The Weekly Round-Up: 12.12.03

Now, us Brits are supposed to be a nation of animal lovers, but in Taiwan they would appear to be taking 'animal love' to new levels.

A Taiwanese professor has found herself in hot water after linking from a university website to pornographic sites which included instructions on how to perform a number of indecent acts on farm animals.

"Pull the udder one" the Round-Up hears you cry... but it's true, no bull.

However, it would seem you have to be up with the lark if you want to get one over on the Taiwanese police and they soon cottoned on to her highly inappropriate horseplay.

The academic in question, named Josephine Ho - or Jo Ho to her friends (or Jo Ho Ho to any would-be Santa Clauses) - has now been saddled with a charge of 'committing offences against morality'.

According to a report on Ananova, prosecutors "have not yet suggested any recommended sentence".

How about: 'You're a very odd woman, Josephine".

That seems like a pretty appropriate sentence.

Or how about "Not tonight Josephine..." but perhaps rather than coming from the mouth of the diminutive French Emperor a more appropriate Napoleon might have been the one from Orwell's Animal Farm.

One likely punishment may be a restraining order keeping her away from animals... proving the old saying (often applied to the Round-Up's old sparring partner Emile Heskey) that you "couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banned Jo..."

At this point the Round-Up should probably point out that Ms Ho claims her links were there for purely academic reasons and that there are serious studies being conducted into these rather distasteful practices... but still, it's the sort of bad publicity that could dog somebody for the rest of their career.

Time to move on...but still on the subject of distasteful practices... spam continues to be a problem which won't go away - and this week silicon.com received a remarkable piece of unsolicited email.

Somebody had clearly been surfing on the silicon.com website and found a biography for Carly Fiorina, star of HBO drama 'The Sopranos', in which she plays Carmella...sorry... hang on... the Round-Up of course means CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

Fiorina was featured in silicon.com's Agenda Setters 2003, where she was ranked 10th and the site includes a biog - which obviously confused a Nigerian spammer claiming to be called Jennifer Kamara - the "Matron of the one and only Motherless Babies Home in Aba".

"The one and only..." no less - get her and her well-blown own trumpet.

Anyway, Kamara decided that Fiorina sounded like a likely victim for a bit of good old fashioned 419 scamming and so emailed silicon.com requesting the help of CARLY FIORINA C/O SILICON.COM (unnecessary use of capital letters the scammer's own).

In case you don't know much about Carly Fiorina - and don't fancy reading our excellent biog - let Ms Kamara - an expert on the matter - explain.

"All over the world," she begins, the HP CEO is "known as a very successful businessman"...

Which may come as some surprise to Carly 'I'm the most famous woman in tech' Fiorina. But flattery will get you everywhere, Ms Kamara.

These scammers really are devilishly clever, they really do their homework.

But if the government has its way, the days of the spammer are numbered.

Much has been said in the media this week about new legislation brought in to stamp out spam - even the BBC woke up, dusted itself off and started to talk about the issue on its Breakfast News programme - in between articles about cooking the perfect the Christmas turkey and a dog that can ride a skateboard... or some such other piece of high-brow news.

(Yes, the Round-Up does realise that's "a bit rich" coming from such a purveyor of the low-brow... there's really no need to email in and tell us).

The bottom line, however, is that legislation is not going to be of much use in cracking down on spam. It may force a handful of legitimate marketing companies to readdress some of their grey-area practices - but mail from such companies is a drop in the ocean compared to the overall tide of spam which hits our inboxes.

In truth, such policy drafting is more an exercise in being 'seen to be doing something' rather than actually doing something which will have any impact.

But the policy-makers are in a no-win situation. To throw up their hands and say "there's nothing we can do" would be honest but it wouldn't be a real vote-winner among the general public enraged by the spam landing in their Hotmail accounts.

And let's face it - honesty has never sat well with politicians.

Bullish statements about 'this' legislation or 'that' legislation probably don't overly concern the 200 or so spammers currently sunning themselves beside the pool in Boca Raton in Florida, while their servers in Beijing are belching out millions of emails per day.

