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Readers of FHM magazine recently named Britney Spears the world's sexiest woman, but how good does she look in high definition? Decidedly unsexy, according to television industry analyst Phillip Swann.

He maintains a list of stars who look great in the high resolution images of HDTV -- and those whose flaws are revealed in the harsh light of high definition reality.

Swann says that in a recent HDTV television concert, Spears' face looked "bumpy and puffy." HDTV's super-clear picture shows Michael Douglas to be wrinkly and old, while his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones looks terrific -- like a porcelain doll. HDTV flatters George Clooney and Charlize Theron, but it's less kind to Robert De Niro and Renee Zellwegger.

Swann says Hollywood makeup artists are trying to adjust to the new world of HDTV, but they can only hide so much.

SWANN: The Hollywood dream machine -- those glamour image consultants who sell on who's pretty and who's not -- put a lot of marketing dollars into trying to create a perception that certain people are beautiful. Why do they do that? Because if they can create that perception they make billions of dollars. Britney Spears is making hundreds of millions of dollars on the fact that people think she's gorgeous and sexy, when in real life she isn't. And so that is a real eye opener and exposes what Hollywood is doing with certain people. But when you talk about people who are really physically beautiful in real life as well as in HDTV, you have a greater appreciation of that.

We're eliminating a whole class of potential stars who are not gorgeous but can be made to look gorgeous?

SWANN: Exactly. Now it's people who are truly beautiful who will be most successful. It will be more difficult for the Hollywood glamour machine to create images, which they have done for decades. In HDTV you got to see people for who they really are, and the Hollywood images consultants are at a loss. They're running scared.

Maybe the effect will be that the public will develop a more realistic, healthy sense of human beauty?

SWANN: Since I reported that Cameron Diaz doesn't look as good in HDTV and she's had an acne problem, I've had people tell me they have a greater sense of appreciation for her now, because they can now identify with her. She's not this incredibly gorgeous, beautiful glamorous super star that she's portrayed as. She truly is the girl next door, because the girl next door might have an acne problem, too.

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File sharing may not be responsible for declining CD sales.

Researchers at Harvard Business School and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill say they've found that sharing of digital music files on peer-to-peer networks like KaZaA has only a minor effect on the sale of compact discs.

The report counters the music industry's central theme in its war on digital piracy. The music industry has blamed file sharing for a prolonged decline in CD sales.

The report says that file sharing actually appears to boost the sales of popular albums by the likes of Brittney Spears a little, while slightly depressing the sales of CDs from lesser-known artists.

Harvard associate professor Felix Oberholser says the study compared actual downloads of music files to store sales of CDs during the latter part of 2002. He says people who shared files likely would not have bought the albums that they downloaded.

OBERHOLZER-GEE: Most of what we know about the effect of file sharing on CD sales comes from surveys. You would ask people, "Do you download music?" Then you would ask whether or not downloading music has changed behavior. The problem with all these surveys, in particular after people realized file sharing was illegal, is that you couldn't be too sure whether everybody is willing to reveal what they do and what they think. The study we did is unique in that we have log files from servers that facilitate downloading. And so we can actually see what people download and we can see if albums that are downloaded more often -- whether their sales change in any way in response to downloading.

What did you find in that regard?

OBERHOLZER-GEE: The average effect of file sharing on sales is pretty much zero. We cannot find a negative impact. We have a number of statistical models, and even if we take the most pessimistic one, the negative effect that we find is so small that the big drop in sales in the 2000 to 2002 period cannot be explained by file sharing.

It's such a tempting connection to make, and one that the recording industry has wanted us to make. Even though CD sales are dramatically down while downloading is dramatically up, there's no connection?

OBERHOLZER-GEE: To make the argument ring true what you would have to see is that the types of music that are shared most often are the types of music that lose the most sales. This is not what we see in the data.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the trade group representing the music industry, denounced the report's conclusions. It released the following statement: "Countless well-respected groups and analysts, including Edison Research, Forrester, the University of Texas, among others, have all determined that illegal file sharing has adversely impacted the sales of CDs."

