Your password's the key to your soul

Bet you didn't know that your choice of log-on password reveals the true nature of your personality.

Well, it's true - at least according to domain name registry CentralNic. They polled 1,200 people and discovered that there are four distinct categories of computer user. Most (47 per cent) fall into the 'Family' group, choosing their own name or nickname, or the names of their partners, children or pets. Helen Petrie, a presumably dishy (geddit?) psychologist brought in to comment on the findings, reckons these are people with strong family ties. They choose passwords which symbolise people or events that have emotional value to them.

Then there are the 'Fans' - those who pick the names of sports stars, cartoon characters, pop starts or film icons. The most popular are variations of Homer Simpson, Darth Vader, Madonna and Keanu Reeves. Fans make a lifestyle choice when they decide on a password, Petrie said.

The third group aren't going to like their profile: 11 per cent of the survey sample fall into the 'Fantasist' category. They pick words like Sexy, Stud and Goddess. These types are self-obsessed, and are the kind of people who always manage to get the subject of conversation round to sex. Apparently.

Petrie said: "Traditionally these have tended to be male, but these results would suggest that quite a few in this category are female."

The word 'Goddess' does indeed tend to suggest that.

Finally, there are the 'Cryptics'. They may only account for nine per cent of computer users, but they are the most security conscious (security sort of being the point of having a password in the first place). They mix upper and lower case, numbers and punctuation to create intricate, cryptic passwords.

Petrie, in an attempt to win more friends, said: "The cryptics are most likely to be what we would regard as geeks. These people opt for clinical, non-guessable passwords. They are the least interesting, but the safest."

Well, Ms Petrie, the Round-Up is currently Cryptic - but also a Fan. All in one cunning password. What does that mean then, eh? Presumably that I've made the lifestyle choice to be boring...

Petrie concluded: "The computer password has become a kind of 21st century Rorschach inkblot test."

Bear that in mind next time you set your password. It was hard enough thinking of one before...

Men are flirts, women are gossips - at least when it comes to the contents of their emails.

A survey by email marketing group edesigns.co.uk has (somehow) managed to find that a third of men spend as much as 40 minutes a day flirting with colleagues, while women concentrate on gossiping and arranging their social lives.

Other popular uses of email for men include forwarding porn to their friends (surprise surprise) and sending jokes, while women are more likely to use it to contact friends and relatives.

Both sexes admitted to spending more time emailing in the pursuit of a new job than they do preserving their current one - indeed, only two per cent of all emails relate to work.

Excuse me? Two per cent? What kind of figure's that? We have no idea who edesigns surveyed, but they'd better hope it wasn't their own staff. If it was, they'll be out of business. Soon.

Just when copyright owners thought it was safe to dip their toes into the murky waters of the internet in these post-Napster days, a new virtual fin has appeared on the horizon: people are now beginning to download entire books free of charge and in significant numbers.

Net monitoring firm Envisional has found that there are 7,267 different pirated e-books freely accessible through newsgroups and file sharing services such as gnutella.

Science fiction and fantasy titles head the list of most pirated books, closely followed by technical computing books (it really doesn't need a psychologist to build a profile of the kind of person involved in this).

Poor old Stephen King is losing out big time: Envisional found 1,600 individual copies of titles such as Dreamcaster, It, Misery and The Shining online.

There are over 700 copies of J K Rowling's work, and 193 of Terry Pratchett's popular fiction.

Clare Griffiths, a lawyer at IP specialists Briffa, said: "Copying e-books and downloading them is a straightforward copyright infringement by the pirate and may also implicate subsequent online users. Even if users only read material on screen they are still making a copy onto the hard drive of their computer, which is enough to incur liability... Where it becomes clear that the piracy has been on a scale to warrant further action, businesses can follow up with legal proceedings."

So there. Stop it. Now. You naughty things.

Who said IT wasn't glamorous? Paul Allen held his 50th birthday bash on his yacht in Helsinki last weekend, and the guest list definitely fell into the 'A' category. Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Dan Ackroyd, Robin Williams, Jeff Goldblum and, err, Eric Idle were all spotted at the party.

Goldblum took a wander round Helsinki before boarding Allen's boat, but wasn't entirely happy. He told a Finnish tabloid newspaper: "I wanted to see the Finnish forest. Where are all the trees?"

He needn't have worried. Allen's boat actually contains a small forest. No, really, it does.

The nature-loving Goldblum should have a word with Bill Gates, who's having his own wildlife problems. We're talking geese. Lots of them. And they're decorating his property in their own inimitable style...

Bill's luxurious Lake Washington home is being overrun by our feathered friends, who are repaying his hospitality by excreting up to three pounds of, err, 'waste' a day. The city parks department is considering extreme action: the ranger has received permission to exterminate 4,200 geese in the area. Poor things. Goldblum would not be happy. And all for smearing Gates' windows... (For more odd Gates news, see '5 Episodes from the Weird World of Bill Gates', http://www.silicon.com/a46762 )