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The Weekly Round-Up: 08.09.06
Shizzle!

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 08 September 2006

If we promise you this week's Round-Up contains amazing stories of intrigue and scandal will you first sit through an interesting tale about a Freedom of Information Act enquiry into the UK government which gave up a little more information than was initially expected?

The Freedom of Information Act, as we all know, was introduced in January 2005 as a way of getting civil servants to do more work.

The idea was that well-meaning members of the public and the media would keep Whitehall pen-pushers busy by asking them questions about everything from UFO sightings in UK skies, to far duller things such as, say, the massive balls-up which is sometimes, less politely referred to as government IT projects.

In this instance an FOI enquiry into the National Audit Office requested information relating to the review of the £530m National Network for the NHS contract.

And there was nothing in the document to suggest that value wasn't still applicable. Not unless you count the blacked out area of a table which had clearly been edited so its contents couldn't be seen.

Or at least they couldn't be seen until you cut and pasted the section into a Word document in which case you could read the blacked out area of the table quite clearly and see that the estimated cost of the programme is now up to £685m.

It seems a little more work is needed within the NAO on setting up PDFs.

The document also contains revelations relating to financial penalties forced upon major suppliers including prime contractor BT.

A spokesman for the NAO confirmed to silicon.com that the document was 'on the level'.

"We were responding to an FOI request and we didn't redact the document properly," said a spokesman, exercising his understatement muscles. "We're now looking at our processes to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Good thinking.



Also not exactly covering themselves in glory this week are the large numbers of business travellers who seem incapable of keeping hold of their laptops while travelling through UK airports.

It can be tough.

One of the most common reasons for loss, according to the chairman of one company that handles lost property at Heathrow and Gatwick, is forgetting to pick them up again once they've been put through the X-ray machine.

It's a lot to remember admittedly. Take jacket off, take belt off, put jacket and belt in tray, put bag on conveyor belt, put tray on conveyor belt, put laptop in another tray... step through scanner, look guiltily about you in anticipation of the machine going 'ping' and then go through the whole process in reverse.

And once these bright sparks have been separated from their laptops it seems many of them are also failing to make the next logical step - checking in with lost property once they realise their mistake.

A member of lost property staff at Heathrow told us: "Many people assume their laptop won't have been handed in."

True, this is probably largely due to the fact we can no longer trust the average man or woman on the street to do the decent thing, any more than we can trust Yogi Bear with a picnic basket but apparently some of these lost laptops do get handed in.

"We get brand new laptops all the time and their owners just never turn up to collect them," our source within Heathrow told us.

So, a trip to Tottenham Court Road and a nice little cash bonus for the staff, then, you might think but not a bit of it. All lost property such as laptops will go to auction after three months of sitting unclaimed and unloved by its rightful owner.



Of course these days (said the Round-Up sounding far older than its youthful 21 years) we are all carrying around far more gadgets, shortening the odds on one or two of these items occasionally going astray and us failing to notice.

And now students in Kent are being given one more gadget to put in their satchels with the launch of a new initiative that will give those with a full attendance record - and who are up to date on their homework - a brand new iPod Nano.

But stop. This isn't a bribe, oh no! After all, surely the kids these days (yes, the Round-Up is aware it's done it again) don't need a bribe to get them to go to school.

South Kent College says the iPods will enable students to download podcasts of lectures which they can then listen to at their leisure. The first lectures to be made available are on child care and motor mechanics - which appears to offer a little something for everybody.

So, lectures on an iPod... the Round-Up can't see a flaw in that plan.

"Hmmm Snoop Dogg or Mr Clarke's lecture on the rise of the Austro-Hungarian empire... ? Decisions, decisions... "

Shizzle!

Josh Coleman, assistant principal at South Kent College, told the BBC the £25,000 needed to fund the project was raised from savings made on 'a building project'. (So the kids may have iPods but the ceiling could cave in on their heads at any minute... the Round-Up speculates, with absolutely no reason to believe that at all and no intention to unnecessarily scare parents whose little cherubs attend the entirely sturdy and safe college.)

However, you could possibly put these two strands of information together (and still come to a completely erroneous conclusion). Do they build more classrooms or do they spend the money on technology to enable 'virtual lectures', thus removing the need for a classroom in the first place... ? It's wild speculation and it's making the Round-Up's head hurt.

Speaking to the Beeb, Coleman addressed the crazy notion that this could be seen as a bribe, heaven forbid.

"At first people thought I was giving iPods out to get people through the door," he began, outlining just what a crazy assumption that was to jump to. "But they can now see the long-term merits. As we attract more full-time students, that generates income which will offset initial outlay."

