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TechBits: File mystery, online spending, non-English names, security robot

TechBits: File mystery, online spending, non-English names, security robot

Web site provides info on PC files

NEW YORK -- Is "malfile.exe" a virus? What does "hmtcd.dll" do?

PC users sometimes come upon unfamiliar files on their hard drives, and identifying them is often a challenge. Many were fooled by a hoax e-mail that circulated a few years ago, instructing them to delete the alleged virus file "jdbgmgr.exe." The file was perfectly innocuous, but it wasn't easy to know that.

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Internet security company Bit9 Inc. this week launched fileadvisor.bit9.com, a Web site that attempts to bridge that knowledge gap. Visitors can search data on 25 million Windows PC files, collected from Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp., the National Institute of Standards and Technology and other sources.

Visitors can search using filenames, but this approach can be fooled by files that appear in several applications under the same name, or viruses masquerading with a legitimate file name.

For more accuracy, users can download a small, free application from FileAdvisor. When the user right-clicks a file, the application gives the option of computing a unique number that identifies the file. That number is then compared to the FileAdvisor database, giving a better chance of identification.

It may be surprising to find that even with 25 million files in its database, FileAdvisor can come up empty. It identified "malfile.exe" correctly as a file that ships with Windows, but was stumped by "htmcd.dll."

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-- Peter Svensson, Technology Writer

Online content spending tops $2 billion

NEW YORK -- Music sales helped propel U.S. spending on online content to a record $2 billion last year, a 15 percent increase from 2004, the Online Publishers Association reports.

The entertainment/lifestyle category, which in 2005 surpassed personals/dating to become the leading category of paid content, will likely get an even bigger boost this year with the availability of more video online. Apple Computer Inc. opened its iTunes Music Store to video late in the year, while Google Inc. did not begin offering paid video until January 2006.

"Consumers are viewing the Web platform and going online as a major destination for entertainment," said Pam Horan, vice president of marketing and membership for the New York-based trade group of media companies.

A few categories saw declines: sports, by 3 percent; user-generated content sites, such as classmates.com and IMDB.com, by 7 percent; and general news, by 11 percent.

Horan notes that consumers have plenty of sources for free news, so publishers may ultimately find that an advertisement-based business model works best.

The study, released Tuesday, was based on tracking by comScore Networks and excludes some types of content including pornography, gambling and software.

-- Anick Jesdanun, AP Internet Writer

Plan outlined for non-English domains

NEW YORK -- The Internet's key oversight agency has outlined a plan for testing domain names entirely in non-English characters, bringing closer to reality a change highly sought by Asian and Arabic Internet users.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced a tentative timetable Tuesday that calls for tests to begin in the second half of the year. The tests would help ensure that introducing non-English suffixes wouldn't wreck a global addressing system that millions of Internet users rely upon every day.

The Internet's main traffic directories know only 37 characters: the 26 letters of the Latin script used in English, the 10 numerals and a hyphen.

Constraining non-English speakers to those characters is akin to forcing all English-speakers to type domains in Chinese. As a result, ICANN has faced pressures to adopt technical tricks that let the directories understand other languages.

In fact, some aren't waiting. China already has set up its own ".com" in Chinese within its borders. Such efforts risk fracturing the Internet, such that the same address could reach two different sites depending on a user's location.

Even if the tests are successful, though, several policy questions remain. For example, should the incumbent operator of global domains like ".com" automatically get a Chinese version, or does that more properly goes to China, as its government insists?

Resolving those questions could take time, and domain names entirely in another language likely won't begin appearing until next year or even later.

-- Anick Jesdanun, AP Internet Writer

First Published: March 17, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

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