The Weekly Round-Up: 03.12.04

"I know it's late but I really need to talk...

"Well I've had a few but no... I'm not drunk..."

We've all been there. The phone call to the ex at stupid-o'clock in the morning. It may be in the dim and distant past but perhaps you were on your way home from a late night, you'd had a few and you decided it was time to either seek 'closure' or reconciliation.

"But what's he got that I haven't..."

It's not a conversation that ever goes well.

Worse still is that moment of dread when you pick your mobile phone off the floor in the morning, wrestling the hangover that has gripped your body, and scroll through 'recent calls' to 'dialled calls', checking whether you phoned anybody last night after you left the pub.

You remember waiting ages for the bus and you've a nagging feeling that you killed some time by making some calls.

"Don't let it be her, don't let it be her..."

But it always is.

(The Round-Up apologises to our female readers at this point for the references to 'he' and 'her', which suggest such scenarios are a male-only faux pas - we know you are just as capable of making embarrassing calls when half cut.)

But no more. Virgin Australia has launched a fantastic new service which will actually prevent you from making such calls.

No matter how much you want to, no matter how much your mates John Smith and Jack Daniels are trying to convince you it's a good idea, you won't be able to.

Users register with the service and provide numbers which they know in their sober heart of hearts they really don't want to call. The operator will then block all calls to those numbers until 6:00AM in the morning.

(Those who are prone to making such inappropriate calls might also benefit from investing in a phone which tells you to stop drinking. Don't think such a thing exists? Think again. Software being used on 100 Nokia handsets at MIT in Massachuchuchettettes studies the user's behaviour and cross references it against other data such as diary info entered into their smart phone. If the user has a meeting first thing but is also out drinking in the evening it will prompt them about the meeting and suggest they take it easy. Which all sounds miserably boring but possibly quite practical.)

And it's not just jilted lovers who land themselves in hot water with the improper use of their mobile phones.

A teenager in Bristol has landed himself in all sorts of bother after he was spotted taking photos and recording video clips on his mobile phone from the public gallery of Bristol Crown Court during a robbery trial.

Shaun Nash was spotted by a juror, who funnily enough wasn't all that keen on the idea of anybody photographing them while they contemplate the fate of an alleged violent criminal - in much the same way as they probably wouldn't be too keen on anybody staring at them, drawing their finger across their throat and mouthing 'you're dead'.

Nash, 19, claimed there was no malice intended with his actions and said he was "just having a laugh".

The judge responded: "Well in that case son, good one - now run along now you merry japester."

No of course he didn't.

In fact few shared in Nash's mirthful antics, especially when the trial was abandoned due to his stupidity.

The judge who sentenced Nash for contempt of court described the photos and video clips on his phone as a montage of "my day out at the Crown Court".

And then he sentenced him six months in prison.

That's right - six months in prison.

It sounds like a pretty tough sentence but judge Michael Roach said a message needed to be communicated to the public that mobile phone use would not be tolerated in court.

Anybody who has ever been in court will have seen signs around the place insisting mobile phones are not used.

For the record, the Old Bailey in London which silicon.com staffers visited last year (for work, rather than prosecution purposes) even has a system in place where you are required to check your phone in. But rather than having a security guard on site who handles such matters the foremost court in the land actually asks you to check the handset in with the pub over the road.

The pub gladly charges you £1 for the privilege. Amazing, from one of the most famous courts in the world.

But - moving on from that digression - clearly Nash thought he was special. Now as one of the oldest lads in the young offenders institute he will have until spring 2005 to think about his foolish actions.

He'll also have to run the gauntlet of incredulity and shame when explaining to the other juveniles on D-wing that he's there because he took photos on his mobile phone. It doesn't exactly carry the same kudos in criminal circles as any number of more serious offences.

"Don't mess with Nash. Johnny in the kitchens tells me he's the Bristol Camera Phone Snapper." Doesn't have much of a ring to it really does it (no mobile phone pun intended.)

Where the law would have stood, had he been drawing really poor quality pastel sketches of the trial, the Round-Up is not sure.

And as if you've not heard enough already about misguided mobile phone use the Round-Up now has a third, more awful story to tell of a man who really should have known better.

When companies such as mobile phone operators decide to launch a new product range or service it's not uncommon for them to rope in a celebrity to endorse the product.

When Vodafone launched Live! the company forked out mega bucks to get David Beckham on board. (Possibly to illustrate how foolproof 2.5G technology could be.)

