The Weekly Round-Up: 21.07.06

You can't beat a good spat.

The best kinds feature a pair of technology heavyweights squabbling over a matter close to their respective hearts and wallets. The better ones also feature two companies with a long history of spats - the more intense and bitter the better. The very best spats of all feature lashings of irony.

Being a lover of spats, tech heavyweights and lashings of irony, the Round-Up was delighted to read that Microsoft has taken offence at Google making sly eyes at the enterprise search market. It has decided to throw its toys out of the pram.

Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner told a conference of more than 7,000 business partners in Boston recently: "Enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business."

Above the cries of "shame!" he added: "Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off of our plate, because that is what they are intending to do," before being drowned out by the sound of thousands of Microsoft share options being waved in the air.

The casual reader may note the modicum of irony about all this silliness. After all, the Redmond giant has hardly been shy in hanging on the coat tails of other, dare it be said, more innovative companies.

In fact, the vendor might be just as well saying "stop stealing our business model" as "stop stealing our business". But that would be truly unfair, would it not?

It's also a bit rich seeing as Google's specialty and focus is, well, search, and Microsoft's is, well it's anyone's guess these days.

Still, in the world of ever-growing open markets, it's warming to entertain the vision of tech executives running around a corporate workplace pointing at rooms and divisions and shouting "dibs!".

Clearly, Sun got the server room, Microsoft and Dell got the desktop PCs, Oracle got the databases and Apple got the reception area.

Microsoft with an insecurity complex? Bill Gates on the way out? Lordy, how things have changed at the Redmond behemoth.

In recent months, Google has unveiled new search appliances but hasn't completely spelled out its overall enterprise search plans. It has also unveiled a free spreadsheet application. It was clearly designed solely with the intention of annoying Redmond's top cheese. Probably.

What's next for Google? Some sort of free word-processing software? Rightly so, some might say. Or should that be Writely so, with a nod and a wink to the acquisition of just such an offering in March?

One thing's for certain - there are many more spats in store over the next couple of years. Lovely...

Next up this week: an apology. The Round-Up is very sorry. It was wrong. So very wrong.

Last week, the Round-Up alleged that the reputation of the IT salesman may not be synonymous with honesty.

Anyone who's ever had the responsibility for buying in software or hardware business solutions will surely have been exposed to the salesman who promises the panacea for all ills. A scourge of our modern times complete with shiny buttons and flashing lights, to boot.

In fact, so sure was the Round-Up that this was the popular perception of the fleets of IT salesmen scooting up and down the fast lanes of the UK's motorways in their BMW 3 Series that it posted a poll on the site to back up its claims.

This is where the apology comes in.

It seems that the IT salesman who promises technological utopias to companies and blind buyers with double-talk and spin may be a thing of the past. As would be the IT salesman who charges a fortune to the same companies to fix the holes and faults in its own products.

Making their voices heard in a poll, silicon.com readers have stated that given a choice of five of the most common kinds of salesmen, the IT vendor is the least dishonest.

Estate agents do extremely badly out of the whole affair but, let's be honest, that doesn't come as much of a surprise.

In total, 36 per cent of more than 700 people polled said they believe estate agents to be the most dishonest salesmen.

Used car salesmen rank next in the hall of shame with 24 per cent of the vote, followed by double glazing salesmen (17 per cent) and mobile phone salesmen (13 per cent).

The 'honest' IT vendor was ranked fifth with just 10 per cent of respondents suggesting they are the most dishonest of all salesmen.

So there you have it. Profound apologies.

Unless the 700 or so people who voted were all IT salesman motivated to clear their profession's name and lull buyers into a false sense of trust and security. In which case, shame on you. (Especially the 10 per cent who would have ticked the box marked 'Me'.)

But the Round-Up's not alleging that at all. Oh no. Not until it's examined the web logs and amassed the proof that is...

Lingering on the subject of tech-related scallywags going up in the public perception, virus writers are apparently the new entrepreneurs.

No really. That's the view of McAfee malware expert Greg Day, who clearly has his eyes firmly set on Graham Cluley's title of the security industry's most outspoken and 'media friendly' pundit.

The McAfee analyst claims virus writers (and the criminal operations that increasingly pay for their services) are showing alarming levels of professionalism. So much so, he alleges, they are beginning to operate like dot-com start-ups.

Move over Graham, there's a new sheriff in town.

