Monthly Technology Updates

DECEMBER 1998

Year 2000 Update - Will the lights stay on in 2000?

So you upgraded your computer hardware and rewrote thousands of lines of code to ready your software for the new millennium, but what if there is no electricity to run your computers? This just might happen if nuclear power plants must shut down and fossil fuel plants (which run on coal or gas) shut down because of year 2000 (Y2K) difficulties.

The nuclear regulatory commission (NRC), the government body that oversees nuclear power plants, has endorsed a plan that aims to make all nuclear plants "year 2000 ready" by July 1, 1999. Plants that do not meet the plan’s standards by the deadline may be shut down. A preliminary NRC analysis has found that most safety systems are not controlled by computer and therefore have no Y2K problems. However, auxiliary systems--such as security, control room displays, and radiation monitoring--may have Y2K problems.

Fossil fuel plants also have Y2K problems, especially with date-sensitive embedded circuits. These circuits are computer chips that perform functions like controlling the flow of electricity. There may be thousands of these chips in a single power plant. Checking and replacing them would be extremely labor-intensive and time-consuming.

For more information about this problem, click on these links:

PC Tips - Blocking access to objectionable Web sites using Internet Explorer

Last month's (November 1998) technology updates included an article about ratings for Web sites. This month's PC tip will explain how to use the ratings feature of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Begin by starting Internet Explorer. Then click on View and then Options. Next click on the security tab. The Content Advisor portion (top part of the screen) will handle the ratings functions. Before you proceed you must choose a supervisor password. This password will ensure that others will not be able to change the ratings limits you establish. When you have chosen a password, click on the Settings button. Type your password, and then click on OK.

You will now see the main Content Advisor screen with the Ratings tab selected. You can choose to limit viewable material based on four categories: language, nudity, sex, and violence. Click on the category you want to limit. Each category has five levels, zero to four. Level zero is the most restrictive, and level four is the least restrictive. For example, you might decide to limit sites for language content. If you decide that mild expletives are okay but moderate expletives are not, you would select level 1.

Once you have set levels for all of the categories you are interested in, click on Okay to save your settings. You will now see the Options menu. Again click on Okay. Internet Explorer will now screen sites based on your settings and not allow the viewing of sites rated at levels below those you have set.

Billboards on the information superhighway

You probably haven't given much thought to those small ads that appear at the top of Web pages, but these banner ads represent a major revenue source for many Web sites. Recently some companies have been using banner ads, which are small graphic files, created in the Java programming language. Java allows the ad to have some interactivity. For example, the ad might give the user the chance to play a game or listen to music.

Determining exactly how much your banner ad will cost can be tricky. Banner advertising is usually charged a rate for each impression, which is every time somebody visits a page with the banner ad. Because the number of impressions is usually large, rates are typically quoted in cost per thousand impressions. The major Web portal sites (such as Yahoo!, Lycos, and Infoseek) offer targeted advertising and a guaranteed number of impressions per month. In this arrangement, an advertiser can buy a search word. For example, Budweiser can buy the word "beer" for a monthly fee. This fee ensures that the Budweiser banner ad appears whenever somebody searches for the word "beer." Targeting banner ads is important because it can increase the ad’s click-through rate. The click-through rate is the percentage of ad viewers who actually click on the ad. While banner ads typically have a low click-through rate (less than 5%), targeted ads may achieve a click-through rate as high as 80%.

For more information about banner ads, click on these links:

Outlawing X-rated Web sites

One of the most prevalent and profitable online industries is pornography. Even everyday searches can inadvertently bring up pornographic Web sites. Many parents and government officials have become very concerned about the pictures children are able to access through the Internet. Their concern has led to cries for legislation.

The Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1995 was the first major legislative attempt to deal with the issue of online pornography. This act made it a crime to transmit "obscene" material via the Internet (or other telecommunications service). On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that the CDA violated the First Amendment.

