The snake on the make

Here's a slippery one for you: the code names of BT's top secret projects.

The BBC's Watchdog programme recently made reference to a couple of mysterious initiatives going on at BT, one known as Boa, the other as Mamba.

Watchdog alleged they were part of a sneaky campaign to get heavy network users to move to broadband.

Not quite true: Mamba is in fact a statistical program used to analyse customer usage patterns.

But we still don't know what Boa is - and furthermore, BTopenworld COO Ben Andradi has mentioned two more projects, Anaconda and Cobra. Cobra is the name of BT's attempts to move heavy users onto second dial-up numbers (see http://www.silicon.com/a48261 for a possible example of a Cobra idea).

But Anaconda and Boa? BT's remaining tight-lipped on these, saying they're subject to "commercial confidentiality".

The snakey references have created something of a hoo-ha within BT. Andradi said: "We have even had our own employees asking to have snakes on their computers. But it's really not as sinister or as interesting as it sounds."

He's probably right. But if you have any ideas about the nature of Anaconda or Boa, click here http://www.silicon.com/a48257 and post a reader comment at the bottom, because we sure ain't gonna get a straight answer out of BT, the telco that speaketh with forked tongue&

Speaking of snakes, we received yet another classy digital blunder from one of our readers this week, a digital blunder being our catch-all term for technology-assisted faux pas (see http://www.silicon.com/digitalblunders for more).

If you don't appreciate toilet humour, please skip the next paragraph&

"Dear silicon.com, Nearing the end of a satisfying, and somewhat loud and productive session in the company restrooms, I took out my mobile phone to play a relaxing game of Snake. To my horror, my traitorous phone had just recorded every last detail of my rather generous bowel movement on the answerphone of the first person in my phone book. I shan't be going round to his for dinner for quite some time, I can tell you. Moral number one: use that keypad lock. Moral number two: make sure no one prudish is first in your phone book, just in case..."

To turn to more fragrant matters, we'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate BT (unironically) for winning a Dow Jones award for its efforts to integrate environmental and social success factors into its business strategies.

As Dow Jones says, sustainability and corporate social responsibility have been seen as a bit beardy and worthy in the past, but the company hopes using these factors as investment screens will bring business benefits to organisations. All power to their (green) elbows.

Readers of last week's Round-Up may remember the strange case of Standard Life's online banking arm (http://www.silicon.com/a48050). To cut a long story short, it transpires that Standard Life stops customers accessing their accounts overnight, but couldn't give us a good explanation for that. Well, a helpful reader got in touch with what could be the answer&

"Dear silicon, I work for a similar (unnamed) financial services company," our reader writes. "We have a similar access problem with our systems. It is due to 'overnight' processing. This processing, which involves moving everyone's money from one account to another, redistributing money amongst investment funds, adding interest etc etc, usually takes the entire night, and can sometimes run into the early morning - which is why sometimes if you ring up a financial services company early in the morning and (God forbid) ASK them something, they'll often go, 'Erm, sorry our computers aren't working&'

"I would like to point out WE have a separate system and data store that still operates all our web functionality for our customers, through the night AND over the weekend. Of course, I'd only be really smug and tell you who I work for, if THAT system didn't regularly fall over and flake..."

Your money is safe in these people's hands. Honest.

And now for something much sillier: Microsoft's promotional material for XP. In early September, the ever-so-slick Microsoft marketing machine got into gear by sending out an 'Exploiting Windows' email newsletter extolling the virtues of its next operating system.

It may well extol the virtues of its lovely software, but sadly it shows absolutely no regard for the basic rules of the English language.

Apparently, XP means every member of a family will (and we quote) "be able to have there (sic) own environment within the PC that is unique to them".

Microsoft also says many people have "purchased Digital Camera's (sic), Video Camera's (sic), MP3 music players and the like".

Sometimes, software installations go wrong and screw your system up. But with XP, it's not a problem: if this happens, you can revert to the pre-installation settings. As the newsletter reads, "If you install a new piece of hardware or software that causes the PC to fail you can restore the PC to it's (sic) last know (sic) working condition."

But our favourite balls-up is in the very first part of the letter. Microsoft says: "In many homes today the PC is used by the entire family. To meet the needs of everyone in a secure and reliable manor (sic) is a tough challenge we deliver on with Windows XP."

Fair enough, but what about those of us who aren't to the manor born and live in unreliable, insecure flats? Tsk. Let's hope Microsoft checks its code more carefully than its promo material. Err&

Moving swiftly on, the whole Microsoft security issue refuses to go away. Gartner says its software is inherently insecure (http://www.silicon.com/a47704 ). Microsoft lays the blame at the doors of sys admins (http://www.silicon.com/a48169 ) - and then backs down a bit (http://www.silicon.com/a48253 ). And then an open source fan reiterates his belief that Linux is, unlike Microsoft's products, virus proof. So sure is he of his claim that he's offering £10,000 to the first person to ruin his Linux machine.

The man in question, Eddie Bleasdale, is yet to give would-be virus writers the whereabouts of his computer, but promises to do so.

The challenge provoked a storm of feedback on open source community slashdot, with one contributor wondering if he had to write a virus to destroy Eddie's machine, or if he could just turn up at his house with a baseball bat. (It's the former, incidentally).

But best of all is Microsoft's response to this. Bleasdale has now challenged the all-conquering company to match his bravado: he wants it to offer a similar amount to the first person to infect a machine running Microsoft software.

Microsoft's response? A spokeswoman told us: "We wouldn't enter into any such situation of giving away money to prove our security. This is viewed by Microsoft as a PR stunt, and we don't need to do this."

We look forward to the understated, stunt-free, $200m launch of XP then...