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The Internet isn't replacing libraries, but it's certainly changing how people use them.

Libraries around the country are experimenting with Internet services such as delivering electronic versions of books via e-mail and online book discussion groups.

The needs of library patrons are changing, according to Marilyn Turner, who manages the Web site and other electronic services for the Hennepin County Library System. The system includes 26 libraries in suburban Minneapolis.

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The Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest is perhaps the most prestigious of its kind. Seventy-three three-member teams are meeting in the Czech Republic next week for the world finals, which are sponsored by IBM.

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Spyware, also called adware, is any software that secretly collects information about a computer and transmits the information to a a third party, usually for advertising purposes. It often leads to an annoying barrage of unwanted pop-up ads, and in sufficient quantity can damage your computer.

Dwight Silverman writes about computing for the Houston Chronicle.

SILVERMAN: Spyware can generate pop-ups that it pulls from a Web site or an advertising service. Sometimes these pop-ups can show up even when you are not browsing. The spyware runs in the background and brings you advertising pop-ups. I have seen some pieces of spyware that, when you click on something that generates a pop-up, instead of what you wanted you get a dozen other pop-ups that are advertisements. It can install unwanted search bars in the tool bar of your browser so it forces you to use their particular search engine, which in turn generates more advertising.

Where does spyware come from?

SILVERMAN: Usually it comes from Web sites that invite you to download something, or if you download a piece of software that appears to be useful and is usually free. The way they're able to afford the development of that software is usually to sell advertising within it, or to have some other process in it that talks to advertisers. You can also get spyware by going to a Web site that pops up what's called a "browser helper object certificate." It looks almost like a little stock certificate. It says, “Do you want to install this product that will improve your search function and get you free porn?” And yes, some of them say that. Hopefully most people will click no. But some people will click yes. And that installs the spyware.

What do the purveyors of spyware want from me?

SILVERMAN: They want to know what you are doing on the Web. They want you to look at their advertising. And they want you to buy their products. Why do they want to know what I'm doing on the Web?

Why do they want to know what I'm doing on the Web?

SILVERMAN: There is spyware that will target ads at you depending on where you go. So let's say, for example, that you're fond of going to gaming sites. They might pop up some ads for games.

How can spyware actually hurt your computer?

SILVERMAN: If you have enough of these programs that are talking to other Web sites, popping things up and hogging your bandwidth, they can really slow down both your Internet connection and the general performance of your PC. In fact, that's how most people realize they have spyware. They think the pop-ups are just coming from surfing the Web. They don't realize that their machine is slowing down because it is clogged with spyware.

Free Software for Removing Spyware:
Spybot Search & Destroy
Ad-aware
Hijack This

Bonus! Listen to more spyware tips from Dwight Silverman.

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Increasingly, spammers are fighting their way into discussions and forums on Weblogs and other kinds of Web sites. Visitors to the Future Tense site may have noticed this phenomenon recently when they discovered the discussion area swamped with spam peddling prescription-free Valium and Cialis (Don't hunt for it -- it's gone now).

Ray Everett-Church is chief privacy officer at ePrivacy Group, an anti-spam consulting firm. He says junk e-mailers are attacking Weblogs created by popular blogging software packages.

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Top video game maker Electronic Arts has given eight million dollars to the University of Southern California to fund a video games master's degree within USC's prestigious film school. It will be the first such program in the country.

The program will help meet a growing demand for video game artists, said Rusty Reuff, executive vice president for human resources at Electronic Arts.

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Letters that soldiers write home help future generations better understand the nature of warfare and the sacrifices made by the men and women who serve the country. But with the Internet available to most troops in Iraq, war correspondence is changing. E-mail is fast replacing handwritten letters.

Today we speak with Andrew Carroll, editor of War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars. That book served as the basis for the film "War Letters" that aired on the American Experience on PBS. He's in the middle of a trip to more than 30 countries, talking with soldiers and collecting their correspondence. We reached him in Beijing.

