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The Weekly Round-Up: 07.12.07
Pirates, nasty data accidents and HMRC... again ...

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 07 December 2007

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction," quipped Sir Isaac Newton in a quiet moment while he wasn't unravelling rainbows.

Actually, Newton's third law states: "For every force acting on an object, the object will exert an equal, yet opposite, force on its cause", proving that while he might have been a whiz with physics, he was a bit rubbish with sound bytes. No matter, his mind was on loftier things. And besides, he wrote it in Latin anyway.

Like all good axioms it can be applied to a number of things aside from physical laws. Take technology public relations for starters. Not convinced?

Consider the news from Microsoft this week that Vista had successfully defeated the spectre of software piracy.

Piracy rates for Windows Vista are half those of its predecessor Windows XP.

The company claims the success is down to the better security of Vista. Microsoft VP Mike Sievert beamed: "Piracy rates are lower because it's harder."

"Like the Steven Seagal of operating systems," he may have thought, but did not dare to utter.

How has this miracle been achieved? Well, the removal of volume licence keys - which allow business to activate an unlimited amount of machines - is one reason, apparently.

Another reason is that Vista PCs which aren't properly activated are automatically made unusable due to a bit of technology that switches off many features with the computer entering a "reduced functionality mode". So it's business as usual, Windows fans.

Some reports claim legitimate Vista users have also been affected by the features lock-down (these little chaps certainly weren't impressed). Which must either be particularly galling or a lucky escape, depending how you look at it.

Meanwhile, an equal and opposite reaction to Microsoft's bold claim is that piracy rates are so much lower for Vista because nobody actually wants to pirate it. That'll be market forces at work, then.

silicon.com readers seem to concur with this alternative theory. At least the ones who have posted reader comments under the story, of which there are many.

"LOL! Even the Pirates don't want Vista," guffaws James Wilkinson. "Even 'pirates' have some sense!" chortles another reader. Some comments are less kind.

In addition, a poll on the site indicates that Vista is failing to win over silicon.com readers, with about two-thirds saying their organisation will never move onto XP's successor. Never. Are you listening Redmond? No, no it isn’t.

More than a year after Vista's business release, silicon.com readers were asked when they think their organisation will migrate to Redmond's latest OS offering.

Of those companies considering a move to Vista, almost one third said they aren't planning to do so until at least 2009 or later. Only two per cent said they had bought into Microsoft's vision of a brave new world of computing, which is much like Apple's brave new world of computing except with even more unnecessary shiny bits.

What's more, it turns out that XP with SP3 still has twice the performance of its newer brother, even with its own first service pack installed.

That's not affecting the mood in Redmond though. Hell no, it's still bullish about the success of the most rapidly adopted operating system in history, crowing about its invulnerability to software pirates and touting the 'big wow'.

Whatever, me hearties, whatever. Yo ho ho...

Criminals place a higher value on your personal data than the UK government. Which wouldn't be so bad were it not for the government being responsible for losing the data in question in the first place.

The latest revelation from the HMRC CD-gate scandal: a strapping cash reward for the safe and timely return of two CDs containing 25 million personal records. And how much is the reward? Good question.

Before we come to the answer, the Round-Up should probably apologise for the persistent reference to the HMRC data debacle - but you may as well accept it. In the same way Bryan Adams' (Everything I Do) I Do It for You refused to be shifted from the pop charts in 1991 - but marked a first for a song title starting with a bracket - the HMRC fiasco is likely to remain a mainstay in the Round-Up for the weeks to come. Get used to it, the Round-Up's still fuming. Grr.

Anyway, a frantic search for the missing CDs has been led by a core team of 47 detectives and computer experts from the Metropolitan Police's Specialist and Economic Crime Command. And the HMRC cleaning staff, no doubt.

Now in its latest masterstroke, the government has offered a £20,000 reward for anyone handing in the two CDs containing 25 million records of personal data.

It's an idea but the problem is the data is worth a hell of a lot more than £20,000 on the black market. Approximately £1.5bn more, according to acting Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable.

What this indicates is how much the government fails to appreciate the value of our personal data in the hands of identity fraudsters. An entire bank account could be cleared out, an innocent person could be set up as a stooge in a fraudulent scam and a credit rating could be damaged irreparably and what value does the government put on your identity?

Less than one tenth of a penny. The Round-Up will readily admit that maths isn't its strongest point but that doesn’t seem to add up...

What's the stupidest way you've ever lost data? Stop right there. The Round-Up's sure you've got good anecdotes but they're unlikely to beat the top 10 weirdest tales of storage-related woe reported this week.

Ant infestations, oil and failed parachute jumps are some of the unusual fates that have befallen innocent data storage devices recently. They all come from data recovery company Kroll Ontrack's list of the most unusual recovery jobs it has faced in the past year, which has seen more damaged portable devices than ever before.

Take the fisherman who took his laptop in his rowing boat. As you do. Both he and the laptop went overboard, taking all the data to the bottom of a lake. The laptop and the data were both recovered but you have to ask yourself whether expensive laptops are an essential element of a fishing trip.

Unless you have a job counting fish and recording the numbers as a friend of the Round-Up used to. Actually, another friend of the Round-Up had a strange hands-on job with turbot that involved encouraging them to reproduce… but we should return to the bit about data loss rather than dwell on that.

There's the scientist who managed to spill corrosive acid on an external hard drive during an experiment and burnt away his important data. Meanwhile, another scientist was fed up with his hard drive squeaking, so he drilled a hole through the casing and poured in oil - which stopped both the squeaking and the hard drive. Clever.

How about the USB stick that shattered when a business man threw it at his partner during a rather heated debate? The device, which contained valuable company plans, was recovered. The Round-Up's unsure whether the partners managed a hug after the fracas. It likes to think so, storage woes have a way of uniting the human spirit in ways that only love and fine wine can do.

However, the Round-Up's favourite is the story of the wedding photographer who accidentally overwrote the pictures he'd taken of a couple's happy day with pictures from another wedding. The happy ending for the wedded couple and the photographer was that the data was recovered.

You can check out more tales of storage data woe. Made all the more remarkable because in all cases the data was recovered, even number two on the list.

Actually, the Round-Up was kidding before. If you have lost data in a spectacular fashion or lost a portable device leading to tales of joy or woe please let the Round-Up know by emailing editorial@silicon.com.

And finally this week, the now traditional quick review of the week's other big stories:

Guess who came bottom in a customer satisfaction survey of UK broadband providers? Go on, you'll never guess…

At a loss for what to ask Santa for this year? Check out the top 10 gadgets to wish for this Christmas. So, so shiny.

And lastly, check out the car that teaches itself to drive. However, bearing in mind it's being showcased by the same company that brought you Windows Vista you might want the think twice about whether to get in the passenger seat.

As ever you have two further delights awaiting you before you need to return to the work at hand. First, the caption competition where you get the chance to win a bottle of bubbly. All you need to do is look at the picture with your eyes, think of a caption with your brain and add a reader comments with your hands. Sorted.

And for those who want to enjoy listening to some of silicon.com's greatest minds toying with a smorgasbord of tech stories, the Weekly Round-Up podcast is available here.