When you watch these ads, the ads check you

Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club or grocery store and there's a slim — but growing — chance the ad is watching you too.




Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity — and can change the ads accordingly.

That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens.

And even if the ads don't shift based on which people are watching, the technology's ability to determine the viewers' demographics is golden for advertisers who want to know how effectively they're reaching their target audience.

While the technology remains in limited use for now, advertising industry analysts say it is finally beginning to live up to its promise. The manufacturers say their systems can accurately determine gender 85 to 90 percent of the time, while accuracy for the other measures continues to be refined.

The concept is reminiscent of the science-fiction movie "Minority Report," in which Tom Cruise's character enters a mall and finds that retinal scanners identify him and prompt personalized ads that greet him by name.

But this technology doesn't go nearly that far. It doesn't identify people individually — it simply categorizes them by outward appearances.




So a video screen might show a motorcycle ad for a group of men, but switch to a minivan ad when women and children join them, said Vicki Rabenou, the chief measurement officer of Tampa, Fla.-based TruMedia Technologies Inc., one of the leaders in developing the technology.

"This is proactive merchandising," Rabenou said. "You're targeting people with smart ads."

Because the tracking industry is still in its infancy, there isn't yet consensus on how to refer to the technology. Some call it face reading, face counting, gaze tracking or, more generally, face-based audience measurement.

Whatever it's called, advertisers are finally ready to try it, said advertising consultant Jack Sullivan, a senior vice president of Starcom USA in Chicago. "I think you're going to see a lot of movement toward it by the end of this year in the top 10 markets," he said.

Because face tracking might feel reminiscent of Big Brother, manufacturers are racing to offer reassurances. When the systems capture an image of who's watching the screen, a computer instantly analyzes it. The systems' manufacturers insist, however, that nothing is ever stored and no identifying information is ever associated with the pictures. That makes the system less intrusive than a surveillance camera that records what it sees, the developers say.

The idea still worries Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group in San Francisco. Tien said it's not enough to say some system is "not as bad as some other technology," and argues that cameras that study people contribute to an erosion of privacy.

In general, the tracking systems work like this: A sensor or camera in or near the screen identifies viewers' faces by picking up shapes, colors and the relative speed of movement. The concept is similar to the way consumer cameras now can automatically make sure faces are in focus.

When the ad system pinpoints a face, it compares shapes and patterns to faces that are already identified in a database as male or female. That lets the system predict the person's gender almost immediately.




"The most important features seem to be cheekbones, fullness of lips and the gap between the eyebrows," said Paolo Prandoni, chief scientific officer of Quividi, a French company that is another player in face-tracking technology. Others include Studio IMC Inc. in New York.

The companies say their systems have become adept at determining a viewer's gender, but age is trickier: The software can categorize age only in broad ranges — teens, younger to middle-aged folks and seniors. There's moderate demand for ads based on ethnic information, but the companies acknowledge that determining ethnicity is more challenging than figuring out gender and age range.

Prandoni provided The Associated Press a limited version of Quividi's software, which uses an ordinary webcam to stream video to a computer. The trial version tracked gender only, using color-coded circles to distinguish male and female faces.

The sample size was too small to be statistically significant, but it was accurate about 80 to 90 percent of the time.

That might be as precise as the systems ever get, said Deborah Mitchell, a professor of consumer psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Even the human brain can't always determine gender, age or ethnicity.

Still, "even if it gets to 70 percent accuracy, that's still giving you a wealth of information," said Mitchell, who teaches in the Wisconsin School of Business.

That information is certainly valuable to Bill Ketcham, the chief marketing officer of Adspace Networks Inc. His New York company sells video advertising on 1,400 video screens at 105 malls around the nation.

Adspace is testing six TruMedia systems at malls in Winston-Salem, N.C., Pittsburgh and St. Louis. The kiosks display a daily list of top 10 sales at the mall, as well as paid advertising that comes largely from movie studios and TV networks.




A 15-second video ad that replays across Adspace's national network can cost as much as $765,000 per month. So advertisers expect rigorous information about who sees the spots — information that face tracking can now provide, Ketcham said.

For now, at least, Adspace isn't changing the ads based on who's watching — Ketcham said the kiosks' audiences are so large that it wouldn't be practical to personalize ads to individuals.

While advertisers like the face-tracking technology, another privacy advocate, Harley Geiger, questions whether it should be used on consumers without their knowledge. Geiger, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, D.C., said advertisers should be telling consumers what details about them are being collected and for what purpose.

