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The Weekly Round-Up: 26.11.04
It's a miracle!

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 26 November 2004

"Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail."

Guard: "Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen... he's already got one, you see."

King Arthur: "Are you sure he's got one?"

Guard: "Oh, yes, it's very nice."

It seems the problems faced by King Arthur in Monty Python's 'Holy Grail' are not resigned or unique to the days of yore. Now, some many-several years later there is another 'Holy Grail' which is causing some problems for those questing for its ownership.

The grail in question is the beer cup which was thrown at Indiana Pacers basketball player Ron Artest.

Of course such missiles from the crowd are nothing new in sport but 'what happened next' - to use the words of A Question of Sport - has created something of a scandal in the US where sport is a far more genteel affair than this side of the Atlantic.

Artest made like King Eric of Manchester and, like the Frenchman 'doing his nut' at Selhurst Park in 1995, leapt into the crowd and started meting out justice with his fists.

The brawl became a national sensation and footage of Artest clambering over seats in order to land one on the offending spectator has been seen the world over.

Now Artest has been handed a 72-match ban. But the story only begins there.

Because the real star of the piece has become the cup which struck the lanky hoop-shooter.

In fact that simple 'Pistons' cup has become the most sought after piece of rare sporting memorabilia this year, leading the Round-Up to fear for the resale value of the phial of 'Paula Radcliffe's tears' acquired from a bloke down the pub last Tuesday week.

The only problem is, there were thousands of identical cups there that night and many of them ended up scattered on the floor in the general melee - but that hasn't stopped many of them cropping up on websites such as eBay with trumped up claims of their own authenticity.

"You are bidding on one of the cups that was thrown during the infamous Pistons v Pacers game," begins one ad, with a degree of honesty which would appear to admit it may not be THE very same cup that hit the Indiana player.

Even still, bidding for this particular item was going strongly at the time of writing - doubtless aided by the seller's claims: "Bid now and own a piece of sports history with confidence of authenticity."

But despite tempering his earlier claims the seller was apparently unable to resist bigging-up his lot just a bit more, claiming it "may be the most seen-on-TV cup ever".

(Hmmm... what about the FA Cup, the European Cup, or even Janet Jackson's bouncy C-cup, sports fans?)

Of course speaking of Indiana, the Pacers' home state, it was Harrison Ford's famous archaeologist Dr Jones who faced exactly (well, not exactly) this very dilemma at the end of third film The Last Crusade.

Faced with a series of cups which all look as though they could be 'the one' how do you know you're drinking from the real thing?

Obviously in the case of the evil Germans in that film they aged, collapsed, died and turned to dust before our very eyes... in this case the 'proud owners' will probably enjoy a far less dramatic fall from grace, perhaps occasionally sharing embarrassed conversations with other owners of the same 'genuine' cup.

"Oh man, no way - I SO own that cup too..." they might say.

Alternatively, bidders on eBay can vie for a T-shirt declaring 'I threw the cup', which puts the Round-Up in mind of the 'I killed Laura Palmer' T-shirt craze of the late-eighties or even 'Frankie says Relax'.

More eBay madness this week saw the sale of toasted cheese sandwich for $28,000.

'Why so expensive?' the Round-Up hears you ask - that must be some pretty tasty cheese and probably some fancy bread to boot. 'Probably Waitrose or even Taste the Difference?' you might be guessing.

Or perhaps you've ever bought a sandwich at any mainline train station in London and think $28,000 for a toastie actually sounds pretty reasonable.

But there is far more to this sandwich than two, by now very dry, pieces of toast and some once melted, now congealed and possibly 'whiffy' cheese.

This cheese sandwich was recognised as a latter day miracle, no less, when it emerged from under the grill featuring the face of the Virgin Mary on one side, placing it alongside the Jesus Christ pork scratching and the David Beckham Jaffa Cake.

Proof if ever it were needed that He really does move in mysterious ways... but the Round-Up can't help thinking He spends a bit too much time working on snack-based miracles.

(The Round-Up assumes the cheese in the miracle butty was Emmental - the holiest of the cheeses... holiest... geddit? It's got holes in it... oh forget it!)

The bidding for the divine toastie was won by GoldenPalace.com - no stranger to publicity stunts. (Read more about the new owner's of the Holy cheese sarnie, here.)

