The Weekly Round-Up: 27.08.04

As long as boffins find newer and cleverer ways to deliver new technology, so human beings will find newer and stupider ways to get caught out by it.

Consider the following cautionary tale. Two Prudential employees were this week fired for being a little less than prudent with the company's corporate email system (see here).

The two workers - believed to be a man and a woman - from the Pru's HQ in Stirling have been sacked after the financial services company decided email messages revealed they had been dealing drugs at work.

According to reports in Scottish newspaper the Daily Record, police raided the couple's home and found quantities of amphetamines, cannabis and ecstasy.

A further six employees are in hot water and have been subjected to disciplinary action after their names were found in the sacked employees' address books. (The names may or may not have been saved in a folder called 'crack monkeys'.)

It's staggering to think anyone would consider work email a secure communication medium for selling narcotics, especially given the media coverage about email monitoring and misuse of the internet in the office.

Companies take misuse of corporate email and web access seriously. And rightly so. What's more, many of us forget just how easily our communications can be monitored (for more on this see here)

And remember, nobody's email is immune from prying eyes: just ask the former chief executive of the Bank of Ireland (see here)...

Further evidence that a fool and his money are easily parted comes direct from Hong Kong this week.

Mobile technology company Artificial Life has come up with what it thinks is a rather neat idea for the busy 21st century chap who simply doesn't have the time to find himself a nice girl.

The big idea is the Virtual Girlfriend - an amorous, animated avatar who appears on the video screen of your mobile phone.

For a monthly subscription (c'mon, you didn't think this was free, did you?) you can send text messages to your virtual belle via your 3G handset.

However, your virtual girlfriend will not always be available to take your call. Heck no: she may be shopping, at work or out with her friends. It’s all part of the game, you see.

Although virtual girlfriends have unique personalities, they all look exactly the same, so you shouldn't be surprised if you glance up from your handset with a warm glow of amore and see your beloved talking dirty to the chap with six chins sitting next to you on the tube.

Still, if you do take offence you could also get back at her by going out with one of her electronic mates, who you get to meet if you treat her well. Presumably, after you meet them there's a 20 minute gap in the game as they rush off to the virtual loos to talk about you.

Be warned: if you fail to appease her endless demands for presents (costing more real money) she won't speak to you and no matter how many gifts or flowers you buy her, at end of the day there's absolutely no chance of getting your leg over. At least you can't fault the game makers for not doing their research.

At the moment, only virtual girlfriends are planned for release later this year. But fear not, Artificial Life is planning to bring a virtual boyfriend to market in due course.

At time of writing, the Round-Up can confirm the virtual boyfriend stays out late drinking with his friends, falls asleep on the sofa with a half-eaten kebab and eventually ends up releasing malodorous gases in the bed. Or the Round-Up could just have been making that up.

However, one would imagine the virtual boyfriend offers at least one value-adding feature so long as your handset comes equipped with a vibrate function...

JK Rowling is known for her colourful imagination, as doorstop-thick novels packed full of flying broomsticks, whoomping willows and hufflepuffs will attest.

Likewise, the contemporary literary landscape is littered with creative giants whose work probes the outer reaches of human imagination and experience. Take Salman Rushdie, for example, or Ian McEwan or Gazza.

However, these great creative geniuses pale into insignificance next to a collective imagination whose limits stretch out to the inky edges of the known space and time - the marketing division at Microsoft.

The software giant this year launched a 'Get the Facts' campaign to warn consumers that Linux isn't cheaper than Windows (see here).

One ad, called 'Weighing the cost of Linux vs. Windows? Let's review the facts', claimed that in a comparison between a Windows and a Linux machine "Linux was found to be over 10 times more expensive than Windows Server... for Windows-comparable functions of file serving and Web serving". Controversial stuff, you'll agree.

However, UK advertising watchdog Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) knows a duff summer read when it sees one and this week threw the book at the software giant (see here).

The key word here is 'fact' and Redmond's handling of it is as slippery as a greased penguin.

Microsoft claimed the study was as like-for-like as it could be between the machines - a Linux image on IBM's z900 mainframe CPUs and a Windows Server 2003 image running on two 900MHz Xeon CPUs - and wasn't hardware specific.