"With the technology proliferating, now or the short-term is the time to consider privacy protections," he said. "If you don't build it in at an early stage it becomes very difficult to build it into an already established system."

IE8 Release Candidate 1 Has New Security Features

Even as the tech world continues to test Windows 7 beta -- and compare it to Vista -- Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 (RC1).

Much has changed since the second beta version of Microsoft's Internet browser. The browser is complete with reliability, performance and compatibility improvements, and there are new security features.

Microsoft said the technical community should expect the final IE8 release to behave as RC1 does. That means IE8 is effectively complete, but the company will continue to review feedback on critical issues.

Reviewing the Changes

On the reliability, performance and compatibility front, Microsoft studied feedback and addressed several issues. The company also worked closely with the security community on clickjacking protection.

According to Dean Hachamovitch, a general manager at Microsoft, Web sites can now protect themselves and their users from clickjacking attacks "out of the box," without impacting compatibility or requiring browser add-ons.




Microsoft also made some changes to the InPrivate feature and the user experience based on feedback. For example, based on data about how people use actually the browser, Microsoft made fitting more items on the Favorites bar easier.

"IE8 focused on how people really use the Web. Consumers want a browser that makes the tasks they do every day faster and easier. The activities people spend their time on define real-world performance: Navigating to Web sites, working with tabs, searching, keeping track of changing information (like traffic or an auction), and using the information from one site with another (as in getting a map)," Hachamovitch said.

"Everyone wants a trustworthy browser that keeps them in control and protects their safety," he said. "Developers want great developer tools, great interoperability, and a powerful platform that enables them to innovate. For some people, accessibility is crucial; for some organizations, policy, administration and deployment are essential."

A Focus on Privacy

Two privacy features -- InPrivate Filtering and InPrivate Browsing -- stand out most to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. InPrivate Filtering prevents content providers from gathering information to create a three-dimensional view of users' browsing habits. Private Browsing is a security feature that prevents somebody who has physical access to a PC from seeing what sites users have visited.




"Where you visit on the Web is as much your business as the books you pull off the shelf at the public library. Is it appropriate for someone to be looking over your shoulder? There would be people who say it is. I've spoken with business owners who believe the online browsing habits of their employees are their business," King said. "But it's a fine line, and I think it's notable that Microsoft has addressed that."

InPrivate Filtering, he added, enlarges the user's circle of privacy. It's a subject that King feels is going to become more important over time because search engines are "not particularly open" about the length of time they keep user data or what they do with it.

"Microsoft deserves a pat on the back," King said. "The InPrivate features really do relate to issues that many consumers think about and are concerned about, but in some cases those concerns have been ignored or pooh-poohed by other vendors."

Others could follow Google's move to reset options

Google Inc. is showing its love for its employees by giving them a second chance to profit from their wilting stock options. But the move irked shareholders still stuck with agonizing losses on their investments.




Nevertheless, Google's willingness to reset more than 8 million stock options at lower prices is likely to spur similar gestures by companies hoping to motivate their employees during a demoralizing recession.

"There is a lot of momentum building" to reprice stock options, said Alexander Cwirko-Godycki, a research manager for executive compensation specialist Equilar. "Everyone has just been sort of waiting for a big name to do it."

Google already has been joined by coffee chain Starbucks Corp., which unveiled a proposal to allow its employees to swap their existing stock options for new ones that will be more likely to put cash in their pockets.

But Google's repricing program made a bigger splash because it's far more generous to the employees — much to the dismay of the shareholders who have seen their holdings in the Internet search leader plunge by 57 percent, or a collective $130 billion, since the stock peaked at $747 per share in 2007.

Google shares surged $18.20, or nearly 6 percent, to close Friday at $324.70 as investors cheered the company's fourth-quarter earnings report. But analysts said the rally probably would have been even more robust if not for the decision to reprice the stock options.

"A lot of people just hate it," said Broadpoint AmTech analyst Rob Sanderson. "I had one money manager tell me, `The next time you talk to Google's management, tell them I want all the stock I bought at $400 a few months ago to be repriced at $285.'"




Understanding the angst triggered by option repricing requires an explanation on how the perquisites work.

Employees at thousands of companies generally receive a bundle of stock options when they are hired, and frequently receive additional grants in subsequent years.

The options are assigned what is known as an "exercise price" — the employee's cost for cashing in the reward. This price typically equals the stock's price at the time of the grant.

