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The Weekly Round-Up: 08.10.04
Baaaaad, baaaaad Ballmer... have you any sense?

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 08 October 2004

"I don't know what I said exactly, but it was baaaaad!"

This was Steve Ballmer's slightly understated response when asked to comment on a statement earlier in the week which appears to have offended much of the Western world.

Ballmer, clearly sensing the Apple community didn't have enough reason to dislike him already, told a select group of journalists while in London at the weekend that iPod users steal music - or at least the majority may do.

His exact words were that "the most common format of music on an iPod" is "stolen". So pleased with his 'did-you-see-what-I-did-there' cleverness he even repeated himself "stolen!" for added impact.

silicon.com, as one of few publications to be privy to his words, ran with the story and it took off.

In fact, it took off 'big time'.

It got picked up on almost every Mac fan site - of which there are many - and appeared large on geek news portal Slashdot.org.

By the time Ballmer arrived in the Netherlands for the Dutch leg of his European charm offensive his words had travelled around the world several times and waiting in The Hague for him were questions about the remarks which appeared in the silicon.com article, according to a colleague of ours in The Netherlands.

Sounding very much like a man who had given 'his people' cause for concern and had since been made aware of the can of worms he'd opened two days previously, Ballmer uttered those words: "I don't know what I said exactly, but it was baaaaad!".

An interesting thing the memory.

(Anybody who needs reminding of Ballmer's finest hour, or somehow has lived this long without seeing it for themselves, click here and enjoy. It truly is a remarkable way for a man of his age and position to behave. If you thought his words were 'baaaaad!' wait until you see his moves.)

And those of you with an un-Ballmer like recollection of events more dim and distant than a few hours hence may remember the Round-Up mentioned a few weeks back that Aussie Prime Minister John Howard had been in trouble for sending unsolicited bulk email to promote his campaign.

Still, politicians are a canny bunch. They tend to learn from their mistakes, don't they?

Of course they don't. Howard's been caught doing it again - this time he's accused of sending spam voicemail down voters' phone lines.

Understandably many Aussie voters are angry, for a variety of reasons. Some resent the fact their privacy is being invaded by unsolicited 'marketing' of any kind - not least all of those who were ex-directory and now want to know how their details were obtained. Others simply resent it because they weren't intending to vote for Howard and as such his message simply took up a few seconds of their life they could more beneficially have used.

Then there are those who took issue with the fact the calls appear to have been routed via an overseas call centre - which isn't seen as being the most tub-thumpingly patriotic thing to do and then, finally there are those who had to pay for the privilege of receiving the messages which they may not have wanted for one or all of the above reasons.

Anybody using a dial-up voicemail service actually had to shell out to retrieve Howard's message.

Howard's electoral rival, Labor candidate Mark Latham, told Australia's ABC News that Howard's electioneering represents: "The most relentlessly dishonest and negative advertising campaign in the history of Australian politics."

To that we can possibly add ill-considered as well.

Fortunately it's not just Aussies who have a monopoly on gaffes that occur where the worlds of technology and politics collide.

Picture the scene, Oliver Letwin, shadow chancellor, is being primed for a slot on BBC Breakfast News.

"OK Oliver. The crew from the BBC are here and they're ready to go live in three minutes," the Tory party advisor may have begun. "Is your make up done?"

"Absolutely my dear girl."

"And you know what you're going to say?"

"But of course... I'm going to lay into Gordon Brown and Labour taxation."

"And you've checked your facts and figures...?"

"Indubitably!"

"OK, then we're already to go, they're just coming out of the local news and weather and then Dermot Murnaghan and Natasha Kaplinsky will introduce you and ask you some questions."

"Right ho!"

"And you're mobile phone is switched off isn't it Oliver... Oliver...?"

"Sorry my dear, what was that....? Oh... Good morning to you too Dermot..."

Cue loud phone ringing, drowning out the end of the very first question, and much fumbling from Letwin as he attempted to switch it off without taking it out of his pocket.

How difficult can it be to remember to turn off a mobile phone? Is this a man we want to trust with the nation's economy?

Even the otherwise so-lovely-a-nation-relishes-waking-up-with-her-each-morning Natasha 'that girl can dance' Kaplinsky, was forced to comment on it, live on air, possibly as much out of surprise as offence, but as gaffes go it's a good 'un. Nothing says 'I respect the electorate' like your phone going off during one of the day's most watched news broadcasts.

Furthermore, very much as a 'BTW', Letwin still uses the original Nokia ringtone made popular by Dom Jolly's 'Trigger Happy TV' and subsequently dropped by all but the most oblivious of mobile phone users.

As Jolly might say: "HELLO!! ...I'm at the Tory Party conference... ...No, it's rubbish!"

And while the Round-Up is putting the boot in to MPs let's be bi-partisan about it and give arts minister Estelle Morris a bit of a dig.

Morris this week 'spoke out' on the in-no-way-tired issue of file-sharing and music piracy.

"Piracy is theft - pure and simple," she said. "Whether it's Jamelia or a jobbing musician, the artist suffers. We owe it to them to make sure they get a fair return for their creativity, flair and inspiration."