More recently Congress has passed and the president has signed the Child Online Protection Act. This law calls for penalties of up to $50,000 and six months in prison for anyone who "by means of the World Wide Web, makes any communication for commercial purposes that is available to any minor and that includes any material that is harmful to minors." On November 20, 1998, a U.S. District Judge temporarily restrained the Justice Department from enforcing the law. An injunction hearing was scheduled for December 8, 1998. Look in future technology updates to keep informed on this issue.

Congress has also begun consideration of the Internet Freedom and Child Protection Act of 1997. This act would require Internet service providers (ISP) to offer screening software to their customers. For more information about screening software see the article in this month's technology updates.

For more information about the debate over online pornography, click on these links:

For privacy, "pretty good" may be good enough

If you're concerned about your privacy when sending and receiving E-mail, consider Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). PGP is a software package that encrypts E-mail messages so only the intended receiver can read them.

An encrypted message looks like a series of random characters. So how to decrypt it?The problem with conventional encryption technologies is that they require a secure means for transmitting the code’s keys. Suppose you want to send a secure message to a business associate. You would have to decide on a decryption key and let your associate know what it is. And you would need a secure transmission medium to send the key. However, if you already have this secure transmission medium, you wouldn’t need to use encryption.

PGP solves this problem by using two keys. One key, called the public key, is published so that anyone who wants to send you a message can use it for encryption. The other key, called the private key, is used to decrypt the message. One key cannot be determined from the other. So, if you wanted to send that secure message to your business associate, you would first look up his or her public key. You would then encrypt the message with the public key and send it. When the message is received, only your associate's private key will decrypt it.

Like any encryption method, PGP can be broken. However, the computing power required is enormous. PGP should be sufficient for all but national-security type messages.

PGP is free. You can download a copy from the MIT Web site at http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html.

For more information about PGP and encryption technologies in general, click on these links:

Will your next computer have a flat panel monitor?

Bill Gates uses one that cost $2,500. Until very recently that was the price of flat panel computer monitors. Now a number of major monitor manufacturers have come out with relatively inexpensive flat panel monitors. Some of the new models sell for under $1,000.

Using a flat panel monitor saves space and reduces eye strain. And as more computer users demand larger monitors, the space required for traditional cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors increases. Where a typical CRT monitor may require up to two feet of space behind it, a flat panel monitor may only require a few inches.

CRTs work by constantly refreshing the screen, which causes a flicker. If you view the monitor out of the corner of your eye, you can notice this flicker, which leads to eye strain after you’ve worked at the computer for an extended period of time. Flat panel monitors are typically liquid crystal displays (LCD). In a liquid crystal display there is no need to refresh the screen because each picture element (pixel) can be directly manipulated.

If you are considering buying a flat panel monitor, you should know that a 15" LCD monitor has approximately the same usable area as a 17" CRT monitor (because of the curvature of CRT monitors). In addition, you should be sure that the LCD monitor you are planning to purchase will work correctly with your computer's graphics card. Finally, when shopping for an LCD monitor you should be sure to view it from the angle you would use in normal working conditions. This is important because, unlike CRTs, LCDs lose crispness as your viewing angle moves to one side.

For more information about flat panel monitors, click on these links:

Put your ad online, just Double Click

If you think that placing banner ads (see article in this month's technology updates) sounds like a lucrative business, you're right. Double Click is the leading Internet advertising agency. The company began business in January 1996 with just 13 employees. Today it employs over 350 people and has a market capitalization of over $500 million.

Double Click's main service is the Double Click Network, made up of the 170 most visited Web sites. Advertisers who use the Network no longer need to make individual deals with each of these sites.

This network of 170 of the most visited web sites allows advertisers to reach their target audiences without the hassle of making deals with each site individually. The Double Click Network also allows [its subscribers?] to reach individuals with their ads through Double Click DART.