The more a company's stock price rises above the option price, the higher the profit for employees. The idea is to inspire workers to put in longer hours and come up with better ideas — to increase the company's value and the employees' potential windfall.

But if a stock price plunges below the option price — a phenomenon known as being "underwater" — employees can become dejected, distracted and perhaps even tempted to entertain other job offers, especially if a large portion of the compensation comes in the form of options.

The problem of underwater options faces 72 percent of the companies in the Fortune 500, based on Equilar's analysis of average exercise prices in mid-December.

Google's work force is awash in underwater options: Nearly 17,000 employees are holding more than 8 million stock options with an exercise price of at least $400.

Those are the options likely to be exchanged in a program running from Jan. 29 through March 3. The new options are expected to have an exercise price tied to the market value of Google's stock in early March.

Even though the repricing will result in $460 million in accounting charges, Google reasoned the cost is acceptable, to avoid morale and retention problems among its 20,222 workers. Since its inception in 1998, Google has given options to virtually all of its employees, turning thousands of them into multimillionaires.

"We think it's a good deal for shareholders and for our employees as well," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said Thursday.

Even though it has been cutting back on some perks, Google is still renowned for pampering employees — a trait that isn't widely shared. That's why Sanderson isn't convinced Google's repricing will cause other companies to follow suit.

"Google gives away free lunches to employees, but that didn't compel everyone else to do it," he said.

Did Google even need to be so magnanimous at a time when many people are simply happy to have a job?

"While we agree with management that it is in shareholders' interests to keep Google employees motivated and retain the company's focus on growth, we question the necessity of the (repricing) program given the current employment environment," ThinkEquity analyst William Morrison wrote in a research report.

On the flip side, it could still be smart business to feel make workers feel wanted — even as millions of other people are unemployed.

"The reality is that talented people will always be able to find another job in any market," Sanderson said. "And if you lose your intellectual capital, you could be losing the future of the company."

Hoping to hold on to its employees, Google is extending the vesting period for each swapped option by a full year. Vesting refers to the time that must lapse before an option can be exercised. So a Google employee with an underwater option that vests in June 2010 would have to wait until June 2011 to exercise a repriced option.

Sanderson and Morrison both agree that Google could have lessened the backlash against its repricing by coming up with a program that didn't sting its shareholders as much.

Besides raising issues of fairness, Google's program threatens to lower future earnings per share by creating the need to issue more outstanding stock when the options are cashed in.

Google could have lessened the dilution experienced by its shareholders if it required employees to exchange anywhere from four to 10 of their current options for a repriced option. Or they could have traded for a share of restricted stock that would vest over several years.

It will probably take a few years before any definitive conclusions can be made about the wisdom of Google's repricing, said Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal.

Samsung Electronics reports first quarterly loss

SEOUL, South Korea - Samsung Electronics, the world's largest manufacturer of flat screen televisions, memory chips and liquid crystal displays, posted its first ever quarterly loss Friday as the global economic slump hit prices and demand for mainstay products.




Samsung lost 20 billion won ($14.4 million) in the three months ended Dec. 31, the company said. Samsung posted 2.21 trillion won in net profit a year earlier.

The net loss — Samsung's first since the company began reporting results on a quarterly basis in the third quarter of 2000 — underlines the challenges facing electronics companies worldwide as major economies flounder in recession.

The Suwon, South Korea-based company has struggled with falling prices for chips and flat screens, as well as the waning consumer appetite that has hit other Asian electronics manufacturers including Japanese giant Sony Corp.

On Thursday, Sony projected its first annual loss in 14 years, while South Korea's LG Electronics Inc. reported a record quarterly net loss. Japan's Panasonic Corp. said earlier this month it would slash about $1.5 billion from its planned investment in two new flat-screen TV plants and shut down unprofitable businesses.

Samsung's results showed that "our company could not escape the rapid decline in the global economy," Robert Yi, vice president for investor relations, told a conference call.

The result was not as bad as the net loss of 92.93 billion won forecast by an Associated Press survey of 10 analysts. But on an operating basis, the company racked up red ink to the tune of 940 billion won, much worse than the forecast of a loss of 319 billion won. That loss was also a first.

Operating earnings are seen as a direct indicator of core business performance while net profit or loss also reflects taxes, dividends, asset sales and other items.

"The global economic slowdown had an adverse effect on consumer purchases of electronics goods in the fourth quarter, traditionally a strong period for electronics companies," Samsung said in the release.