Come on Estelle, 'fess up, the Round-Up can see what you were doing with the whole alliteration and street 'cred' thing, but it was "Jim Reeves" before some young pup in the press office changed it to Jamelia, wasn't it? Or is the Round-Up just getting far too cynical when approaching press releases these days.

Morris's words come as the British Phonographic Industry announced its latest drive to crack down on the online file-sharing of music.

Also rallying behind the BPI and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Estelle Morris, is Feargal Sharkey, which makes for an interesting pairing.

It would appear that while 'a good heart' may always be 'hard to find', in the words of the man himself, an available rent-a-quote is always around when you need one.

"I find it extraordinary...that we are prepared to ask musicians and songwriters, to turn up to work everyday and not get paid for it," said Sharkey. "Especially since all that many of those musicians and songwriters are trying to do is to make the world the rest of us live in, a much more valuable, much brighter place," he added.

...of course they are Feargal. In fact the Round-Up has been told in good faith that many of them are really very embarrassed about the squillions of pounds they make as a nasty by-product of making the world "a much brighter place".

Also fighting out of the corner of truth and decency is Rob Stringer, CEO of Sony-BMG Music UK.

"Breaking new artists can take years of investment and hard work," said Stringer.

Fair point. And by "years of investment and hard work" Stringer is clearly talking about the likes of Backstreet Boys, Westlife, Will Young and Gareth Gates, who are all signed to his label.

It must have taken perhaps a whole half-hour to fathom the manifold intricacies of the 'young girls buy shed-loads of records' phenomenon.

The Round-Up finds it hard to feel much sympathy for the complainants in this debate and a spokesman for the BPI conceded "we're not trying to win a popularity contest", which is probably just as well.

Moving on.

Last week silicon.com wrote about a new company called jeftel which claims to provide 'secure, leak proof email'. More interesting, however, in the Round-Up's humble opinion, was word that the venture is funded by a 'mystery backer'.

Intrigued, the team at silicon.com dug further and uncovered Jeffrey Morris, a Yorkshire-based millionaire who is also the man behind several other online businesses registered at the same address in Leeds as jeftel, including Worldwidetender.com, or WWT Media as it is now known.

WWT Media has been accused in the past of sending unsolicited spam email - although this is an allegation the company categorically denies.

AOL currently blocks all email from WWT Media and the organisation has also been blocked by Spamhaus and the DNS providers blacklist in the past.

Robert Barr, head of development at jeftel and former managing director at WWT Media, said: "jeftel and WWT are separate businesses with separate staff."

A source close to the situation confirmed Morris is indeed the money behind both ventures but said that is where Morris's involvement ends.

However, some confusion, which the Round-Up is happy to clear up, has arisen from a page which has been cached on Google.

Although it is important to note that it is obviously very much 'a work in progress' and should be treated as such, an earlier version of the 'Our board' page, cached on 29 September from jeftel.com, does appear to name Morris as CEO of jeftel. The page also has head of development Robert Barr's job title wrong as well, naming him as managing director.

(See the page here - while it remains available.)

Furthermore the page appears to claim a man by the name of Michael Abrahams is the chairman of the company. (And a man by the name of '??????????' is named as the FD - so it's fair to assume this wasn't intended to end up in the public domain.)

Michael Abrahams and Jeffrey Morris have some history. Abrahams was Chairman of MinorPlanet, another Jeffrey Morris-backed venture.

Abrahams is also chairman of Kingston Communications.

However, to clear up any confusion, a spokeswoman for Kingston Communications told silicon.com the listing on the cached page is incorrect, attributing it to human error and stating that Abrahams is not chairman of jeftel.

"Michael and Jeffrey have worked together previously and Michael is working with jeftel," said the spokeswoman. "However, from what I understand, it was never the case that he would be the chairman of this business. This was purely an assumption made by the team building the site. As a friend of Jeffrey's, he purely acts as a sounding board and advisor on a personal, one-to-one basis."

So hopefully that clears up any confusion.

The spokeswoman also confirmed to silicon.com that "Kingston Communications supplies WWT Media with telephony services."

The Round-Up's head is spinning; all this confusion that can arise from Google being too efficient at its job... and companies developing web content on a live site.

But Google is not the only search engine that has been mistakenly leading people down a wrong turn or two this week. Ask.co.uk recently sent some sixth form pupils studying biology and looking for information on the human heart to a website where they gained intimate knowledge of various other human body parts.

According to the BBC, children at a school in Bradford were directed to a website displaying some distinctly naughty images of an 'adult' star whose surname, unfortunately happened to be 'Heart'.

A warning page on Ask which is intended to appear before users are redirected to such a site failed to materialise and the innocent young eyes of the assembled students were exposed to some full-on smut.

Ruth Whitehead, head of science at the Hanson Secondary School, told the BBC: "One of the girls called me over and we were both shocked at what we saw, explained Miss Whitehead."

The Round-Up cannot confirm whether the music class researching a project on "large organs" ran into any similar problems, but you can be sure that shocked members of the woodwork class won't be searching for any more "big tools" in a hurry.

Until next week the Round-Up is off to consider the wisdom of that last paragraph.