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The Weekly Round-Up: 11.04.08
Wanted: PM's prints, £1,000 reward...

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 11 April 2008

Wanted: fingerprints of one unkempt, jowly, harassed-looking Scottish gentleman. Reward: £1,000.

An elaborate stunt dreamed up by anti-ID cards campaigners No2ID and Privacy International is offering a reward for anyone capturing the fingerprints of the Prime Minister or Home Secretary.

The two organisations have produced a Wild West-style 'Wanted' poster offering the reward for anyone who can lawfully obtain the fingerprints of either Gordon Brown or Jacqui Smith.

The poster says: "Smith & Brown intend acquiring by force the fingerprints of innocent people. The ringleaders need to learn that our fingerprints are not government property."

The posters will be put up in tube stations and pub toilets, both of which seem to be unlikely places to find either Mr Brown or Ms Smith.

Both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are accused of "identity theft" in the posters, which promise to make their fingerprints publicly available if captured. You can check out the poster here.

The reward money will be paid to a charity of the bounty hunter's choice. It's rib-tickling stuff.

The poster suggests lifting the prints from hard surfaces such as a beer glass or doorknob. Again, you're going to be standing around with your fingerprint kit in your hands for a while unless you're a frequent visitor to 10 Downing Street or the PM drinks in your local.

"Oi John, you'll never guess who was in 'ere last night - only Gordon bleedin' Brown. I 'ad a word with 'im. I says: 'Gordon, my son, you've got to sort out the bleedin' National 'ealth Service, it's a disgrace..."

(Alternatively, you could perhaps enlist this little guy's help? )

The campaign is an attack on government plans to take the biometric details of UK citizens for ID cards, starting next year.

So what other opportunities might there be for the enterprising young fingerprinter to make a quick £1,000?

Well, modern politicians are defined by what they say as well as what they do, so take a look at some recent speeches.

You might try and read the speeches where he talks about grasping nettles (tricky) and opportunities (trickier) but anything grasped or grabbed with two hands doubles your chances of getting some decent prints, irrespective of how immaterial or stinging the grabbed item might be.

The truly ambitious might also want to try and fingerprint him while he's actually making a speech, which again might prove a tough challenge given that, first, he waves his arms about a lot and second, he'd probably notice you doing it.

Either way, the challenge is there and Mr Opportunity is knocking hard on the doors of CSI enthusiasts...

Fancy a quick career prospects survey? Good stuff.

Work in IT? Check.
Young? Check.
Low paid? Check.

You're stuffed.

HP has claimed IT departments should be prepared for some churn and upheaval in coming years - or even more so than normal - as companies begin to adopt the idea of "cloud computing", which could result in many low-level IT jobs being cut.

And what in the name of all that is good and holy is cloud computing? Put simply, it's where applications are hosted and computing power is virtualised and available as a utility. Simple, really.

HP UK's managing director Stephen Gill has claimed that many large organisations are currently devoting around 70 to 75 per cent of their IT budget to managing their existing infrastructure, leaving little room for the innovation that can bring value to the business and rays of sunshine to the lives of its beleaguered and untapped staff.

Gill claims companies are able to outsource the need for maintaining complex infrastructure and reduce their IT headcount as a result and he added: "Overall you will see fewer people but with different jobs [and] more exciting roles."

Finally and adding insult to injury: "The junior roles are the ones that are usually dull and that will be automated anyway."

Run to the hills. For the record, the Round-Up thinks the word he was really after was 'drones'...

And yet - some encouraging news for thousands of young, worried techies: you could always get a job as a barista in your local coffee shop, branches of which are increasingly filled with caffeine-riddled workers with milk-filled laptops and empty bank accounts. Believe it or not, coffee shops are the new offices and people will always need tech support.

In other news - Microsoft this week got sick and tired of waiting for Yahoo! to make up its mind about Microsoft’s acquisition offer.

The software giant issued the Yahoo! board with an ultimatum giving the internet search pioneer three weeks to enter formal merger negotiations and conclude a deal. Or else.

On top of this Yahoo! announced this week that it's testing the use of Google ads on some of its search pages, raising the possibility of a significant shift from its present advertising strategy.

First, it's intended to test Google's AdSense for Search service, which will deliver relevant ads alongside Yahoo!'s own natural search results. Secondly, it's probably being done to annoy the living hell out of Microsoft. If you listen very carefully, you can still hear the sonic boom of Steve Ballmer's roar echoing throughout time and space.

And just as we were thinking Yahoo! had reached the end of the road and would have to be assimilated by the Seattle giant, up pops a whole range of companies that want to wrap it in cotton wool and whisper sweet nothings in its ear.

Oh yes, it's all gone mental this week because suddenly there's a veritable host of possible suitors leaping out of the wings and offering to throw unfeasible amounts of money at the company. Like who?

Glad you asked. Time Warner for one. The old lady of the media knows a thing or two about reaping the financial benefits from multibillion-dollar mergers with internet businesses. Yahoo! this week announced it's closing in on a deal from Time Warner to merge with its AOL unit.

Meanwhile, News Corp is considering joining Microsoft in a bid for Yahoo!, which would bring its MySpace social networking site into the mix and create a more formidable rival to internet juggernaut Google, reports claim.

The final word on the matter belongs to Sanford C Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay, who is clearly no stranger to understatement. Said Jeffrey: "The whole situation seems to be very unstable."

Any sane man would have to concur, Jeffrey. There's too much confusion here, the Round-Up can't get no relief...

And finally this week: got Windows Vista yet? You may want to wait as Windows 7 is on the way.

Curiously adopting the idiom of a teenage surfer, Bill Gates said: "I'm super-enthused about what it will do in lots of ways." The departing chairman also said that new versions of Windows would help revolutionise mobile phones and run the desk of the future, which would have a touch surface display allowing users to call up items using their hands. That would be the Surface technology, a neat, clever, $10,000 table that promises users a lifetime of backache thanks to its vision of ergonomic hell.

Pass the hash and metasploits. No idea what the Round-Up is talking about? Get the low-down on the latest must-have tech lingo here.

HSBC proves that it's not just government departments that have a cavalier approach to dealing with personal data.

And finally, the BBC's digital supremo and a rowdy mob of silicon.com readers hit back at claims from some ISPs that content providers should pay a premium for the download of IPTV content. The cheek of it. It almost makes the Round-Up want to open four iPlayer windows and play all of this week's EastEnders episodes simultaneously. Almost that is, moral outrage only carries a semi-determined idiot so far.

Until next week, don't forget you can check out the other Weekly Round-Up by downloading the podcast, which this week features computers of yesteryear (go Amstrad CPC 464!).

And enter the caption competition for a chance to win some bubbly.