The same company also brought in Teutonic track ace Michael Schumacher, doubtless also at the cost of several squillion euros.

T-Mobile brought in US tennis ace Andre Agassi and big-nosed smasher Steffi Graff to promote its services.

Well now consumer electronics and mobile handset manufacturer LG Electronics has jumped on this sporty bandwagon and signed up... wait for it... Manchester City and how-did-he-ever-play-for-England goalkeeper David James.

(The Round-Up always thought James would land a lucrative contract with either Lurpak or I Can't Believe It's Not Butter but it seems he was swayed by the lure of the handset endorsement.)

Clearly somebody at LG has a problem with David James, because they subsequently proceeded to put him through the kind of embarrassing ordeal only the former international fumbler could ensure.

The man nicknamed Dracula because of his fear of crosses and referred to by all and sundry as 'Calamity James' 'starred' in a photo shoot which had everybody at Silicon Towers howling with laughter.

But judge for yourselves.

Here is David after raiding his Mum's dressing up box, giving a coy, 'Sorry you've just caught me on the phone to my agent' glance to the camera. What you can't hear is him telling his agent he will coming around his house later and pouring paint stripper on his car.

Here is David proving people really will do anything for money. (Answers on a postcard as to whether the look on his face is panic or horror, as he sees the nosedive his career has taken.) Presumably all those incoming calls are from people asking him 'What were you thinking?!'

And here's David playing it sexy and exercising the right to bare arms. You'll note his rather prominent tattoos. (Doesn't he realise these things are permanent and while they may seem like a good idea at the time they can be a real embarrassment in later life? The Round-Up is of course talking about ridiculous photo shoots, not tattoos.)

Not a man famed for his safe-hands handling, the Round-Up wonders how many of the new LG handsets he dropped during the shoot.

But moving on and to news which the unflappable Steve Linford over at SpamHaus described as "brilliant!" this week.

Peter Francis Macrae, the only UK resident on the SpamHaus Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO), has been arrested this week by Cambridgeshire police.

Admittedly he hasn't been arrested for sending spam but rather for the offence of issuing death threats against members of the force and a trading standards officer, who happened to be investigating his business.

He has also been charged over an alleged denial of service attack against the police force. Macrae, 22, went by the intriguing alias of 'WeaselBoy', which if he chose it himself seems remarkably self-aware.

But Linford isn't worried about semantics and believes the public menace charge levelled against Macrae may actually carry a far more severe penalty than any charge under the Computer Misuse Act.

Linford said: "There aren't any laws in Britain which could be used to get Macrae. British laws on spam are pretty rubbish."

On some levels the Round-Up thinks it is a shame the UK's many spammers are able to operate without fear of intervention by the law - but if they were ever to use a mobile phone in court then we'd have them!

Also taking action against alleged spammers this week was Lycos, which launched a screensaver based on the popular SETI model which pools idle computers' processing power. But rather than using the massed power to search for extraterrestrial intelligence this grid of machines is being used to attack websites which advertise using spam.

The service launches a denial of service attack, potentially crippling the sites which it targets.

Dubbed the 'make love not spam' campaign (probably need to work on that a bit more) it was launched to a fanfare on Tuesday. (And was down again by Tuesday evening... amid suggestions the very spammers it was targeting had attacked it. )

The scheme, which is drawing a lot of press attention, has certainly proven popular and appears to be having some impact already.

A spokesman for Lycos said: "This gives internet users the opportunity to hit spammers where it hurts."

Which is true, so why is one respected anti-spam campaigner already cringing at the prospect?

Steve Linford (yes, him again) from SpamHaus said: "It's irresponsible of Lycos to put its name to it because it lends legitimacy to DDoS attacks. You can't break into a thief's house just because he breaks into yours. We don't support this or recommend this practice. Directing traffic is part of the degradation of the internet we are trying to stop."

Oh dear. Probably not the glowing praise Lycos was hoping for. Bad dog!

Until next week - have fun if you're starting your Christmas shopping this weekend. And once again, if you haven't helped us take the heartbeat of the user community already, here's a survey we'd like you to complete.

And here's some news:

Government abandons £15m broadband aggregation scheme

CIO Jury: Would IT chiefs outsource themselves?

Nationwide reaffirms 'anti-offshoring' stance

ID cards: "This is not a Big Brother database"

The nation in 2004: Are you more techie than the average Briton?

Publishing industry faces "Y2K" over new ISBN numbers