Yahoo's search index, its database of searchable Web sites.

Non-commercial organizations can submit their Web pages and digital content for inclusion in Yahoo search results for free, while commercial content providers pay a fee to include their content in search results.

The widely anticipated announcement marks the unwinding of a long-term relationship between Yahoo, operator of the world's most-visited Internet properties, and Google, the No. 1 Web search provider.

Yahoo has recently made major investments in the sector with acquisitions of search provider Inktomi and Overture Services, a key Web-search advertising company.

Microsoft is also throwing its vast resources behind a project to build search technology of its own.

2004-02-26T00:44:00.000-08:00

Microsoft beefs up security initiatives

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, whose company's software is often derided for being buggy and vulnerable to hackers, showed off planned features for shoring up its programs and heading off cyberattacks.

Progress is being made against viruses, network attacks and sloppy code that make systems vulnerable, said Gates. But, he added, a lot more work remains.

"The people who attack these systems are getting more and more sophisticated," Gates said Tuesday. "For every time we take a type of attack and eliminate that as an opportunity, they move up to a whole new level. That's not an unending process -- we can make it dramatically difficult."

Speaking to thousands of security experts at the RSA Conference, Gates said Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Initiative -- unveiled two years ago after several embarrassing Windows flaws were exploited by viruses and hackers -- is paying off.

In the first 300 days after the launch of the Windows 2000 Server operating system, 38 security bulletins listed as critical or important were issued. The first major product released after the initiative, Windows Server 2003, has had just nine such bulletins in the first 300 days.

"Everything we're doing has been impacted [by the initiative]," Gates said. "Over the past two years, we have made a lot of progress."

Gates showed off an upcoming Windows XP update that focuses on security improvements. Service Pack 2, which will be available later this year, includes a centralized control center where users can automatically check their computer's security status, such as whether all critical updates have been applied or whether antivirus software is running.

Unlike earlier Windows releases, Microsoft's firewall software will be turned on as part of the default installation. A firewall blocks intruders from entering a system.

In the new service pack, the Internet Explorer browser will now have a pop-up ad blocker as well as more user control over small programs embedded in some Web sites.

Beyond the Windows service release, Gates also showed off "active protection technologies" that will gird Windows computers against attacks by sensing system or network changes that indicate virus activity. If a problem is detected, the computer's firewall will dynamically ratchet up defenses.

A number of companies at the conference were showing products similarly geared toward detecting unusual activity in networks.

Gates also said e-mail spam -- which often contains viruses or is sent from infected computers -- is being targeted on several fronts. Besides today's antispam filters, Microsoft and other companies are developing e-mail programs that allow users to create "white lists" of people with whom they wish to communicate.

Messages that originate from outside the white list could be judged on several factors, including the content's appearance and any proof that could be offered by the sender. Such proof could be the sending computer's completion of a puzzle for each message.

"By having a system send one of those along, that allows the e-mail client to say, 'OK, that was a fair piece of work to solve that ... I'll move that into the inbox automatically to the user,"' Gates said.

For regular use, such computational challenge would not be noticed. But for bulk e-mailers, it would tax a computer's resources.

Ultimately, e-mail systems must be able to determine whether the sender of a message is authentic. Microsoft has proposed a technology, dubbed "Caller ID for E-Mail," that uses the Internet's existing infrastructure to determine that a message originated from a real address.

Gates said Microsoft is working with governments and companies by sharing its software source code, or blueprint. Thirty governments and thousands of companies now have access to Windows code to better incorporate their programs -- and look for problems.

This month's leak of a portion of the code to a previous version of Windows was not the result of the Shared Source program, Gates said.

Microsoft's trustworthy computing plans are important, but they are a piece of a much larger puzzle, said Robert Holleyman, president of the Business Software Alliance. A broader understanding among users is necessary to ensure security.

"There's not a single solution to the problem of cybersecurity," he said. "It's a range of solutions that need to be deployed collectively to raise the overall security."

2004-02-17T00:07:00.000-08:00

Software bug linked to blackout

NEW YORK (AP) -- A programming error has been identified as the cause of alarm failures that might have contributed to the scope of last summer's Northeast blackout, industry officials said.

Ralph DiNicola, spokesman for FirstEnergy Corp., said the utility has since applied fixes developed by the system's vendor, General Electric Co., and has accelerated plans to replace GE's system with a system from French nuclear engineers Areva SA.

A U.S.-Canadian task force investigating the blackout said in November that FirstEnergy employees failed to take steps that could have isolated utility failures because its data-monitoring and alarm computers weren't working.

Without a functioning emergency management system or the knowledge that it had failed, the company's system operators "remained unaware that their electrical system condition was beginning to degrade," the report said.

At the time, task force members said it remained unclear whether the software malfunctioned or if FirstEnergy's computers had difficulty running it that day.

DiNicola said Thursday that the company, working with GE and energy consultants at Kema Inc., had pinned the trouble on a software glitch by late October and completed its fix by November 19, coincidentally the same day the task force issued its report.

GE Energy spokesman Dennis Murphy said the company distributed a warning and a fix to its more than 100 other customers the following day.

DiNicola said FirstEnergy had informed the task force at the time; the company went public with it this week in a report on the Web site SecurityFocus.

The discovery of the programming error took "weeks of going through millions of lines of data," DiNicola said.

The failures occurred when multiple systems trying to access the same information at once got the equivalent of busy signals, he said. The software should have given one system precedent.

With the software not functioning properly at that point, data that should have been deleted were instead retained, slowing performance, he said. Similar troubles affected the backup systems.

Joseph Bucciero, senior vice president for transmission services at Kema, said the public should not lose confidence in utilities.

"There are a lot of systems out there and they are running for many years already, and this is the first time a problem like this has arisen," he said.

Bucciero said the software bug surfaced because of the number of unusual events occurring simultaneously -- by that time, three FirstEnergy power lines had already short-circuited.

The GE system at FirstEnergy was a 1996 model, DiNicola said. The newer system from Areva will be installed at two locations, Akron, Ohio, and Reading, Pennsylvania, for redundancy, he said.