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It used to be that handwritten letters were about the only practical way for soldiers at war to correspond with family or friends back home. But today in Iraq, a year after the war began, most American troops can slip into a military-run Internet cafe to send and read e-mail, surf the Web, or place a call to the states over an Internet telephone.

Each cafe is equipped with about 20 Gateway laptop computers and four "voice over IP" phones.

U.S. soldiers check e-mail and surf the Web in a Baghdad cyber cafe.

Everquest is the online role playing fantasy game, where users across the Internet unite to fight monsters and hunt for hidden treasures. Its addictive nature has given it the nickname "Evercrack."

A former player, who wants to be known only as "Jane," has started a Web site that collects the stories of family members and friends who live with obsessed Everquest players. The site, called Everquest Daily Grind, is based on postings to the "Everquest Widows" online discussion group.

JANE: My social circle definitely suffered from playing Everquest. You end up sacrificing a lot of your own time. You don't do much anymore, you don't socialize, you stop pursuing other hobbies, and you don't exercise. One thing I was always interested in was music. And I found that during that time when I was playing excessively, I stopped doing all these activities. You become isolated, and Everquest becomes the one thing you do when you are not at work or not following any kind of obligations to family and so on.

GORDON: Do you still play too much?

JANE: No, no, it's totally fine now for me. I think the problem with Everquest is not just the computing aspect of the technical elements or the graphics that's really appealing; it's more the social aspect of it. It identifies a certain need people have to socialize, to be popular and to do well in life. And I think that's why it's so addictive to some and not to others.

GORDON: Characterize the kind of stories you post on the Everquest Daily
Grind.

JANE: The typical story that I see is someone's spouse or live-in partner sleeping in until 12:00 or so, getting up, sitting in front of the computer all day, and having the other partner go out and work, come home and make dinner, do the laundry and take care of the kids while the partner is still sitting in front of the computer. This is not an isolated event; I've seen those stories over and over. I want people to realize that the impact is not just that one person gets jealous because the other person spend so much time on the computer game, but that it actually has a negative impact on the household.

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Everquest is the online role playing fantasy game, where users across the Internet unite to fight monsters and hunt for hidden treasures. Its addictive nature has given it the nickname "Evercrack."

A former player, who wants to be known only as "Jane," has started a Web site that collects the stories of family members and friends who live with obsessed Everquest players. The site, called Everquest Daily Grind, is based on postings to the "Everquest Widows" online discussion group.

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In a new survey, the Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that a growing number of Internet users are becoming disillusioned with email, despite the first national anti-spam legislation which went into effect on January 1. The Can Spam Act criminalizes some tactics that spammers use to send junk e-mail.

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The broadband revolution has finally arrived, and it's changing the way we use the Internet.

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Ripping one CD onto your computer doesn't take a lot of time. But what if you want to convert hundreds of them to the MP3 format so you can play all your music from your PC, or load up your portable digital music player? Now we're talking a real investment of your time.

For a price, you can hire a service to do the grunt work for you. RipDigital will mail a spindle that you load with CD's, which you ship back. In about a week, you'll get your CD's back, plus one or more discs that contain all of your music in MP3. It costs a little more than one dollar per CD. You can also pay extra for all your music to be loaded onto a new external hard drive.

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A gadget currently in development promises to make your wallet slimmer, and your money and identity safer.

The Chameleon Pocket Vault is an electronic device about the size of a small PDA that's designed to consolidate your credit, debit, super market club, identity, library and "Speedpass" cards onto one piece of plastic.

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"Cheaters are undermining the once-promising world of online video gaming." So begins an article by freelance writer Dave Wilson in a recent edition of the San Jose Mercury News.

Wilson says gamers have found ways to make their characters nearly invincible against their Internet opponents, in games like Grand Theft Auto and Madden NFL 2004. Wilson says rampant cheating, or at least the impression of rampant cheating, threatens to stifle the development of an emerging art form.

