The Weekly Round-Up: 15.08.03

At the risk of starting civil war, the Round-Up uncovered some interesting stats this week regarding the digital divide which exists between rural and urban parts of the UK.

As part of silicon.com's Broadband Britain survey last week we gave you four options to complete this sentence:

"People in rural Britain..."

Thankfully the most popular option was "People in rural Britain... should be entitled to the same level of connectivity as urbanites", which received a massive 62 per cent of the vote. Which is all very nice and keeps pitchfork on briefcase warfare at bay for now.

Second was "...should be given government subsidies to bring broadband to their areas" which received 20.7 per cent of the vote, while 9.4 per cent favoured subsidies from BT.

This was particularly interesting given that more people blamed BT for the slow roll out of broadband - and yet more thought it was still the government's place to make reparations.

However, the final chunk of the vote was taken up by readers who believe "People in rural Britain should move to the cities if they want broadband" which was favoured by 7.9 per cent of the nearly 2,500 respondents. Cue much 'Hiss boo!' reaction from rural areas and plenty of angry feedback in editorial@silicon.com.

One of these city-dwelling spoilsports was probably silicon.com reader Simon Curry who believes having to pay for expensive alternatives to ADSL broadband should just be a natural downside of living in rural Britain, in the same way high property prices and a £3 pint are a result of London living (the Round-Up added the bit about the £3 pint - but it is a bit unfair...right?).

Simon wrote: "By living in the sticks you probably work from cheaper property and pay lower rates. If it's so important [to have broadband] there are already sensible alternatives - they just cost more. Maybe I should demand to buy things in the South East at the same price as the North or South West - rents and property prices are much higher - why? It's all down to supply and demand."

He's in the minority - our results tell us that - but does Simon have a point? Email editorial@silicon.com.

For more of the results from this survey, see:

Broadband Britain: It's happening to you Broadband 'go slow': Government gets off lightly in blame game How much would you like to pay for broadband? High-speed have-nots: Why don't you have broadband?

On a personal note the Round-Up is still without broadband after almost a fortnight with a dead line. But at least this disconnect has some benefits. If you can't get online, then you can't commit a digital blunder.

silicon.com reader Jonathan Hill wrote in with this story - which falls firmly into the 'look before you leap' (...or at least look before you hit 'send') category: "A sales rep at my company once drafted an email to an important client, detailing some issues the client had, and how we would resolve them. To this day no-one knows what he was thinking, as he finished the email: '...look forward to meeting you soon, you big fat hairy b@st@rd'."

According to Jonathan the last part was intended as a joke (no, really?), and the salesman assumed his assistant would proof and remove it before sending the email. Only she didn't.

If history has taught us anything - and it has - it's that there are plenty more stories like this out there. Later this month we will launch Digital Blunders 2 - the aptly named follow-up to the Digital Blunders special we ran two years ago.

In the intervening two years we assume there have been countless incidences of replying when you meant to forward, replying to all when you meant to reply and wrongly addressing emails that contain all manner of inappropriate content.

Email your horror stories to editorial@silicon.com and we'll publish the best but, in the meantime, here's one from the archive to get you in the mood:

"A friend had been travelling Australia and New Zealand for nearly a year and before setting off back to UK sent a blast email to everyone in her address book, including family, friends and everyone she had met on her travels. She thanked all the people she'd met for such a fantastic time, and said she looked forward to returning home. One of her friends emailed back saying he was sorry they wouldn't be seeing her before she left, and was amazed at "how many blokes you shagged"... but, you guessed it - he'd replied to all!"

Oh dear (see http://www.silicon.com/digitalblunders for more).

No strangers to sexual misadventure and bawdy goings-on are the nation's students - our future doctors, lawyers and fast food workers.

PC manufacturer Evesham Technology has cottoned on to this fact and has teamed up with Mates to offer free condoms to any students buying a PC in time to start the new term.

The imaginatively entitled 'buy a laptop prevent a baby' campaign (which doesn't seem to acknowledge that it would be cheaper just to by the condoms without paying out for a laptop) will run until 30 September.

The scheme is the brainchild of 19-year-old Evesham salesman Chris Mole.

Joking aside (though the Round-Up presumes this is the first computer salesman who's ever had any mates) Evesham is to be applauded for its sensible - if slightly tangential - campaign.

But some questions. Who are these students who can afford to buy a laptop? In truth it is probably more likely that it is 'daddy' who is being asked to shell out for yet another expense, which may well create a slightly awkward moment at the till:

"Finally sir, will your daughter be wanting to take advantage of our free offer? This laptop actually qualifies her for a jumbo box of condoms..."

"Thank you very much - I imagine those will be very useful for my little princess..."

Ouch!

And finally, thank you to everybody who wrote in to wish the Round-Up a speedy return to fitness following the malady of last week.

Rest assured the Round-Up is back to full fitness and is now off down the local to knock back a few £3 pints of strong lager and start telling hoards of celebrating 18-year-olds that A levels were "much harder in my day".

Until next week - here's some news:

Kidnapping ordeal for laptop distributor Gillette slams privacy concerns over RFID tracking Microsoft enters music download fray in the UK Bulk email success stories bring junk evolution Bill Gates turns his back on tech Mecca