The silicon.com Weekly Round-Up: 07.03.03

There have been some strange goings on in Belgium of late. A little while ago, an employee of steel company Bekaert made merry with Photoshop and pasted the heads of three of his mates on naked images of Homer and Marge Simpson, and then emailed the wacky pictures to 20 of his colleagues. It's hardly up there with Oscar Wilde on the wit front but harmless enough. It could even be said to be mildly amusing, if you were in a generous mood.

Sadly, the email found its way into the in-box of the company's big boss, who didn't find it at all funny. He sacked the prankster on the spot, according to a report on Ananova.

But that wasn't the end of it. The man's co-workers clearly had a bigger funny bone than their 'superiors', and went on strike in protest - all 1,680 of them, including the three people whose heads had been messed around with in the first place. That forced the management into a swift rethink. The man has now been suspended for one week and will be allowed to return to work after that. And so we should think. There's a big difference between offensive material and a joke.

A British Gas customer thought he was at the wrong end of a punchline this week when he received an electricity bill for £2,320,333,681,613. That's over £2.3 trillion. The letter accompanying the bill threatened the man with a court summons if payment wasn't received promptly. After a long phone call or two, British Gas saw that they might have made a mistake. Indeed, it emerged that the figure was in fact the meter reference for the property, and had ended up in the bill's 'total' box by mistake. So it was all down to simple human error. And nothing to do with computers. Which means the Round-Up shouldn't really be writing about it. So, er, hmmm. Moving swiftly on...

Hutchison's third-generation mobile phone service, 3, was launched this week. It was a low key affair (largely because you can't actually buy a 3G handset yet) but Hutch did at least have the good sense to unveil the service on 3 March (03/03/03 - geddit?) We always wondered why O2 didn't do something similar when it launched last year (2 February would have made a lot of sense). It couldn't be that it missed its deadlines could it? We have no idea to be honest.

But we do know how much this stuff's going to cost. The 3 handsets will retail for £399, and there are (surprisingly enough) three tariffs available. The pay-as-you-go option is called 3ToGo, with video calls costing 50p per minute, voice calls to other 3 users 5p per minute, voice calls to other networks 10p per minute, text messages 10p a pop, picture messages 25p and video messages 50p.

Then there's the mid-range option, called Kit on 3, which gives customers a package including 1,000 minutes of voice calls, 100 minutes of video calls, 60 picture messages, 40 video messages and 50 video downloads for £59.99 per month.

The top-end option, Caboodle on 3, gives twice as much as Kit on 3, for £99.99 a month. All three services include a free email service and internet access to news reports, sports news, share prices and some other content until 30 June 2003 (which must mean Hutch is expecting the handsets to be ready before then).

The big controversy is, of course, whether Kit and Caboodle are brands to be proud of. The prevailing opinion in silicon's offices is that these are indeed a good thing. But the jury was not unanimous in its decision.

What is for certain is the scale of mobile phone crime - and that the industry and government are actually taking steps reduce it. Last November, the UK's mobile operators finally buried the hatchet and agreed to create a shared database in which they would all record details of stolen handsets. They could then ensure that the nicked phones would be disabled from use on any network. (Up until then, the companies only barred stolen handsets from working on their own networks.)

Since then, over 400,000 phones have been disabled, which is a fine effort and shows what you can do with a little co-operation. It does, though, point to the sheer size of the problem. In 2002, just under a third of all street crime in London involved only the theft of a mobile phone. In a further 21 per cent of street crimes in the capital, a mobile phone was among the items stolen.

In response to these alarming stats, the Metropolitan Police, backed by the Home Office, launched its new 'Immobilise Phone Crime' initiative on 4 March. A £1.5m advertising campaign will stress that, because of this shared database, stolen phones won't work any more. Thieves can be jailed for five years for reprogramming a stolen handset. Have a look at www.immobilise.com for more information.

We've been banging on about spam quite a lot recently here at silicon. One bit of advice we've been keen to pass on is: 'Don't reply to spam, it merely confirms that your email address really exists.' But one reader, Michael Hurman, head of new media at McCarthy O'Connor, couldn't resist writing back to one bit of unsolicited material he received from America which promised to show him how to make money from bulk emails, and included quotes from various newspapers praising the author's 'product' and provided 'testimony' from several well-known companies who had used it.

Michael wrote: "As a professional marketing agency working for some of the clients you have just mentioned, it would be appreciated if your email removes the names of the organisations with legitimate email marketing techniques from your promotion. It is apparent you are promoting the use of unsolicited email, which as you will know is against the law in the US, and will soon be illegal in the UK.

"The use of such brand names insinuates that the companies mentioned are engaged in illegal advertising. I'm pretty certain they will not wish you to tarnish their reputation by your allegations. Finally, I have also forwarded this email to anti-spam organisations, as I have not at any point given my email address to receive information on this offer. Kind regards..."

And then, to his surprise, Michael got a reply. Showing that grammar and spelling aren't this spammer's strong point, the message read, simply: "As I told to some people in the past, that there are more serious problems on the net, like child abusses, discrimination and many others, but it seems you people get more upset receiving an email which can only profit you, so in this context I'd say to you is 'GET A LIFE'."

Which is a bit rich coming from someone who lies for a living. Meanwhile, another reader, Steve Thompson, received this extraordinary email in his inbox earlier this week.

"If you want to raise a Civil Court action against someone anywhere in Scotland then I am your man. I am a ruthless bastard and I will screw the opposition to the wall even it if means bending a few rules. Email me back or call me on xxxxx xxxxxx."

It was signed by someone allegedly working for a law firm called (and we're not making this up) Blackadders. Not a very cunning plan, sending unsolicited emails, as Steve pointed out. He replied to our man, asking him if he knew a solicitor who could help him sue someone who was sending him spam...

It turns out that that is unlikely. We had a quick word with Blackadders, who told us that the email was not in fact from them. Some merry japer (clearly with a grudge) had sent the uncompromising message from a Hotmail account, and merely pretended to be a Blackadder solicitor. The matter is now in the hands of the police. Tricky things, emails.

Til next week, here are some headlines...

Wi-Fi comes to Britain's pubs. Cheers...

Microsoft's Office upgrade 'overly complex'

Standards group takes aim at spam

Revealed: The link between the world's smallest combination lock and IT

Hackers' code exploits Sendmail flaw