However, the ASA was having none of it and claimed the Linux tests were made on a slower, yet more expensive, server than the Microsoft software.

The ASA found the ad's Windows vs. Linux stance might lead people to think running Linux itself is 10 times more expensive than Windows, and miss the very specific reference to "competing file serving set-ups".

The Round-Up is sure the thought never crossed the minds of the Microsoft marketing execs involved.

The ASA concluded that consumers could be misled and asked Microsoft to amend its ads and suggested in future the software behemoth might want to have a word with the Committee of Advertising Practices' Copy Advice Team. They'll be quivering with fear in the Seattle suburbs after that dressing down.

The marketing execs in question could be better utilised by helping plug the holes that continue to appear in the increasingly leaky-looking Windows XP Service Pack 2 dyke.

First up is news that the hefty software upgrade has left a highly-critical flaw in Internet Explorer unplugged (see here) making it not so much 'drag-and-drop' as 'drag-and-infect'. Now, there's a neat marketing slogan.

Meanwhile, a report in PC Magazine claims that, following a tip-off, its lab team found a vulnerability in the Windows web systems management interface (WBEM) that could be used to exploit firewall status information. It described the security hole as a 'crater'.

A recent study by InsightExpress found that most IT managers believe upgrading systems to Microsoft's latest security patch for Windows XP could generate serious problems (see here).

Of those polled, 63 per cent believed SP2 would prove the most difficult Windows update installation ever. Three per cent went as far as to claim their "blood pressure rises just thinking about it".

Microsoft has acted quickly to compile a 100-page guide to resolve the myriad compatibility issues SP2 has with various applications, which included the company's own CRM software (see here).

The line from Redmond is that it's the apps and not the operating system that require re-jigging. If you listen very, very carefully, you can just hear those IT managers' blood pressure rising...

Meanwhile, if you have questions about any Microsoft security issues, including Trustworthy Computing, patch management, CD updates (see here) and, of course, XP SP2, here’s your chance.

silicon.com will be putting your questions directly to the man at the helm of the company's UK security operation, chief security officer Stuart Okin.

Simply email your questions to editorial@silicon.com and we'll put them to Stuart. And be nice now...

And finally, if your idea of a trip to the, ahem, throne room, involves a little peace and quiet and a good book, then the Round-Up has some bad news for you.

A cultural centre in Amsterdam has taken the craps, sorry wraps, off a talking toilet.

The anthropomorphic WC is fitted with sensors that link back to a computer called Private Room 02 - a nice touch form our wacky Dutch cousins - which is the toilet's brains, so to speak.

If the toilet 'feels' someone is trying to make a mess they'll be warned to leave it tidy, according to the ever-reliable purveyor of quirky news, Ananova. (We'll leave aside the definition of mess for the time being.)

The toilet berates users if they fail to flush it, smoke, don't put up the seat or use too much loo roll.

Furthermore it torments them with horrifying war statistics if they take too much time.

Potty inventor Leonard Van Munster said: "When someone is spending a lot of time in the little room, one can hear him make funny remarks such as 'Do you know that during this 50 minutes you've spent in the toilet, 50 people have died in wars all over the world?'"

Is nothing sacred?

He added: "The computer has developed its own moods. Sometimes he doesn't say anything but will then suddenly start to sigh."

Good grief. Is this really the right sort of thing to inflict on the residents of a city known 'over here' for its more 'spaced out' elements?

The clearly demented Van Munster is currently chained to a little Casio keyboard trying to work out a little ditty for people perched on the toilet. "I want them to feel at ease in the little room."

It might help if you put a gagging order on talking potty for starters, Leo...

Until next week the Round-Up will be closing its eyes and trying to shut out the voice coming from below while considering the startling fact that there are only five days left to register for silicon.com's CIO Forum at the discounted early-bird rate.

The CIO Forum is your opportunity to enhance your knowledge on major issues facing the UK IT industry, hear from high-profile speakers and network with industry peers (see here).

Signed up?

Now go read some news...

IM the prime suspect in City leaks

Sacked worker launches hack attack

'Jihad' online is just hype

RFID on drugs: Are cloning worries the major problem?

Virus alert: Rbot sets your webcam to spy on you

VoIP for top estate agent