Rude anagrams of Bill Gates

Did you know that Bill Gates is an anagram of 'I get balls'?

Nope, nor did we until irreverent news site BBspot.com pointed it out.

Apparently its readers reckon 'I get balls' is the most appropriate anagram of the Microsoft über-geek's name. Given the recent history of his company, 'Legal bits' isn't bad either. And the next time you see the blue screen of death you might gain some masochistic satisfaction from remembering his name can be rearranged to spell 'Begat ills'.

Not to be outdone, silicon.com started messing around with the names of a couple of other high-profile, high-tech leaders. Scott McNealy wishes to 'Cancel my tots' (not sure what that means, but it sounds nice). Michael Capellas provides us with a whole host of permutations, including the stark warning that somewhere, 'A cheap camels ill,' and also the surrealists' favourite, 'A leach lamp slice.'

But saving the best til last, would we be right in reading any significance into Carly Fiorina's anagrammatic sobriquet, 'A rainy frolic'?

Useful applications for mobile phones number 94: a condom substitute.

Catholic women in Poland are signing up to receive text messages warning them not to have sex. The contraception advice service texts them when they are ovulating and at their most fertile to cut the number of unwanted pregnancies.

Poland is 90 per cent Catholic, so this could become a rather popular service. What the Pope thinks of what will probably be called 'contratextion' is unknown.

And now for reader enquiry of the week. "Dear one and all at silicon, I was just wondering, well (I am aware that you IT oriented (sic), but since Enron has made headlines nowadays, can you tell me what exactly does Enron do, what's their expertise, what industry, any story, drama that is associated with them etc. Thanks a lot. Patrick."

Well, we're not quite sure whether this is supposed to be sarcastic or if Patrick has just arrived from a far-away galaxy, but here are a few key words which might point you in the right direction if you type them into a search engine: lying, cheating, corruption, document shredding, dodgy auditing, $55bn bankruptcy, suicide and criminal investigation.

It's going to make quite a film, isn't it?

Question four on the Export Compliance section of Dell UK's online order form asks: "Will the product(s) be used in connection with weapons of mass destruction, i.e. nuclear applications, missile technology, or chemical or biological weapons?"

Wonder what happens if you tick the 'yes' box?

Bill Gates has said sorry. What for? Well, for bodging all Windows products released so far. He's put a moratorium on any new development work for one month to give his legion of techies a chance to go back over existing source code with a fine tooth comb in an attempt to make Windows more reliable and secure.

Richard Purcell, director of corporate privacy at Microsoft, explained Gates' decision. He said that great man himself was "really annoyed by the incredible pain we put everyone through in computing".

What's that phrase involving horses and stable doors?

Five and a half million UK citizens have spoken on the phone while sitting on the throne.

Indispensable research from e-Mori, conducted on behalf of BT Communications Products (no toilet jokes please), also found that three million of us have picked our nose with one hand with a handset in the other, with a further 2.6 million having "got intimate with someone" as they nattered away on the blower.

So that's what a hands-free kit is really for...

While we're in the land of love, romance and essential research, Amazon.co.uk has discovered that one in nine of us have sent ourselves at least one Valentine's card. One in three have received one from our mums or dads. And one in 10 have stolen a Valentine's card addressed to their housemate or sibling and pretended it was theirs. How sad is that?

Finally (and more relevantly), could the green shoots of a high-tech recovery be poking through the frozen soil of a post 11-September world?

Sun said this week that it expects to be back in the black come June (http://www.silicon.com/a51095 ). Cisco - always a key indicator of the industry's health - said that it too is likely to beat analyst expectations in its next financials (http://www.silicon.com/a51142 ). And PricewaterhouseCoopers says that venture capitalists are beginning to get busy again: $7.1bn was invested in the US in Q4 2001, reversing the downward trend of the previous six quarters (http://www.silicon.com/a51009 ). PwC is predicting similar encouraging signs in Europe this year.

Fingers crossed, eh?

silicon.com's fourth annual Skills Survey is now live. We'd like you to tell us about your working lives, the make-up of your IT department and the sorts of expertise you think you'll need to succeed in 2002. See http://www.silicon.com/goto-ss2002-3

The Round-Up will be back next Friday. Until then, here's some news...

BBC education plan branded 'anti-competitive'
http://www.silicon.com/a51137
UK workers a nation of surfers
http://www.silicon.com/a51115
The virus that could spell the end of Intel
http://www.silicon.com/a51103
Star Trek web browser piloted by US ISP
http://www.silicon.com/a51072
Russian monks in spam scandal
http://www.silicon.com/a51014