Fourth quarter sales rose to 18.45 trillion won from 17.48 trillion won the year before, but less than the 20 trillion won expected by analysts.

Samsung shares fell 4.1 percent to close at 442,000 won.

On the bright side, Samsung said mobile phone sales rose to a record during the quarter despite a 5 percent contraction in the global market for handsets. The company, the world's No. 2 mobile phone manufacturer, sold about 200 million handsets in 2008, an increase of 22 percent from 2007.

The handset market in developed economies such as the United States and Europe will decline by 10 percent or more in 2009 to about what it was in 2004, Chi Young-cho, senior vice president of strategic planning, told the conference call. Emerging markets are expected to slow, he said.

"We expect 2009 to be quite challenging compared to any previous years," he said.




Samsung announced a major restructuring last week, consolidating business operations into two divisions. This week the company said it had replaced most of the heads of its overseas regional headquarters.

It also announced the redeployment of more than 80 percent of the almost 1,400 employees at its Seoul headquarters.

For all of 2008, Samsung said that net profit fell 25.6 percent to 5.53 trillion won from the year before, while sales rose 15.5 percent to 72.95 trillion won.

Obama's whirlwind first day: economy, war and more

In a first-day whirlwind, President Barack Obama showcased efforts to revive the economy on Wednesday, summoned top military officials to the White House to chart a new course in Iraq and eased into the daunting thicket of Middle East diplomacy. "What an opportunity we have to change this country," said the 47-year-old chief executive, who also issued new ethics rules for his administration and hosted a reception at the presidential mansion for 200 inauguration volunteers and guests selected by an Internet lottery.




After dancing at inaugural balls with first lady Michelle Obama past midnight, Obama entered the Oval Office for the first time as president in early morning. He read a good luck note left behind by President George W. Bush, then began breaking cleanly with his predecessor's policies.

Aides circulated a draft of an executive order that would close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year and halt all war crimes trials in the meantime.

Closing the site "would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice," read the draft prepared for the new president's signature. A copy was obtained by The Associated Press, and an aide said privately that Obama would sign a formal order on Thursday.

Some of the 245 detainees currently held at Guantanamo would be released, while others would be transferred elsewhere and later put on trial under terms to be determined.

Obama's Cabinet was moving closer to completion.

At the Capitol, the Senate confirmed Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state after a one-day delay forced by Republicans. The vote was 94-2, and spectators seated in the galleries erupted in applause when it was announced.

Treasury-designate Timothy Geithner emerged unscathed from his confirmation hearing, apologizing for having failed to pay $34,000 in taxes earlier in the decade.




To the evident anger of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republicans on the panel invoked longstanding rules to postpone a vote on Eric Holder's appointment as attorney general.

Counting Clinton, seven Cabinet members have been confirmed so far, as have the two top officials at the Office of Management and Budget.

Obama's schedule for the day included separate sessions on the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The new president has pledged to take bold steps to revive the economy, which is struggling through the worst recession since the Great Depression. Last week, he won approval to use $350 billion in leftover financial industry bailout funds.

He presided over the White House meeting on the economy as the House Appropriations Committee moved toward approval of $358 billion in new spending, part of the economic stimulus package making its way to his desk.

The new commander in chief held his first meeting in the Situation Room, where he, Vice President Joe Biden and senior military and foreign policy officials discussed war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama campaigned on a pledge to withdraw U.S. combat forces from Iraq within 16 months, and to beef up the commitment in Afghanistan.

The new White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said Obama's phone calls to leaders in the Middle East were meant to convey his "commitment to active engagement in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace from the beginning of his term."




Gibbs also that in conversations with Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders, the president emphasized he would work to consolidate the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Obama intends to name former Senate Majority leader George Mitchell as a special envoy to the region.

Not everything was new at the White House.

In the Oval Office, Obama worked at a desk built from the timbers of a British naval vessel, the HMS Resolute, and used off-and-on by presidents since the 1870s, including Bush. It also appeared that the carpet that Bush used in his second term, a yellow sunbeam design, was still in place.

If some of the furnishings remained in place, there was no doubt that the new president meant to fulfill his campaign promise of change.

"As of today, lobbyists will be subject to stricter limits than under any ... other administration in history," Obama told reporters as he signed the new rules. The restrictions included a ban on gifts by lobbyists to anyone serving in the administration.