GoldenPalace.com has a history of sending out branded streakers to gatecrash sports events but nudity was rife in the news this week, even without their input.

For starters there was the pornographer who is suing Google for revealing some of his pay-content with its oh-so-clever image search technology. The super-search site also finds user names and passwords which enable users to access the site and dodge the near $30 subscription fee.

And then there are the hackers who exposed Italian senators to images of hardcore gay pornography... possibly in reaction to recent events which cast Italian politicians in a less than gay-friendly light.

First there was the debacle when Rocco Butiglione, Italy's candidate for European Union Commissioner, publicly branded homosexuality a sin and then there was the sacking of Senate vice-president Dario Mattiello after he was pictured at a gay night spot in Rome.

His sacking sparked a furious reaction in more liberal quarters, leading some experts to put two and two together and come up with four as far as guessing the motivation behind a hack attack which bombarded screens around the Senate with gay porn is concerned.

Seems an outside chance the two incidents are related, don't you think?

The hack was made possible due to an infection by a variant of the Rbot worm, a backdoor Trojan, which hands control of key systems to a hacker.

It's worth noting that the charming Rocco Butiglione did also say a woman's place is in the kitchen, but the Round-Up is guessing it made for a less appealing subject for the hackers striking a blow for liberal thought.

"Now, what's going to have the most impact? Should we go with the pictures of professional women commuting to work, or shall we go with the gay porn?"

While the Round-Up has managed to fight the temptation to make several crass jokes about the hardcore images revealing 'back door entry' to the Senate, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, couldn't resist a little gentle innuendo.

"Whatever their motives, the hackers have shown a bare-faced cheek by planting these homosexual images at the heart of Italy's political establishment," he said, possibly fighting a little smirk as he said it.

("Bare faced cheek". Amazing. You see he's not just talking about shameless acts of defiance - he's making a subtle allusion to men's bum cheeks, geddit? Priceless.)

Now, from bare-faced cheek to 'Blair faced geeks' - with news that our very own, respected PM sat down this week for a high-tech powwow with the nation's texters.

And what did we learn from this text-based conversation with the nation?

Well, apart from texting back some standard answers about Iraq and foxhunting we learned Tony's favourite guitar solo is from While my guitar gently weeps and Mick Jagger would be the front man in his super group.

Hmmm, it probably seemed a good idea at the time. Which could also be said of the plan announced this week to give visitors to next year's Glastonbury festival smart cards in place of tickets. It may well limit the problem of counterfeit tickets but the Round-Up is willing to believe it may greatly increase the problem of dazed and confused crusties walking around muttering "I can't remember my PIN number, man!"

And finally, it's said the course of true love never did run smooth and that statement could certainly be applied to the story of James and Nataliya Fox.

It was the archetypal story of love... their eyes met across a crowded contact website for American men seeking Russian mail-order brides.

The website, called Encounters International, boasts the touching strapline: "The woman of your dreams just may have a Russian accent".

Nice. What do they write on their Valentine's cards?

"Roses are red, Violets are blue
For a US passport, I'll marry you."

After the site put them in touch with one another, the pair were married within three months.

But sadly and perhaps surprisingly this union was not to last and the pair allegedly became abusive towards one another. James branded Nataliya "nutty" as a "fruitcake" and she made allegations of domestic violence against him.

Following one alleged assault Nataliya moved into a shelter while James allegedly flew to Haiti and arranged a quickie divorce. You could say the writing was on the wall by this stage and the pair are indeed now separated.

But there is a twist in this tale of matrimonial woe. In a landmark legal ruling late last week Nataliya was awarded $434,000 by a US judge in a case against the romantics over at Encounters International.

According to a USA Today report the owner of Encounters International, Natasha Spivack claimed the settlement was unjustified and said her company could not be held accountable for the actions of members once the introduction had been made.

In her testimony Spivack even intimated that Nataliya had abused the system to obtain a US visa - which is a scandalous suggestion if ever the Round-Up heard one.

Now for a far less scandalous suggestion. silicon.com has teamed up with The Bathwick Group to try to crack that old chestnut of just how IT affects productivity. Stick with us - complete this survey here and you'll be entered into a draw to win an iPod Mini.