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Whatever benefits they may bring to society, computers can be harmful to the environment. Manufacturing them consumes a lot of energy and natural resources, while discarded PCs can pollute groundwater.

A new report from a research arm of the United Nations says the best way for computer users to help the environment is to upgrade their machines instead of buying new ones -- or by purchasing used computers.

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The Linux Users Group of Baghdad is asking Americans to donate how-to books to help build a new computer infrastructure in Iraq.

The group says computers and software are easier to come by than instructional books. Would-be Iraqi geeks are looking for books on Linux, the open source operating system that serves as an alternative to proprietary programs like Windows. They also need books about other kinds of open source software, and about HTML, the programming language of the Web. The goal is to encourage the development of a technology industry that's not dependent on U.S. companies.

The Freedom Technology Center of Mountain View, California is collecting and mailing books to Baghdad.

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TellTale Weekly is a new, low-cost audio book service selling titles from the public domain. You can buy books for less than a dollar and place them on your portable music player or computer.

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Humanitarian relief organizations need to do a better job communicating with the news media about crises around the world, according to a new report.

Two nonprofit groups, the Fritz Institute and Reuters AlertNet, commissioned the study, which was conducted by Steve Ross, professor of journalism at Columbia University.

Non-governmental organizations, or NGO's, like Oxfam and the Red Cross need to use the Internet more effectively to get their message to reporters and the public, said Ross. Relief organizations benefit in many ways from the stories reporters tell, he said.

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Linux, the computer operating system that many corporations are adopting as a vastly cheaper alternative to Windows, is the subject of two new lawsuits.

Linux is open source software, meaning that programmers from around the world contribute to it. Linux code is free, or can be purchased in more user-friendly, packaged versions.

Utah company SCO is laying claim to Linux, saying parts of it have been lifted from Unix. Unix is an operating system created by Bell Labs in the 1970's that's now owned by SCO. SCO has expanded its legal campaign, suing retailer AutoZone and carmaker DaimlerChrysler over their use of Linux.

Stephen Shankland, a reporter for CNET News.com, says the lawsuits could have far-reaching implications.

Eight years ago this week, Future Tense made its debut. About the same time, Internet research firm comScore Media Metrix issued its first report looking at the most trafficked Web sites on the 'Net. We thought we'd look back at that report to get a glimpse at how the 'Net has changed since we first went on the air.

Graham Mudd is a comScore Media Metrix analyst.

MUDD: In the beginning of 1996, we estimate that approximately 20 million people were online from from U.S. households. That's about 10 percent of households.

How does that compare to today?

MUDD: In January 2004, there were approximately 135 million household Internet users. That's between 60 and 70 percent depending on the estimate of household size.

Sometimes we think technological change is not coming fast enough. But that's quite a change in just eight years.

MUDD: It's 600-plus percent.

What kind of sites were the most trafficked back in '96 and how does that compare to today?

MUDD: The Web of the mid-90's was dominated by ISP sites, search engines and university sites. A lot has changed. While we see that ISP's and search engines are still near the top, many of them have taken the form
of portals. Three major networks of sites (AOL, MSN and Yahoo) now dominate the top 50 sites. And in fact those sites each reach more than 70 percent of the Internet population, and collectively reach nearly every single Internet user.

It's sort of fun to look back at the top sites of '96 for the oldies-but-goodies like Infoseek, Compuserve, Prodigy, Well.com and umich.edu. That's so different from today.

MUDD: It is. And back in 1996, there wasn't much of anything in terms of e-commerce or especially online travel. But in 2003 we saw more than 90 billion dollars spent and that's excluding auctions. If you look at just
travel alone, it was 40 billion dollars. It's become a major marketplace.

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Eight years ago this week, Future Tense made its debut. About the same time, Internet research firm comScore Media Metrix issued its first report looking at the most trafficked Web sites on the 'Net. We thought we'd look back at that report to get a glimpse at how the 'Net has changed since we first went on the air.