Having tracked the rise (and fall) of a huge number of dot-coms in its inglorious past, the Round-Up can't help but feel the comparison to tech start-ups is a little unfair, where the only truly criminal element present was the business plan. Or in some cases the lack thereof.

"I can't help but look at these trends and think of it in terms of a start-up," he said, echoing what the Round-Up just wrote a couple of paragraphs ago.

He adds that McAfee research reveals that organised malware individuals and organisations have now reached new levels of sophistication and look set to continue in that trend.

Not wanting to leave it at that, Greg decided to poke a stick in the general direction of the open source community by alleging that the open, online distribution of virus code and greater collusion among writers are key in contributing towards what appears to be a very real research and development cycle within these criminal organisations.

"The mentality of open source is helping them," said Day, ducking behind a bullet-proof shield.

"Open source is a great idea, it's just a shame they've taken that great concept and are using its success for their own benefit," he added.

This is the same open source mentality that works to develop operating systems for businesses that seek to shut out the hordes of virus writers that inflict most of their damage on the incumbent mainstream corporate OS hegemony that security companies make a lot of money producing software to protect, of course.

Either way, Greg's theory doesn't sit well with silicon.com's readers, with one alleging the comparison may as well be extended to compare burglars with entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, ageing Welsh stoic Eric the Disillusioned (that's what he put on his Reader Comment, OK?) stated: "The difference between an entrepreneur and a scumbag malware writer is that the former has a sense of right and wrong and seeks innovative ways to legitimately make money and the latter cannot be trusted to follow the rules and will lie, cheat and steal to make money."

Ecommerce website fish4.co.uk provided us with one of the most memorable error messages of recent times when its service was unavailable earlier this month.

After the company's site crashed it put up a holding page apologising for the service outage and informing users about the nature of the problem. The exact reason for the problem, in fact.

The message on the fish4 website read: "Thank you for coming to fish4 this morning. Unfortunately the fish4 website is unavailable due to the failure of a very expensive piece of Sun hardware (Sun 6900)."

It adds: "A Sun engineer is at the data centre but didn't think to bring the replacement part with him."

Saucer of milk for the fish4 webmaster, please.

According to Sun's website, the Sun Fire E6900 Server is an "enterprise powerhouse" which can "satisfy even your toughest mission-critical service level agreements".

See? The Round-Up wouldn't trust IT salesmen any further than it could spit a bat.

"We hope the Sun engineer will have repaired the hardware by 12PM," added the site with a tinge of hope and bitterness.

"Bravo!" to fish4. "Boo!" to you pesky Sun engineers.

The holding page also puts the Round-Up in mind of a spectacular service error in recent times (alright, a few months ago).

A two-storey high electronic billboard in New York's Times Square froze, displaying what is touted to be the world's biggest ever Windows error message (check it out here).

Brings tears to your eyes, doesn't it?

The Round-Up's betting the nice Microsoft salesperson who sold software powering the billboard failed to mention the system's potential instability during mission-critical operations either.

Trust no one. (Ed note: Don't start that again... )

And finally this week, another one to file under "companies seeking indemnity from lawsuits from the exceptionally dim".

Round-Up readers may recall that when it was first launched, the ultra-tiny Apple iPod Shuffle was touted as being the same size as a pack of chewing gum.

Clearly driven by some paranoid legal beagles, Apple's website saw fit to warn users that comparative size was where the similarity between the device and chewing gum ended and stated that on no accounts should users eat the iPod Shuffle.

Technically speaking you shouldn't eat gum either. If one is to believe Mother Round-Up it gets all tangled up in your guts and you die. Ho hum.

Meanwhile, the marketing department at Motorola has clearly taken note. In a recent ad for the smooth, rounded Pebl phone, a user skims a handset across an ocean - possibly to demonstrate that you can call people on the other side of large aquatic masses.

A brief caption on the ad's closing screen warned something along the lines of: 'Fictionalisation: Pebl is not water resistant'.

So just in case you were thinking of skimming your new phone across the waves, a note of caution: that's not covered by the warranty.

But it might just make you feel good...

Until next week, here's something else you shouldn't skim...

• Mobile phone use irks public transport passengers
• UK loves Microsoft more than the BBC
• Motorists to get jam-busting traffic info
• First free broadband not so free
• Virtual world seeks telepaths