The silicon.com Yearly Round-Up

5. A virus-free world

This year has seen more and more nasty people write horrid viruses and vicious worms and let them loose on the internet.

A lot of them were so damaging because they exploited holes in Microsoft software, but I still think the virus writers themselves should be locked up. Indeed the perpetrators of the Goner worm have been (http://www.silicon.com/a49837 ) as has the chap behind the Kournikova virus (http://www.silicon.com/a47782 ). My dad likes Anna Kournikova. But not viruses.

Other ones we've known and hated this year include Badtrans and Code Red and Nimda and Voyager and Aliz and Sir Cam and Magistr and Kakworm and Funlove and Homepage and Melissa and so on and so on...

So to make sure next year's better, could you encourage Microsoft to improve its security, and ensure all IT departments have the latest patches and also encourage the ISPs to take more responsibility for blocking them? That's not too much to ask, is it?

6. A mobile phone

My mum and dad say I'm too young to have a mobile, but all my friends own one. They sit in class text-ing each other. In fact we've gone "txt" mad! In August, one billion "txt msgs" (!) were sent (according to the Mobile Data Association). And that's a lot.

The Guardian (which my mum reads) even ran a text message poetry competition. This one won it (I don't understand all of it, which is why I want a phone to practice on and learn this new language)...

"txtin iz messin,
mi headn'me englis,
try2rite essays,
they all come out txtis.
gran not plsed w/letters shes getn,
swears i wrote better
b4 comin2uni.
&she's african"

My dad liked this entry (but I don't get it):
"no, i am not linda,
I hv not slept w/yr sis,
+i wd nvr call any1's ma a slag"

I want a phone that can show video too, coz all those companies spent all that money on 3G licences and they can't have wasted it. Can they? None of the trials have gone to plan though - the Isle of Man almost got a network up and running, but the first launch didn't quite work, leaving the Koreans and the Japanese to steal a march. But for long and complex reasons they couldn't manage fully fledged 3G roll-outs either. But I'm sure we'll get there in 2002. Or 2003. One day, anyway.

7. The complete works of Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams died this year and they showed the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy on TV and I thought it was good (apart from the rubbish special effects).

Many people don't take him very seriously and say that all the stuff about the Guide being a forerunner of the internet are rubbish. And of course it is. And Adams would have been the first to admit it. In an interview with an obscure website called silicon.com he said he wasn't a predictive writer (see http://www.silicon.com/a39603 ).

And he wasn't. He was simply a funny, insightful person.

The man who created the bit died this year too. Claude Elwood invented the term in the 1940s, and did a lot of pioneering work in the fields of technology, cryptography, investment theories and probability (so my school encyclopedia says).

My dad knows someone who wrote a poem to commemorate Mr Elwood. It reads:
So goodbye Claude
Creator of the bit
It's you we have to thank
For all this IT sh*t

And now, dear Santa, I've run out of paper so my list will have to end. And there were so many other things I wanted to talk about. The Compaq/HP merger. The FriendsReunited phenomenon. The moves to tackle cybercrime. Napster. IR35. I could go on and on. But I won't.

If you could see your way clear to bringing me just a few of these pressies, I'll be an even better boy next year.

The mince pie and a glass of milk will be on the dining room table waiting for you to arrive on Christmas Eve. I'll leave the tree lights on so you can see where you're going. Say 'hi' to the elves for me.

Thanks for reading this, and have a very merry Christmas and a happy, peaceful new year. I'll be back in 2002.

Love, the Round-Up

P.S. Nice beard.