He also imposed a pay freeze for about 100 White House aides who earn $100,000 or more. Its implementation was unclear, since none of them was on the payroll before Tuesday's noontime inauguration.




On Tuesday, within hours of Obama's inauguration, his administration froze last-minute Bush administration regulations before they could take effect.

Among them was an Interior Department proposal to remove gray wolves from Endangered Species protections in much of the northern Rocky Mountains, and a Labor Department recommendation that would allow companies that manage employee retirement plans to market investment products to plan participants.

Obama and his wife began their day at a prayer service that is traditional for the first business day of a new administration. They were joined in front-pew seats by Biden and his wife, Jill, as well as former President Bill Clinton and his wife, hours away from confirmation as the nation's top diplomat.

"Grant to Barack Obama, president of the United States, and to all in authority your grace and good will. Bless them with your heavenly gifts, give them wisdom and strength to know and to do your will," prayed the Rev. Andy Stanley, one of numerous clerics from several religions to speak.

Inauguration video draws record online traffic

The inauguration ceremony of President Barack Obama made for a busy day at the two leading companies that deliver Internet video.

Akamai Technologies Inc. said 7.7 million people watched video streams carried by Akamai at the same time on Tuesday, a record for the company, which is hired by many news sites to handle video delivery. On ordinary days, the number of simultaneous viewers rarely goes over 2 million.

All told, tens of millions watched video streams from Akamai at some point during the day, said Jeff Young, a spokesman for the Cambridge, Mass.-based company.

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Akamai competitor Limelight Networks Inc. of Tempe, Ariz., said 2.5 million people watched the inauguration on sites that use Limelight for delivery, with most of the viewers staying for Obama's entire speech.

Not all Web sites were able to keep up with the flood of traffic: CNN.com had to place some viewers on a "wait list" for a while before they could view the live stream. The Associated Press had issues as well — from a bit after noon until shortly before 1 p.m., new viewers could not access its video streams on various Web sites. Akamai streams video for both companies.

The huge number of video viewers appears to have slowed the Internet as a whole. Keynote Systems Inc., which tracks Web site performance, said the Internet's top 40 sites slowed by as much as 60 percent when the ceremony started at 11 a.m., and many news sites saw even sharper declines in performance. NPR.org was almost completely unavailable around noon.

People also kept accessing WhiteHouse.gov to see when it would be updated with the new president's portrait, at one time making the site take 15 times longer than normal to load, according to Shawn White, director of external operations at Keynote. Obama's picture was posted at 12:07 p.m.

In terms of the number of news Web site pages perused, Tuesday was not a record day. Akamai's global index of news consumption put the top usage at 5.4 million visitors per minute, below the 8.6 million registered on Election Day.

Technology to stop phone use in cars

Many parents would love to be able to give their teenagers a cell phone that couldn't be used while driving. Now some inventors say they have come up with ways to make that possible, but they appear to be relying on wishful thinking.




One product to hit the market, $10-a-month software by Dallas-based WQN Inc., can disable a cell phone while its owner is driving. It uses GPS technology, which can tell how fast a person is traveling. But it can't know whether the person is driving — and therefore it can needlessly lock a phone. WQN, which sells cell phone and Internet security software under the name WebSafety, says it signed up about 50 customers for its first month of service.

Aegis Mobility, a Canadian software company, plans to release a similar Global Positioning System-based product this fall, known as DriveAssistT. Aegis is in talks with big U.S. wireless phone carriers, which would have to support the software and charge families a fee of probably $10 to $20 a month, said David Teater, the company's vice president.

The DriveAssistT system will disable a phone at driving speeds and send a message to callers or texters saying the person they are trying to reach is too busy driving. But because that person could be a non-driving passenger, the approach is a blunt tool.




Other product concepts that don't involve GPS systems have their own flaws. As a result, Parry Aftab, who advises families on technology and safety, suggests worried parents find another way to stop their kids from calling or texting while driving. Parents are better off taking away a child's cell phone if it is used improperly, she said.

"More and more, we see any solution is, in large part, education and awareness, parents getting involved," said Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org. Driving and cell phone use can be a bad combination, "but so is putting on makeup and eating a three-course meal," Aftab said. "I wish technology providers would look hard at the problems before coming up with a knee-jerk solution."

Concerns are mounting that driving while gabbing or text-messaging on a cell phone, even if it is not handheld, is unacceptably dangerous. The National Safety Council said this month that there should be a total ban on cell phone use while driving, citing the higher risk of accidents and deaths.