Double Click DART determines the profiles of individual users [of what?] and feed each person ads [whose? Subscribers to DART? For a piece of the action?] targeted to his or her specific interests. [How about a one-sentence example?] Double Click is also able to target users by geographic location. How does Double Click do it? It looks at Cookies files (see September 1998 Technology Updates for an article on Cookies). These files contain information about [information about the sites or just the sites themselves?] sites a user has visited in the past. For example, if a user has visited sports-related sites, then Double Click will deliver a sports-related ad.

Double Click delivers over 3 billion ads a month on over 4,200 Web sites.

Blocking X-rated web sites

Concern over the prevalence of pornography and other objectionable material available on the Internet has grown considerably over the past few years (see the article on Internet pornography in this month's technology updates). The software industry has attempted to ease this concern by developing programs that block access to the Web sites that carry this objectionable material.

Some of these packages, such as Surfwatch and Net Nanny, use lists of Web sites that contain particular types of objectionable material. For example, a parent can block access to sexually explicit material but allow access to sites that present pictures depicting violence. Very general filters can present problems. For example, filtering out all sites by the word "breast" would mean that a child would not have access to sites about breast cancer. Therefore, most of these packages allow parents to add and remove sites..

Some blocking packages allow parents to use third-party rating systems (see the article in last month's technology updates). The Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSAC) has taken its computer game ratings and applied them to the Internet. Filtering software based on the RSAC rating system is available in Microsoft's Internet Explorer (see this month's PC Tips).

Many software packages use a combination of devices to block and/or filter objectionable material. In addition to preventing access to Web sites, many products can block out chat rooms and newsgroups.

For more information about blocking and filtering software, click on these links:

Privacy - Europe's new law

On October 25, 1998, Europe's new privacy law, called the European Data Protection Directive, went into effect. This new law strictly protects the privacy of European citizens and may have a far enough reach to protect the privacy of non-Europeans. The law guarantees that European citizens will be able to access their data [it’s not clear what "their data" is. Do you mean data about them held by (government? Other?) agencies?] and know where it originated [how it came to the agencies or whoever mentioned in the preceding clause?] The law will also prevent marketers from using this information. European Union member countries have three years to bring their national laws into compliance with the directive.

A provision in the law that deals with the international transfer of data has sparked a major debate. This provision states that personal data may not be sent to countries that do not abide by the European privacy standards. For example, a multinational corporation with offices in Europe and America may find itself prohibited from sending personnel records from its office in Paris to its office in New York. The law has already affected a number of U.S. companies. For example, the Swedish government has prevented American airlines [Are these all the airlines in the U.S. or is it American Airlines, the specific carrier?] from transmitting passenger health data from Sweden to America.

The impact of the law on the emerging electronic commerce market is difficult to determine. However, some U.S.-based companies may run into problems. For example, Double Click (see this month's Technology Updates) uses Cookies to develop consumer profiles. It is unclear if this practice would be prohibited under the new directive.

For more information about this topic, click on these links:

Using cable technology to speed Internet access

If you are looking for a high-speed connection to the Internet, you might not need to look any further than your cable company. Companies like Comcast and Cablevision's Optimum Online now offer a high-speed Internet connection through their cable system. The speed of these connections ranges from 500Kbps to 10Mbps. Compare that with the 56.6Kbps speed of the fastest phone-line connections. Cable’s high speed can reduce the time required to download a 10MB file from 48 minutes to under 10 seconds (for the highest-speed cable connections).

If you are interested in using the cable system to connect to the Internet, you will need a cable modem. Just like a standard modem, a cable modem modulates and demodulates a signal. That is, it converts the signal between an analog and a digital signal. Unlike a phone-line modem, however, a cable modem does not need to dial into the network because the computer is always joined to the Internet. You may have to install a network card in setting up the cable modem.Cable modems can be expensive, running from $300 to $500. However, many cable companies will let you lease the equipment and roll the lease price into your monthly access charge. At $35 to $40 a month, these access charges are slightly higher than phone-line connections in some areas. And you should also be aware that the connection is shared among users in a given area, so as the number of users increases, the speed of the connection will decrease.

For more information about cable modems, click on these links:

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