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It's "Super Tuesday," when voters in ten states cast their primary ballots. It could turn out to be a big day for one of the Democratic contenders, but it will certainly be a big day for electronic voting. Voters in California, Georgia, and Maryland will cast their votes with a touch-screen. After the 2000 election Congress authorized funds for states to upgrade to electronic voting, but it's still a controversial technology.

In Maryland, officials are trying to shore up confidence in the new machines. Measures include tamper-proof adhesive tape to prevent anyone from fiddling with their programming or electronics. We talk with the state's top election administrator. (Jeff Horwich guest-hosts.)

Here it is, Super Tuesday -- voters in ten states cast their primary ballots. It could turn out to be a big day for one of the Democratic contenders, but it will certainly be a big day for electronic voting. Voters in California, Georgia, and Maryland will cast their votes with a touch-screen. After the 2000 election Congress authorized funds for states to upgrade to electronic voting, but it's still a controversial technology.

In Maryland, officials are trying to shore up confidence in the new machines. Measures include tamper-proof adhesive tape to prevent anyone from fiddling with their programming or electronics. Linda Lamone is the state's top election official.

LAMONE: It's called "tamper tape" and it indicates on the tape itself if anyone has tried to intrude into the equipment. And it's placed across the door that leads to the area where the memory card is stored.

FUTURE TENSE: How confident are you right now that the system will yield accurate results?

LAMONE: I am completely confident, in fact both of the studies that were done on the Diebold equipment for Maryland said that they counted 100 percent accurately.

FUTURE TENSE: Do you consider this any kind of test run, or as far as you're concerned, this is the real thing, is the testing over with?

LAMONE: The testing is over with. This equipment has been tested at least four times in preparation for this election by different people, and it's had two risk analyses done on it. It was used in four counties in the 2002 gubernatorial election without any problems whatsoever, and it's been used in about 22 municipal or special local elections since then.

FUTURE TENSE: There are groups in a few places in the country that are using electronic voting, and I think there is a group in Maryland, that have encouraged people to avoid the electronic voting machines and use absentee ballots instead. Have you seen any surge in absentee ballots because of that?

LAMONE: No.

FUTURE TENSE: And what's been your response to these lingering concerns about the technology?

LAMONE: They're basically saying that the only way to ensure trustworthy elections is for the equipment to be able to produce a paper ballot that the voter can then examine to make sure it matches what they see on the screen. Well, of course if you have a rogue programmer that's smart enough to program the equipment to record a different result than what the person sees on the screen, that same programmer will make sure that what is printed on the paper matches what's on the screen and not what's recorded. So I think it creates a false sense of security. And if you look at the administrative and logistical problems of having printers in polling places, in Maryland we have 16,000 voting units. That means 16,000 printers that are capable of running from 7:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night, with enough ink and paper to accommodate that. And what happens when a printer jams?

FUTURE TENSE: There has been a lot of focus on the potential disadvantages, but what are the advantages of going electronic? How is this going to make things easier for your office and better for office?

LAMONE: Absolutely. Security is certainly an issue and one that we take seriously, but the real issue is how many voters are not going to be disenfranchised from the voting process due to the advantages of electronic voting. It provides a secret ballot to the blind and visually impaired for the first time in this state. It's much more flexible as far as language needs are concerned. We're offering the ballot in Spanish in two of our larger jurisdictions. It eliminates over-voting completely, which was a huge problem for some jurisdictions in the 2000 presidential election. And it greatly reduces under-voting. We have something here that is intuitive to use, the majority of the voters absolutely love it. And you need to have a balance between security and putting into place new barriers that could disenfranchise voters. We
We're confident, we like the equipment. Most of our voters like the equipment, and we think we're going to have a great election.

That's Linda Lamone, administrator of elections for the state of Maryland.

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As much as you hear about Weblogs, you'd think just about everyone is a blogger. But a new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that fewer people create and read Weblogs than you might think.