But who pays for all the tunes on iTunes? The bank of Mum and Dad that's who. Just another 'back to school' cost. Tsk!



Moving on from the slightly questionable to the entirely ridiculous, with news that Golden Palace Casino has once again ventured into the world of weird eBay auctions.

... and you know how much the Round-Up likes weird eBay auctions.

The latest lot to find its way into the Golden Palace museum of the bizarre is a sandwich that was reportedly left half-eaten by the all-singing all-dancing queen of White Trash America, Britney Spears.

To Spears' credit the sandwich was apparently egg salad, so she ate a lot more of it than the Round-Up could ever manage. Urggh.

The lot also included a bonus 'corn dog' which was left half-eaten by Spears' husband who apparently goes by the nickname K-Fed... though it seems Half-fed might be more apt.

The seller of this rather creepy lot (after all, who steals other people's leftovers and then thinks to sell them online, really) claimed to have been waiting tables backstage at a celebrity music event.

So it's nice to see the A-listers get fed the same nasty sandwiches the rest of us have had to endure at wakes (it's no excuse to let the quality of food slide) and 90th birthday parties for years.

Clearly all the other party food was gobbled up - denying eBayers the opportunity to bid for Christina Aguilera's half-eaten pineapple and cheese cubes on a stick, or Justin Timberlake's nibbled iced-ring biscuit.



Now, if you'll forgive the Round-Up blowing its trumpet for a while, silicon.com had reason to cheer this week with news we have been shortlisted for four awards at the upcoming AOP awards, a glittering bash for the great and the good of online publishing, including best editorial team and best website.

We're tremendously proud and even now we're working on our shocked 'wow, what us?' faces and our 'we're fine, we don't do this for the awards' faces in time for the big night.

Furthermore CNET Networks, publisher of silicon.com, found itself shortlisted in seven out of 14 categories in total... officially making us this year's Ghandi at the awards.



And finally from a tale of editorial excellence to one of jaw-dropping dim-wittedness.

Now you can say what you like about the average IT journalist...

That's it. You can say what you like, because frankly our peers this week revealed what a stupendously dense bunch some of them can be when reacting to a spam attack that appears to have targeted the press list of tech company MIPS.

It stands to reason that most of the recipients on a press list would be journalists but that didn't stop some of them pointing this out and replying to all on the email, thus increasing the numbers of spam emails we all received.

"There's a journalist - me - in the chain," wrote one hack with an air of self-importance rarely seen from somebody admitting they receive spam (shock horror).

"And another," wrote another, all the time replying all.

"Me too," came the next insightful response.

Already it was like being stuck inside one of those demented internal emails you get announcing a promotion that some employees across the organisation feel inspired to respond to, adding 'Great news, Chet, glad you're on our side Dude ;-)' or something equally vacuous.

"All the hacks on my floor at Reed in Sutton have also been spammed," piped up one staffer from a magazine called Microscope, which may or may not be about microscopes. However, we are willing to believe that receiving spam is quite possibly the most interesting thing to have happened in Sutton in quite some years (discounting stabbings, bar brawls or 'hanging out' at McDonald's).

"So have I," chipped in a bright spark from Electronic Design Europe (?).

"Me too," added a hack from New Electronics (double '??') with a comment of almost monumental worthlessness.

"I don't believe I know any of y'all, but this sure has been ... amusing," wrote - we're guessing - an American hack from IDG, taking meaningless to new depths.

"Loathe as I am to jump in and prolong this weirdness, howdy," added an editorial type from EE Times.

"This feels like a journalists' convention," another journo offered, conjuring a terrible vision in the Round-Up's mind of an event possibly even less appealing than a Grumbleweeds revival at a Middlesbrough social club.

"OK, so who's got any commissioning budget?" wrote an optimistic freelancer, attempting to turn a spam email into a social networking tool.

"I cover military technology," added another proudly, possibly while muttering 'guns' repeatedly under his breath and worrying the knees of his combat trousers.

"I cover storage and all things IT," added somebody else, who quickly won the Round-Up's vote for 'Person we'd least like to be stuck in a lift with'.

Don't these people have any work to do... ?

On that note the Round-Up sits back in its chair and declares itself finished for another week.

And if you were wondering what happened to the "amazing stories of intrigue and scandal" which you were promised at the start. Well that was a lie. Which is as scandalous as it was intriguing! So it wasn't a lie at all in fact - how odd.



On that confusing note - here's some news to settle your mind...


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