The Weekly Round-Up: 06.02.09

It only took a light dusting of snow to bring the south of England to a slippery, sliding halt earlier this week. You may have noticed.

As the snow came down, mobile usage went up. Monday between 7am and 8.30am saw a massive spike in texts and calls as commuters rang work with sob stories about being trapped behind gigantic snow drifts of nearly three inches, or pinned down by marauding gangs of snowball-wielding 11-year-olds.

The Round-Up is pretty sure there was another spike in calls and texts about half an hour later, when these same commuters starting sending pictures to Flickr of their freshly built snowmen and arranging to meet their mates to make snow angels.

Nevertheless, the white stuff forced swathes of the capital's workers to dust down their home PCs and turn the front room into a makeshift office - albeit one without the grumpy boss and with more Murder She Wrote on in the background.

The Round-Up loves working from home. You get so much less done.

See how the rest of the silicon.com team joined the working from home party.

Still, a few over-keen souls did battle through the elements, and several times in the last few days the Round-Up has spotted unlucky commuters slipping up on a particularly treacherous stretch of icy road, not too far from Silicon Towers.

There's something about the crazy desperate dance to remain upright when someone slips on ice - the windmilling arms and flailing legs more often seen on a sysadmin at the office party - that somehow completely robs victims of all dignity. The Round-Up has experienced this several times this week.

But in the case of this particular spot by Silicon Towers, it's not just their dignity the unlucky have lost. As the snow has melted the ice has begun to reveal its ill-gotten gains - a hefty pile of change that has fallen from the pockets of those hitting the ice.

Yesterday the Round-Up was cheered to see a couple of local urchins hacking at the ice to get the goodies within. Who says the cold snap has been bad for the nation's finances?

Anyway, now you're back in the office, stay away from that keyboard! Yes, you! Forget the internet being a strange and dangerous place, the biggest threat out there is…you.

Yes, dear reader, it's all your fault.

Forget hackers, forget botnets, it's you, in cubicle 64a, that is the biggest risk to your company's IT infrastructure. Try not to take it too personally, though.

According to a poll of silicon.com readers, nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of those surveyed said the biggest security threat to companies is malicious and/or incompetent staff, far outweighing the danger from viruses, phishing scams or the other nasties the security industry likes to scare everyone with.

Following this revelation, the Round-Up has a suggestion.

There are often calls for tougher sentencing and more police investigations to deal with virus writing and hacking. But if the real problem is end users, let's enroll everyone that works in IT in a special tech police force.

Especially everyone that works on helpdesk support. Think Judge Dredd but with more pens in the top pocket and an extensive knowledge of printer drivers. Imagine the conversation.

User: "I've got a problem with my computer"

Helpdesk: "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

User: "It's just I've been using my DVD drive as a cup holder and now I have hot chocolate inside my laptop."

Helpdesk: "Aaargh! Lawbreaker! Five years hard labour!"

User: "But I need to send an email to a lawyer who says he has $10m in a bank account for me and I just need to send him my bank details…"

Helpdesk: "10 years!"

Don't touch that keyboard! (Last time, honest). Especially if you've done anything that might embarrass you in front of the boss. And frankly, if you've never done anything that might embarrass you in front of the boss then you're just not trying hard enough.

A survey of HR chiefs has revealed almost a third (32 per cent) search the internet and check social networking websites to gather background information on potential recruits and existing employees. The sneaks.

And one in four said they have been put off a new hire by what they found - with drunken photos and rude comments being the biggest turn-offs. A separate piece of research also revealed that one in three candidates have lied at a job interview. This is presumably when they are asked by the interviewer whether they really are the person in the Facebook photo wearing antlers, a bottle of tequila and not much else, at which point the well-rehearsed explanation about the evil twin will become very useful.

OK, now you can touch that keyboard - but only to check out the links to other great stuff on silicon.com this week.

ID cards are here so why can't the police access the info? The Round-Up would love to say more about this story but some things are so ridiculous as to be beyond satire, and this is one of them.

Check out five other jobs you might fancy when you've finally had enough of IT (sadly it doesn't include spy and astronaut)

And more big threats to IT security (and this time it isn't you).

Lastly, come and have a go (if you think you're funny enough) at the caption competition.