These people are criminals. They know what they are doing is against the law and frankly they are unlikely to care about the machinations of European governments.

It's all well and good the UK having anti-spam legislation - but we don't actually have anybody to use it on - the spammers are all based elsewhere. We're likely to see a handful of cases brought against companies who accidentally breached the new laws, while those sending billions of emails into the UK continue to do so undeterred.

Even AOL came out this week and stated that there is not a single "large-scale spammer operating in the UK" - and you'd fancy that they would know a thing or two about it. So drafting this legislation was obviously time well spent.

More web news from around the world comes courtesy of eBay - that unique repository of the weird and wonderful.

Previous headline grabbing auctions have seen wives, weapons of mass destruction and even Captain Kirk's chair from the bridge of the Enterprise sold on eBay.

Now added to the lots of looney lots - if you follow - is a Dutchman's soul.

Turns out you no longer have to travel to some lonely crossroads in the American Mid-West - and nor do you have to be the cloven-hoofed devil himself - to acquire a soul.

In fact you just had to be able to beat the highest bid when the sale ended on 8 December...

So there you go, technology has even streamlined the procurement systems for Satan - it really is a wonderful thing.

For the record the seller put a reserve of £6 on his soul... which seems pretty cheap. He didn't even want to be able to play guitar or anything.

Sadly though there were no takers.

And finally... two challenges for you to ponder on until the Round-Up is back with you next week.

Firstly. The Round-Up and a colleague were today put in an awkward situation. Having left our mobile phones in the office on our way out for a meeting, we were suddenly in need of making an important phone call. Running late for the meeting, and unaware of a change of venue, we were lost and floundering - cut off from the usual lines of communication.

So we went in search of a payphone.

Now the Round-Up doesn't know if this is something you've tried to do in recent times, but it's the first time in about the five years the Round-Up has owned a mobile that it ever gave thought to finding a phone box. There were none on the streets, so we tried in pubs (...honestly, we were looking for a phone... it was a big pub - 20 minutes wasn't an unreasonable length of time to spend in there).

Of all the pubs we tried not one had a payphone. In some instances the spotty juveniles behind the bar even looked at us with a 'who are these weird people from the past' look on their faces.

"You're looking for a what?" they asked.

The Round-Up felt like Marty MacFly in Back to the Future II - except the Round-Up lacks the youthful good lucks of Michael J. Fox (who later went on to found lastminute.com...maybe).

So here's the challenge. Lock your mobile phone in a drawer and see how long you can go without it... and let us know how you get on - but be honest.

We'll publish some of the best stories and the best experiences...

OR - if you can't be bothered with that - just tell us where the nearest phone box to your office or place of work is... the Round-Up is guessing finding one may not be the easiest of tasks... but trust us when we say it's an excellent excuse for an impromptu pub-crawl.

Email editorial@silicon.com.

The second challenge is a seasonal one - because if you hadn't noticed Christmas is well and truly on its way.

So the Round-Up is looking to bring a little seasonal mirth to your inbox next week with a selection of the finest Christmas cracker jokes - and this is where you come in. We want you to contribute your jokes by emailing editorial@silicon.com.

But please, no lengthy tales and nothing that wouldn't be suitable for a family Christmas dinner.

Think Christmas cracker jokes and if they have a Christmassy theme then all the better.

To get the ball rolling, here's a couple from the archive:

Q. How does Good King Wenceslas like his pizzas? A. Deep pan, crisp and even.

...and this second one works best read aloud:

Q. Why did Darth Vader know what Luke Skywalker was getting for Christmas A. Because he felt his presence.....

Until next week, have a wonderful time at any Christmas parties you might be attending and seriously folks, look after yourselves out there and take care on the roads.

And if you have a moment, please take our quick 15 second survey all about identity theft:

And before you go... give us some clicks and read these stories:

Agony for anti-virus vendor Sophos

Spam email targets UK police force with denial-of-service attack

Now Whitehall signs up to desktop Linux trials

Iris, fingerprints and face to be used in ID card trial £2.7bn NHS IT contracts awarded