At least 18 states restrict cell phone use — talking or texting — for some or all drivers, according to the insurance industry-funded Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Yet even in those states, motorists and especially young drivers are hardly deterred.

One of the worst accidents occurred last year in New York, when five teens were killed when their 17-year-old driver, carrying on a text conversation, collided with a tractor-trailer rig.




B. Michael Adler, chief executive of WQN, said his 18-year-old son came to mind as he was developing the company's software to disable a cell phone while driving.

"He's texting messages with two hands and driving with his legs," Adler said. "You flip him the keys to the family car, you might as well be flipping him a six-pack of beer."

WQN's surveillance service promises more than just disabling the phone in cars. It can monitor a person's whereabouts, notifying parents by text messaging when their children step out of designated zones or return home. It also can turn off a cell phone at school, preventing cheating by text messaging during classroom tests, based on a reading of the school's location.

The question parents would have to ask themselves is whether they'd want to prohibit their children's activities this way. That kid you're trying to control might not be driving, but rather sitting on a train or a city bus or in the passenger seat of a buddy's car.

Michael Hensley has thought about this very dilemma. The 52-year-old manager for a defense contractor worries that his 23-year-old daughter is a "thumb Olympian" inclined to send text messages while driving.

But he doesn't expect technology to provide an answer. Savvy kids "will always find a way to defeat" a technological product, Hensley said. "It's human nature to defeat the system." Instead, Hensley said, he's tried to educate his daughter about the dangers of mixing phones with driving.




The inventors of the GPS-based software systems acknowledge their systems aren't perfect for disabling cell phones and are hard at work on improvements. Meanwhile, a separate, hardware-based solution appears to have its own flaws.

A pair of inventors affiliated with the University of Utah have developed a prototype of a key fob device that communicates with a cell phone over Bluetooth wireless signals. The key fob wraps around an ignition key; when the key is flipped or slid open, the device disables the cell phone paired with it.

This turns out to be easy to beat. A kid could remove or run down the key fob's batteries, or duplicate the key — without the fob. So in response to questions from The Associated Press and critics on the Internet, the Utah inventors, Wally Curry and Xuesong Zhou, have dropped their original concept for something different.

Zhou considered transforming the key fob into a device that prevents nothing. Instead, it would let a driver hit a "quit" button and talk or text at will, but with a consequence: parents get notified by text messaging, and a monthly "driving score" could go to an insurer, which might jack up the teenager's premiums for bad driving.

Even that, Zhou acknowledged, wouldn't solve the tampering problem. So in his latest brainstorming he produced an elaborate scheme: Parents should estimate how many hours a child drives each month and report that to a Web site. If the key fob system reported the teenager appears to be driving substantially less than the prescribed time, it might indicate he's defeating the system, and the Web site could send a report to the parent.

Virus spreads quickly, but may be a dud

A computer virus that may leave Microsoft Windows users vulnerable to digital hijacking is spreading through companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia, already infecting close to 9 million machines, according to a private online security firm.

Fortunately, however, it may be a dud.




Though computer bugs have become a common affliction, Finland-based F-Secure says a virus it has been tracking for the past several weeks has surged more rapidly through corporate networks than anything they've seen in years.

But the virus doesn't appear to be working as its designers intended. F-Secure's chief security adviser, Patrik Runald, said the virus's coding suggests a type of bug that alerts computer users to bogus infections on their machines and offers to help by selling them antivirus software.

Instead, the virus is simply spreading to little effect, though it may still pose a threat to infected computers.

"The gang behind this worm haven't used it yet," F-Secure's chief research officer, Nikko Hypponen said by phone. "But they could do anything they like with any of these machines at any time."




Microsoft issued a security update Tuesday to deal with the so-called "Downadup" or "Conficker" virus, which appears to be a new version of a bug that popped up in October.

"Over the last couple of weeks, a new variant of this worm has been affecting customers," the company acknowledged in a blog post. Microsoft said the virus is spreading by gaining access to one computer and then guessing at passwords of other users in the same network: "If the password is weak, it may succeed."

A company representative couldn't immediately be reached Saturday to comment on F-Secure's estimate of infected machines.

Most computers with Windows will automatically download Microsoft's security update, but Hypponen said the virus disables updates on infected machines.




While the origin of the virus is a mystery, F-Secure's best guess is it came from Ukraine. Hypponen said it is coded to avoid computers there, which may indicate whoever wrote the virus was trying to avoid drawing attention from local authorities.