ALSO. . .

* The four-day National Cable Television Assn. conference in New Orleans kicks off today, as top cable TV operators and network equipment providers will rub shoulders with new media upstarts such as Commerce.TV, IBeam Broadcasting and VideoPropusion. America Online President Bob Pittman and Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer are expected to present competing visions of Internet television, promoters say. On Sunday, WorldGate Communications Inc. said its service connecting TVs to the Internet over cable lines will be used with Microsoft’s operating system on set-top boxes made by Motorola Inc.

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NetWorld+Interop, a key event for the Internet equipment industry taking place this week in Las Vegas, will draw attention to antidotes many software vendors offer for the vulnerabilities of the networked world to viral attacks. The event will open with a keynote speech Tuesday by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and be highlighted by speeches from top executives of Cisco Systems, Extreme Networks Inc. and Inktomi Corp.

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IBM Corp. Chairman and CEO Lou Gerstner makes his annual appearance before Wall Street on Tuesday, but faces a chilly reception from analysts looking for him to make good on promises of double-digit sales growth. IBM saw a 5% decline in first-quarter revenue compared with a year ago, as results were sapped by a slowdown in spending by customers seeking to avert Y2K software bugs and by sluggish growth in several of its mainstay businesses.